Hits & Misses

As I sit here finishing my breakfast, I can't help but think that this whole Bagel & Cream Cheese thing just might catch on...

But thank god it's Tuesday, and all across America that can mean only one thing. Yes, boys and girls, it's Cavemen night on ABC Television -- the show that's sweeping the nation!

I just read that there are 755,000 American citizens on the U.S. government terrorist watch list. Doesn't that make you feel a lot safer? After all, that's quite a few sleeper cells.

This Day In History: 1975. Spain's Francisco Franco steps down as dictator and starts second career as tiresome Saturday Night Live punchline.

If that wasn't the worst World Series of all time, it's only because the last 4 or 5 have also sucked big wind. Three sweeps in the last 4 years, the other a 5-game series.

But America got its free fucking taco, and at the end of the day, isn't that what it's all about?

I don't mind Joe Buck, he's actually a pretty good play-by-play man in two sports; sure, he's a bit of a smart-ass , but likable in a Greg Kinnear kinda way if you don't think about it too much. His shilling during the whole in-game Taco Bell promo, however, even for Fox, was crass and low-class.
And speaking of low-class, when you look it up in the football dictionary, there's a picture of a scowling Bill Belichick, the NFL's Captain Ahab, in trademark gray hoodie. What other conclusion can you draw after the Patriots once again needlessly, classlessly ran up the score, this time against the Redskins en route to a 52-7 rout. Even after a Brady to Wes Welker TD made it 45-0 with just over 9 minutes left, when the Pats got the ball back after a 3-and-out by Washington, backup QB Matt Cassell threw three straight times en route to yet another score.

Any wonder that outside of Boston, every football fan in America will be tuning into this Sundays Pats-Colts battle of unbeatens in Indy and pulling hard for the Belicheat Bullies to finally get their well-deserved comeuppance from the football gods.

In case you hadn't noticed, New England has outscored opponents by a crushing 331-127 margin -- a mind-boggling 204-point advantage -- which translates into an average per-game beatdown this season of 42-16. To put it in perspective, the Pats have scored 43 TDs so far -- or as many as the rest of their lousy division -- Buffalo (10 TDs), New York (15), Miami (18) -- combined. And their 8 victories double the wins eked out by the 3-4 Bills, 1-7 Jets and 0-8 Dolphins.
In the New York market this past weekend, we were subjected to two of the all-time fugliest games in recent memory -- the Giants taking on an incredibly bad Dolphins team from London, followed by a Jets-Bills crapfest. It would be impossible to accurately convey the torturous boredom these two games represented.

Played in a steady downpour on a muddy field with treacherous footing -- and who could've expected inclement weather in London? -- and featuring a steady procession of dropped passes and similar miscues, this game alone set back the NFL marketing effort a good decade or two. That is, until the Jets and Bills faced off, thrilling fans the world over with a game utterly devoid of excitement. This one was still tied at 3 after 3 of the most tedious quarters ever played. All hell broke loose in the form of a single, deciding J.P. Losman touchdown in the 4th, propelling the jubilant Bills to their first season sweep of the dreadful Jets since 1997 -- and all but ending Chad Pennington 's career as New York's starting QB.

There seem to be a lot of bad in-game coaching decisions in the NFL this year, and first-year Miami head man Cam Cameron seems to be making more than his share as he learns on the job. Sunday he made a few more, including a gutless decision late in the 3rd quarter when, trailing 13-0, he sends his FG kicker in on 4th down from the Giants 5-yard line. The Dolphins would later cut the lead to 13-10, only to squander whatever small chance they had by executing the worst onsides kick attempt ever, where Jay Feely gave his team literally zero chance to recover by skidding the ball directly out of bounds on a line.

Earlier in the game, Cameron showed why this whole head coaching thing may be over his own head. As mentioned, the field conditions at London's Wembley Stadium were atrocious bordering on dangerously unplayable, but that apparently didn't factor into Cameron's play calling. On the very first drive, Miami was running the ball well behind journeyman Jesse Chapman, so on 3rd and 2, Cameron has backup QB Cleo Lemon dropping back and trying to connect with the Dolphins corps of woefully nondescript receivers, and of course the result is an incomplete pass. To get an idea of what was coming, remember a few weeks ago Cameron was the guy who somehow thought it would be a good idea to use his oft-concussed QB to block a defensive lineman, thus effectively ending Trent Green's career and in turn thoughtlessly unleashing the much-unheralded Cleo Lemon Era on an undeserving populace.

On the second Miami possession, the Dolphins face another 3rd and 2 near midfield. Remember, it's a driving rain and the pigskin is obviously more slippery than usual. So Cameron -- offensive coordinator for the five previous years in weatherless San Diego -- foolishly decides this is as good a time as any to trot out a trick play. He has WR Marty Booker going in motion, then lining up under center, where he takes the snap and predictably proceeds to considerately fumble the ball back to the Giants -- showing our overseas cousins why his Dolphins, for some unknown reason the second most popular U.S. football team in Jolly Old, are winless after 8 games.

Now, in fairness, no team in the NFL has been hit harder by injury than Miami, losing their starting QB, RB, MLB and TE and trading away Chris Chambers, their best WR, with the possible exception of the St. Louis Rams and Buffalo Bills. So Cameron may get a mulligan for 2007 from Miami management, but he'll be on a short leash next year to prove that he isn't the latest in a long line of candidates that make better coordinators or position coaches than head coaches.

Speaking of ex-coaches, Bill Cowher gets this week's Captain Obvious award for his comments on the CBS postgame show Sunday. Previewing next week's Game of the Century, Cowher let viewers know that, in his opinion, "This Patriots team is playing very, very well" heading into the Colts game. That's the kind of insight only an ex-coach can provide.
But mastering the obvious is an art not lost on the league's present coaches, at least if Tennessee Titans head honcho Jeff Fisher has anything to say about it. Following another ugly win in which his team could muster only 13 points against Oakland, with starting QB Vince Young throwing for a scant 42 yards on 8-14 passing and generating only 11 yards more with his legs, Fisher offered this nugget on the state of his offensively challenged 5-2 team: "The only thing lacking on this team is touchdowns." Unfortunately for Jeff, crossing the goal line is the league's agreed-upon method of scoring 6 points, so you can see what an unfair disadvantage that is to the Titans.

My new favorite player in the league is Denver DE Elvis Dumervil. He's the only defensive lineman listed under 6 foot, at 5'11" and 260 pounds, and he's not just taking up less space than his teammates, he's an impact player -- with 6 sacks and a pick on the season.

