In a prior post, I noted that The Producers is playing at the Hobby Center the next couple of weeks. One of my sons, my wife and I went to this past Friday’s performance, and it is truly a great show. Even Everett Evans, the Chronicle’s tough theatre critic, gives the show a spectacular review. This is Broadway at its finest, so don’t miss it.
The excitement over the Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte acquisitions resulted in the Astros‘ selling out their season opener against Barry Bonds and the Giants in record time. More on baseball later.
This looks like a pretty sweet deal for the Williams Company, Texas’ largest highway construction contractor.
John McClain, the Houston Chronicle’s main NFL reporter, weighs in with an articlethat Houston’s success in hosting Super Bowl XXXVIII will likely result in another Super Bowl later in the decade.
Frankly, I do not have a clue on how Jacksonville is going to handle Super Bowl XXXIX next year. To handle the various festivities for this year’s Super Bowl, Houston used two large convention centers, Minute Maid Park, the Astrodome, the Reliant Stadium, thousands of hotel rooms, two distinct entertainment areas (Main Street and the Galleria area), and hundreds of restaurants. Jacksonville simply does not have facilities of that size or nature. Already, the NFL and Jacksonville are planning on docking a fleet of cruise ships in Jacksonville Harbor to make up for the lack of hotel rooms in the area.
The Super Bowl may have become such a huge event that only a few cities are going to have the facilities and infrastructure to handle it. Stay tuned.
After a weekend of no blogging because of resolving some technical issues with the blog site, I’m back blogging. Hopefully, we have all the tech issues resolved with the blog and are good to go for an extended time.
From the incomparable Stu’s Views:
Rich Connelly of the Houston Press–Houston’s “alternative” weekly newspaper–has a funny piece in this week’s edition on the Super Bowl XXXVIII festivities in Houston.
The following link will take you to the transcript of CIA Director George Tenet‘s address on U.S. prewar intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Although Bob Dole‘s 1996 presidential campaign was one of the worst of the past quarter-century, he was an outstanding senator and is a great American. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Mr. Dole weighs in insightfully on recent criticism of President Bush’s military service:
On Fox News recently, my friend John Kerry stated: “I’ve never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard.”
Sen. Kerry did make a judgment, in 1992, when Bill Clinton — who did not serve — was running against Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran. After Bob Kerrey criticized Gov. Clinton, John Kerry said, “We do not need to divide America over who served and how.” He should stick to his previous position by acknowledging the honorable service of President Bush and the hundreds of thousands of other National Guard members defending America every day. The president piloted an F-102 in the National Guard and received an honorable discharge when his requirements were met.
Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe also said last Sunday that service in the National Guard wasn’t service “in the military.”
These attacks are offensive. Service in the National Guard is one of the finest things any citizen can do, and there are tens of thousands of guardsmen and women serving our country today all over the world. Thousands are serving in Iraq, and some of those have made the supreme sacrifice in the service of their country.
It should be incumbent upon presidential candidates to disavow accusations that have no proof or substance behind them. Gen. Wesley Clark learned the price of irresponsibility the hard way as thousands of voters deserted him in the weeks since he intimated President Bush might have been a deserter. Enough.
Sen. Kerry is a war hero, but if campaigns were about war records, I would have won easily in 1996. Campaigns are about issues, and the candidates of both parties owe the American people a compelling vision for the future of America.
In a related Seattle Times editorial, Collin Levey makes the accurate point that, among a political candidate’s attributes, military service is generally overrated.