How stupid is Hamas?

Pretty freakin' freakin'stupid

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose Hamas-led government negotiated the cease-fire with its militant wing, blamed Israel: "We made great efforts at keeping the truce and there was a positive Palestinian position, but unfortunately this position was met by expanding the aggression and escalating it against the Palestinian people," he said. "It's not a Palestinian problem, it is an Israeli problem."

..."The cease-fire has been over for a long time, and Israel is responsible for that," the spokesman, Abu Obeida, told the Voice of Palestine radio station. "We are ready to kidnap more and more, and kill more and more of your soldiers."

It's really quite sad. We sympathize with average Palestinian citizens, and believe that some of Israel's policies, particularly the wall, the bulldozing of complete neighborhoods, and the illegal use of clusterbombs are abhorrent. It's been said before, but bears repeating: if the Palestinian leadership accepted Israel's existence and lobbied for its own state by adopting nonviolent means after anti-colonialist, civil rights champions like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and even Martin Luther King Jr, they'd receive their own country, maybe even East Jerusalem and the pre-1967 borders. But the thing is they don't have leadership.

No one who represents them has both the pragmatism to move away from the banner of jihad and towards reality (you, Hamas) or the strength and solidarity to actually get a deal done (you Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's successor.)

So Hamas will probably carry on its war and get maybe 10-15 Israelis killed, Israel will retaliate, getting 80 militants killed (and civilian "collateral damage") and the world will look on, thinking "those damn crazy middle-easterners." It will take years for the blood of the Holy Land to ever be cleansed, and for the people there to live the way God intended-in peace and compassion with one another.

It's a freaking shame, too.

Kimono Bet Postmortem

Dice-K didn't pitch very well, but for the entire series Joe Torre managed his pitchers about as well as Alberto Gonzales runs the Department of Justice, and now we will be getting our geisha on this week.

Yankees AA call-up Chase Wright struggled with his control for the entire game, giving up four consecutive home runs to erase an early 3-0 Yanks lead. The Yanks still had the oppurtunity to win again with a one-run lead in the seventh. But after a solid relief appearance by Andy Pettite in the sixth, Torre called on middle relief man Scott Proctor to face Sox slugger Manny Ramirez, who has hit three homeruns off Proctor in his career. Proctor gave up three consective hits, incuding a three-run homer by thirdbasemen Mike Lowell, which gave the Sox a two-run lead. With a man on third, the Yanks threatened to tie in the eigth, but an amazing catch by Sox rookie Dustin Pedroia sealed the game.

We're disappointed by the outcome of last night. Yet, since the Yankees held tough against Boston's best in a series where the Yanks were playing about 2/3 at their potential due to injuries, we are hardly feeling devastated. The Yanks can hit Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett, and Dice-K. We'll meditate to that when we don the kimono.

We're really trying to dislike this guy, but...

... We just can't. Daisuke Matsuzaka looks so friendly and lovable, like a teddy bear. And everyone in the media seems to talk about how great he is. If we met him, we'd want to buy him dinner at a Japanese-Italian fusion restaurant and ask him about striking out Ichiro. In a few hours, our sentiments might change. His pitching performance will determine if we will don a kimono at school, and whether the Yankees will be swept by Boston.

As we mentioned earlier, standing between us and certain humiliation is a Mr. Chase Wright; so we are pretty confident! No, really. That wasn't complete sarcasm. Okay, it was.

Yet, our outlook for the rest of the season is about as positive as one can be in this situation. This weekend the Yankees weakest pitching (save for Andy Pettite, of course) just happened to match up with Boston's best. Still the Yankees were positioned to win on Friday with a 6-2 lead in the eighth until Boston rallied. Yesterday, they kept it close when minor leaguer Jeff Karstens faced "ace" Josh Beckett, losing 7-5. Keeping in mind major contributors Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon, and Jorge Posada all missed the game, I would say what we learned the Yanks can match up with Boston's best. With a healthy lineup, they'll find more success. Though Johnny Damon returns, that might not help us today. But we'll be spending the day making chili and visiting cousins over assorted cold beverages made in Ireland. So we'll probably still be pretty happy.

John McCain is the Pauly Shore of War-Comedy

So what do you do when you are a major Presidential candidate at a time when America is in a war with Iraq that hasn't gone exactly as planned, and you are asked a question about the potential for war with its biggest neighbor, Iran? We hope your answer would not be breaking out to song, replacing the Beach Boy's hit "Barbara Ann" with the words "Bomb Iran."

Senator McCain's campaign claims it was a joke, made in good fun. And that anyone who is bothered by the Senator's remarks should get over it.

