he los angeles lakers have traded shaq to the miami heat for lamar odom, brian grant, caron butler, and a future first-rounder,” tony kornheiser said on today’s Pardon the Interruption. “It is an incomprehensibly stupid move by the Lakers, and if David Aldridge has half a brain he will agree with me. How ’bout it.”

“You never trade Shaquille O’Neal.” aldridge replied. “You go from being invincable, to vincable.”

john woo caught me in the hallway, his head was down, he said it softly but i nearly beat him to it.

they did it, he said.

i know, i said.

this wasnt a they did it like omg they did it. this was a they did it like the republicans have stolen the election they did it.

like we always knew it was possible, but we didnt think it would actually happen, right infront of us, right when we were already down and beaten.

shaq was traded to the miami heat today for lamar odom, brian grant, caron butler and a #1 draft pick in 2005.

hardly a king’s ransom, particularily because grant is an undersized center and odom is an unproven burnout, and caron butler is a third year hopeful who scored twice as many points in his rookie year than he did last year.

shaq, meanwhile, is a presence that is going to be nearly impossible to replace, and brian grant is not the answer.

people say shaq is old. shaq isnt old. not even at 32. they say he’s out of shape, and i say theyre looking with their eyes and not the stats. shaqs numbers only got better as the season went on.

the fact is people in LA never fell in love with the big aristole the way that they fell in love with kareem, magic, worthy, and now kobe, and its ashame because shaq was hollywood, he was hard, he was funny, he was tough, and for his size he was as durable as it gets.

if kobe actually signs with the lakers, he is still unbelievably unsigned, the lakers will have the kobe show which vince carter, t-mac, and the answer proved doesnt win titles.

if he doesnt sign

and why should he

the lakers have a 41 year old power forward

no center

a new coach

and not much else except you boy

fuck that, id divorce my wife go to new york and win the first title for the knicks in a hundred and ten years.

lakers fucked up.

kat + waiting on instapundit‘s two cents on the failed ban on gay marriage + aint no bad dude

in lots of ways shes been an idyllic wife, standing by her man through thick and thin. she’s an educated, well-spoken, sober voice of the left.

i can see why people like rush limbaugh dont like her, even fear her. shes smarter than he is, has real power, and speaks to more people than just the grayhaireds and the unemployed.

but why would the dems not find time in their convention to have hillary clinton speak?

“It’s a slap in the face, not personally for Hillary Clinton (news – web sites), but for every woman in the Democratic Party and every woman in America,” Judith Hope, a major party fund-raiser and former chairwoman of the NY State Dem Party told the Associated Press.

According to the article, the former first lady “would appear at the convention’s opening night as part of a special segment featuring all the women senators, but she was not expected to speak.”

“To include the wife of the governor of Iowa, who I’m sure is a wonderful woman, and to not include Hillary Clinton is just such a glaring injustice,” Hope said. “It is, frankly, very stupid.”

Most see Ms. Clinton as the likely presidential candidate in 2008 should Kerry/Edwards lose. Why the Dems wouldn’t be reaching out to American women as the party of inclusion, and the party who have a good shot of giving this country its first woman president is beyond me.

Any problem that they had with her husband, they certainly dont have toward her. So whats the deal?

Unless of course this is all just a big fakeout, a planned ommision, if you will, to inspire a groundswell of support for the senator from new york, which will culminate in a dramatic and powerful speech this summer in boston.

as someone who witnessed hillary when she stumped for her husband back in ’91, i can attest to the fact that she can deliver the goods.

and she doesnt need a cadre of handlers to tell her what she should be saying or how to say it.

plus shes almost as pretty as edwards.

the dems should be embracing this woman who has gone through the ringer with her husband and has come out the other end even more powerful and solid than ever before.

i can’t wait to vote for her.

sk smith + britcoal + nico

mr. matthew lee welch brought up the concept of theo-cons, republicans who are rooted in Christianity who push moral agendas into american policy.

i say this without the least bit of sarcasm, but i am, in theory, in full support of such a concept.

the biggest problem that i have with this fine land is its shame in regards to religion. in order to distance ourselves from the religious zealots of the rest of the world, american politians oftentimes hide their spirtual beliefs so as not to be branded a Jesus-freak puppet or an echo chamber of the vatican.