Elsewhere on the name front, the player with the best moniker in the game -- real name Hannibal Navies, which sounds like a Wikipedia article -- was just cut by the San Francisco 49ers. The only thing worse these days is actually playing for the 2-5 49ers.
The Patriots' shocking dominance aside, in many games there are but 2 or 3 "hinge" plays separating the winning and losing teams; some plays can swing the score 14 points -- from 7 points in one direction to 7 in the other. One such play took place in the Cowboys' hard-fought 24-14 win over the Vikings last week. In the second half, with the game tied at 14, Cowboys DE DeMarcus Ware just misses a sack of the Vikings QB that would take Minny out of field goal range and probably force a punt, and with the score still locked at 14, Dallas ball at around their 20, it's anybody's game from there on . Instead, after the incompletion, Vikes K Ryan Longwell lined up for a 48-yarder to break the tie. But DE Chris Canty, the Cowboys tallest player at 6'7", manages to get a hand on the kick and the blocked FG is returned 68 yards by S Pat Watkins for a TD. The FG would have put the Vikes ahead 17-14, now suddenly it's 21-14 Cowboys -- a 10-point hinge play that swings the game in favor of Dallas.

This game had more than one hinge play. In the second quarter the Cowtown Romos were driving for a go-ahead score when WR Pat Crayton is stripped and the ball returned 57 yards for a Vikings' defensive TD. So instead of 10-7 or 14-7 Dallas, it's 14-7 Minnesota Norsemen at the half, despite 28-32 passing by Tony Romo for 231 yards and the Cowboys outgaining the Vikings by a decisive 250-77 margin. That's what a few timely hinge plays can do in a game. Even in the Dallas-New England game won by the Pats 48-27, the Cowboys had a 24-21 lead in the 3rd, but the hinge plays in that game were penalties -- specifically a converted 4th and 1 wiped out by a flag for holding.
By the way, Romo finally got his big payday -- on the same day that America's Skank, Britney Spears, allegedly "favored" him with a lap dance at an L.A. nightclub. File under: Luck, Some guys have all the. The new 6-year contract is for close to $70 million, with over $30 mil guaranteed. Not bad for an undrafted free agent whose first contract in 2003 was for $10,000! Romo did little more than ride the pine in games and run the scout team in practice for over 3 seasons before getting his big break -- starting his first game exactly one year ago (10/29/06) against Carolina in relief of beleaguered Drew Bledsoe. But Romo's contract, like the one Tom Brady signed, is reported to be cap-friendly, in that it allows Dallas to continue to surround Romo with talent.

How low are Denver sports fans feeling this morning? First, fans had to witness the Rockies' sorry asses get swept out of the World Series by Boston, suffering the ignominy of watching the other team celebrate a championship on your home field. Which reminds me. Do us all a favor: if you're gonna put up such futile resistance, then don't even bother getting to the World Series in the first place. That was embarrassingly uncompetitive.

Then, a night after losing to the Red Sox, to pour some more salt on an open wound, the area's football fans were "treated" last night to a brutal loss to Green Bay by the Broncos. Following an 89-yard drive, Denver's Jason Elam tied the score at 13 with no time remaining, sending the game into overtime. Then on the first play from scrimmage in OT, Packers QB Brett Favre hits Greg Jennings for a game-winning 82-yard pass. Game over, World Series over, and just maybe Broncos season over, having fallen to 3-4 with a pair of tough road games coming up -- at Detroit and at Kansas City.

Speaking of the 5-2 Lions, no one is scoffing now at Jon Kitna's bold preseason prediction that Detroit would win 10 games this year. Add the emergence of RB Kevin Jones to all those first round receivers, and the offense is potentially explosive.

Another surprise team has emerged in the form of the 4-3 Cleveland Browns, led by QB Derek Anderson, whose steady performance has kept fans from clamoring for first-round pick Brady Quinn to start. Only 24 years old himself, Anderson has 17 TDs against only 9 picks, and now has legit weapons in finally healthy TE Kellen Winslow and WRs Braylon Edwards and Joe Jurevicius. In the last two games, wins against the Rams and Dolphins, Anderson has thrown for 6 TDs with no INTs.

I hate the way the NFL schedules bye weeks. It's an unfair system in that some teams play more teams coming off byes than others, and in important games one team is therefore at a disadvantage. For instance, Dallas has had two weeks to prepare for their road game against the Eagles this week, while the Giants now have two weeks to get ready for the showdown with Dallas at the Meadowlands. My remedy is that each division takes their bye week at the same time, spread out over just four weeks from Game 7 to Game 10. But instead our commissioner is too busy trying to spread a game that is doing just fine within the confines of our borders.

Jerry Jones took a lot of heat for saying this whole overseas expansion thing, or at least traveling to Europe to play a regular season game midseason, wasn't something that would work for his Dallas Cowboys. He voiced what not only Cowboys fans but many fans leaguewide were thinking, but it came off as selfish when the media got their chance to spin it.

Yes, the Cowboys are Europe's most popular team also, followed by the Dolphins and Giants, but the Cowboys are slated to move into a brand new stadium in 2009. That leaves only this year and next year for Texas Stadium games, followed by the move to the new state of the art park. Why should Jones force fans to give up a home game, one of only 8 each year? Of course, the league could punish Jones by withholding future Super Bowls from Dallas, but they know better than to kill the golden goose, or in this case the silver & blue goose.

It's official. Joe Girardi is the new Yankees manager. I think the right guy was chosen here, but it's still kind of bittersweet that Don Mattingly announced he will not come back in any coaching capacity next year. In fact, after weeks of inactivity, things are suddenly happening all around baseball.
It looks like none other than Joe Torre is going to get the L.A. Dodgers job. The job isn't exactly vacant, with Grady Little still technically their manager, but Torre is obviously an upgrade. Grady Little is one of the sport's real nice guys who never quite wins the big one, to liberally paraphrase Leo Duracher. And that's where Mattingly is likely to end up, as Torre's bench coach. Attention Bud Selig: make the Dodgers-Yankees interleague series happen, and keep it going for the next three years at least.

Sportswriters and talk radio hosts had it all wrong: they were sure that Yankee fans would be upset if Mattingly wasn't offered the head job. But most can separate their love for Donnie Baseball the player from who they think is the best man for the manager's job. That man is Genuine Joe Girardi.

ESPN is throwing Paul O'Neill's name out there as a potential Yankees coach under Girardi. That sounds good to me. Maybe hitting coach. Hell, if he wants to pinch-hit once in a while, more than a few fans would have no problem with that.

Also, scumbag/agent Scott Boras announced during Game 4 that Alex Rodriguez is opting out of his Yankee contract to become a free agent. More than a few fans shouted Good Riddance upon hearing the news.

Let's hope the Yankees put a younger, hungrier version of what we've been used to so far this millennium on the field. If would be great if Girardi, voted Manager of the Year after his lone one-year stint as Marlins manager in 2006, could model the team after the 1996 version -- utilizing a National League blend of speed and defense, heavy on the hit-and-run and daring base-running. Anything to take back our rightful place in the standings ahead of the hated, detested, much loathed Red Sox.

Say What?!

