Every year, some well-meaning columnist reminds us of the holidays’ true meaning, and wishes the consuming public all the best despite their wayward approach. Well, guess what? I ain’t that guy.

I’m the guy who says, “The next knucklehead that uses ‘Turkey Day’ as a synonym for Thanksgiving should lose everything he has.” From his job to the universal remote he makes his kid get because he’s too freakin’ lazy to walk his sloppy ass across the room to retrieve it.

Clearly, Mr. Turkey Day has no gratitude for what he has and is solely focused on what the majority of Americans guzzle down that particular day. So, screw him. Maybe when he’s living in a box, fighting Smelly Sal for the spot nearest the flaming barrel, and standing in line for runny stuffing at the homeless shelter, he’ll remember just how good he had it and think he should’ve given more thanks.

Last week, President Bush told reporters that the attacks on US soldiers in Iraq were limited to a very small area of Iraq. His reasoning was that since the area of unrest was so small that an allout assault was unnecessary. However, an attack on US soil on 5 acres of land was reason enough to invade and destroy two entire countries.

Yes, there are mitigating factors such as the innocent lives lost versus the lives of soldiers. I doubt that distinction matters much to the families who are meeting caskets at Army bases around the US. What we have is a lethal double standard that is being constantly danced around by the Bush administration.

It seems that this week, with several major assaults in Baghdad and Tikrit, the Bush administration and its minions have realized that they will not be able to kid glove the Iraqis into whatever vision the administration holds for them. Any illusion you may have that the administration is not behind every move in Iraq is certainly understandable considering the amount of opinion that “the Iraqi people” seem to be able to voice in the press.

We keep hearing about how excited they all are and how much they are looking forward to democracy. Yet, that opinion is really only held by the people who are in the provisional government. A government installed by the Bush administration, not elected by the Iraqi people. So, who really knows how the Iraqi people feel about the occupation.

I would be all smiles and hugs when faced with scared, pissed, and tired Marines bristling with armament. I might also be smiles and hugs when I met with my fellow saboteurs later that night under cover of darkness. I am not accusing all the Iraqi people of being resistance fighters who often kill innocent bystanders. However, I can certainly understand how they might go about fooling the Army and its soldiers into thinking I was helping while with my other hand, I would be throwing grenades.

What the administration has done is to dump the US Army into an impossible situation. Not a difficult one, but an impossible one. There are cultural differences between the soldiers and the population that simply cannot be overcome. 3000 years of history bears that out. Look at the befuddlement our forces saw in Vietnam with the enemy hiding in tunnels and doing suicide charges against withering fire. The American forces simply could not understand how or why the enemy were doing what they were doing.

While the comparison to Vietnam is certainly valid and powerful, I think it’s far too loaded an analogy to be useful. Instead, compare the Iraqi War with our most famous, and honorable war, World War II. We were fighting for all the right reasons. We won, not with superior techonology or numbers or smart tacticians, but with sheer determination. That’s precisely what we lack in Iraq. We have superior technology, greater numbers, better tactics and every other advantage, but we are fighting for nothing. How can any soldier or really any American possibly see Iraq or its people as a threat. There are no WMD there. Saddam has disappeared. All we seem to have done is to create a climate where our soldiers can be picked off by resistance fighters. We cannot expect the men and women who are there to be both saviors and executioners at the same time, especially when they see no purpose to either course of action.

I have this image of our soldiers just sitting around guarding palaces and eyeing each passing truck as their trigger finger itches. This has become less of a war and more of a test of the national patience. I simply cannot conceive that anyone in this country thinks that we have anything to gain, morally, financially, or globally, by pursuing our current plan, or lack thereof, in Iraq.

Dear Congress,
Lately you seemed to have turned part of your attention toward the Bowl Championship System, or BCS. Yes, it seems to be very subjective in a nature and a system the rewards the giant universities while leaving little hope for the smaller colleges.

We know this is something you understand as you often favor big donors while us little people are left behind. But that is for another letter. We, the SpittingLlamas, would like to let you know that we have come up with a plan to fix the BCS that not only makes it more logical, but could make it much more profitable for Universities everywhere. Let’s remember, college athletics funds so many programs that us non-athletic students that were required to use our brains and study could take advantage of.

In short, you can pay attention to the war and we’ll fix this BCS thing for you. After all, there are kids the same age as these college athletes in Iraq coming home in bags right now. So let us, big fans of NCAA football, propose a solution.

The way the BCS works now is confusing and so arguably fluid and subjective that no one is satisfied with the results. The BCS rankings average the two main Top 25 polls - The Associated Press media poll and the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll. After that, they implement another factor averaging the seven highest computer rankings by Richard Billinglsey, Kenneth Massey, David Rothman, Jeff Sagarin’s USA Today, Matthews/Scripps-Howard, The Anderson & Hester/Seattle Times, Peter Wolfe and Atlanta Journal-Constitution rankings. The lowest and highest computer rankings will be disregarded, and the computer component will be determined by averaging the six other computer rankings.

