It's Been A Long Time, But Now I'm...

We here at VFLOAB have been busy and that explains why it’s been nearly a week since we’ve posted anything, and we apologize for that. We’re not proud of this fact either.

No matter, since we’re feeling feisty today, we probably lack any ability to write anything introspective and analytical. Call it a cop-out if you will, but them the facts Jack.

We’re happy to see the Champions League start up again with Liverpool going down in Lisbon last night 1-0 (there’s still hope next week). Arsenal walked into Madrid and took a 1-0 (or 1.5-0) lead over Real Madrid last night also when Henry scored a goal that everyone is gushing about. But Europe being Europe and lacking ESPN, we haven’t seen a video of the goal. But word in the papers was that it was amazing. Tonight, Barca is in London facing off with Chelsea. We’ll ignore the fact that Rangers is also playing since we are, after all, good Catholics (Hibs and Celtic for life!).

We’ve been enjoying the Olympics just because they’re there and they don’t come around all that often. We don’t have much to say about them, but we can’t understand how American Idol is out pacing them in the ratings. What’s enjoyable about watching lounge singers attempting to sing songs that aren’t lounge songs and taking themselves way too seriously? I just don’t get the entire Idol phenomenon (a show we tried to watch last year we might add, but it's so bad and so boring that we couldn't get into it and that's saying something considering we love My Super Sweet 16). It might be the most boring show on TV since nothing happens and as we said, most of these ‘performers’ are no talent ass clowns. Since I can’t explain its popularity, I’m just going to take the easy Democratic route and blame George W. Bush. There that was easy.

Yummmmm baseball is starting…

There’s something going on in the UK with Prince Charles and the fact that he considers himself a political dissident… but I don’t care. I just felt like maybe you should know.

This whole port situation is very interesting. It’s a classic Free Market vs National Security question… and considering that those are two of the GOPs biggest platforms it was only a matter of time before this came to ahead. While we haven’t done a ton of reading on it, we sort of agree with Bush at the moment since Dubai is much different than the rest of the Middle East in terms of lifestyle and even politics. But there are two things that should be considered:
1) We’ve seen the cracks within the Republican party over the last year or so, but could this be the issue that ‘breaks the dam’? And while party’s rarely fall into complete and utter chaos, this could be the issue where we see a clear split between two fractions within the GOP. Remember, it’s usually these ‘small’ issues that create these clear rifts. Just something to watch for.
2) Treasury Secretary John Snow is a former chairman of CSX and the firm was bought by the Dubai firm back in 2005. Also one of the Dubai firms top executives, David Sanborn, was nominated by Bush to the post of the Maritime Administration in the U.S. Department of Transportation last month. In other words, Bush could be helping out a friend here… but what else is new.

The USA Hockey Team finally bowed out of the Olympics today losing to Finland. While for some reason they’re getting blasted in the media, we actually think the US did a pretty decent job in Turin this time around. The team was clearly weaker than the Swedes, Finns, Russians, Czechs, and Canadians on paper and avoided getting knocked out of the first round of the tournament. So while they didn’t win a medal, no one was expecting them to win one anyway. It was one of those odd years where US hockey is at a crossroads and we should be fine in 2010 when the games are in Vancouver. As for who we’re rooting for now… I feel like I’m at 7-11 in front of the slurpie machine. How can you not love Teemu and the Finns? The Swedes have the best sweaters in the tournament and play great hockey. The Czechs are always hip. And the Canada is our fall back country come Olympic time… so who do you root for? I guess it all depends on the match ups.

Things I can promise in the upcoming few weeks and days… a break down of Fukuyama’s wonderful piece on the Neo-con movement, 2006 Baseball preview, random Economist stuff I’ve come across. And I’m sure well thought out, intellectual, and analytical musings on why Bush is wrong.

This stinks, sorry. I’ll go.