"I would rather stick needles in my eyes than spend one second of my time on that story."
CBS correspondent Lara Logan on being asked to do a story on female soldiers in Iraq and their "cyber" pets

"Running around like a mad man with a razor blade in one's hand is not the best way to solve such problems."
Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to latest U.S. sanctions against Iran

"There is an almost menacing call that you get whenever someone hears something they don't like – their people call up and threaten, or challenge, and get very nasty. That's now become the norm."
Chris Matthews of Hardball on White House officials reacting to critical reporting of the Iraq war

"If it's a clinical strike like the one that Israel carried out on the Syrian installations and no one admitted to doing it, you'd have a fierce reaction from Iran, but it would probably die down. If it were a botched job with lots of targets and civilians dying and Iranians retaliating, it could escalate and the price of oil could shoot up to God knows where. Everyone wants it not to happen, but it's like a crash happening slowly. You can see the two cars coming toward each other. There's an inevitability about it."
Leo Drollas, chief economist of the Center for Global Energy Studies, discussing the potential impact of a U.S. strike on Iran

“In corporate America, where a broader sense of social responsibility once held sway, a culture of greed has taken over. Instead of treating their employees fairly, being accountable to their shareholders and contributing to America’s prosperity, CEOs act like their corporations exist just to build their own massive fortunes.”
John Edwards

"An inside job? How dare you. How dare you. It was not an inside job. You guys have got to be careful, you're going to give Minnesota a bad reputation."
Bill Clinton to 9/11 Conspiracy hecklers at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser

"We will not be a safer country, we will not be a safer America if the whole world watches us being defeated by a bunch of kids with improvised explosive devices."
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson

"A few days ago, Senator Clinton tried to spend one million dollars on the Woodstock concert museum. Now my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time.”
Republican presidential candidate John McCain

"It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it."
Rudy Giuliani on whether waterboarding is torture

"It makes a significant difference when you have somebody in the statehouse willing to take the lead."
President Bush on difference between government response to California wildfires versus Hurricane Katrina

"This is an issue where I'm sure lots of people would love to ridicule me when I say this, but it is true that many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals. There are also concerns that it would increase tropical diseases... again, I'm not an expert in that."
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino

"Pop music's all been trivialized in a Britney Spears-y kind of way, hasn't it? They've taken it and killed off the energy and co-opted us into this commercialism that's really, really dull. Britney is Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart's all right for T-shirts and socks, that's about what she is. The industry for a long time now, going back for 20 years solidly, has not backed songwriting from the youth point of view. It's actually killed youth culture and rebellion and repackaged and remodeled it into very, very dreary things. There's powerful stuff in rap music, but honestly, 98 percent of it is mindless and repetitive and tedious. Now, I worked with Afrika Bambaataa some 20-plus years ago, and what's changed since then? What's as good as 'The Message'? Nothing comes to mind. Most of it is utterly selfish and it's all about acquiring goods and bragging about how much jewelry you can wear at once. If that's what the white man has taught the black man, that selfishness is the root to all success, they're wrong."
John Lydon
Lydon on Rudy Giuliani:
"Now that's a very bad piece of work. Very dangerous. Scary to high hell. You've got to stop them. You've got to. You look at Mitt Romney and you know that's corrupt from head to toe, that is everything wrong in a man, the vanity onwards. Who do I like? Who's the crazy one [laughs]? There are a couple of Democrats there that just speak it. [Dennis Kucinich] is hilarious, but he ain't no sex god. It's packaging, but I want to hear values, I want to hear true principles and I don't want to hear nonsense like, 'When I get in, we'll be pulling out [of Iraq] straightaway.' That's guaranteeing a bullet in the back of the head real quick. Don't do that. Sort it out or admit that was a failure, but don't ignore it, 'cause we've all got to carry on living in this world and this problem is only going to escalate. I want answers now. I want some serious thought in it."

"Ich Bin Ein Rockies Fans"

UNLIKE A CERTAIN flip-flopping fair weather ex-Mayor I could mention, I've just become the biggest Colorado Rockies fan east of the Mississippi. Even after last night's 13-1 blowout, which I bailed out of as soon as the Red Sox put up a 3-spot in the bottom of the 1st inning, turning to a repeat of "The War" on PBS, the Series is still not a fait accompli -- a fancy Latin way of saying "It Ain't Over Till It's Over." Or, to paraphrase another great statesman, Ich Bin Ein Coloradans.

Maybe this Series is fated to take after the dramatic 1960 Yankees-Pirates 7-game classic, where the Yankees blew out the Bucs in their 3 Series wins, while Pittsburgh squeaked by in their 3, until the famous Bill Mazeroski HR in the bottom of the 9th of Game 7 to win it all. Technically that was my first World Series -- having been hatched in April of that year -- but I have no real recollection of the Yankees winning their games by margins of 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0, or the Pirates' narrow wins of 6-4, 3-2 and 5-2. If the Rockies can steal Game 2 tonight and head back west with a split, they will definitely make a good showing in their 3 home games.

Colorado is virtually unknown to most of the country, literally having not played a game on national TV in over 2 seasons, while Boston and their legions of singularly annoying fans are so popular they make up their own Red Sox Nation. And whereas perhaps they are not as universally detested outside New England as their long-time division rival Yankees are across the country, there's still plenty to hate about this team.

This quote by David Ortiz, for instance, is enough to make me root even harder for the Rockies, if that were even possible. "We've been called favorites since Day 1, and look at us," the man known as Big Papi says. "Here we are dancing and just taking it easy. We just have the edge, the attitude to become champions." With all due respect, Mr. Papi, your team also has the biggest payroll of any ballclub outside of New York, and that's the real edge you have over the National League representatives you're facing off against. Let's keep it real here.
The Rockies' payroll is a relatively penurious $54 million this season, while the Sox had to make ends meet with a mere $143 million worth of overpaid superstars. Just this last offseason, Boston threw a $103 million contract at a single player, Japanese League star Daisuke Matsuzaka -- $51 million just for the right to negotiate with the club who owned his rights in Japan, and another $52 million for the actual 6-year contract. It's outrageous economic discrepancies like this that go a long way toward explaining the continuing decline in popularity of baseball relative to the other major sports, especially football, where teams are forced to budget players under a league-mandated salary cap -- thus ensuring a competitive balance that the former national pastime can only dream about.
From the moment the Yankees were ignominiously eliminated from the playoffs by the Indians, it's been wall-to-wall Joe Torre coverage in the sports pages and on New York sports radio. You would think the Pope had been fired by the Vatican for major moral misconduct, such was the non-stop commentary by experts and laypersons alike.

The biggest joke was how some people spun the story so that the Yankees brass somehow insulted saintly Joe with their meager $5 million offer to manage the team for one more campaign -- as if Father Torre would have had to take a vow of poverty to accept those terms. How could the Steinbrenner family force poor Joe to take a pay cut from his 2007 salary of $7 million, the reasoning went -- conveniently neglecting to mention that contract incentives would have escalated the $5 million base by a substantial margin, or that even absent those incentives, St. Joe still would have been the sport's highest paid manager by a wide margin.
Joe Torre has come a long way financially since 1996, his first season managing the Yanks, when he made a "mere" $330,000. To put it in further bas-relief, Joe was coming off a 3-year deal that paid him more than $19 million. The new "insulting" contract would have given Torre a million-dollar bonus for making the playoffs, another million for advancing to the ACLS and, you guessed it, another mil for reaching the World Series -- hardly unreasonable management expectations for someone guiding a talent-laden team with the game's highest player payroll. Torre has been the highest-paid skipper in baseball history since 2001, and that doesn't even take into account the lucrative commercial endorsements he's accumulated throughout the last dozen years while at the helm of the Yankees successful playoff run.

