Those other Cardinals
This year, out of the ordinary, I have a rooting interest in the Super Bowl. I'm just not sure yet what it is. As a partisan towards the city of St. Louis, everything within, and also a proud Iowan, I'm tickled once more for former Rams QB and Cedar Rapids Regis alum Kurt Warner.
This year's march by Warner into the NFL's biggest game, at the helm of its doormat franchise for the last 60 years, should cement the quarterback's Hall of Fame credentials. The three peak seasons of Warner's career (with the St. Louis Rams from 1999-2001) match that of any quarterback in league history, but what he didn't yet have, after debuting at almost 30 years old, was longevity. Even 7 or 8 more mediocre seasons at the conclusion of that peak would have likely done the trick. But in 2008, after multiple concussions and more substantial time lost to injury and circumstance since his second and seemingly last Super Bowl, he's added a secondary peak to his remarkable career, and if he gives the Arizona Cardinals their first NFL championship since 1947 this coming Sunday, you'll start hearing me call him the greatest quarterback of all-time-- especially if you're along for the ride during one of my increasingly-frequent weekend drinking jags.
But maybe getting
back to the Super Bowl is already far enough for both Warner and the Cardinals. Just propelling Big Red into the Big Game tells us all we need to know about the character of Mr. Warner, and I'm not sure that I'm emotionally ready for the transient Gridbirds, who called St. Louis home from 1960 to 1988, to end their championship drought, the second longest in American team sports history. (Behind guess who.)
He looks harmless enough now in that little bolo tie, but 77-year-old Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill exhibited no hesitation two decades ago about abandoning the Gateway City for sunnier skies (quite literally) after he failed in his attempt to fleece Missouri taxpayers of a new stadium. (They were ultimately fleeced anyway several years later.) Bidwill has long been one of the NFL's biggest cheapskates as club owner, and he's taken a comeuppance by having his team go 60 years without even
playing for the NFL title. (Before Sunday, their last championship game participation was in '48.) The franchise, dating back to Chicago, has won only one post-season game since '47 (a Wild Card game against Dallas in 1998), and none while in St. Louis.
In fact, one could make the case that Bidwill, son of one of the founders of the league, symbolizes everything that's wrong with sports today, or come to think of it, the world in general. With the day-to-day operations of the club handed to son Michael several years ago, the Bidwills didn't start spending money on their club until they had finally finagled a new stadium. It came from the good people of the state of Arizona. University of Phoenix Stadium opened in 2006 after taxpayers picked up roughly two-thirds of its total construction cost, or $311 million between a state sports authority and the city of Glendale. The Bidwills will get reimbursed for their contribution, thanks to a 20-year naming rights agreement with the for-profit adult educational institution. Forbes Magazine says the franchise is worth $914 million today to the Bidwill family.
Thanks to the wonder of sports, my conscience will ultimately be my guide when I sit down to watch the game on Sunday. I suspect that I'll find that it impossible to deny the human element and not root for the remarkably decent and charitable Warner. His podium proselytizing at the occasion of each championship is always kind of a bring-me-down, but as the christian prophets go, at least he appears to live the principles of his faith, and really, he seems like just a hell of a nice guy.
1/29/09 Afterword: I'm even more conflicted about the Bud Bowl.
1/30/09 Afterword: preferred Springsteen set (that's somewhat realistic): "The Rising"/"Tenth Avenue Freeze-out"/"Born to Run"
News from around the nation
At least Congressman is dialed in. Michigan's John Conyers has
formally introduced universal, single-payer health insurance, and he's
dragging Karl Rove back to the line of scrimmage.
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Bailed-out bank execs helpfully declare
"the demise of a civilization".
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We live in an amazing technological time.
This photo, comprised of 220 smaller photos, allows one to zoom all the way in on a sleeping Clarence Thomas seated behind Barack Obama at last week's inaugural.
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Know what's wrong with our campaign finance system? Individuals
aren't allowed to contribute
enough.
