Hot off the presses...

Roger Clemens discovered to have used performance-enhancing soap in late 1980s.

A letter from representatives of former Clemens personal trainer Brian McNamee implicated three-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens of involvement in a number of efforts to secure performance-enhancing substance.

The letter stated "Roger Clemens has used steroids and human growth hormone for a number of years. However, perhaps of even greater concern to baseball is the revelation that Clemens has been using performance-enhancing consumer products since his meteoric rise into the big leagues in the second half of the 1980s." McNamee offered as proof this recently-revealed video of Roger Clemens using performance-enhancing soap.

"While other major league players have played with various levels of soap film limiting their movement and performance, Mr. Clemens has effectively washed his body clean of residue and film, giving him an unfair advantage over the 99% of major leaguers who are left to cope with Lifebuoy, Irish Spring, and whatever soaps they scavenge from road hotels."

"Perhaps more alarming is the fact that Mr. Clemens was aware of the implications of using performance-enhancing soap and took care to dub another person's singing voice in over his own into the inexplicable video," the letter continued.

Congress has not announced whether they will pursue charges against Clemens or P&G Labs, the purported creator of the performance-enhancing soap known as "Zest" (believed to be short for Zinc Ethyl Steroidal Tetrazone). Upon advice from ousted New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, the IRS is attempting to contact the nude women appearing in the video to confirm whether Clemens is, in fact, the man known as "Client 9".

Clemens declined the opportunity to respond to reports that he was "Zestfully clean".

14 going on 50

So I've now read 14 books this year, after a serious diversion last month for work-related reasons.

January (7):
Charlie Wilson’s War by George Crile
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
The Numbers Game by Alan Schwarz
Nothing's Sacred by Lewis Black
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Liars' Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage On Wall Street by Michael Lewis

February (2)
The Dogs of Bedlam Farm by Jon Katz
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo

March (5)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Supreme Conflict by Jan Crawford-Greenburg
A Practical Guide to Racism by C.H. Dalton
Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Fiction: 4
Non-fiction: 10

I'll be brief with my discussions of the new books to the list, since a lot of time has passed.

In summary,
February
The Dogs of Bedlam Farm - Average, but underwhelming, Katz is pretty judgmental and pretentious, he loves dogs, but he criticizes others for loving them too much and treating them like children, because whatever love they show that exceeds what he shows his dogs is wrong. All while he abandoned his family and moved to a farm to herd sheep because of his dogs. Yeah, that's not contradictory. It's occasionally endearing, but he's too distant to be writing about emotional bonds with animals. Not recommended, particularly if you love dogs.

The Body Artist - Well, one of these years I had to finish a DeLillo book, given that I have almost all of them. I chose the wrong one, because this is self-consciously abstract and obscure, albeit mercifully brief -- which is why I chose to read it when the deployment to NYC was impending, I thought I could actually finish it, and I did, just barely. Not recommended.

March
A Confederacy of Dunces - This won a Pulitzer? It's a farcical collection of off-the-wall characters that is relatively innocuous and doesn't add up to something until its conclusion, which goes on for sixty pages, but still seems brisk. I'm still puzzled by the critical acclaim, but it's a generally innocuous book, albeit one that's relatively dense (my work schedule may have had something to do with the month it took to read this, but it wasn't the sole factor). Recommended

Supreme Conflict - Did you know that Clarence Thomas was confirmed and is currently on the Supreme Court? That's about all you'll learn from Jan Crawford-Greenburg, who puts a lot more focus on the other justices who have been nominated in recent years. It'd be puzzling if it didn't fit in so closely with her moderate right-wing approach to the Supreme Court appointment process. She's fairly even-handed, but it's not hard to tell where her sympathies lie, which can get tiresome. You will learn more about Bush's approach to appointing Supreme Court appointments here than you would from The Nine, and there's less fawning over Justice O'Connor, who ranks among my top 10 worst justices in the history of the Court (let's be honest, this blog got its title from her mastery of callousness), but she also dodges issues of interest, like the Thomas confirmation hearings, which are basically skipped so that she can deride the appointment of David Souter as executive ineptitude first because it didn't accomplish the goal H.W. Bush had, later because it's clear she has affirmative contempt for Souter. Recommended, but not if you have access to other Supreme Court writings, because frankly, aside from Rehnquist's history of the Supreme Court, I've yet to find anything that's not worth reading on a largely under-covered topic.