So don't forget to include virtuous Joe the Martyr in your prayers tonight. As for myself, I am looking ahead and praying the Steinbrenner scions don't follow up a good business decision with a bad one -- tapping Don Mattingly as the next manager. Instead, the Yankees should bite the bullet on the PR hit they would take from fans by passing over beloved Donnie Baseball and immediately hire Genuine Joe Girardi, destined to be the game's next great manager wherever he goes next.

Free Fallin' Down

This story sent in by Paul S., my co-conspirator in truth:

From: Prison Planet
Twin Towers Collapse Unexplainable
Implicitly acknowledges controlled demolition only means by which towers could have fallen at free fall speed
by Paul Joseph Watson October 16, 2007

"The National Institute for Standards and Technology has been forced to admit that the total free-fall collapse of the twin towers cannot be explained after an exhaustive scientific study, implicitly acknowledging that controlled demolition is the only means by which the buildings could have come down.

In a recent letter (PDF link) to 9/11 victim’s family representatives Bill Doyle and Bob McIlvaine, NIST states, “We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse.”

A 10,000-page scientific study only offers theories as to how the “collapse initiation” proceeded and fails to address how it was possible for part of a WTC structure to fall through the path of most resistance at freefall speed, completely violating the accepted laws of physics.

In addition, NIST’s own studies confirmed that virtually none of the steel in either tower reached temperatures hotter than 500 degrees. The point at which steel weakens is 1000 degrees and melting point is reached at 1,500 degrees, according to NIST itself."

___________________________________________________________
OF COURSE NO MENTION OF THIS IN THE MAINSTREAM PRESS, NO 60 MINUTES PIECE, JUST MORE ROUND THE CLOCK BRITNEY COVERAGE. IF YOU THINK THE COLLAPSE OF THE TWIN TOWERS IS SUSPICIOUS, THEN LOOK INTO WTC-7 -- THE BUILDING THAT FELL EVEN THOUGH NO PLANE HIT IT. THAT'S WHERE THE WHOLE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT COMES CRASHING DOWN LIKE A HOUSE OF CARDS ... OR LIKE THE CONTROLLED DEMOLITION OF THREE TOWERS OF STEEL?

PAUL IS REALLY INTO THIS STUFF NOW AND HAS BEEN SENDING ME CLIPS & LINKS, ETC. AFTER HE SENT ME one such EMAIL I sent him back my summary of the case for a conspiracy.

"What I think we know about 9/11: no doubt Flight 93
was shot down, or there was a missile onboard. The 3
towers fell due to controlled demolition. Insider
trading on United and American Airlines in days
leading up to 9/11 proves without doubt foreknowledge
of the attack. The Pakistan ISI (Intelligence) chief
wired money to one of the hijackers. Not only did the
hijackers train at flight schools (including one right
down the block from where you lived in '98!), but in
one book I read the claim was made that 4 or 5 of them
trained at US military installations. Any reports from
CIA or FBI agents in the field about the coming attack
were ignored or, even more incriminating, blocked from
reaching upper levels of those agencies. There was no
way an inexperienced pilot could have hit the Pentagon
and engineered the sharp turn it would have required.
There were training exercises on 9/11 controlled by
none other than Dick Cheney using high tech computers
(PTECH) and he also was able to control the response
and made sure the attacks were finished before any
fighter planes could reach their targets.

Given all that, and given that Bush & Co. wanted to
invade Iraq before 9/11, there is no doubt in my mind
that we knew the attack was coming and purposely did
nothing to prevent it. Like Maura, I too am outraged
that the government has been hijacked (pun intended)
by the military industrial anti terrorist complex.
What's more incriminating is that this administration
stole two elections and has lied to the American
people at every turn, usurped the system of checks and
balances -- impeachable offenses -- and has set up a
plan of martial law in case anybody wises up to their
criminal activities.

We are using mercenaries and soldiers of fortune in
Iraq -- up to 100,000 -- who make more than twice as
much as our soldiers, and are immune from prosecution.
Witness the indiscriminate murders of Iraqis. What's
to stop Bush from bringing all those Blackwater goons
and thugs back to this country should there be massive
civil protest in the streets if we should foolishly
attack Iran? It's a mess of epic proportions and the
damage this frat boy, draft dodging, dry drunk has
caused will have repercussions for generations to
come. He is without doubt the single worst politician,
the most hated head of state America has had the
misfortune  to see in its history.

I could see either another terrorist attack on
American soil being the impetus for martial law and/or
suspension of the 2008 election. Cheney is so evil and
so driven by greed and power that there is literally
nothing I would put past this spiritually bankrupt,
corrupt bastard. The same mindset that killed JFK, RFK
and MLK is alive and well. Ironically, the only hope
we may have is a MILITARY coup d'etat or revolt
against these sons of bitches. How can they let their
own people be used as cannon fodder for the
Bush/Cheney crime family's own ends? These neocons
play us for fools, fighting preemptive wars of
occupation for Israel's security, not America's."

The truth is still out there, but the clock is ticking...

It's A Good Thing

WARNING: Diary-Like Entry Below

After an excruciating period where freelance work slowed down, the last few weeks have seen a resurgence, if not a renaissance, for yours truly. The key was getting those second and third freelance agencies in the fold, and now I sit at the proverbial junction of opportunity. Being persistent and constantly checking in for work is the key, staying on the radar. Remember, if I make money, they make money, 'cause they charge a fee to whatever company I work for on a given project.

Today is a good example. I worked a 6-hour shift at LTV, which has been my quasi-headquarters since June of '06. I got the LT job through the agency I've been registered at for the longest time, a year and a half or so. Then in the early afternoon I got a call from the second place I found about a month ago, let's call them CC for short. CC got me work at 2 new places already, and they called me around 3 or 4 other times for potential gigs but I was already booked somewhere else for the day(s) they needed me. They seem to have a lot of contacts in advertising. One company down in Chelsea where I had worked about a month ago wanted to know if I could work off premises tonight. Shoot yeah, I said, and it turned out to be a small ad proposal. Last time I was on premises it was a nice juicy 75-page document I could really sink my teeth into. This time it might only be a couple, three hours' worth of work. But that's okay: it's all about getting your foot in the door at as many places as possible, making an impression, getting repeat business. So I will turn that around by tomorrow, and maybe there's something else they'll need down the road.

Then a little later in the afternoon, I get a call from a third agency, which so far has promised me a few things but nothing has materialized. These agencies can drive you crazy like that -- get your hopes up, only to be let down. You try not to get too high or too low, but I plead guilty to getting myself all worked up over possibilities that may or may not turn out, as well as feeling really, really down when things don't work out. But if like me you're putting all your eggs in the freelance basket, then you can't be surprised at the vicissitudes and vagaries of making a living that way. It's definitely not for everyone, and sometimes I'm not even sure it's for me. Just the last week, I've had second thoughts, third thoughts, even 9th and 15th thoughts.