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I can't think of a recent newspaper article that better epitomizes today's out-of-step, right-wing, corporate media than this one: As part of a published series of debates humorously titled "Dust-up" in the LA Times, radical conservative Hugh Hewitt and "liberal" Susan Estrich
square off today over whether or not President Obama should investigate Bush Administration officials' handling of the "war on terror." Oops, they both agree.
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Hopefully, iconic film actor Mickey Rourke won't really parlay his recent Oscar nomination into a real-life stint as
a professional wrestler. If we wanted to see a guy throw an Academy nod into the toilet, they could give another one to Burt Reynolds.
Snap!---
The best player in Sunday's Super Bowl was raised by a sportswriter. That sportswriter says he can still report the game objectively from the press box at Tampa Stadium.
Crowning Pujols
The winter doldrums are in full swing. Another two inches of snow fell on Des Moines last night, and the high temperature today is hovering around the age of puberty, and that's puberty for a girl, people, not a boy!
I've found a solution through Netflix-- ordering DVDs of some of the greatest baseball games of all-time to enjoy during the chilly January weekends-- games watched or in the Netflix queue include what would commonly be known as the Bill Buckner game, the Kirk Gibson game, the Ryne Sandberg game, and the 1987 World Series contest Cardinals fans know simply as the Tom Lawless game. I'm also pleased to notify you that pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to Spring Training in only 20 days.
Our topic then today is the greatness of the Cardinals' Albert Pujols, the reigning National League MVP and baseball's best player. He's about to accomplish something
truly historic:
Only one time in history has a Major League player claimed what would be considered a "Decade Triple Crown," meaning that he led his league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in for the span of an entire decade. That player was Rogers Hornsby for the National League in the 1920s (a Cardinal for the first 7 of those 10 years). Babe who? Yes, that's Rogers Hornsby. During the '20s, he led the Senior Circuit with a .382 BA, 250 home runs, and 1,153 RBIs.
With a "typical" season in 2009, the Great Pujols will become number two. The following are the top 5 lists in each category for the first decade of the new millennium in the National League...
BATTTING AVERAGE
1) Albert Pujols .334
2) Todd Helton .332
3) Barry Bonds (retired) .322
4) Chipper Jones .316
5) Moises Alou .310
HOME RUNS
1) Albert Pujols 319
2) Barry Bonds (retired) 317
3) Andruw Jones 291
4) Lance Berkman 284
5) Adam Dunn 278
RUNS BATTED In
1) Albert Pujols 977
2) Lance Berkman 946
3) Todd Helton 895
4) Andruw Jones 874
5) 3 tied with 850
But, you're saying to yourself, the real decade should be 2001-2010. You started a year early, Chris. Well, so did everybody else. What makes his feat doubly remarkable is that Pujols spotted the rest of the league a full year. He didn't make his big league debut until April of 2001. If we subtract 2000, we have
two years remaining in the decade, but Pujols' lead in each category widens...
BATTING AVERAGE
1) Albert Pujols .334
2) Todd Helton .326
HOME RUNS
1) Albert Pujols 319
2) Adam Dunn 278
RUNS BATTED IN
1) Albert Pujols 977
2) Lance Berkman 879
Those are virtually insurmountable leads if Pujols remains healthy and consistent. And unlike even Hornsby, Pujols will have accomplished it in the first 10 years of his career. The last Triple Crown winner in the National League for a single season was Joe "Ducky" Medwick (again, a Cardinal) in 1937, but Pujols may accomplish a feat that has a longer drought than that.
"Star Wars" osmosis
The story of "Star Wars", by someone who has never seen it.
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In Sight It Must be Right: This is Roger Ebert on
his favorite restaurant. Someday we'll get a Steak 'n Shake in Des Moines. They're as far west now as both Iowa City and Kansas City.
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Muammar Qaddafi:
a voice of reason?
