NASCAR Notes

Saturday Notes:

For NASCAR fans out there, I saw Bill Elliot at lunch. I was eating with my father at the Dawsonville Pool Room, and Elliot came in and had a bite too. He sat right under a portrait of himself, painted in the days when he was "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville," or "Million Dollar Bill" after the Winston Cup victory. Of course, it would have been hard for him to sit anywhere in that place that wasn't near a picture of himself.

Nice guy. Dawsonville is a small town, so no fuss was made about him being there -- everybody knows most everybody, including Bill. He used to sell cars up here, too, and several of the people will have bought a Ford from him.

Another note: Captain's Quarters had a good post on George Soros' comments at Davos.

He went on to say that Turkey and Japan are still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany's rejection of its Nazi-era past. "America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany," Soros said. "We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process."

This is highly inflammatory and, quite frankly, anti-American. We do not purge people from the political process here. We use elections and free speech to determine the policies the nation wants implemented, and we elect our leaders on the basis of a free and unfettered franchise. Equating Republicans to Nazis and then suggesting that the government impose a process to exclude them from public office makes Soros much more of a fascist than anything he decries.

CQ notes that Obama has been Soros' favorite prospective '08 candidate, and looks for a repudiation of this idea. It would be nice, though I wouldn't expect it, given how much money there is to be had from remaining Soros' favorite.

I still think Bill Richardson is the best in the Democratic field so far. By the way, the second week of that PJM Straw Poll is ongoing. Grim's Hall is standing for Richardson on the D side, and Duncan Hunter on the R side.

Also, you'll sometimes see ads on the sidebar for a new video game that tries to simulate a political peacemaking process for the Israel-Palestine conflict. Grim's Hall has been offered an evaluation copy, should we wish to review it. If any of my co-bloggers would like to have a go, drop me a line and I'll arrange it. I'm a little curious about it, but Israel/Palestine has never been one of my areas of interest. Another of you could probably do a better job of telling if it model the conflict well.