A Practical Guide to Racism - It's funny. Mission accomplished. It has plenty of highlights, I knew I had to buy the book after reading the discussion of Mormons. It's a premise that's executed very well for 160 pages, but the glossary at the end is tiresome. That said, if you're not on some ill-advised quest to read 50 books cover-to-cover...you wouldn't sit and read every relentless word of it. So, because you're not psychotic, this is highly recommended.

Mere Anarchy - Well, most of these were published in the New Yorker, so it's no surprise that the only link the stories have is that they are all pretentious. The verbiage is annoying at times and his character names are an exercise in reader's tolerance for complete absurdity, but most of the stories are whimsical or amusing enough to justify the twenty minutes it will take to read the entire book. Harmless fluff, recommended if you think you could possibly like it, definitely not recommended to anyone who has any doubts.

Into Thin Air - It's certainly not the page turned that Into the Wild is, because that book was gripping from start to finish and took no effort at all to get into. Into Thin Air is a far more gradual book, which teaches you about the tedium that is involved in preparing for a mountain climb, but once they start to ascend the mountain, it is hard to put down. It's certainly hard to gauge how objective the account is, but it's a readable one in any event, and almost certainly the best book I've read this year. Highly recommended.

Nobody puts Swayze in a corner...

Whoopi Goldberg says she would not have won her Oscar for Ghost without Patrick Swayze

You know, Whoopi, the guy already has cancer. Now is not the time to blame him for your Oscar win too.

Dusty Trails

I'm hoping that Dusty Baker realizes that his name would be apt for an entertainer in what must be an ever-growing industry -- videographed adult entertainment. Because his true calling is apparently far from his current occupation of baseball soothsayer.

Today, in no small part because of Dusty's fetish for elder players (again, he's got himself a niche -- mature porn it is), the franchise for which he now festers acquired two of the least efficient and least impressive specimens in the game of baseball today. One who can't walk (hm...figuratively, there has to be some sort of paralysis fetish/handicapped porn -- but at the very least, Corey Patterson's inability means he certainly should have glasses, which probably puts him into his own niche) and who is utterly lacking of talent (hm...amateur?).

If only he had a thing for barely legal center fielders, the Reds would have a shot. Instead, like many participants in the adult entertainment industry, they're just f***ed.

(The editor offers his thanks to the Adult Entertainment Association of America for their gracious assistance in this blog post).

Oh yeah, well, you're a beet farmer...

So a co-worker of mine alerted me to the existence of firejoemorgan.com six months ago, and I suspect 2 of the six months since have been spent reading it and re-reading it. It merges my interest in baseball and scorn for David Eckstein into one concise package.

For that matter, the next few months will continue to be spent reading it, which obligates me to vent to no one about how it has wronged me with its calm reminder that there are people in the world who love Moneyball, namely my fiancee, who does not like baseball, everyone else who does not like baseball, and people who read the book the way you're supposed to read LSAT reading comprehension sections -- delightfully ignoring each and every word while attempting to impose your own meaning on it. Some of us it shuttles to lowly Cornell Law School where we wonder how anyone who is regarded as brilliant signs Lou Merloni to anything but a suicide pact, others it allows to enjoy reading Michael Lewis' work and mistaking it for an accurate and true syllogism of of baseball genius.

Ken Tremendous is also a television writer who has written episodes of The Office and plays Cousin Mose. So I'm going to refer to him as Cousin Mose out of respect.

1) You'll note that cousin Mose decays into using wins and losses to defend Esteban Loaiza, which is a fair indicator that there wasn't much that could be said to defend the Loaiza signing, because wins and losses are hardly the ultimate measure -- as Cousin Mose, among others on the site, point out on a near-daily basis while attempting to refute baseball's biggest cretins.