The Inauguration Day Recap
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream had two phases. The first phase of the freedom movement involved integration, equal opportunity, and equal voting rights. The second phase was the demand for economic equality and included a challenge to the country's militarism that he said made America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.'
Inauguration Day 2008 was a red-letter day for phase one. References to the principals of phase two were woefully inadequate in the new president's first speech, which was just cautious and vague enough in its advocation of "post-partisan" ideals to ignore the reality of the difficult decisions he'll shortly be forced to make between the separate, competing parts.
President Obama's speech made no mention of Palestine, despite the fact that Israel had used the occasion of our transfer of presidential power as a window of opportunity in which to launch a large-scale assault against Gaza with American-provided weapons, and he perpetuated the dangerous and long-standing myth that free markets equal freedom, saying that "Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched." (News, I'm sure, to peoples living today in Russia, South Korea, and Argentina.) Rather than challenging directly the enemies of freedom and instruments of destruction on Wall Street, he said only that "collective failure" has kept us from making the hard choices of late.The American Empire was never placed on notice.
The new president's speech was smoothly written, adroitly delivered, filled with some important historical comment on the question of race and the struggle for equality, while lacking in the malaprops and outright flag-waving pimpery we came to expect from his predecessor; but it
was filled with its share of whitewash for our checkered history and still plenty of flattery for his adoring populace ("[our] tempering qualities of humility and restraint," really?). There were no promises of health care for all, or free education for every student. The bar was not set high.
For those of us who have chosen to adopt the more historically-justified "show-me" approach to the Obama Presidency, his opening address and the promises therein can be only that, accepted with openness but with a healthy skepticism towards one who has shown so little courage thus far on so many of the most important struggles before us. The job actually starts today.
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After I work through some feelings of ambivalence over the almost monarch-like images, I'm sure I'll find this video clip
terribly charming.
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Dick Cheney
as Dr. Strangelove. The transformation finally became complete.
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The Bush presidency ends in the dismal way it began and endured for eight full years. Thanks to the backing of a vengeance-thirsty public and the lack of any opposition party of consequence in Washington, a mental incompetent and underachiever, possessed of a crippling personal insecurity, was allowed to run roughshod over everything in his path, from the United States Constitution to large masses of innocent, wasted human life. May a God of unconditional love, patience, and mercy grant this country the sufficient wisdom and courage that it will never,
ever allow this man to become commissioner of baseball.
Rickey's ready for the Hall of Fame
Rickey Henderson, the last Major League Baseball player that looked good in a fur coat, was inducted into the Hall of Fame this week, and it's worth a moment to praise his many accomplishments both on the field and off.
One can only have love for Rickey Henderson, one of baseball's few players to compete in four different decades. He developed the habit early in his career of referring to himself publicly-- and to himself-- in the third person and by his first name, as in "Rickey says Rickey." This inspired, if not the "Seinfeld" episode about the physical fitness trainer who does the same, then at least the series of Budweiser television advertisements early in the decade featuring a similar fictional professional athlete named Leon.
When Henderson-- from this point on referred to as Rickey-- became baseball's all-time stolen base king in 1991, surpassing Lou Brock, he told the crowd-- with Brock only a few feet away from him that "Lou Brock was a great base stealer, but today, I am the greatest of all-time. When he broke Ty Cobb's career record for runs scored, doing so on a home run, he took 45 seconds to circle the bases, then slid into home plate.
In the early 1980s, when the man who would become a 10-time all-star was still in the first of four tours of duty with the Oakland Athletics, the A's accounting department was in a panic over $1 million that had gone missing from their bank statements. Mystery solved when it turned out that Rickey had taken a $1 million signing bonus and, rather than cashing it, framed it and hung it on a wall at his home.
Rickey, who was born Rickey Nelson Henley (yes, he was named after singer/actor Ricky Nelson) and who was born on Christmas Day 1958 in the backseat of a '57 Chevy on the way to the hospital, once asked a teammate how long it would take him to drive to the Dominican Republic.
