various thoughts

Just a mishmash of things...

I have a very hard time believing that upping our troop level by 21K in Iraq is going to be the ticket to Victory over there. It looks more like a desperate grasp of a president trying to salvage what will likely be his legacy. First off, I don't see much support at all for it...the House doesn't want it, the Senate doesn't want it, the Iraqis don't want it, I don't want it, and on and on. It was listed as a recommendation by the Iraq Study Group as an option that could help secure the region and for more our Armed Forces sake than Bush's I surely hope it does. This was not a war we should have gotten involved in and now it looks like there is no happy ending here. What a shame.

We only have a very limited amount of troops elgible for this additional deployment as our forces are streched very thin amongst our various conflicts and bases around the world. The number of overall troops available may be good, but the number of troops available "with combat training" is not, and those will be the ones called upon here. This also means that a lot of soldiers will be called on for a second, third, or fourth tour in Iraqi with very little recovery time at home, and that is not a good situation.

Bush stated in his speech the other night that 80% of the violence still occuring in Iraq was directly in and around Baghdad and these additional troops are needed to quell that violence so that Iraq may proceed in some semblance of normalcy...I sure hope so...

other stuff...

The UK wildcats have started out their SEC schedule looking great with a victory over Ole Miss and a trouncing of Auburn. Sure hope that continues when the tougher opponents come along, and the SEC is very tough this year (and most every year) with ranked teams like defending champ Florida, LSU, Alabama, and other traditionally tough foes like Vandy and Arkansas...Go Cats...

The hockey team I kind of inherited when I moved to Tennessee (since I get most of their games on TV), the Nashville Predators, are standing in 1st place in their division nearing the half way point; and while so many teams make the playoffs in hockey placement doesn't mean everything it's still nice to see. The front office over in the Music City have put together a team that isn't laced with superstars (well maybe Paul Kariya could count as one), but manages to play great together and get the W's.

I've been kind of keeping up with the various poker action going on via live blogs and such like the Carribean World Poker Tour Championship and The Aussie Millions. Glad to see Erik Lindgren take down the huge 100K buy-in event down under. Only the truly upper class of poker can afford a buy-in to these pricey events so with the likes of Ivey, Seidel, Negreanu, Hansen, Juanda, and more this is some good poker to watch. Lindgren is a top notch player and seems like a great guy on and off the felt. Kudos should definitely go out to the wealthy Japanese businessman Masa Aki Kagawa for hanging quite tough with the pros to finish in the money 3rd and for super star Eric Seidel for getting to heads up and taking down 2nd. Only the top three finishers got paid with Lindgren pocketing a cool million...nice! That should pay for plenty of golfing prop bets with Kid Poker, Ivey, and Doyle, although from what I hear Lindgren more than holds his own on the links.

Have been having trouble finding the time to update this here blog, but hopefully it's just a short term thing. Have fun, and more later...