NFL Picks

I'll make it quick--it's almost game time!
Houston favored by 3 at Atlanta. Pick: HOUSTON. Schaub over Harrington.

Jets favored by 3 at Buffalo. Pick: JETS. J.P. Losman is out for the Bills.

Baltimore favored by 4 at Cleveland. Pick: RAVENS. That defense is just too tough.

Dallas at home favored by 13 over St. Louis. Pick: ST. LOUIS. Dallas will win, but 13 pts is too much to cover.

Chicago favored by 2.5 at Detroit. Pick: BEARS. The Lions have to prove they can come up big in a big game. They haven't done it yet. The Bears have.

Miami by 3.5 at home over Oakland. Pick: MIAMI. They're due to play well at home.

Minnesota favored by 1 at home vs Green Bay. Pick: PACKERS. Minnesota just can't score.

San Francisco favored by 2 at home vs Seattle. Pick: SAN FRANCISCO. Seattle not that good on the road.

Carolina favored by 3 at home vs Tampa Bay. Pick: BUCS. They're on the road, but Delhomme is out for the Panthers.

Indianapolis favored by 10 at home vs Denver. Pick: COLTS. They have Denver's number.

Pittsburgh favored by 5.5 at Arizona. Pick: STEELERS. Too much disarray in AZ with the QB situation, etc.

San Diego favored by 11.5 at home vs Kansas City. Pick: CHIEFS. San Diego's offense isn't in sync yet; they'll win, but 11 is too much to cover.

NY Giants favored by 3.5 at home vs Philadelphia. Pick: EAGLES. That offense is ready to roll.

New England favored by 7.5 at Cincinnati. Pick: PATRIOTS. How can you pick against them given what they've done the first 3 weeks?

Poll watch

A Newsweek poll has Obama leading Clinton etc in Iowa.
Senator Clinton remains the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
But I've said it before and I'll keep saying it--if she loses Iowa, the ballgame changes and it's a real, big-time race. She certainly won't be able to intimidate others in the party with the "inevitability" argument.

Funny to meet you here

Chris Rock, Bill Clinton, Bono, and others were in Harlem's Apollo Theater yesterday to champion youth activism. Rock: ""I think we're trying to make activism cool again for kids."
Clinton later made an impassioned speech about young peoples' chance to change the world etc etc.

Bill sure is brazen sometimes. Did he ever stop and think, just for a moment, what his presidential administration--with its scandals, its endless cynical spin, its falsehoods, his obvious skirting of the law with regards to campaign financing, his own lies with regards to Monica Lewinsky--did he ever stop and think about what THAT did to young peoples' cynicism and their willingness to be involved? Young people were as cynical and as uninvolved with politics during the Clinton era as we'd ever seen them.

Not a way to support the troops

U.S. military personnel, returning to the U.S. (finally) from Iraq after a tour of duty, land at Oakland's airport but are kept in a quarantined area and are not allowed to enter the terminal.

A fine way to welcome our soldiers home. The airport needs to quit blaming others, and make sure it doesn't happen again. And all airports should bend over backwards to make sure our returning troops receive every courtesy when they get home.

Usual media bias dept

The Washington Post trumpets that the Environmental Protection Agency under the Bush administration "pursues fewer polluters."

Sigh. 1] They write that as if it's automatically a bad thing. It's not. The federal government must avoid over-regulation and the use of heavy-handed tactics. 2] In any case, the headline is false. The EPA isn't pursuing fewer polluters. Instead, they're pursuing fewer major prosecutions against accused polluters, and instead making deals and plea-bargains, gaining compliance that way. They have the same goal as do environmentalists; they just use different tactics. It's sad that the liberal headline-writers at the Post can't, or won't, acknowledge this.

Another bum rush for Rush

Rush Limbaugh's opponents are after him again--and again unfairly.
He makes a comment about one soldier, a soldier who apparently has indeed been proven to be rather dishonest--and so he's supposed to be attacking all soldiers who criticize the war? Come on; this is worse than usual.

Cubs win! Cubs win!

Somewhere, Harry Caray is smiling.
I live only a little more than 100 miles from Chicago, so it's not hard to follow the Cubs.
My hometown team is the Tigers, as I grew up in Michigan; but I like to see the Cubs win too.
And you have to feel good for them and their fans. Partly, it's of course because the Cubs haven't been to a World Series since 1945. Isn't it their turn?