A teammate of Rickey's with the Seattle Mariners once heard him muttering to himself on the way back to the dugout after striking out, "Don't worry, Rickey, you're still the best." When a reporter asked him if he talked to himself, he said, "I never answer myself so how can I be talking to myself?"
Rickey broke baseball's all-time record for walks during his career, a record now held by Barry Bonds, but remarkably, the man widely considered to be baseball's all-time greatest leadoff hitter walked
to lead off an inning 796 times in his career. That's more than the total number of career walks for more than 50 Hall-of-Famers.
Though he played for the New York Yankees for only five seasons (during the late '80s), he finished as their all-time stolen base leader. While living in New York City, he told a teammate that his condo had such a great view, "He could see the Entire State Building." After receiving a six-figure bonus check from the Yankees, he went several months without cashing it. A team staffer asked if there was a problem with the check. "No," he said, "I'm just waiting for the money market rates to go up."
When Rickey stopped getting Major League job offers after 25 big league seasons in 2003, he played two seasons with the minor league Newark Bears and then a year with the San Diego Surf Dawgs, leading the Surf Dawgs to the Golden Baseball League championship of 2005, posting a .456 on-base percentage with 73 walks over 73 games. In his first season with the San Diego
Padres in 1996, he boarded a team bus one day and teammate Steve Finley told him he could sit wherever he wanted. "You've got tenure," Finley said. Rickey responded, "Ten years? Rickey's been playing at least 16, 17 years."
Despite playing during the so-called "steroid era" (long-time of the Bay Area A's, no less), Rickey, he of the rock-solid body, almost entirely escaped the media glare of alleged impropriety (probably because he didn't hit that many home runs). Rickey told a
Baseball Weekly reporter about ten years ago that he was in the middle of a kind-of constant physical workout. Citing an example of this ethic, he said that if he was in a hotel room at night watching television, and a set of commercials would come on the screen, he would simply drop to the floor and do 50 push-ups. A reporter asked Rickey in 1996 if he believed Ken Caminiti's estimate that 50 percent of Major League players were doing steroids. "Well, Rickey's not one of them," he responded, "so that's 49 percent right there."
Rickey made going to the ballgame entertaining and enjoyable. Our friend, David Levenhagen, caught a foul ball off Rickey's bat when we were at a Mets/Cards game together in St. Louis in 1999. (I'm always keeping a scorecard, which puts me at a competitive disadvantage for foul flys.) During the same game, Rickey went to the mesh screen near the on-deck circle at one point to poke at and torment a grandstand heckler, and out in left field, when the light-hearted taunts of "Rick-ee, Rick-ee" reigned down on him, he made a fanning gesture with his glove to indicate that the fan's verbal needling was helping to cool him on a hot day.
Rickey's a marvelously deserving Hall-of-Famer, for whatever that's still worth, and I'm looking forward to one hell of an induction speech. If he's preparing for his big day the way he prepared for every game he played for 25 years, according to teammates, he's standing naked in front of a full-length mirror repeating the phrase, "Rickey's the best."
Indeed he was.
In the air tonight
At the end of Monday's post, I mentioned that I would be assessing the status of the American airline industry later in the week, but I was half-joking. I had some leftover notes from my New York City diary in reference to the safety treatment we're all subjected to nowadays when we go through those marvelous security screenings. But
today's crash landing of a 155-passenger, twin-jet commecial airplane into the Hudson River near midtown Manhattan makes that a rather eerie reference, especially since the plane had taken off from the same airport as our New York City departure roughly 90 hours before.
Instead, then, I'll summarize my pre-1/15/09 thoughts this way:
# 1) Taking off your shoes at airports, random full-body searches, and traveling without toothpaste is the height of unwarranted panic and stupidity in the post-9/11 world. How about just putting our bag(s) on the conveyor belt, walking through the metal detector, and calling it a day.
and # 2) Delta airlines cookies is tasty!
