Moneyshot Quotes of the Week

"I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day."

"That is absurd. It may even be criminal."

-- Gordon Smith, the latest Republican Senator to get off the Kool-Aid

"It's bad in Iraq. That help?" (heh-heh-heh)

-- Bush, when asked by a British reporter if he was 'still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq'

"It shocked me that (the Astros) would not continue to go up, when the Yankees continued to push and push and pursue and they (the Astros) really didn't do much."

-- Andy Pettitte, pissing and moaning about his $16 million contract with the New York Yankees. The Houston Astros offered him $12 million.

"The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion."

-- Texas comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn

"You have these cheap shots coming at you, but you still need to move forward. Obviously, when people are spreading falsehoods and lying about your character and who you are, it's much more aggravating. ... If you lose by one point in a game, you can look back on every single play of the game ... (one) can say, 'gosh darn, if we only had made that block, if we only didn't jump off-sides, if we only had recovered that fumble, if we hadn't thrown that interception. If the referees didn't screw us on that play.' "

-- former Senator George Allen of Virginia, on why he lost

"I just didn't feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically. He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes."

-- Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, after an Oval Office meeting

"Nope, nobody sang 'Kumbaya'."

-- outgoing UN ambassador John Bolton, asked about a 'healing process' with outgoing UN Sec.-Gen. Kofi Annan at a White House dinner attended by both

Pettitte, Astros playing chicken

This is the most recent news I can find on the 'will he or won't he'/'here or there' cat-and-mouse being played by Andy Pettitte and the Astros:

The Yankees have opened by offering Pettitte $15 million. They've also told him they'll improve that, perhaps to $17 million, which would top the $16.5 million he made in 2006. The Yankees also said they'll give Pettitte a second year if he so desires. The Astros are way behind financially, at $12 million (and one season).

Even so, interested parties have seen the competition as a 50-50 proposition.

"Certainly, we have a geographical edge,'' Astros general manager Tim Pupura said. "And certainly, you have to expect the Yankees to have a financial edge.''

The author, Jon Heyman of SI.com, continues ...

Feeling slightly uncertain about which team Pettitte will choose, the Astros went ahead and agreed to a deal Thursday morning to obtain Jon Garland from the White Sox for three young players -- Willy Taveras, Jason Hirsh and Taylor Buchholz -- only to see it fall through when, according to sources, the White Sox became concerned with the health of Buchholz.

We can't forget that Pettitte left the Yankees three years ago feeling somewhat slighted by his own team when it reduced their offer to him from a three-year contract to a two-year contract. So it's reasonable to wonder whether Pettitte felt the least bit slighted at the news that the Astros had a deal for a pitcher to replace him.

And indeed, Garland would have been replacing him. Purpura said it "would have been very difficult'' to employ both Garland and Pettitte and said they will continue to seek a top starter. If they can't resurrect a deal with the White Sox, they will look for another one.

"We have to pursue other options,'' Purpura explained. "He's talking to other clubs, and we're talking to other clubs."

I thought the 'Stros did well with the Carlos Lee and Woody Williams signings (even if the market dictates they had to overpay for them) but if they miss Pettitte not over a few million dollars but because he's easily piqued, well ...

... too bad. He started this charade with his Clemens-like shilly-shallying, and now if he has to go back to the Big Apple to work, gee that's too bad for his lovely family in Deer Park.

Make up your mind already, you big redneck.

Update (minutes after this posting): Pettitte is New York-bound.

Andy Pettitte has chosen to re-sign with the New York Yankees, reaching a one-year $16 million deal with a player option for another $16 million in 2008.

If he gets hurt, he won’t take his option.

“I had offered the Astros $14 million and an option,” Randy Hendricks said. “But they wouldn’t take it. Both teams know that if Andy gets hurt, he won’t take the option. The Astros flat turned me down.”

Feingold, Bennett put the ISG on notice

Each in their inimitable way, of course. First, Russ (from Countdown):

The fact is this commission was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism. So that's who is doing this report.

Then I looked at the list of who testified before them. There is virtually no one who opposed the war in the first place. Virtually no one who has been really calling for a different strategy that goes for a global approach to the war on terrorism. So this is really a Washington inside job and it shows not in the description of what's happened -- that's fairly accurate -- but it shows in the recommendations. It's been called a classic Washington compromise that does not do the job of extricating us from Iraq in a way that we can deal with the issues in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia which are every bit as important as what is happening in Iraq.

This report does not do the job and it's because it was not composed of a real representative group of Americans who believe what the American people showed in the election, which is that it's time for us to have a timetable to bring the troops out of Iraq.

And then Bill:

Who are these commissioners and what is their expertise in Iraq — or even foreign policy? ... The entire report is contemptuous of the military, spoken of as pawns on a chess table, barriers, observers, buffers, and trainers. Never as what they are trained to be: the greatest warriors in the world. Would it have been too much to ask that one general, or even one outspoken believer in the mission from the get-go, be on this commission?

Perhaps the most systemic problem with the report is it didn't tell us how to win; it answered how to get out. The commissioners answered the wrong question, but it was the one they wanted to answer.

In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible.

I think Bennett is jealous because he wasn't picked for the commission. Or maybe he's just having severe slots withdrawal.

Pearl Harbor Day remembrances

Today is the 65th anniversary.

There's no personal connection to the day; my dad shipped out to Pearl (he boarded a train at the old Union Station railway downtown; it's now part of Minute Maid Park) but got there just as the war was ending, so he never saw any action. He spent his enlistment doing the beginning of peacetime maintenance.

The surviving veterans will gather at the USS Arizona memorial for the last time. Most of them don't expect they can attend a 70th, if there is one.

The Arizona had been loaded with millions of gallons of heavy fuel oil the day before it was sunk in the Japanese attack. That oil has leaked slowly out of it ever since. There has long been concern that the deteriorating condition of the rusting ship might suddenly release what remains of its trapped cargo, causing an environmental disaster. People have been studying ways of dealing with, or preventing, that occurrence.

And in Fredericksburg, the hometown of Admiral Nimitz, they will commemorate the anniversary with the usual speeches and 21-gun salutes, but also with a sale of Texas Historical Commission bonds to expand the facilities there.