If that wasn’t confusing enough, they introduce a large does of subjectivity with something called, “Rank of Schedule Strength.” This is one team’s schedule compared to other Division I-A teams of actual games played divided by 25. This component is calculated by determining the cumulative won/loss records of the team’s opponent (66.6 percent) and the cumulative won/loss records of the teams’ opponents opponents (33.3 percent). Huh?

Then, they toss in something even more nebulous. They have a “Quality Wins” rating. The quality win component rewards to varying degrees teams that defeat opponents ranked among the top 10 in the weekly standings.

Then, and this is the part you congressmen have focused on, they only allow 6 conferences to participate - ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC. You claim it’s anti-competitive to exclude other conferences, as there could be great teams there, and ultimately hurts their recruiting efforts. And I haven’t even gotten to the “At-Large” factor.

As you wise sages on Capital Hill have noted, this system is too fluid and subjective to amount to a serious, scientific ranking. It’s about as subjective as those no-bid contracts given to Haliburton, but again, that’s for another letter. After you read this and bask in its clarity and logic, you may want to thank us by instituting a new national holiday in our name.

We call our new system the LBS - the Llama Bowl System, or Long Blowjobs, Shizz?

It uses the playoff method, similar to the NCAA basketball, but incorporates the best of the current college football system, namely the fat, rich sponsors that make the world go ’round.

There are currently 56 bowl games. Our LBS institutes a playoff system that automatically puts the top 64 teams in a bracket and begins a weekly elimination. At week two, 32 teams play in the next level of bowls, then 16… you get the idea.

Each game would be referred to as a “bowl game,” thus creating the opportunity to keep the sponsors on board and the greenbacks flowing toward the colleges. The first bracket, the 64 teams, would be the lesser-known bowls, like the Bukkakie Bowl, The Motor City Bowl, and the Enron Check Your 401k at the Door Bowl.

The next set of brackets after the first round of eliminations has bowls that are more prestigious. Bowls like the Insight Bowl, the Outback Bowl, and the Florida Voting Bowl (of course, this bowl will be fixed and African-American’s won’t be allowed to buy a ticket much like the 2000 voting practices of Florida.)

At each level the cost of sponsorship goes up. You could find a bidding war going on for the top 4 bowls. A final four could be marketed, helping the 4 final teams in recruiting efforts rather than just the single championship team. With this playoff system, you go from the current 56-bowl line up to a 125-bowl set up. That is thousands of more sponsors! A million more tickets sold! HOLY SHIT, talk about a boost to the economy!

One complaint may be that this would lengthen the season. Good. We should be all for it. NCAA fans will go to these bowl games. Currently the last NCAA football game in November 29, yet the majority of bowls game are not played until the first week of January. Let’s keep these special gifts receiving, THC-steroid using kids playing through the month of December. The Final Four games could all be played on Christmas Day when we are all surrounded by extended family we’d rather not talk to and find ourselves bored. Then the National Championship game will still be held on January 1st.

So there you are, Congress. It’s laid out for you like a third world country ready to be bombed. You just have to say it’s so. Feel free to jam a new highway project or something in there for your district, too. We won’t tell anyone.

You friends,
The SpittingLlamas

As I have detailed many, many times I am a news junkie. I’m signed up on every breaking news email list there is… CNN, ABC News, MSNBC….

And, time and time again, I make fun of that “news” site that masquerades as ABCNews, or as I like to call it, The Advertising Barf Company. I have never seen a news site whore so much advertising before. Not even FoxNews stoops to that level.

Anyhow, I’m getting away from my point. A breaking news email comes in from ABCNews. I had just read on CNN.com about a bomb in Iraq at an Italian police station that killed 22 people. Could that have been the breaking email awaiting me in my inbox?

Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Britney Spears Opens Up to ABCNEWS About Her Music, Her Heart and Her Famous Body Parts.

News is no longer news. It’s entertainment. It’s not about telling us what is going on in the world. They are whoring themselves to the lowest possible denominator they can find, which I think is simple ‘people who are currently awake.” It’s about getting you to see their ads, not about getting you to see what is happening in the world.

From the Grapeshot forums: Rush doin’ Rush doin’ Rush

Rush Limbaugh crucifies himself. Again.

Dr. Dean has been criticized for making the now infamous Confederate flag reference. He indicated that he also wanted to vote of white trash. He said it better than that, but that is essentially what he was saying - poor white folk with a confederate flag in their pick-up truck.

While Kerry and the other attacked Dean, making this issue into a political statement for them, did any of them ask if Dean was right?

MSNBC pointed out that if Dean had 99% of all Black voters, he would still not carry a single southern state. In other words, to win the south, you also need the vote of the poor white folk with confederate flags in their pick-up trucks.

Like drilling a dry well, Kerry had to move his attack elsewhere. So he is now attacking Dean for possibly opting out of federally matching campaign funds.

One, no candidates follow the guidelines set by the federal matching program. They always find a way to spend past the limit, even if it means having TV commercials made south of the border and beamed in. So let’s stop giving lip service to the matching program.

Second, why does Kerry, or Edwards, feel that they should have to take advantage of the program when the program may actually be a disadvantage? Bush steamed past the $100 million mark in campaign funds. Dean, the democrat with the largest war chest, has 20% of that.