We like to think we have a sense of humor. But given the unfathomably paranoid way the Iranians view the world, the animosity in the history of US-Iranian relations, and the need greater diplomatic initiatives in the region if the US ever leaves Iraq, the remarks from a serious presidential candidate are very hard to forgive, whatever the context. The mullahs in Iran will definitely make sure "Bomb Iran" is taken literally. And this will make finding agreements on the few things we should agree on, mainly Iraq being stable, even harder than before.

We are not sure what McCain was thinking, because this can't help him catch Rudy Giuliani in the polls. But we do know that with MC Rove finally found an opening act, and the RNC might have to put out a "Greatest Hits" album. We just hope that the word "hits" isn't meant literally.

Going, Going, GONG!

As you can see, the Yanks swept their home series against the Cleveland Indians. They are now set to play three games at Fenway Park. It is April, but we are pretty excited for this series.

We think we have the edge in Pettite vs. Schilling and for Saturday we will keep the image of Josh Beckett walking in runs during last year's Boston Massacre II, but the game we're really looking forward to is Sunday when Daisuke Matsuzaka debuts against the Yankees.

You see we bet our buddy Joe that if Dice-K beats the Yankees in his first start, for a full day at our high school, we'll wear a silky robe that Japanese-American kindergarten girls wear on Girl's Day. Obviously, when we made this bet, we weren't expecting that minor league call up Chase Wright would be our starter. Really, we weren't. But Wright did have a solid debut this week against the Indians and a lot of that had to do with the good movement he gets with his two different curveballs. On his pitching, Wright says, "I see myself as a left-handed Tim Hudson. He gets after it when he's on the mound, which is like me. He's a bulldog, which actually was my nickname in high school, because I go right after batters."

From the way the Yanks have been hitting lately, we're still think its entirely possible Dice-K's Yanks debut will be folly. And we DO have a "bulldog" on our side. At least that is what we keep telling ourself.

NOTE: And we like our title. What say you?

Mos Def @ Pipeline Cafe

We'll admit, we were a bit skeptical about paying $46 to go see Mos Def at Pipeline Cafe this Friday. But after enjoying what just might have been the best concert of our admittedly empty concert life (we've only seen the Strokes and Kanye West,) we're pretty sure it was worth it.

Mos Def came on the stage at about 9 o'clock. After waiting in the front row for several hours, it felt like God himself beamed down to grace us with his presence, except God wore a really colorful hoodie, baggie board shorts, a ti leaf lei and has starred in multiple hit movies like "The Italian Job" or "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" and released several acclaimed albums like "Black on Both Sides" and "Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star."

What made Mos really special was his versatility, smooth carefree demeanor, and a genuine ability to connect with the audience. Mos can go from a fun, shake-your-ass club hit like "Ms. Fat Booty," to the physchedelic yet undoubtedly hip-hop jam "Umi Says", to the keen, socially concious ballad like "Modern Marvel," which tastefully samples Marvin Gaye's classic "What's Going On?" He even played Black Star hit "Definition," doing the part of partner and our second favorite rapper Talib Kweli.

In between songs, he'd joke and display a genuine affability. When a girl threw flowers onto the stage, he set them up on the turntables and sarcastically cracked about how gangster that made him. Yet, my favorite part was after the end of "What's Going On," he spoke about proof of God lays in our music. Yet, Mos displayed a taste of nuance and humor, saying "science can explain a lot of things, but after a certain point, science needs to sit its ass down!"

The show lasted for nearly two hours and it seemed that no one--even Mos and his DJs--wanted the show to end. In fact, we think we saw him argue with the venue manager to play a few extra songs. With that sort of enthusiasm, how could one be disappointed? We certainly weren't. In fact, we think we found the one man who could bring down MC Rove (see below.)

UPDATE: We received a picture from a concert companion. We would give them proper credit and acknowledge them by name, if our English teacher allowed us to name real people from our school.

We sold our soul for fantasy baseball dorkness...

Thanks to Barry Bonds 736th and 737th homeruns, our fantasy team did pretty well yesterday. We don't mean to brag. In fact we even feel a little bit guilty. If it wasn't for fantasy baseball, we'd probably would be the guys that do things like this...

But late in our fantasy draft, we needed more home runs and RBIs and decided to roll the dice with a without a doubt hall-of-famer. So now we gleefully root for Bonds in his quest for 756 home runs, even if many people consider it to be the biggest sham in baseball history. We are nerdy and we have no morals, but it's been pretty easy since for the last several years we've rooted for this man