What Caught My Eye Today

2008 Presidential Race - Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. In all, the two men whom officials described as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people — 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community. The numbers 14 and 88 are symbols in skinhead culture, referring to a 14-word phrase attributed to an imprisoned white supremacist: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children" and to the eighth letter of the alphabet, H. Two "8"s or "H"s stand for "Heil Hitler." Talk about numerology getting out of hand. Good grief. The spree, which initially targeted an unidentified predominantly African-American school, was to end with the two men driving toward Obama, "shooting at him from the windows." Whack job comments aside--and believe me, several come to mind--it never ceases to amaze me the deep levels of hatred that seem to exist just beneath the fabric of, for lack of a better term, civilized society. I'm the last one to offer up any excuses for these psychos, but clearly these individuals feel slighted by the world at large. I think it would prudent to figure out why. Sure we stopped these two, but does anyone really believe that these are the only two guys that feel disenfranchised and angry?

Senate - Ted Stevens, a pillar of the Senate for 40 years and the face of Alaska politics almost since statehood, was convicted of a seven-felony string of corruption charges — found guilty of accepting a bonanza of home renovations and fancy trimmings from an oil executive and then lying about it. The senator said he would stay in the race against Democrat Mark Begich. Though the convictions are a significant blow for the Senate's longest-serving Republican, they do not disqualify him, and Stevens is still hugely popular in his home state. Of course he's running for Senate again. Heck, I bet he wins by a significant margin. Turns out that a felony can only prevent you from voting, not actually running for office. You have to love politics. Of course, on the bright side, Stevens probably has a lot fewer skeletons in his closet then the rest of his Senate colleagues.

Syria - What with things going so well in Iraq and Afghanistan, I guess it's not much of a surprise that the U.S. decided to piss in someone else's backyard. A bold U.S. raid into Syria showed the stark choice the Bush administration is putting to both friends and adversaries in its final weeks: Clamp down on militants and terrorists or we'll do it for you. And we wonder why no one likes us. The target of the raid in Sukkariyeh, Syria, just over the Iraq border from Husaybah was a man known as Abu Ghadiyah, the leader of the most prolific network to move al-Qaida associated foreign fighters into Iraq. A ground attack was chosen over a missile strike to reduce the chances of hurting civilians not associated with Abu Ghadiyah's network, the official said. Syria said troops in four helicopters attacked a building and killed eight people, including four children. The attack comes at time when Syria has been working to improve its image in the world. And periodically, U.S. commanders have noted that Damascus has worked harder to clamp down on the use of its country by terrorists. So this raid was what, our way of offering positive reinforcement? The United States has been asking Syria to hand over, capture or kill Abu Ghadiyah for months or years. The U.S. Treasury Department claims he ran a resupply operation on the Syrian border. Syria rebuffed the U.S. request, saying it was monitoring Abu Ghadiyah's activities. Clearly, Syria wasn't doing enough was it? Syria called the raid a "serious aggression," and its foreign ministry summoned the charges d'affaires of the United States and Iraq in protest. Whine, whine, whine. Seriously, what is the big deal with the United States ignoring the sovereignty of another nation. It's not like we didn't have a good reason. There was a bad guy hiding out in Syria, and we didn't like that.

War on Terrorism - Let me preface this item by saying, I just found my new favorite web site, but more on that in a moment. When political pundits began talking last year about the tab for the war in Iraq hitting $1 trillion, Rob Simpson sprang from his sofa in indignation. "Why aren't people outraged about this? Why aren't we hearing about it?" Simpson said. And then it came to him: "Nobody knows what a trillion dollars is." That's not true. A trillion dollars is like what, a tenth of the national debt? Simpson decided to embark "on an unusual but intriguing research project" to put the dollars and cents of the war into perspective. He hired some assistants and spent 12 months immersed in economic data and crunching numbers. The result: a slim but heavily annotated paperback released, "What We Could Have Done With the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq." He calculates $1 trillion could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with gold — 23.5-karat gold leaf. It could buy every person on the planet an iPod. It could give every high school student in the United States a free college education. It could pay off every American's credit card. It could buy a Buick for every senior citizen still driving in the United States. America could the double the 663,000 cops on the beat for 32 years. It could buy 16.6 million Habitat for Humanity houses, enough for 43 million Americans. Now imagine investing that $1 trillion in the stock market to make it grow and last longer. He used an accepted long-term return on investment of 9% annually, with compounding interest. The investment approach could pay for 1.9 million additional teachers for America's classrooms, retrain 4 million workers a year or lay a foundation for paying Social Security benefits in 65 years to every child born in the United States, beginning today. Oh I don't know, that stuff sounds okay, I guess. But you have to admit going all "shock and awe" on Iraq was pretty cool too. Simpson created a Web site companion to his book that lets you go virtual shopping with a $1 trillion credit card (click here). Choices range from buying sports franchises to theme parks, from helping disabled veterans to polar bears. "At one point we couldn't find anybody who actually stuck with it long enough to spend $1 trillion," Simpson said. You laugh? Try it, it's not as easy as it looks. I tried.

Hockey - Here's a little known piece of trivia for you. This past Saturday night, every team in the NHL--all 30 teams--were in action. Turns out this is only the second time in NHL history that this has happened. Of less surprise is the fact that no one noticed.