Enough about whining and complaining about Washington and all the crapola going on there. Consider this place your happy happy spot for at least a day. Nothing but positivity here, and I’ll prove it to you:

This sounds like a positive development for the Monroe, LA area. What say you, Rob?

Lots of positive vibes in the air when the Red Sox are as hot as they are right now. And it’s only going to get better when John Smoltz is added to the rotation a week from today. This team is white-hot and playing its best baseball of the year.

This might not be seen as quite so positive by Michelle Wie, but her failure to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Open can only be a good thing. Maybe this will become her golf game’s own little “come to Jesus moment” and she’ll now realize just how close she is to being a washed-up has-been before she’s even old enough to graduate college.

I’m not much of a WalMart guy – except when it comes time to restock my orange golf ball supply – but any time you’re planning on adding jobs that’s a positive thing, right?

If you’re worried about your wallet and the quality of your healthcare this can only be seen as a positive thing.

Lots of positive vibes coming from this great website.

What would a positive blog post be without a giant rabbit video?

I didn’t realize the official start of monsoon season in Arizona is June 15. I suppose, like hurricane season, it takes a few weeks for mother nature to get into gear. It will be interesting to see how this year pans out – last year was an especially active and violent one around here, but this year, outside of that stretch of 100+ degree days in early May, the summer has been fairly mild in terms of temps thus far.

R.I.P. Bob Bogle. The Ventures are well represented on my surf music MP3. Their “Surfin’ To Baja” CD is a fine example of contemporary surf sounds.

I could have told President Obama this. They would have been better off giving every taxpayer a $10K check. At least it would have been spent locally or given to the banks to pay off debt.

On the other hand, I think he’s doing the right thing just letting the Iran thing play out.

On the other, other hand, he’s positively clueless when it comes to attempting to tackle a health care system overhaul when Social Security and Medicare are broke.

This, I think, is a story that’s about to explode. Can’t say I didn’t warn you that this guy is drunk with power. It will catch up with him, sooner or later. Richard Nixon can testify to that.

Just wondering: is there anything this guy doesn’t want the government to run?

Now you know how The Great White Shank gets all his wisdom.

David “Big Papi” Ortiz is back.

Thanks to my brother Dave for his comment on yesterday’s post, pointing out some knee-slapping quotes from Michelle Wie following her lousy finish in this weekend’s LPGA Championship: (my boldings):

Even though Michelle Wie never made a run at winning the LPGA Championship, she certainly gave her sizable galleries reason to cheer this week.

Wie opened with a 2-under 70 on Thursday, hit a hole-in-one Saturday and started her final round Sunday with an eagle on the par-4, 358-yard hole.

Never mind the three double bogeys and eight bogeys, all of which contributed to a 1-under 287 and a 23rd-place tie. As far as Wie was concerned, there was absolutely nothing to complain about.

“I felt like I played great. I really don’t think the score reflected my game,” she said, shortly after a bogey on No. 18 capped her final-round 70.

“I feel like I did really well, I feel like I was swinging really well. Everything felt pretty positive,” Wie said. “I just couldn’t get anything going, and some of the putts didn’t drop. A couple of sprayed shots here and there (hurt).”

Reminds me of that line from Tin Cup, where Don Johnson asks Kevin Costner, “How could a great ball striker like yourself go out there and shoot an 83?”, to which Costner’s character replies, “Well, I missed a six-footer on 18 for an 82”.

…Or something like that. But you get my point.

Hey Michelle, listen to The Great White Shank. I’ve got news for you: your score is positively a reflection of your game. You finished 14 strokes back and in 23rd place.

But this is what we’ve come to expect from Michelle Wie. She’s always playing great, just never scoring. Always with an excuse why she can’t seem to win out there And the media and the galleries who follow her every move and shot out there never question a thing she says. After all, she’s Michelle Wie, the biggest draw on the LPGA tour.