Now then, as to the extraordinary men and women who captain and steer our planes-- the statistics that have accompanied today's news alerts illustrate for me just how remarkably safe air travel is in the United States. There has not been a commercial airline fatality in the U.S. air industry in over two years-- a record, and there hasn't been a large-scale crash in more than seven years, also a record. It's not for lack of opportunities, either. Roughly
15,000 commercial flights depart every day in this country.
We often hear people say that air travel is the safest mode of transportation there is, but we rarely see the stats. No news for two-plus years is certainly good news.
Hypothermia alert
I implore you: don't go out tonight. The forecast in Iowa and the Great Midwest is for near record lows-- 17 degrees below zero or more in Des Moines, with a wind chill temperature of perhaps 40 below.
Instead, enjoy these fine online articles I found today--
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As the White House gets prepped for its new occupants, a 20-something friend of one of the Bush twins
recalls a movie night at the White House with Josh Brolin... er, George W. Bush in 2001. The young man comes home with a lovely memory and a nickname.
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Ever feel like you're unimportant? That you're a tiny, insignificant cog in the wheel of the life? Well, I've got the solution to your problem. Send an email complaint to the FCC.
The Federal Communications Commission has
launched an investigation into NBC's telecast of the Golden Globes Sunday night after film director Darren Aronofsky, pilot of the new film "The Wrestler," "flipped the bird" during Mickey Rourke's acceptance speech for Best Actor.
"We received 18 complaints about the Golden Globes telecast," an FCC spokesperson said, "and the commission is reviewing the matter."
That's right, a whopping
eighteen complaints
. Two baseball lineups, minus the designated hitters.
--
Christopher Hitchens, on his friend Salman Rushdie and today's media self-centership.
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The "Arrested Development" movie still appears to be
hinging on the decision of breakout star Michael Cera. The comment thread with the article is hilarious.
The Gotham Recap
Sorry for my absence, I just returned from an exciting getaway weekend in the Big Apple. It was my first visit in eight years, but my visits seem to fall in bunches and I'd like nothing better than to turn around and head back tomorrow.
Here are some thoughts I jotted down about the trip and the city so nice they named it twice...
The buzz of the city can hit you before you even get there. In the terminal of the Cincinnati Airport, awaiting the connecting flight to LaGuardia, a man in a business suit on a cell phone was talking up a movie he had just seen. In it, a character was playing a cello in the marching band. I recognized the bit immediately as the quintessential New Yorker Woody Allen's in his first film "Take the Money and Run." I also witnessed the first Orthodox Jew of the trip in Cincinnati. He was awaiting the same connecting flight (presumably back) to NYC. You don't see "them kind" in Iowa now that Agriprocessors has closed. In a parallel study on the way home, we were in the Atlanta airport not two minutes before I saw a guy in a protestant minister's collar.
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During the current economic downturn, even the prices in Sky Mall magazine are falling. A five quart ice bucket sells now for only $99.50.
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While traveling by bus and subway through the borough of Queens, I can't get the mental image of Kevin James out of my head. That's why he's "the King," I guess. That got me to thinking about who would be the mental image of each of the other five boroughs. For me, Brooklyn would be Jackie Robinson (or maybe Vinny Barbarino), Staten Island is Christina Aguilera, and the Bronx is Malcolm X. Manhattan is probably Cole Porter. I'm kinda sophisticated that way.
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I've still never been to LaGuardia during the summer, but I've always been curious if you can hear the sound of the Mets game while in the terminal.
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Classic New York City moment involving the companion: We're in a shuttle bus and the driver is talking so much to the passengers (telling corny jokes) that he's got his eyes more on the back of the bus than on the road as he races down a street filled with pedestrians. "Hey, there's a person!" she shouts as the cab driver races past a near collision, completely oblivious.