westerners, and particularilly americans, have proved that they can balance their religion and their politics. most of us believe that God, infact, does NOT counsel the president of the united states to go to war with certain countries and/or to give tax breaks to the rich.

we have proven that you can have a moral compass that can work in conjunction to the bill of rights. we have proven that you can be a Christian nation minus Reformation.

what we have yet to prove is that we can govern a Christian nation by the teachings of Christ who preached things like “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none” (welfare), “turn the other cheek“, and His “new” commandment of “Love one another like I’ve loved you.”

if President Bush claims to be a Christian, I would like to see him rationalize his policies to the above.

i would also like to see more bible reading.

what i wouldn’t like to see is bible-thumping. America is great, in part, because of its diversity. i see no problem with a Christian president saying, “it is my belief that…” or “my faith teaches me… but I know yours might be different.” in fact i would encourage it.

ultimately i think that more religion in america, particularilly Christianity, would make for a less-violent country. i see very few places in the good book where it encourages preventative strikes on foreign lands.

and hardcore Christians, who see the Lord as their ultimate savior, and Jesus as the way, the truth and the life, should have a difficult time spending more money on “defense” and less on education.

if the Lord is our shepherd, after all, then whaddup with all the aircraft carriers?

but thats me, and i am obviously not reading the same bible as they are because within the second page of my bible it says that all the green seed-bearing plants are here for our use.

which to me means legalize it and free tommy chong.

so yeah, i would love to see the theo-cons out there, as well as the theo-libs.

sad thing is most of them are too chickenshit to stand up for what they truly believe in, and the others dont even know what they believe in, they just think that theyre supposed to believe in Jesus for some reason.

me, i believe, and i pray, and i trust. and hopefully ive shown in three years writing this that you can be a Believer, and the actions will mirror the beliefs far better than the words ever could.

simon world + matt welch + silverbake

so i wore shorts since its damn near ninety degrees here in hollywood.

when i got to my cubicle my commander had left a post-it note that he wanted to meet with me.

when the meeting was over i returned to my desk and i was thinking, what more could this fucking place do to me? which is a very victim-y way to think about anything, but its all i could come up with.

turned out one of my favorite people, the fella who sits next to me, had filled out a formal complaint about the fact that i had the nerve to play music at my desk.

a while back we made a deal that i would not play music until after noon, the halfway point of most of our days. i was pretty good about holding up my end of the bargain. but now even that amount of music was too much and i was being asked not to play music unless he was in the bathroom or away from his desk.

i dont know why some things bother me and some dont. call me a freak. the low pay, the extremely low pay, doesnt bother me.

the lack of opportunity: no biggie.

the lack of praise or respect for the fucked up work that im forced to deal with on the daily: whatev. ive grown to realize that there are very few perks to working at the xbi and kudos is low on their list.

people ask what the busblog is. what this is all about. and what the xbi is. and this morning taking the long walk from my commanders office to my little desk on the other side of the complex, i was realizing that the busblog is the written expression of endurance. of putting up with so much nonsense and not cracking. of turning shit into shinola.

its no accident that this blog didnt exist before i started at the xbi. and theres a little part of me that deals with all this whatever this is because the end result is writing that i dont mind putting my name on, because it isnt a daily barrage of venting, it isnt whines from the wilderness, it isnt bitchings from the balcony.

and the biggest struggle in this standoff regarding music is that i like the guy, and i know he has no love for music, and he knows how important music is in my life.

in the past i would be playing something and someone would ask me about it and i would talk about the songwriter, the guitarist, the producer, the label, the politics around it, the lyric that refers to a completely different song from a completely different person. i might even talk about one of the times that i saw the band. music to me isnt just the fa-la-la that it might be to someone else.

similarilly the groans from the guitars of lee rinaldi and thurston moore that i hear arent the shrieks that others hear. the tinklings of tones from thelonious monk that i enjoy isnt the background sounds that others here. and the walk of bass notes from john paul jones is more than just a fond recollection of past days that others might hear.

and being asked not to do something that i find nearly a neccessity to get through the day is horrible to me.

so im torn. and im tired. and ive hit the end of the road. i want to quit now. i want to stop this insanity. i dont want to have to fight for every little shred of happiness that im forced to wrestle over in my walk to earn my daily bread.

and im not getting laid.

damn good thing nothing in here is true.

her name is gruel + steph + andy dolan + and cheney too