2) The injuries in 2007 nearly all happened to Mr. Glass. It's one thing to decry an onslaught of injuries when it happens to players who don't have a history. But when your injured list starts out with Milton Bradley, Rich Harden, Bobby Crosby, and Eric Chavez, it's about 3% more surprising than Kerry Wood and Mark Prior being injured at the same time. Chavez had suffered significant injuries in two of the last three seasons. Harden has had just one season where he made it through an entire season on the mound, and his closest after that, he made 22 appearances and 17 starts. Bobby Crosby has been injured three of his four major league seasons, and has been limited to an average of about 90 games in those three seasons. And is not good. Not even close to good. A .255 EqA, a 7.1 VORP, which pales in comparison to BP's projections for Alex Gonzalez's mighty 11.3, Asdrubal Cabrera's 11.5, and even Marco Scutaro's 6.5. So, thus far, we have three players from whom you automatically discount at least 1/5 of a 162 game schedule and that fantasy players won't even touch because of their fragility. Then add Milton Bradley, who's never finished a season without injury. So, thus far, you have four players who all had to be figured for a 66-100% of missing significant time with injuries. They are all injured. It doesn't take me Paul DePodesta to regard this as statistically insignificant. In fact, it was more probable than not. (Forgive me for the crude calculations, it's relatively silly to say that if you've been injured in three of the past four years, you have a 75% likelihood of injury -- but it's considerably less silly than ignoring the player's injury history entirely.

3) I'm being generous to exclude Mark Kotsay and his bad back that showed up after he arrived in Oakland. Then you add Kotsay, who was coming into the season as Mike Sweeney and lo and behold, did not experience a miraculous recovery from back problems. Maybe go to Lourdes? Then add Dan Johnson. Wait. Well, if you want to be specious, you can say that the injuries to Dan Johnson held back the A's his 108 OPS+ must have been truly coveted, since it'd have taken a herculean performance from a slightly better than average, but still worse than Aaron Boone (113 OPS+) player to replace him. You know, like Daric Barton, an actually promising player (186 OPS+ in extremely limited time -- limited primarily by Beane's refusal to call him up, so that he could keep Todd "OPS Deadweight" Walker on the roster filling in at 1B along with moving Nick Swisher into the infield to make room for Kielty, who would be released in June.

4) How about mentioning that for some reason Billy Beane saw it fit to acquire Jason Kendall, a man whose immense talent for things other than baseball are rivaled only for by his immense lack of talent for baseball after his gruesome ankle injury (read: Jason Kendall's going to get hall of fame votes, his ankle may come to rival Andre Dawson's ravaged knees if he can fall ass-backwards into a World Series). And after seasons of 79 and 88 OPS+ (well below average), he still did nothing to bring in a rival catcher or ... huh ... he didn't want Jeremy Brown playing instead. In fact, Jeremy Brown, who retired for "personal-non-talent-related" reasons couldn't even carry Kendall's jockstrap, because Adam Melhuse got that job. Billy Beane, when given a big sack of money, can't even help himself from throwing it at players who make 3 years of Derek Bell for $9 million look like a clearance sale at Dollar General. He signs and re-signs only dead weight, so while he may draft well and he still makes some impressive swindles on the trade market, he also makes his share of awful trades, like giving away future All-Star Mark Redman and a fine pair of earrings in Arthur Rhodes for Jason Kendall. The sad thing is that those are the best things I can say about those players, and yet I would still much rather have them than Jason Kendall.

5) When you sign players like Mike Sweeney, you expect Mike Sweeney-like production, which means "Ow, I hurt my back. See you in September." They have gotten that from the players that fall into the Mike Sweeney category. The few aberrant injuries came to Huston Street (who will be leaving as an overpaid closer very shortly), Justin Duchscherer, and Kiki Calero. These are significant injuries to three very solid pitchers. Injuries that, if they had never happened, could theoretically have led to the A's winning...how many more games? And if we resurrect the broken-down bat of Eric Chavez, whose last season of .800+ OPS was 2004, so he could contribute at his 2006 levels...you're right. The A's still miss the playoffs, and not by a particularly close margin, even in the worst division in the AL.