Speaking of which, this third agency, let's call them TF/S, has a company that needs a proofreader for two full weeks, and maybe more, and they want to meet me tomorrow. It's a very famous brand name company, but that's all I will say on the matter. I'm not superstitious really, just a little stitious, but I don't wanna jinx myself any more than absolutely necessary. So that's a positive development. Tomorrow I work at LT till 4, then shoot downtown for the interview or meet & greet or whatever it turns out to be, likely a quick proofing or editing test, which of course I will annihilate with my overall editing acumen, and then we'll see what happens. Not to get ahead of myself, if that's even possible, but if they want me to start next week I will have to do some juggling with LTV.

On the one hand, I don't want to burn any bridges or alienate my regular clients. For instance, this week I worked 4 days at LT. Every other week, or about twice a month, S-NY, down on Varick Street, calls me to work on a certain catalog, an in-house style guide, or something in that vein; I don't wanna lose them, for instance. I don't wanna lose LT if this new gig ends after 2 or 3 weeks. I don't wanna put off the agency that got me both those good gigs, as well as others that I've developed good relationships with over the last year and change; they took me months and months to build up. I don't know where I would be without these guys -- well, gals actually. Another small advertising shop on Varick Street that I worked a few times for asked for me last week, but I was already booked somewhere else and just couldn't squeeze them in; I usually move heaven and earth so that I can accommodate both places the same day -- work somewhere from 9 to 1 or 2 and then shoot over to the other place. Those are the best days, when you feel in demand.

Some Hither, Others Yon

Wherein your humble narrator continues his obscure ravings, toiling selflessly in the relative anonymity of the modern blogosphere...

Two of the more impressive Internet commentators I've come across -- and come to admire -- are Glenn Greenwald, who publishes a lengthy daily political column for Salon, and Gregg Easterbrook, who writes for ESPN's Page 2 in wide-ranging and desultory form, on multiple myriads of matters. Besides the superfluous extra consonant at the end of their first names, these writers share an admirable girth of output that never fails to entertain and inform.

For instance, in his weekly Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Easterbrook is likely to switch from a discussion of the Tampa Bay Cover 2 to sheer wonderment at "why ancestors of the Paleo-Indians (would) have walked more than 1,000 miles across the Bering land bridge if they had no way of knowing a bountiful new land was on the other side?" Or suddenly cut from wondering why anyone would still punt to Devin Hester to give us statistics about the types of vehicles that are likely to be involved in California highway accidents, then more football talk before a quick sidebar detour into Christmas music showing up earlier and earlier in the year.

Glenn Greenwald is strictly politics, but his output is even more impressive. He writes a lengthy piece every day -- not Monday through Friday, mind you, but every day of the week, Saturday and Sunday included. You can go check the archive; there's no record of the guy ever taking a day off, anyway.

Greenwald writes about the follies, fallacies and deliberate falsities of the Bush administration and, more importantly, their minions of toadies and loyal sycophants in the corporate media. For instance, he recently took yuppie putz Rich Lowry to task for not only being a chickenhawk cheerleader for eternal war, but for never owning up to his repeated mistakes and falsehoods related to the Iraq war; Lowry is only the latest neocon apologist to take a fact-finding trip to Iraq's Green Zone and then, upon returning home, predictably report on how well the war is going and then brand critics of Bush and his war critics as treasonous freedom haters.

I strongly suggest adding both Greenwald and Easterbrook to your reading rotation, or just bookmark them for future perusal. More highly recommendatory praise I would be loath to offer due to my own selfishly egocentric considerations.
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For some unknown but serendipitous reason, I am now on my second book about New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement that eventually became New York. Following Henry Hudson's journey on behalf of the Dutch (he actually was looking for a direct route to Asia), waves of adventurers and settlers made the long trip across the Atlantic.

The Small Island at the Center of the World, The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America, by Russell Shorto, makes great use of recently translated records of the fledgling Dutch colony in the years leading up to the English takeover in 1664. From the start, Manhattan was self-consciously diverse, ambitious and tolerant -- displaying a chutzpah totally in keeping with its later rightfully celebrated spunk. Shorto skillfully traces the colonists' demands for self-determination and self-government to the Enlightenment ideas in the air at the time; the inspiration of Descartes, for example, looms large in the development of New Amsterdam figures like Adriaen van der Donck.

The Shorto book is fascinating on just so many levels. There's the backdrop of the religious wars between the British and the Dutch, the trade wars between Spain and everyone else, the wars the American colonists waged against the Native population. Then there is the subplot of Peter Stuyvesant, representing the reactionary forces of Calvinism, trying to keep the unruly inhabitants of the island in line, many of whom, with New Amsterdam's many taverns and illicit activities, were as drunk with beer and alcohol as they were on the heady brew of freedom.

Except for the very southern tip of Manhattan surrounding Fort Amsterdam, the rest of the island was unexplored wilderness, but the colonists got on amazingly well with the native tribes. In addition to lower Manhattan, there were also small Dutch and English settlements in what is now Jersey City, Hoboken, Harlem, Yonkers, Flushing, Hempstead, and parts of Brooklyn.

The Dutch also settled the territory around present-day Albany, some 150 miles up the Hudson River from New Amsterdam. The settlers called the area Beverwijck after the beaver trade with the Indians that drove the economic activity of the colony.

Janny Venema's Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652-1664 is a much tougher read because of its more scholarly, dissertation-like prose. Where Shorto went out of his way to create a compelling narrative that is almost aggressively modern in tone (at one point Shorto invokes the name of Joey Ramone to make a point!), Venema unabashedly piles on the dry facts and statistics, interspersed with journal entries and anecdotes from the period.

I've searched several libraries but these two seemingly are the only books dealing exclusively with New Amsterdam's founding. I suppose the next best bet is a bio of Pete Stuyvesant, who really came to life in the Shorto book as something more than a one-dimensional historical cutout best known for surrendering to the British.
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Moving ahead several centuries, the U.S. has managed to piss off three major world powers in the space of less than a week -- and that doesn't even include the ongoing damage being fostered on our behalf in the Middle East. First we upset Turkey with a proclamation calling attention to the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians following WWI. Then we further damage relations with Russia with our insistence on developing a Star Wars type missile defense system that likely will never be functional, operational or effective despite billions or even trillions of taxpayer dollars.
Now China is expressing its outrage at President Bush meeting with the Dalai Lama in the White House, saying, in language startlingly similar to that of Turkey following the Armenian affair, that it will have an "extremely serious impact" on relations between the two countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also in Iran warning against further American interference in the region. With both Russia and China getting a large share of their oil supply directly from Iran, the stage is set for additional deterioration of the always precarious balance between war and peace that has existed since the end of the cold war.

