Anti-war Wizard
Thanks to a reader for emailing this speech made at the recent war protest rally in DC. I have to admit I'm mostly with Kos on this one - mass protests like this have become so self-parodying as to be pretty inconsequential (I hope I'm wrong about that). But this must have been a real highlight, and perhaps the makings of a new leader in the liberal ranks. Etan Thomas played college basketball at Syracuse, and now for the Washington Wizards in the NBA. His fabulous speech proposed taking Republican leader/blowhards and dropping them off in "the 'hood" to start their lives over.

I’d employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.

I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.

But, Etan goes pretty easy on them really. He doesn't send even 1 devastating hurricane to wash away what little they would have to their name. Read the whole thing. It's great.