I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it again: if Wie was in her mid-20s, or weighed 40 pounds more, or had frizzy hair, or wore glasses no one, and I mean, NO ONE would pay any attention to her. She’d be just another Asian player out there on the tour. But because she’s got that sexy college-chick thing down she’s the LPGA equivalent of soft porn. How else to explain all the attention foisted on her by The Golf Channel and the huge galleries that follow her? It certainly isn’t her professional tournament performances.

Wie can trot out that same “my score doesn’t reflect my game” crap every week, but denial is not just a river in Egypt. And Wie doesn’t just live in denial, she owns the word – she’s been living it for three years now. Any professional golfer who finishes 14 strokes back and then argues their score didn’t really reflect their game is beyond clueless.

That’s loser talk. And it’s time for Michelle Wie to grow up.

Kind of interesting to see how our rabbits have acted this past week following the passing of Marble Jr. It’s almost like their bunny radar can tell there’s one less rabbit in the house and they don’t know how to respond. Just makes you realize how much rabbits, being the prey animals at the bottom of the food chain they are, rely on familiar sights, sounds, and habits as a way of feeling safe and reassured.

Take Cosmo, for instance. Ever since he was given the run of the bunny room, he would spend his nights lying alongside Marble Jr.’s cage area – especially if she was lying directly across on the other side of the fence. Since Marble Jr.’s passing, however, rather than lie alongside her cage area, Cosmo has spent his nights against the fence but facing away from it. Kinda strange.

For Half Pint, this has been an especially difficult week. Even though she never spent any time with Marble Jr. – like the other rabbits, the latter would have ripped her to shreds if given half the chance – they were, in a sense, cage mates, since part of Marble Jr.’s area included an open cage directly below Half Pint. Since during the day Cosmo spends his time elsewhere in the house, with no Marble Jr. around to watch, smell, or listen to, Half Pint now spends much of her days alone. As a result, we’ve been letting her out at night for a romp, but, given that rabbits are such creatures of habit, that must seem strange to her.

Even Peanut – a.k.a. the Little Bitch – knows something is going on. Her response seems to be a general need for reassurance. While never the least bit hostile, she’s not exactly what you’d call friendly – outside of her deep hatred for Half Pint she’s really just a skittish young rabbit. But this week, she seems unusually quiet, and while in her cage will even allow us to pet her for an extended period of time.

I’m not sure I’d call it mourning on the part of our three remaining rabbits, but there is definitely some brooding going on, and it will either take some time or some other shakeup in the Richard rabbit universe to shake them out of their doldrums. Just like their human housemates, I guess…

Tonight’s win by the Red Sox over the Yankess and sweep their 3-game set was especially gratifying because this one was (or at least should have been) in the bag for the Bronx Bombers. A 3-1 lead in the 8th inning, C.C. still going strong, and sloppy weather conditions that slowed the game down to a crawl.

And yet, within the space of minutes, Sabathia was gone (pulled by Yanks’ manager Joe Girardi after allowing a single and a walk to lead off the inning) and the Yankees’ bullpen imploded, allowing the Sox to push across three runs before turning things over to Jonathan Papelbon to close the door and send the BBs back to the rock they crawled out from under.

You can bet they’ll be no small amount of second-guessing in the Apple after this one, and there should be. Surely, Girardi knew how important this game was – if not in terms of the standings, just to break the Red Sox 7-game winning streak over the Yankees this year – and closer Mariano “Fruit Bat” Rivera hadn’t pitched in the series – so two innings of relief work wouldn’t have killed him, just once.

More importantly, the Yankees played horribly in the series. Miserable starting pitching, atrocious baserunning, no clutch hitting, and overall listless play. Sure, they’re just a couple of games in back of the Sox, but the Yankees have definite concerns. Some other thoughts:

* I don’t understand why Joba Chamberlain is not Rivera’s set-up man – tonight’s game showed yet again they have no way of getting to Rivera right now. Perhaps at the trading deadline they’ll trade for another starter, put Chamberlain in the bullpen and Philip Hughes into the rotation; they’d be immediately stronger.