Pakistan is another case in point of a potential tinderbox. North Korea is still a totalitarian nightmare state. Rwanda is a continuing black eye to humanity of biblical proportions. These are not the good old days for billions and billions of people.
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But how about that crazy National Football League? Now that I've had a few days to dwell on it, I can take some positives away from Dallas getting drubbed by the Boston Belicheats on Sunday. For instance, we did fight back from early 14-0 and 21-10 deficits to take the lead in the 3rd quarter, 24-21. Of course, the Cowboys D did give up 27 more points after that, while we only managed 3 more, but didn't I just say we were stressing positives. Damn me!

Also, and most significantly Tony Romo bounced back from the Buffalo game to have a steady if unspectacular game. The problem wasn't the offense in this game, aside from another slow start where they got absolutely nothing on the first 3 possessions; the problem was never stopping Tom Brady on 3rd down, not getting the ball back for the offense. And the penalties, 12 for 100 after 3 quarters. Some of them were drive-killing daggers. But there I go again with negatives!

Obviously, you have to be impressed with the efficiency of the New England offense, but good offensive teams can move the ball against their defense. It's more a case of defensive schemes that are superior, although obviously there's a wealth of talent on that side of the ball, and now they get Richard Seymour back, in my opinion their best player on either side of the ball -- an absolute beast on the defensive line.
Tony Romo has now started 16 games since replacing Drew Bledsoe last year, the equivalent of one full NFL season. And if fans needed statistical justification or numerical confirmation for what their eyes have shown them, that the franchise has finally found its man after years of searching for the worthy successor to its last great QB, Troy Aikman, well, here it is: Romo has 4,348 yards passing in his first 16 regular season starts. That's second in NFL history -- only 5 fewer than Kurt Warner threw for in 1999, the year he won his first league MVP trophy and led the St. Louis Rams to victory in Super Bowl. More importantly, Romo is 11-5 as a starter in those games, with 31 TDs against 19 INTs.

Not a bad omen, if you ask me. And not to blow my own horn -- I don't even have a horn unless you refer to a certain prominent organ as a horn -- but what the hell. I called Romo a potential star on this very blog five full weeks before he was inserted into the lineup to relieve a struggling Bledsoe to start the second half against the Giants in Game 6 last year. You can look it up in the archives. On September 12, 2006, in a post mostly devoted to my ruminations on 9/11/2001, I snuck in a few sports observations near the end. After a season opening loss to the Jags last year, I wrote:

"One more similar underperformance by Bledsoe and I think Bill Parcells will be hard-pressed not to make a QB switch and go with soon-to-be-famous Tony Romo. You heard it here first."

That's the kind of prescient foresight my innumerable readers have come to expect from this space. And who am I to disappoint them?

See why I was worried about the Giants. They're 4-2, in the midst of a 4-game winning streak, and now have upcoming games against two more tomato cans of the NFL: the Dolphins and 49ers. I didn't want them getting on any kind of roll leading up the rematch against the Cowboys on November 11. Incidentally, or maybe not, the Giants will be coming off a bye week heading into that game. Hopefully, the Cowboys will be at full strength by then, with WR Terry Glenn coming back from injury, DT Terry "Tank" Johnson returning from suspension, and CB Anthony Henry fully healed.

NFC teams should also be worried about the Saints based on their performance against the Seattle Seahawks. Now, how much of New Orleans' dominant outing Sunday night is due to the suddenly reeling Hawks is debatable, but it sure looked like the Saints offense of last year, with RB Reggie Bush breaking out with his best game of the year and QB Drew Brees spreading the ball around effectively.

The Seahawks were also badly outcoached, with Saints head man Sean Payton several steps ahead of counterpart Mike Holmgrem all night. After Seattle cut the Saints lead to 28-17 with 6:30 left in the 4th quarter, they chose to go for an onside kick even after New Orleans put their hands team on the field. The Saints predictably recovered at the Seattle 42, and proceeded to run more time off the clock. Then when the Seahawks got the ball back and drove to the Saints 10, they went for the TD on 4th down instead of kicking the FG, cutting the lead to 8, and extending the game. Bad, bad coaching.

San Diego just made a trade to address one of their few weak spots. They get Chris Chambers from Miami for a 2nd round pick next year. Good deal for both teams, I think, because Chambers was not gonna excel in Miami with their QB situation, while the Chargers will use him to stretch the field, making their offense even more dangerous.

Tampa Bay, decimated by injuries to the RB position, acquired Michael Bennett from the Chiefs. Bennett, who had some good years for the Vikings, is still only 29 years old. In 2002, he made the Pro Bowl after rushing for 1,296 yards and catching passes for another 351 yards. Fun Wikipedia fact: Bennett once clocked in at an unbelievable 4.13 for the 40-yard dash, one of the fastest times ever recorded, and he has "4.13" tattooed on his calves.

Bad news for Ron Springs, the former NFL player and father of current Redskins CB Shawn Springs: he's lapsed into a coma seven months after undergoing kidney transplant surgery. The organ was donated by Everson Walls, his ex-teammate with the Cowboys during the 1980s. Springs was a tough, slashing runner in the '80s and hopefully he comes back from this latest setback.

Better news for Kevin Everett: the Buffalo Bills TE has been making solid progress since suffering a severe spinal cord injury earlier in the season. He's been able to push himself in a wheelchair as he continues his physical therapy, and can now open and close both hands.

Vikings rookie RB Adrian Peterson, fresh off a 224-yard rampage against the Bears, just might already be the best back in all of football. He made Chicago's gasping and grasping defenders look like extras in a Heisman Trophy promotional highlight reel. The Bears certainly won't be the last team to suffer that indignity, but here's hoping a different fate awaits Peterson's next opponent, your Cowboys of Dallas city, who host the mighty Minnesota Norsemen this coming Sunday.

Love To Play Tackle

We went from short sleeves to jackets and coats in a hurry here in New York over the last few days. Three weeks after the calendar marked the official end of summer, we've had the warmest fall perhaps of all time -- or more to the point, we've had summer weather extended into October for weeks and weeks, sponsored by your friendly folks at Global Warming Inc.

Just last week we were hitting the beach with impunity as temps dipped back up into the 80s, then late in the week, the first chill of autumn flew in on blustery morning winds, and it finally dawned on everyone that, yes, another summer's end is in the books.

A lot of things to delve into today, but a pre-NFL Sunday morn is hardly the time or place for such random delving. Not when there's a Texas style showdown in the offing with the 5-0 Dallas Cowboys hosting the 5-0 Boston Cheatriots this afternoon. We're taking a ride to Karim's house in Teaneck for this game, that's how huge and how anticipated this contest is in Cowboy Nation. There will be at least 4 of us devoted Cowboy fanatics screaming in front of a large screen TV. It's hard to believe that this is only the 5th time in NFL history two undefeated teams have met this late in the year. I just don't get why it hasn't happened more often.

Everyone has weighed in on the marquee matchup, and I would say 9 out of 10 "experts" are picking the Pats. The AFC is the far superior conference, the reasoning usually goes, and the Pats have all that Super Bowl history. I give the Cowboys a fighter's chance because I believe at their best, Dallas can match up with any team in the league.