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We didn't take a single taxi ride during the four days we were in the city. I'm as at home now in the New York City subway system as a fish in the ocean. I can't get enough of it-- I feel a sense of efficiency in terms of time, money,
and the ecology. It's a triple threat.
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Everyone really should walk the length of, or part of, the Brooklyn Bridge. You can't take a bad picture there. They all turn out like
this. Unfortunately, it would be too dangerous to Spiderman-it-down to the lower platform and snap a picture from the standpoint of the passing cars, but if you could, it would totally look like the opening sequence of the TV show "Taxi."
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The linked picture above is from the internet naturally, but the companion took about 300 digital pictures during the trip, 100 alone at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I think she's going to be marketing a calendar.
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I don't know how a modern subway commuter could live without an iPod.
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Most don't.
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No restaurant in town serves cheesecake in actual proportion to the human stomach. Perfect for police horses, though.
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The companion learned a little too slowly that you can't take a picture of a New Yorker without the subject of the photo demanding a financial contribution in return. First, it was the drummer at the subway stop in Times Square, then it was the guy in green greasepaint dressed as Lady Liberty at Battery Park.
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New York City will turn anyone into an architecture buff. I'm an art deco adherent myself. The NBC Studio tour is worth the price of admission just to see the interior of
the staggeringly beautiful GE building in Rockefeller Center. We took photos in front of the Christmas tree Thursday night, and you know it doesn't look half the size it does on television. This is probably because it's dwarfed by the 70-floor building behind it.
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In case you were curious, the tree came down Saturday morning.
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Of course, the NBC Studio tour was also worth the price of admission because of its tremendous broadcast history. The "Saturday Night Live" studio, 8-H, (they did a live show the evening of the day we were there) was long ago home to the NBC Radio Orchestra, dating back to the 1930s. That had great significance to a former employee of WHO Radio in Des Moines, an NBC affiliate for more than 60 years until the mid-90s. The "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" studio on a lower floor had added significance in that it was also the home of "Late Night with David Letterman" for 12 seasons prior to Conan's occupancy, so we saw that historic stage and the off-camera locations where Dave and his gang used to conduct the hallway and elevator races. The GE pinheads are
still there, and they say the place is now haunted by the ghost of Marv Albert.
We also got to see the "Late Night" studio in one of its final days. Conan leaves for Burbank and "The Tonight Show" after the February 20th taping, and a new studio is being built next door for his successor, Jimmy Fallon. I'll probably do an official obituary post for the studio at the end of the month.
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Skipped the "Today" show scene on Friday morning, but I would have liked to have seen the fourth hour with Kathie Lee Gifford.
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Spent about an hour on Wall Street Friday. The Dow lost 143 points.
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The tower at Rockefeller Center notwithstanding--
this is the most beautiful building in the city, if not the world.
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My biggest cultural shortcoming is that I equate everything with movies and television. Even in the extraordinary Natural History Museum, what I'm mostly thinking about is that this is where they shot scenes for the recent films "Election" and "The Squid and the Whale." When you get right down to it, this city of 18 million people and more than 300 square miles is really just the set of "Ghostbusters".
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The stage shows on Broadway are wonderful, but if you get a chance, take in a club performance at Birdland on 44th. It's one of the coolest evening stops in a great city. Someday I'll get to a jazz performance at Lincoln Center. I like that high-hat stuff.
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The companion couldn't resist purchasing a fake Rolex in Chinatown, and she took it for half the asking price at that. So if you see her, don't be fooled.
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I was pleased to get my picture taken with the statue of Ralph Kramden at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
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A beautiful wet snow fell on Saturday when we were at the Natural History Museum on Central Park's west side. The scene was almost magical. You can understand why John Lennon loved the park.
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Good thing I had a notebook with me to record all the things we did and saw. Otherwise, I'd have to wait until I got my credit card statement to get this written.
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Later in the week,
What's Wrong with the Airline Industry today.