But partly too it's because for so long the Cubs were a laughingstock, a joke, a punch line. Everyone assumes the Cubs can't win and will never win. Actually, though, the Cubs since 1984 have won 3 division championships and been to the playoffs 4 times. Not exactly a dynasty, but hardly a team that will never win. Maybe, for the Cubs and their fans, next year is here.

But what she said about the coach's decision still goes

In their biggest game of the year, the coach of the U.S. women's soccer team decides to yank his shutout-pitching goalie and play someone else. Decision backfires. Yanked goalie (Hope Solo) criticizes the coach, and receives criticism in return. She apologizes for any perceived criticism of the woman who replaced her in goal; but she stands by what she said about the coach's decision.

And good for her! The coach was nuts, pulling someone who'd pitched 3 shutouts in the last 4 games. Miss Solo was being honest; and she stood by what she said. Refreshing these days...

Whither Newt?

Ed Morrisey makes an interesting argument: that Newt Gingrich is looking to run in 2012, not 2008. Most compelling point: why indeed say you won't run unless you raise $30 million in three weeks (an impossible goal)? Seems like it's set up to fail. But it could allow Newt to begin setting up an organization and a constituency that could make the real run (against Hillary, Newt suspects) in 2012.

It could be a real candidacy of ideas and principles, or so Mr. Gingrich keeps suggesting (no matter when he runs) and if he's serious about that, more power to him. Although I of course don't think the 2008 election is a lost cause for conservatives; far from it.

Remember Goose Creek

“He explained that he made the tape to assist those persons in Arabic countries to defend themselves against the infidels invading their countries...”

Haven't talked about this case in this space yet, but it's significant. A couple of guys with ties to terrorism, planning terrorist acts, with (unsurprisingly) Muslim/Middle Eastern backgrounds (and it's sad that this is no longer surprising) were caught right here in the U.S. of A, in South Carolina.

And some in the news media at first tried to laugh them off as just transporting "fireworks."
Some in this country decry measures such as the Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security threat level warnings, suggesting that any threat is overblown. They're wrong.

Today's good news from Iraq

An Al Qaeda leader is killed: "The U.S. military in Iraq has killed a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was responsible for bringing foreign fighters into the country and kidnapping U.S. soldiers in 2006, an Army general announced today. The senior leader, a native of Tunisia who goes by the pseudonym Abu Usama al-Tunisi, was killed in an air strike Tuesday by a U.S. Air Force F-16 jet as part of a series of raids on the al-Qaeda in Iraq network, Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson, chief of staff for Multinational Corps Iraq, told a Pentagon briefing. "

And by the way, statistics now show that the U.S., dating back to 2003, has killed over 19,000 terrorist insurgents in Iraq. That's 19,000 fanatics who can no longer kill American men, women, and children.

Cozying up to the greens

President Bush is trying to do so, it appears. Quote: "President Bush assured the rest of the world today that he takes climate change seriously and vowed that the United States "will do its part" in crafting "a new international approach" to reduce the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet."

Great! But then comes the next line: "However, he proposed no new initiatives to do so." Slam!
And even if he had done so, many environmentalists would have denounced them as insufficient, too late, not enough, etc etc etc.
Fundamental: when Republicans reach out to liberals or progressives or to the left--when they try, that is, to be "moderate"--it never works. In fact, i'd argue it only earns them contempt from the very persons to whom they try extend a hand.

"There has to be a better way to do this"--but there isn't

Federal agents raid a bunch of McDonald's restaurants in Nevada and arrest perhaps close to 100 illegal immigrants.

There's the usual outrage from the radicals on this issue: "We don't approve of the Gestapo methods ICE is using," said Gilbert Cortez, a Latino leader who urged Hispanic workers to stay home from work in protest Friday." Yes, right, arresting those who broke the law automatically is "Gestapo" behavior. Such nonsense.

A local mayor in Nevada whose town was one of the targets of the raids wasn't happy, either: "He said that he opposes illegal immigration, as well as immunity for illegal immigrants, but that "there has to be a better way to do this." "Think of some of the people who were arrested and picked up; they have children. They don't know where their mama or their daddy is. That's not right." Hey, Mr. Mayor, I think many of us are all for punishing employers who are either negligent in vetting their employees, or who knowingly hire illegals. Great.