6) The chapter on the major league draft is really quite significant. You really need to go read it again before you tell me how amazing Moneyball is. What you really learn is that Billy Beane thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and in doing so, he mocks picks that have turned out considerably better than his own. Beane had a great first round that year, three of his four picks hit (Nick Swisher, Joe Blanton, Mark Teahen), one of them missed (Jeremy Brown). Swisher and Blanton were coveted by other teams, and Beane was surprised either of them fell to the slots they were in. Jeremy Brown was not regarded highly by anyone, for the most part it sounds like no one knew of him. And for their ignorance, those teams had less talented AA players those three years Jeremy Brown spent in Midland. But time has also taught us that Billy Beane was wrong. Prince Fielder, mocked as much as he was in that chapter by Beane himself, is a significantly better player than Nick Swisher. Fielder last season had a 156 OPS+, VORP of 69.1. Swisher? OPS+ of 127, VORP of 31.5. Not a bad player, by any means, and better defensively than Fielder. But eat your words, Beane. Basically, aside from 4 of the top 5 picks, who have been largely sidelined by injury (thanks a lot, Chris Gruler) or were picked way above their talent level (Bryan Bullington), there were a lot of hits in that first round. Zack Greinke, Jeremy Hermida, Jeff Francis, Scott Kazmir (who Beane derides), Cole Hamels, James Loney, Jeremy Guthrie, Jeff Francouer (if you ignore the fact that he can't draw walks and that he's not a good player -- most do), Mark Teahen.

7) Jeremy Brown's career OPS is barely above .800. It's like saying you go to one of the top 7 rated schools...when you say top 7, you mean that you go to #7, and next year, you may be going to #8 or 9. His OPS is .809 in the minor leagues. Thus, he's a supremely talented player who is more than capable of beating up on minor league pitching Crash Davis style and someday will meet a philosophical woman named Annie and a fireballer named Nuke who looks vastly inappropriate while attempting to throw pitches, clearly proving that Ron Shelton can't write scripts that teach Tim Robbins to pitch or Kevin Costner to act. Breathe. Fact: Jeremy Brown had two really good seasons in the minors, three that were less impressive. He had gotten leaped over by another college catcher who was more highly regarded coming out of college who put together a pedestrian .799 career OPS in the minors (for shame, Kurt Suzuki), but was apparently seen as more likely to contribute in the major leagues, since Jeremy Brown's been spending the last two years really familiar with the RiverCats after three years at Midland. He had spent six years in the minors after being drafted as a college senior. You can call it what you want, but he was too old to be a prospect (and was not regarded as one by Baseball America for the last four years, failing to crack the top 30 prospects in any of those seasons, unlike players as unknown as the A's Minor league player of the year Andre Ethier). Russ Morman had an OPS exceeding 800 in a much lengthier career in the minors, you can ask him why he retired (answer: hanging around AAA for ten years gets tiresome). So it was for personal reasons, but one can easily suspect that the personal reasons involved being unable to live up to the unwanted expectations that came with being in Moneyball and his inability to crack the major league roster and see any playing time. And Landon Powell had just passed him up on the likelihood of being in the majors list, the A's had traded to get Rob Bowen and kept him on the 40-man roster, so he was a 28-year-old 4A catcher who wasn't on the 40-man roster (and had been dumped from the 40-man roster without getting any interest on the waiver wire), hadn't gotten picked in the Rule 5 draft, and wasn't probably going to catch a lot of interest from anyone else on the market. Those are very personal reasons, but there's a lot of baseball involved in them too. If he has a dying relative or something of that sort, then that might have been the biggest catalyst for him to make a decision rather than postpone the inevitable, but there's not too many people lining up to say it wasn't inevitable.

Once again, Baseball Prospectus is telling. "When it comes to Jeremy Brown, the A's might not be selling jeans, but nobody's buying the idea that he's much of a ballplayer anymore, either."

Lastly, that begins to refute this defense of Moneyball, which is emphatically harder than refuting Moneyball itself, which can be summed up in about three words, but I will, with my lawyer-like sensibility, take considerably more.

8) Moneyball glorifies two players above all others on the roster -- Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford. They typify the underlying Beane theory -- don't overpay for players because you can find production in castaways. This is fine and good. The teams that the A's were taking to the playoffs when Moneyball came out involved a couple of other players that you may have heard of if you were a Cy Young voter. Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson. They are barely mentioned in Moneyball. Nearly all the time is devoted to discussions of how important on-base percentage is, Zito, Mulder and Hudson warrant about a paragraph of mention, while Chad Bradford gets a chapter. As much as OBP and OPS are important statistics that are overlooked even now in an era where Juan Pierre finds work in a baseball-related job, they don't have much to do with the A's success. Even in their halcyon days of reaching the playoffs, the team OBP is not at the pinnacle of the AL (3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 10th, I'm told in a correction to my earlier hyperbole). Their ERA, on the other hand, is near the top of the AL every year they made the playoffs. So if you want to prove the importance of OBP, find a team that found success because they could hit and reach base safely through walks. Don't find a team that had a couple flashes from young players who went on to bleed money from other GMs and then have their steroid-backed bodies break down into nothingness. Beane's supplemental parts might have had value, but they weren't the driving force behind success.

