QUOTEWORTHY

The media … have been universally untrustworthy because they have their
own notions of what I should think and what I should do.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Business Week, March 12, 2007

FORMER STEELER DEPLOYED TO IRAQ

HONOLULU (AP) - A former NFL player who joined the Marines and was motivated by college roommate Pat Tillman, who died in Afghanistan, was heading for the war in Iraq Tuesday night.

Former Pittsburgh Steeler Jeremy Staat, is following in Pat Tillman's footsteps.
Lance Cpl. Jeremy Staat, a former defensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers and St. Louis Rams who had been playing Arena Football, was one of 300 Marines in the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment being deployed from Kaneohe Bay. The unit is expected to be in Iraq for seven months.

"The way I look at it, we're spreading freedom, and you have to support the troops and you have to support the war," Staat, 29, told KITV in Honolulu on Tuesday as he prepared to leave from Hawaii. "You can't just tell some Marine who just lost his buddy that we supported you but not the war, because in that case you're basically saying that Marine, his buddy, just died for nothing. We're one team."

Tillman, who played defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals, was killed by friendly fire near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in April 2004. The Defense Department is investigating allegations of a coverup, including the Army's failure to tell Tillman's family for several weeks that he had been killed by gunfire from his fellow Army Rangers, not by enemy fire, as they initially were told.

Tillman gave up a $1.2 million NFL contract to join the Army Rangers.

Staat said he felt compelled to join the military after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but Tillman, who was his roommate at Arizona State, advised him to stay with professional football until he qualified for retirement benefits.

"I felt there is more to life than just a game," Staat said, adding that Tillman's death helped motivate him to enlist.

Staat played for the Steelers from 1998-2000, and played two games with the Rams in 2003. He was playing for the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena Football League before being put on the league's suspended list.

He graduated from the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot in March 2006.

To enlist, the 6-foot-5 Staat said last year he dropped from 310 to 260 pounds. He said three months of boot camp training gave him a deeper appreciation for team camaraderie.

HONEY, PICK UP SOME MILK & A HOME MORTGAGE...

Taken from The Wall Street Journal
Wal-Mart Stores, underscoring its continuing push into financial services, has quietly renegotiated the terms of leases with a number of banks operating in its stores, giving Wal-Mart itself the explicit right to offer mortgages, home-equity lines of credit and consumer loans.

A portion of one lease, obtained by Dow Jones Newswires, also gives Wal-Mart (WMT, news, msgs) the ability to offer debit cards and investment and insurance products directly or through a third-party vendor.

In the wording of the new lease, Wal-Mart said it could "offer these products and services in the checkout lanes, at the customer-service desk, through automated-delivery channels, kiosks" or at any other place in the store.

The new lease language comes at a time when Wal-Mart has generated controversy over its repeated efforts to enter the banking business, a push that has drawn fierce opposition from the banking industry, some members of Congress and activist groups.

The Bentonville, Ark., retailer has a pending application to establish an industrial-loan company in Utah but has promised publicly that it won't open retail bank branches.

The company minimized the importance of the changes, as spokesman Kevin Gardner said the lease language didn't "signal anything new."

"We've been offering services like check cashing, money transfers, branded credit cards and bill payments for some time," he said. "Our strategy is to continue to grow our existing financial services to continue to save our customers money so they can live better."

Gardner wouldn't say why the leases also protected Wal-Mart's right to eventually offer items it didn't currently sell, such as mortgages, home-equity loans and investment and insurance products. He also didn't say when the company might roll out any of these products. "We have not made any announcements," he said.

JUSTICE FOR THE SPOLIED RICH

Reuters-NEW YORK - British supermodel Naomi Campbell was sentenced to community service as punishment for throwing her mobile phone at her housekeeper. The New York Post reported Tuesday that Campbell had been assigned to mop floors with other community-service workers at a Sanitation Department warehouse in Manhattan starting March 19. A court official confirmed the story but declined further comment.
Now, I would just love to see Paris Hilton get busted for something and be sentenced to wearing Goodwill clothes for a month and have to scub out McDonald's dumpsters or something!

WALKEN FOR PRESIDENT 2008

REDNECK TIME OUT