The GOP plan changes hands
I grew up in an era when the Reagan Revolution and its corporate adherents had painted the political canvas as a debate between "tax and spend" Democrats and fiscally-conservative, low tax Republicans, but Alex P. Keaton is dead (fictionally speaking), and real life has taught us all something different. The Republicans bow to no party when it comes to reckless spending, and both parties have come to agreement that deficit spending keeps the world economy a spinnin'.
The president-elect is
preparing us for "trillion dollar deficits for years to come," but somehow now the spending of liberals (such as they are) in Washington isn't targeted towards the full funding of much-needed social programs like Medicaid and unemployment benefits-- you know, the safety net stuff that created and provided for history's most prosperous middle class. The safety net is now "a central part" of the anticipated cuts in spending. The giveaways are now 12-figure bailouts to greedy Wall Street slot-jockeys and poorly-backed loans for automakers who've shown no initiative whatsoever to change the way they do business or mind the planet.
Prudent government spending is long overdue, but what President-Elect Obama doesn't seem to realize is that the days of pandering to voters with tax cuts went out with WMDs in Iraq. You can't have it all. Bad debt put us in the position we're in now. Obama's economic stimulus package, proposed publicly Monday, includes $300 billion in tax cuts and credits, and that's unconscionable. The proposed cuts are targeted directly at the payroll tax, which directly finances Social Security and Medicare. I'm not an economist, but do you have to be to know that you can't cut revenue when you're a trillion dollars in debt? When you're in a hole, some dead white guy once said, the first thing you should do is stop digging.
An increase in spending coupled with lower tax collections isn't even a tax cut, it's an increase. It means the government will have to collect more taxes in the future. The Washington solution is to replace toxic private credit with government (read: taxpayer) credit. We should be
increasing taxes, and we should tax the people who have it to give-- the corporations and the wealthy. Fortuitously, that group has been getting a free ride for quite a long time now. Did Reagan's top-down tax breaks ever trickle down? Foreclosures, bankruptcies, and the recent collapse of the capitalist system don't seem to positively confirm. Tax the corporations. Their tax percentage has dropped by double digit percentages over three decades. Tax the foreign companies that do business within our borders without toll. Close the regulatory loopholes and enforce the tax laws already on the books.
Obama advisors admit that his proposed tax cuts and credits this week are bait to help get Republican legislators up onto the boat. His stimulus plan, they argue, will have more teeth, and inspire more confidence, if it can pass the Senate with 80 or more votes.
I swear that never in our nation's history has there been such a record of a political party shifting the goalposts
in the wrong direction as the Democrats have done during this decade-- and not just in matters economic. First, they complained that it was the Majority Republicans wreaking havoc. When they took control of both houses of Congress two years ago, they blamed the Bush Administration for strong-arming from the Executive Branch. When they scored in November what will likely be 59 seats in the 100-seat Senate, we immediately began to hear warnings that the chamber majority wouldn't be
filibuster-proof. And now, they're paralyzed to act unless they can get legislative support from 4 out of every 5 senators. At what point will progressive Americans stop accepting the excuses of Democrats to keep acting like Republicans?
College football recap
I debate whether or not it's even worth revisiting this as I do, but college football is really a pathetic spectacle. The institution's concept of fairness is so far out of whack as to be comical. Jim Crow boosters have created a coaching fraternity that is nearly as wholly-white as the driven snow. And the organizational structure, in terms of team competition, is no fairer.
In 1996, running back Troy Davis of my alma mater, Iowa State, rushed for 2,185 yards, the third highest single-season total in collegiate history. He scored 21 touchdowns and became the first college player ever to rush for 2,000 yards in two different seasons. He accomplished this as essentially the only offensive threat on a team that played seven of its 11 games against nationally-ranked opponents in the top-rated Big 12 Conference. Yet, Davis, an African-American with a speech impediment, lost the Heisman Trophy to Florida's white quarterback Danny Wuerffel, who was playing in the same backfield that year as future NFL standouts Fred Taylor and Ike Hilliard and who had very publicly given his life to Christ. Davis should have been the biggest no-doubter since Barry Sanders eight years earlier.