Dean, or any dem of that fact, is going to blow a lot of money just getting the nomination. Then they’ll have Bush’s $100 million waiting for them. The federal matching program would set limits on how much a candidate can spend in any one state, while Bush would have no such limitation. That’s not including organizations like the NRA that will put out their own pro-Bush commercials that are not part of the official Bush campaign.

In other words, if Dean can muster the money, and all indications are that he can, then screw the federal match. It will be the only way to go toe-to-toe with Bush and his gazillionair, lying, no-bid contracting friends.

I will tell you why I am supporting Dean, with lip service and money. Not for his economic plan. Not for his heath-care ideas. It’s for a single statement he made a few weeks ago. He said it’s possible we may not win the White House, but I will make you proud to be a Democrat again.

Democrats are tired. We no longer want to be the party of Bill Clinton. We want to be the party of passion. And when I hear Kerry and Clinton say they do not want liberals in the party, then they might as well be staff members of the RNC. How can a candidate seeking the Democratic nomination say he does not want half of the current democrats in the party? When that happens there is something very wrong.

Dean has continued to surge forward because Democrats are tired are being the political whipping boy. We’ve deserved it, but Dean is fighting it.

Michael Moore points out:
This week the Senate gave Bush the $87 billion he was looking for to continue the debacle in Iraq. But the Republicans knew that voting for this might come back to haunt them, so they asked the Democrats if they could just have a “voice vote” so no one’s name would have to be recorded as having voted in favor of sending the nation into permanent debt (a debt that may not be paid off in our lifetime). The Democrats, afraid of appearing unpatriotic, agreed to the deal.

Something tell me if Dr. Dean where Senator Dean, he would not have agreed.

Log from our IRC room #spittingllamas on irc.dynamix.com:

Jetteva: breaking news from ABC email list:
Jetteva: EXCLUSIVE: Martha Stewart Tells Barbara Walters ‘I’m Innocent’
Jetteva: WELL SHIT! who would have guessed!’
Cosbysweater: hahaha
Cosbysweater: I can’t wait to watch it.
Cosbysweater: Maybe she’ll also say how this experience has changed her.
Jetteva: it’d only be breaking news if she told wa-wa: “I hate little people. I got rich on the backs of middle-class losers. I’m Illuminati.”
Jetteva: “I slept with Elvis and I’m a 33rd degree Mason”
Cosbysweater: LOL
Cosbysweater: Now that would be News!
Jetteva: “I am the holy grail.”
Cosbysweater: Then she strips and runs around singing the theme song to “The Smurfs.”
Jetteva:> that would get the highest ratings on TV ever

A bit latter in the day…
Cosbysweater: weird: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/031104/241/5rkhv.html&e=2&ncid=1756
Jetteva: glad I saw that after lunch. =^)
Cosbysweater: yeah. pretty strange looking.
Cosbysweater: they have regular sized heads
Jetteva: i bet when you’re that small, you’d be great at hide and go seek
Cosbysweater: LOL
Cosbysweater: straight to hell.
Jetteva: yep… or, is it a glass is half full?
Jetteva: I’m not evil, I’m just an optimist
Jetteva: well, maybe evil too, but an evil optimist
Cosbysweater: I guess you could say you were just thinking about them
Cosbysweater: and what they might be good at.
Cosbysweater: It would be solely evil if you said
Cosbysweater: “Man, they prolly suck at basketball.”
Jetteva: hahaha.. right
Jetteva: or, “I bet they get picked last for the kick ball teams”
Cosbysweater: hahaha
Cosbysweater: They would however be easy to leap frog over.
Jetteva: glass is half full with us.
Cosbysweater: Absolutely.
Cosbysweater: We could be motivational speakers.
Jetteva: LOL
Cosbysweater: Help people with their self esteem.
Jetteva: they could make a movie.. Agent Orange Juice.
Jetteva: it’d be a comedy
Cosbysweater: hahaha
Cosbysweater: Starring them and O.J. Simpson.
Cosbysweater: The juice is loose.
Jetteva: they could sit up on his shoulders and they could solve whacky crimes
Cosbysweater: that’s a hilarious image
Jetteva: “Don’t make me mad now, I’ll toss the Orange sisters on your face.”
Cosbysweater: He’d be running through the airport with them holding on for dear life.
Jetteva: hahahaha
Jetteva: “turn left juiiiiccceee.. he went datta way”
Jetteva: while OJ is pushing over nuns and Red Cross workers as he runs
Cosbysweater: And all the while, the background story is him searching for the real killers.
Jetteva: every now and again, Kato could appear in the background like he’s trying to find a way into the action so he can get noticed
Cosbysweater: hahaha
Cosbysweater: There could be one episode where OJ falls while chasing a guy
Cosbysweater: and the Orange sisters could say,
Cosbysweater: “I told you not to wear those shoes.” and then look at the camera.
Jetteva: we are the undiscovered waskiasklalisi brothers
Jetteva: but it’d be even better because we’re not really brothers
Jetteva: but we could make a trilogy called The May Tricks
Jetteva: it could be all about magicians in May, mixed with Buddhist philosophy

This picture can only mean one thing…

Update to the LlamaTails section.