9) Listen, I hate bunting too, but in the most thrilling (read: I'm being as specious as Michael Lewis, it's the only A's playoff game I remember) game in which the A's found playoff success, how did they do it? They bunted. Didn't Billy Beane read Moneyball? What a moron. (I'm referring to game 1 of the 2003 ALDS against the Red Sox, where the A's won on a bunt single from Ramon Hernandez). While I hate people who think Asdrubal Cabrera is the Indians' savior because he knows how to generate bunt outs, it's clear that abandoning the bunt entirely isn't really a part of Beane's plan either.

10) The glorified assistants -- Moneyball also details how crafty Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi were using computers to make great teams. Paul DePodesta then went on to suck with the Dodgers, J.P. Ricciardi took everything he learned from Beane, then spent all his money on a closer anyway and now has a dynamite closer named Jeremy Accardo that he discovered only through Tommy John surgery for B.J. Ryan. And while Moneyball lauded Ricciardi for turning around the Blue Jays with a modest payroll, when the book was published, it was a lie because they had one of the ten highest payrolls in the major leagues (Carlos Delgado was a factor) and they had not, and still have not, turned anything around. DePodesta was present for the destruction of the Cleveland Indians (the wacky John Hart years where the Indians landed such dynamite talents as John Smiley, Ricardo Rincon and Kevin Seitzer in exchange for actual major league players, although the healing has begun, I can no longer say the Indians miss Jeromy Burnitz or Danny Graves) and lasted about the length of a Will Ferrell film in Los Angeles.

11) OBP is not Beane's revelation, not even for the A's. Sandy Alderson started this process. If you don't believe me, read The Numbers Game. Beane is a genius because he drafted Tim Hudson in the 6th round in 1997 (editor's note: whoops, no he didn't. That was Sandy Alderson -- Beane's efforts were far more middling.), Mark Mulder in the 1998 draft (2nd overall pick), and Barry Zito in the first round in 1999 (ninth overall pick). Two of those three were in the top 10 picks in the draft, where it's at least harder to miss. Still, they were off the charts successes and Beane deserves credit for them and for at least starting to shy away from high school players (though he's abandoned this in recent years) in favor of quicker turnaround players from college.

You can hate Moneyball and still like numbers that are relevant. It's not even difficult, you just have to be willing to accept that about 90% (or even all) of the premises can be true without the conclusion (performing sexual favors for Billy Beane is a necessary and Opus Deian act of self-abasement) following from them.

12) Bobby Crosby is not a good baseball player. He had one good season. Period. I cannot mention this enough.

The Mitchell Report

Yeah, that's right, I read it. The whole damn thing until he got to the recommendations, which are obviously not my concern, because I am neither a member of the MLBPA nor a person of any authority. But I did read the entire scandal sheet, including the history (which was particularly enjoyable to resurrect memories of Pascual Perez).

My conclusions:
1) If you're a light-hitting catcher, you've been identified as purchasing steroids. It's a shame Tim Spehr didn't hang on longer, he could certainly have joined Tim Laker, Todd Pratt, Gary Bennett, Greg Zaun, Cody McKay, Ryan Jorgensen, Bobby Estelella...and so on.
2) There's very few surprises, the Clemens thing is considerably more explicit than the others, but generally the people aren't huge surprises, collections of players who weren't there long enough to make an impact or people who were repeatedly broken down (Kevin Brown, Rondell White).
3) No Red Sox. At all. Brendan Donnelly is mentioned (although they non-tendered him), so is Eric Gagne (who they cast away a few weeks ago) but aside from Clemens and Mark Carreon, nearly no one who's ever been associated with the Red Sox seems to show up on the list.
4) Selig ignoring the recommendation not to punish players is hubris to the nth degree. Yes, players have broken the rules, but to punish only those people who were dumb enough to pay with checks or buy from one of two designated sources is ridiculous and arbitrary. As much as I'd love to see Andy Pettitte, Gary Sheffield, and Paul Lo Duca get exiled for a while, it's ridiculous to do it unless you're going to launch a full-scale investigation that would implicate people on the Red Sox too.
5) Man, white people love steroids. This is one really white list of players, considering the ethnic background of the Major Leagues.
6) The Dodgers' organization sure knew what was up. While there's no other documentation of teams indicating that their players were on the juice, the Dodgers' discussion of Kevin Brown and Paul Lo Duca show absolute complicity. Theo Epstein is the only other person who inquired about it, but then he ignored the advice he received and picked up Eric Gagne anyway.