More preposterous than even a series of these Heisman clusterfucks has been the history of awarding the sport's national championship to the wrong team, if any at all. Absent a playoff system that works marvelously in every other team sport, the antiquated collegiate bowl system allows sportswriters to
vote the championship based on their favorite brand name, and the national championship ends annually in dispute.
This year's national champion will be the winner of the Florida/Oklahoma game on Thursday when the two favorites of the BCS power conferences square off. Yet there's only one unbeaten Division One team in the nation-- the Utah Utes. Were they beneficiaries of a weak schedule? That was the poorly researched argument against Troy Davis when he competed for a low profile team in a premier conference a decade ago. The Utes may play in the little-known Mountain West conference, but they beat three teams currently ranked in the Top 16, and another, Oregon State, that will finish in the Top 25. They won at Michigan and Air Force, and in the Sugar Bowl this weekend in New Orleans, they beat Alabama 31-17 in a game that's annually a home game for an SEC representative.
Keep your eyes peeled for the final voting Friday. The national champion is never decided on the field, but it typically warrants a headline in your local paper.
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A recognizable actor died Saturday. Pat Hingle had more than 100 roles to his credit on stage and screen, and even if his name doesn't ring a bell, I suspect you'll recognize
his face. Hingle was the type of guy you'd come across on television when you didn't intend to, but he had a terrific presence. Obituaries today are primarily recalling his role as Commissioner Gordon in four "Batman" films during the 1980s and '90s, but he was also part of the original Broadway cast of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," appeared uncredited in Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront" on the big screen, and according to
his lengthy page on the Internet Movie Database, played different characters in three separate episodes of television's "Murder She Wrote."
My most indelible memories of Hingle on screen are as an army colonel who finds himself a victim of April Fool's pranksterism in a Season 8 episode of "M*A*S*H"; as loveable, doddering old Gus O'Malley, the pre-Sam Malone proprietor of "Cheers" on the series of the same, and as Joe and Brian Hackett's grandfather on "Wings." Hingle was cast as fathers and father figures as far back as Warren Beatty's in 1961's "Splendor in the Grass."
He always seemed a very warm and friendly fellow. His death is really a shame.
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Now if you'll excuse me, I have to begin watching
my new "WKRP" DVDs, which arrived via the USPS today. That's Ted Nugent you're hearing in the background.
Revolution
Allow me to be the first to wish you and yours a Happy New Year 2009. (To his assistant:) You mean it's already the third? Oh well, allow me to be one of the first dozen or so anyway. 2009 promises to be the most blog-tastic year to date.
In news to start the year on a positive note-- Nikko Smith, son of Cardinals Hall-of-Famer Ozzie Smith and former "American Idol" finalist, is about to
release his new CD "Revolution" after a year of legal roadblocks. Here's
a sampling of Nikko's R&B chops on Idol and
an entertainment feature from St. Louis that features Nikko's singing father. Simon Cowell can eat it.
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High school chum Matt Strawn is one of six candidates for chairman of the Iowa Republican Party.
Looks as though the non-white male vote is there for the taking.
This is
Matt's blog.
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Senate Democrats can't stand up to a president with an approval rating in the twenties. Can they
stand up to a state governor on his way to prison for corruption? It will be interesting to find out.
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True story: I went to see the Sean Penn vehicle "Milk" the other night. It's about the first openly-gay elected official in America, Harvey Milk, during the 1970s. Then on the way home from the theater, I had to stop and pick up only one item at the grocery store-- milk. I swear it was a total coincidence. Didn't even realize it until I got home.
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If Iowan Kurt Warner leads the Arizona Cardinals, of all football franchises, to a Super Bowl title, do we have to then call him the greatest quarterback of all-time?