* It’s pretty obvious David “Big Papi” is back, but I wouldn’t screw around with the lineup right now and put him back in the third spot in the order. I love the J.D. Drew / Youk / Jason Bay / Lowell / Ortiz 2 through 6 – it really helps spread the lineup out.

* Gotta love that Red Sox pitching staff. They’ve gotten “Commander Kick-Ass” Beckett and Jon Lester straightened out, Tim Wakefield is steady, Dice-K is who he is, and Brad Penny has looked better with every start. They’ve got John Smoltz due in a few weeks, and bullpen that is rock-solid.

* It’s no coincidence that the Sox pitchers have been pitching better and Julio Lugo is riding the pine. Nick Green had a fantastic series against his former team, and there’s no reason for Lugo’s shadow to darken the dirt at shortstop with Jed Lowrie due back around the same time as Smoltz.

Given Barack Obama’s latest idea – using US taxpayers money to bail out European banks – might I suggest he also consider a bailout for Al-Qaeda? Hey, everyone’s hurting these days, right?

Rhetorical question: is there anything President Obama doesn’t want the government to control?

This is sick.

David Letterman is a pig. Can you imagine the uproar if someone like, say, Don Imus or anyone on Fox News were to crack the same kind of joke about one of the Obama girls? Just goes to show you just how the looney Liberal Left thinks. They’re really sick people.

Between this and this and this, there have been a lot of goodbyes haunting this house lately. I’m feeling the mortality…

This world is full of evil. And there’s really nothing you can do about it. Makes you realize just how strong a force Satan is in this world.

There’s nothing in this world that compares to the distant sound of thunder on a still summer night.

Seven in a row. I love it!

Rhetorical question: What is it about Sarah Palin that makes the loony liberal Left so intimated and paranoid about her? Answer: they know she’s one of us and are afraid, very afraid.

Thank God someone’s thinking with a clear head.

Wanna hear the best surf CD ever recorded? Start here.

A sports night Q & A:

Is Josh Beckett the hottest pitcher in baseball right now? He absolutely dominated the Yankees tonight.

Could it be that David “Big Papi” Ortiz is finally “back”? That homer he hit tonight off of A.J. Burnett was not cheesy by any means – it was crushed on a high arc to center and would have been a homer in any ballpark.

How is it possible that Alex “A-Fraud” Rodriguez saves his worst games for the Red Sox? It does my heart good to see him flounder out there on the games biggest stage. I’ve always believed the Yankees will never win another World Series as long as he’s on the team, and I’m sticking to that prediction.

Did Manny Ramirez really shrug off his 50-game suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs by saying, “”I didn’t kill nobody, I didn’t rape nobody, so that’s it, I’m just going to come and play the game.”? Unbelievable.

Can I say something about the NBA Finals? I hope the Orlando Magic enjoyed their victory over the L.A. Lakers tonight, because that’s the last one they’re going to experience this season. The Lakers just have the matchups this series.

Is this cool, or what? Trust me, it is.

Does anyone really care about the NHL finals? Does anyone even know who’s playing? I don’t have an answer to that…

Accuweather headline: Summer Nowhere To Be Found, and that’s certainly the case here. Hard to believe that it’s June and our A/C hasn’t been on for more than a few hours each day. Normally the sucker would be running out flat but this year has been strange.

Take May, for instance: Phoenix set a record for most days above 100 in May (12); since then we’ve settled into a delightful pattern of days in the low-to-mid ’90s. And it’s not just the temps – we’ve actually had clouds around the past few days to keep the heat down, allowing us to leave the doors open to let some fresh air in. That’s not a typical June occurrence, I can tell you that. And here’s something strange, we’re actually going backwards on the pool water temp – it hit a seasonal high of 89 the other day, but since then, it has dropped back to a refreshing 84.

Tracey says the weather reminds her of April. A little warm for April, perhaps, but it sure doesn’t feel like June.

And around here, that ain’t a bad thing.

I’m up to my eyeballs in India work tonight. But this is what I’d rather be doing. I love the words and the imagery here. This guy knows how to write.

A great post by Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey.

The “greatest generation”, indeed.