The following people are all named in the Mitchell Report, although several are only mentioned as people who had been identified in the media as receiving HGH or steroids:

Manny Alexander
Chad Allen
Rick Ankiel
David Bell
Mike Bell
Marvin Benard
Gary Bennett
Larry Bigbie
Barry Bonds
Ricky Bones
Kevin Brown
Paul Byrd
Alex Cabrera
Ken Caminiti
Mark Carreon
Jason Christiansen
Howie Clark
Roger Clemens
Paxton Crawford
Jack Cust
Brendan Donnelly
Chris Donnels
Len Dykstra
Bobby Estelella
Matt Franco
Ryan Franklin
Eric Gagne
Jason Giambi
Jeremy Giambi
Jay Gibbons
Troy Glaus
Juan Gonzalez
Jason Grimsley
Jose Guillen
Jerry Hairston Jr.
Matt Herges
Phil Hiatt
Glenallen Hill
Darren Holmes
Todd Hundley
Ryan Jorgensen
Wally Joyner
David Justice
Chuck Knoblauch
Tim Laker
Mike Lansing
Paul LoDuca
Nook Logan
Josias Manzanillo
Gary Matthews Jr.
Mark McGwire
Cody McKay
Kent Mercker
Bart Miadich
Hal Morris
Dan Naulty
Denny Neagle
Rafael Palmeiro
Jim Parque
Andy Pettitte
Adam Piatt
Todd Pratt
Stephen Randolph
Adam Riggs
Armando Rios
Brian Roberts
John Rocker
F.P. Santangelo
Benito Santiago
Scott Schoeneweis
Gary Sheffield
Mike Spinelli
Mike Stanton
Miguel Tejada
Derrick Turnbow
Ismael Valdez
Mo Vaughn
Randy Velarde
Ron Villone
Fernando Vina
Rondell White
Jeff Williams
Matt Williams
Todd Williams
Steve Woodard
Kevin Young
Gregg Zaun

10 reasons there should not be a college football playoff...

1) How many teams? If it's four, why is it four and not eight? If it's eight, why not four? If it's eight, why not 16? Hell, why not just have 65 teams and make the regular season as utterly meaningless as college basketball's unwatchable first four months of meaninglessness?

2) Where the hell are these games being played? I'm sorry, but having neutral site playoffs is utterly lame, having better seeded teams play at home is way too advantageous to be fair in any meaningful sense, given that the differences are theoretically negligible, hence the need for the playoff.

3) How often are there 3 teams equally worthy to be in the title game? Oh sure, it's happened, Auburn got screwed a few years back, but let's face it, there's usually 2 or fewer teams who warrant being in the title game. The solution to that is certainly not playing more games. Ohio State went undefeated, no one else aside from Boise State did. Ohio State should not have to win two games to win the title, because they shouldn't have to play any of these teams.

4) How flexible will it be? Absolutely inflexible, it is the NCAA. So it doesn't work more often than not. If there's three teams, it's not a round robin, it's still going to be a final four, so a fourth team who is less worthy than the other three now gets to crash a party they weren't entitled to it. Moreover, you can't change things, because people have to be able to plan their vacations at some point, tickets have to be sold, ad time has to be sold, and even a 40 day layoff won't be enough to placate the NCAA's money-generating machine.

5) How much does this game really matter? College football teaches lots of harsh life lessons. If you lose a game, more often than not, you're screwed. That ends it for you, you're just playing to ruin everyone else's season. If there's a playoff and you lose, you just have to go out and run up the score in all subsequent games to look like a dominating team.

6) How much bias could this remove? Lose early, win late, you're going to be blessed with an inflated ranking. Win early and lose your final game...and you're done. This isn't going to change with a playoff, because a playoff is still fundamentally flawed, because voters and computers are going to elect the teams to those games, whether they warrant it or not. You're just making it be a screw up as to who the fourth or eighth team to get in is, instead of the second team.