But picking up illegal immigrants is also going to have to be a part of this. There has to be a penalty for engaging in illegal immigration in the first place, not just for hiring them.

By the way, what's Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson's position on Iraq?

James Taranto's "Best of the Web" on opinionjournal.com has the answer (scroll down a bit) on the former ambassador and governor who's tried to distinguish himself from the other candidates by advocating a U.S. pullout from Iraq within months:
"New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson is running for president, and his position on Iraq can be summed up in 20 words: get out, vamoose, flee, scram, skedaddle, don't look back, bolt, beat it, go AWOL, quit, escape, run for your lives!"

Hey, it's a nice, concise summary.

She's still got it

Rappers like Kanye West get all the pub.
But look whose album soundly outdistanced his, and everyone else, this week:
Reba McEntire, with her Reba Duets album, sold over 300,000 copies last week.
I've always loved her music. Congrats, Reba!

Member of the gotcha media gets gotcha'd

From the "Shenanigans" blog on Politico.com: "Looks like MSNBC correspondent David Shuster may have deprived loyal MSNBC viewers of their favorite GOP talking heads—at least for now. This week, the MSNBC reporter “sandbagged” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) during an interview by asking her to name the last solider from her district to die in Iraq. After she couldn’t, Shuster named the solider himself and then scolded the Tennessee Republican for her hypocrisy. But it turns out that the soldier Shuster named— Pvt. Jeremy S. Bohannon,—was not from Blackburn’s district after all. The incident landed Shuster in some GOP hot water, and the newsman was forced to make an on-air apology for the incident last night. But that might not be the end of it, as irked Republican Hillers are now planning a boycott Shuster’s employer. "

Heh. We live in such a "gotcha" culture. But what goes around comes around.
Serves him right.

Ahmadinejad, Iran, Democrats, and our Iran policy

Jim Geraghty on National Review online, watching the Democrats debate last night from a New Hampshire bar and seeing all, pretty much every one of them, call for direct talks with Iran, had a great take on it: "The McCainiac and I exchanged incredulous glances when candidate after candidate said their preferred way to deal with Iran was direct talks, some of them mentioning Ahmadinejad. That prospect looks a little different after watching the man talk about God, the angels, the prophets and Islam for twenty-five minutes straight at Columbia University, and then follow it up by contending his country has no gay people. It took… how should I put it… the willing suspension of disbelief to contend that face-to-face meetings with Ahmadinejad seemed like a productive avenue to pursue. We concluded that the only man on stage who looked like he was willing to be tough on Iran was Tim Russert."

Fearing Hillary

No, not Republicans. Some of the other Democratic candidates for president. Quote: "Biden suggested Clinton's experience as first lady in the administration of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, when she tried unsuccessfully in the 1990s to reform health care, would hamper her effectiveness as a U.S. president. "I'm not suggesting it's Hillary's fault. I think it's a reality that it's more difficult, because there's a lot of very good things that come with all the great things that President Clinton did, but there's also a lot of the old stuff that comes back," Biden said. As Clinton fixed a chilly stare on him, Biden hurriedly added: "When I say old stuff, I'm referring to policy, policy."

I didn't realize "chilly" stares had such power.
What are the other candidates so afraid of? Does Hillary really have that much power, hold that much sway, already?

As for the debate itself, from a principled point of view, Democrats remain their liberal selves--vying to be most antiwar with regard to Iraq but not be too nutty, talking about tax increases for Social Security, for more governmental involvement in health care. There should be, and needs to be, a clear choice between the two parties in 2008 on the issues.

Don't mess with the Clintons

An owner of a New York Italian restaurant puts a picture of himself posing with Chelsea Clinton. Soon comes a letter from President Clinton's lawyer, complete with veiled threats.

"What kind of crap is that?"

Indeed. And I agree with Ann: "Nino, I'm not your lawyer. I'm just a law and politics blogger. But I say leave the photograph up. Clinton won't come after you over this. He'll look like a complete jerk.I mean, he already does."

Even worse--he looks and sounds like a corporation.

On Ron Paul

"Ron Paul is a pencil head, leading a jacquerie of wicked idiots. "
Sadly, given that his opposition to the war of Iraq seems so poorly thought out, and seems to be leading his followers to an absolutist anti-war position, 'tis true.