Last year Dallas beat the eventual Super Bowl champions when the Colts rode high into Texas Stadium at 9-0. That's got to give them some added confidence.

Also, I would be shocked if QB Tony Romo follows up his bad game last Monday night with another stinker. I expect Romo to play well enough for the Cowboys to win, and not to put his defense into bad situations with turnovers. Of course I was shocked that he threw 5 picks against the Bills. But Romo was able to rally for the game winning drive like vintage Roger Staubach, just to pick a name out of the air on this football Sunday.

The Cowboys need two other things to happen. First, a consistent pass rush against Tom Brady. If the Dallas defense doesn't get 4 or 5 sacks, a lot of pressures and hurries from DeMarcus Ware and Anthony Spencer, and at least 2 turnovers leading to scores, I think their chances go way down of coming out with a victory.
Second, and related to the first, is keeping Pats WR Randy Moss in check, not letting him take over the game with big plays. To me this is the wild card. If Dallas can hold Moss to under 100 yards, they win a close game.

Pre-game prediction: Cowboys 24, Patriots 19.

Post game I'll either be too jacked up or too bummed out to offer any coherent conclusions. Good sign that the Red Sox lost last night. Sometimes luck runs hand in hand with cities. The Sox and Pats fans are insufferable blowhards. Their teams sucked for years and years and then they get a dose of winning for 4 or 5 years and now they invented football and baseball. Go Indians! Go Cowboys!!

Black and Blue Monday

IN ONE OF THE STRANGEST SPORTS NIGHTS for me in forever, both the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys spit the bit. But where one team turned from a frog into a prince at the very last moment, the other kept right on ribbiting itself out of the playoffs.

Another uninspired Yankee team showed up for a playoff game last night, and that's why they're going home after another first round loss. The better team won again in the Cleveland Indians, and that's why they will be facing the Boston Red Sox for the right to move on to the World Series.

The underdog Buffalo Bills took it to the heavily favored Cowboys all night long -- forcing 6 turnovers, scoring 2 defensive touchdowns, and getting a 103-yard kickoff return. But it was the 1 late pick by Bills QB Trent Edwards, the rookie QB from Stanford who otherwise outplayed Tony Romo right from the get go, that proved most damaging to the Bills. Fittingly, after 41-point underdog Stanford pulled off college football's biggest shocker in years with their 24-23 win against USC Saturday, this game followed the same script for 59 minutes -- delighting the rabid crowd taking in Buffalo's first Monday Nighter in 13 years.

Romo threw picks early and often, 5 of them, but was able to lead a late 80-yard drive, going 9-11 to pull Dallas to 24-22 after a missed 2-point try. With half a minute left, Dallas K Nick Folk put the foot back in football, executing a textbook onsides kick, and suddenly Dallas still had a prayer. After a long pass to WR Terrell Owens was replay-reversed, Romo had just enough time to complete 2 short passes, and the Cowboys set Folk up for a 53-yarder. The rookie nailed the kick, but Bills head coach predictably had called time so Folk would have to hit it again for the win. Folk's second kick was a dead ringer for the first, and the Cowboys had pulled off the stunning comeback with 9 points in the last 20 seconds. The 25-24 win pushes the Cowboys to 5-0 heading into the New England game.

I never would have believed Romo could play this bad -- overthrowing receivers all night when he wasn't underthrowing them. After 3 passes, Romo had 2 picks and an incompletion. Romo kept throwing it to the guys in the retro Bills uniforms all night, but he kept right on flinging, managing to complete 29-50 for 309 yards. The Dallas defense kept them in the game all night, ultimately giving up only a single FG to the conservative Buffalo offense.

In the first half, it seemed Romo was doing everything in his power to burst whatever goodwill he had built up over the first 4 games, throwing 4 terrible picks, then just like that the legend is somehow enhanced with the dramatic, improbable come from behind last second win. And so you can say that Romo played his worst game of the year and his best game of the year last night, displaying the resiliency that all the great ones have. In the first half, Romo played like the turnover-happy Brett Favre of last year, but still displayed enough Favre-like fortitude to pull out the game when it counted.

I hadn't given up even after it was 24-13 Bills in the 4th. These Sunday and Monday Night games can turn on a dime. Even so, I was so disgusted at some points that I switched back to the Yankees game, who chipped away to get within 6-4. Derek Jeter had an A-Rod-like playoff series, hitting into double plays and killing the few rallies the Yankees could muster against the Indians pitchers. But the end of the Joe Torre era came quietly, with nary a mosquito in sight, and baseball in New York is dormant for another season, another spring, before even a trace of chill in the October night air...

Release The Fighting Gnats

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME! Just got home and turned on the Yankees-Indians game. It was an unusual 5:00pm start and it's now bottom of the 8th. Getting late early. Yankees were leading most of the game 1-0 on an early Melke Cabrera HR, and now just like that it's 1-1. Walk, Wild Pitch, Sacrifice, another Wild Pitch by phenom Joba Chamberlain. Yanks down one game already, so this is a must win if this series isn't gonna turn into a repeat of last year's disastrous first round ouster at the hands of the Detroit Tigers.

John Sterling, that master of overbaked hyperbole, just called it one of the great playoff games of all time. Of course, that was before the Indians tied it. Now Sterling is blaming Chamberlain's misfortune on the swarm of gnats flying around the young pitcher. Man on second. Cleveland 1, Yankees 1, Gnats a whole lot more than 1. Suzyn Waldman just noted that the bugs are still gonna be in there if they bring in Mariano Rivera. Good to hear they don't play favorites. "No one will ever know what will have happened if there were no bugs," intones a disconsolate Sterling. "You don't know," enjoins Waldman, "maybe the bugs are biting Joba." Maybe the gnats will get behind the Yankees next inning, attacking the Indians pitcher with reckless abandon like extras in a Hitchcock movie. This game may be played under protest due to mosquito interference.
I thought we were headed for yet another Red Sox-Yankees clash. The Sox have held up their end of the bargain so far, winning game one behind a dominating Josh Beckett. Yankees blown away in their first game, in danger of trailing the series 2-0. But it's top of the 9th, top of the Yankees order against Cleveland pitcher Fausto Carmona, which sounds like a Spanish explorer.

Damon grounder to first, one out...

Let's jump around here while we wait for something to happen in the game...

I've got a small notebook I'm trying to empty out, so let's see what I got...

Did you catch the part in The War where a soldier from a small town in Connecticut was talking to a German POW who spoke English and seemed to know all about where he lived in the States, down to the name of the small river that ran through his hometown. When pressed on how he knows so much about such a relatively obscure part of America, the German informed him that after the Nazis had won the war, he would have been the administrator of those U.S. territories under Hitler's master plan. Spooky.

I also jotted this down: "What the fuck was it all for?" (referring to the hardships and sacrifice of these soldiers). "Do any of these obnoxious young people in their flip-flops chatting incessantly on cell phones during the few moments they're not plugged into their iPods and BlackBerries & fucking Gameboys even know the first thing about that history?"

A bit of a generalization on my part, but maybe some truth there also...

Yankees, man on second, A-Rod up, 3-2 against the Cleveland starter Carmona, 19-7 on the year. Let's stay with this. 3-2 fouled off, hard sinker in on his hands. Good battle going on. Abreu off 2nd. He struck him out swinging! And now the pressure is on A-Rod, you can bet on that. Still tied at 1, but Cleveland coming up bottom of the 9th.

Another thing about The War. Watching it over the first few nights, one thing struck me about the military strategy on the U.S. side early in the campaign. In Tunisia and later in Anzio, World War I had nothing on this war in terms of mismanagement, sheer unnecessary exposure of troops to suicide missions that were doomed from the start, and the use of troops as what can only be called cannon fodder. In Anzio the troops were hunkered down for months on a beach with no cover whatsoever. The Tunisia debacle perhaps may be excused in retrospect, considering the Tunisia Campaign was very early in the War in terms of American particiation, thus the total lack of experience on the part of both the common foot soldier and his commanding officers. Going against Rommel's seasoned killing machines in North Africa, it took several bloody and costly missteps and ill-conceived risks before the U.S. troops themselves became battle-hardened and inured to killing. It ended with a mind-boggling 275,000 German/Italian POWs.

Great footage shown on the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast of America, as well as a less well-known episode -- the brutal internment camps in Filipino cities like Manila where Americans were imprisoned by the conquering Japanese armies.

YANKS-TRIBE STILL TIED 1-1 after 9 full. John Sterling didn't come right out and say it, but you know he thinks the Indians are behind the bugs attacking Chamberlain on the mound. "Woulda been a Yankees win without the bugs. Life is funny sometimes...," he says, and who can argue with him about that salient point.

Battle of the Bulge. 1,600 American men A DAY dying of frostbite during one stretch in the Arden Forest as the Germans tried to mount a counter-offensive near their western border. Amazingly, back home -- and this wasn't covered or even mentioned in the Burns film but I kept thinking about it nonetheless -- George Bush's granddaddy Prescott Bush spent most of the war financing the German war machine from his post on Wall Street. Death, war, arms, money -- like father, like sons of presidents.

"Let's not talk politics today, I feel too good, lemme have my way, high in the city..." -- Lou Reed

Sorry, Lou, can't resist. Bush and Cheney want to use one war to start another. Not content to tell another nation what kind of energy it can use, the Bush administration sought to demonize Iran by connecting it to arming the insurgency in Iraq with IEDs, missiles, training. It goes from ludicrous to laughable when you consider the far greater role played by states like Saudi Arabia, which recently was shown to be the predominant actor fueling the chaos in Iraq. And of course we all know their prominent role in 9/11 and in financing Islamic extremism in general -- facts which have been routinely underplayed in the public discourse.

In 1957 when Jack Kerouac's On the Road was finally published after 10 years of rejection, it was met with scorn and derision by many reviewers who misread the narrator's soul-searching adventures for degeneracy and debauchery. None was more cruel and reactionary than those penned by one Norman Podhoretz, whose comments displayed a rare vitriol even in the cutthroat world of book reviewing at the time. With the 50-year anniversary of Kerouac's upon us, it's worth noting that critics like Podhoretz let personal vendetta and professional envy cloud their judgment, and that hatchet jobs like those authored half a century ago say more about the writer than the subject.
Kerouac is long dead, having passed away a bitter alcoholic in the late '60s. But as the recent resurgence has proven, his literary star and reputation have never been higher or more appreciated. Ironically, Podhoretz is still making news as a neocon's neocon -- bullheaded, stubborn, delusional, closed-minded, smugly self-assured and, most telling, unrelentingly unfazed by repeated proof of their mistakes and miscalculations. His latest screed, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, outlines the case for war with Iran. Despite immersing myself in The War, I'm hardly an expert on WWII, but to use a word like "fascist" to describe a stateless band of terrorists is the height of idiocy.

Podhoretz is also presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy advisor. He emerged from a recent meeting with Bush confident that the White House is onboard with a military offensive against Iran. Podhoretz's daughter is married to Elliott Abrams, a convicted Iran-Contra operative and now a State Department policymaker. Heaven help us all.

TOP OF THE 11th inning, still tied up. Oops, make that bottom of the 11th. Yanks go quietly, 1-2-3. Only have 3 hits all night. Not looking good.

As a Dallas Cowboy fan, I've grown to hate the guy, but you can't deny that Giants WR Plaxico Burress is playing at an All-Pro level this year. And because of his height, he also might be one of the two or three hardest covers in the league for any cornerback, along with names like Randy Moss and Terrell Owens.

Here's why I was rooting for the Eagles the other night. Not because I don't think Philly is still Dallas's biggest threat in the NFC East. But I don't want the Giants getting on any kind of roll: the upcoming schedule has them taking on weak sisters like the Jets, 49ers, Dolphins and Falcons. Barring a slip-up, they're gonna be 6-2 for the rematch against Dallas. Meanwhile, the Cowboys have the Patriots coming up after the Monday Nighter at Buffalo.

Speaking of New England, people are starting to employ the 'U' word when talking about the Pats: Undefeated. They do have games against the Cowboys and Colts coming up, so hopefully someone can derail the Belicheat Boys.

And the Patriots were a little off the other night against the Bengals. Only 34 points put up instead of the usual 38, and Tom Brady was all over the place, going only 25-32 with 3 TDs, his 78% completion rate for the game a notch under his season average. His passer rating for the season is an off-the-charts 134.1. Next comes Kurt Warner at just over 125, then Tony Romo at 112.9.

The whole key to the New England offense is the consistency of the offensive line. Brady has been sacked only 3 times in 4 games, and there just haven't been a whole lot of times when he hasn't been free to survey the whole field unscathed.
Yankees just lost 2-1. Kenny Lofton in the middle of it all for the Indians. Always had a soft spot for Cleveland sports. Always gravitate to the underdog, and Cleveland is the underdog of cities.

What is LeBron James thinking rocking the Yankees cap with the interlocking N/Y deal in his home city's ballpark? That's a real 'look at me' moment. I don't think it's over the top to say that will come back to haunt James at some point. If you're a Yankees fan and you don't want to wear an Indian cap, that's cool, just don't wear any cap at all.

I find it kinda funny that Herm Edwards, all but run out of town by Jets fans, has his K.C. Chiefs at 2-2, while the coach who replaced him, Eric Mangini, is struggling along with a 1-3 record. Last week the Chiefs, boasting one of the least talented rosters in football, took it to the "loaded" San Diego Chargers 30-16. Can you say "genius"?

So Yankees down 2-0 heading back to Yankee Stadium. Just like '96 against the Braves in the Series? Just like '97 when the Manny Ramirez, Juan Gonzalez, Sandy Alomar-led Indians bounced us out of the playoffs? Or just like last year when the Tigers unceremoniously bounced us out in the divisional round? In Sports, as in War, History is yet to be written.