7) Whither Boise State? The Playoff, unless it expands to eight or sixteen teams, would virtually never address the biggest weakness with the current system, which is that an undefeated team like Boise State won't ever get to test themselves against a real top team. They didn't play a 1-loss team, they didn't even play the top 2-loss team. They got relegated to playing a team who was no better than the 6th best team in the BCS (behind Ohio State, Florida, USC, Michigan, and LSU).

8) What strength of schedule? Notre Dame made the BCS. Notre Dame had one of the weakest schedules of any team on God's green earth. So how'd they get in the BCS? They have fans, they have a lucrative TV deal, and they had a preseason #1 ranking. None of these things changes with a playoff. None of them is going to have less impact on a playoff system that will be even more driven by TV ratings, since it would dispense with conference champions altogether.

9) What conference champion? Fact is, conference championships should usually mean something. It's only true mockeries like last year's FSU/Pittsburgh team that crash the BCS and make it a joke. This year, all the teams at least had some business being there, with the possible exception of Wake Forest, who at least made their game fairly even. So if we dispense with all significance to winning a conference, conferences like the SEC are harmed even more for having a hair more quality than others (not as much as the media would tell you, though, its teams still lost some bad games).

10) What about everybody else? Name one dark horse team that would have made an appearance in this college football playoff. Not Northwestern with Darnell Autry, not Boise State with Jared Zabransky/Ivan Johnson, not Utah with Alex Smith, none of these teams would have made it into a top 4 playoff. Not one of them. We lose some of college football's best sheer amusements and finest triumphs. So how are we making things less arbitrary? Sure, it has a modest gain, because teams like USC don't waltz through a soft conference to a single-game season, but if they were really all that soft...how were they going to win that title game? You can see from the last few years that USC sure lived on the lucky side by playing a weak conference and a soft non-conference prior to 2006, but the seasons they won the title games, they weren't particularly disputed. Truly dominant teams like Miami in 2002 (they played a pathetic Nebraska team with Eric Crouch and little else) shouldn't have to do it twice, because there's no one who has a right to play them to begin with. Moreover, seasons like 2001 where there are two deserving undefeated teams (Ohio State and Miami), there's no reason to add a pair of unworthy teams.

Why not just insist that firms abuse their attorneys more?

Scalia: pity the poor $165,000 a year jurist...

Is there anything less sympathetic than invoking the poor SDNY judge who suffers through a salary of $165,000?

Yes, me. I am considerably less sympathetic and slightly less well-compensated. However, while it's an injustice, it's not one that the federal government should be taking any action to correct.

But even if I were not nearly outearning Judge Scheindlin, and that's not much of an injustice given her body of work in recent years, she has something that lawyers do not have -- security.
Lawyers do not have lifetime appointments. Lawyers do not have pension plans, unless they make partner, in which case they don't need any sort of retirement plan except "Find a woman half my age. Marry. Rinse, lather, repeat."

Federal judges have the ability to be imprisoned without losing their job. Let us all recall the heroic Walter Nixon, who not only drew a paycheck while serving time in prison, but also managed to take his impeachment to the Supreme Court and evoke Rehnquist's fine "epistemological fog" argument in response to defining the word "try." That all happened before this guy lost his job for being a felon.

Federal judges have clerks. Oh, lord, what I would not give to have clerks as a junior associate. It's not enough to have junior associates beneath you, because let's face it, you didn't hire them, you will still have to do some of your work, and if you do an incompetent job, you'll start to receive suggestions that you open that restaurant you always have been talking about or become a professional riverboat gambler, anything to get you to quit your current job.

Federal judges work at the ultimate lifestyle firm -- the United States government. There are a lot of federal holidays, the hours are as reasonable as you want them to be so long as you can keep up with a speedy trial calendar

Federal judges have prestige. Any judge has some prestige, but federal judges carry a lot of weight. They get opportunities to witness things that your ordinary lawyer never will.

Federal judges could honestly do nothing and face little criticism for it. Let's face it, if a judge wanted to, they could just decide things from the bench, never research an issue or bother to ask their clerks to do it, they could just work on their putting game in chambers, meet with a few attorneys, and develop a dreadful reputation for arbitrariness and caprice. What happens? They serve as a judge until they die or retire. While a judge may care about his reputation, he or she certainly doesn't need to, they just need to stay one step away from being impeached. Let me assure you that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind to get yourself impeached (see also Nixon, Walter).

You can make more in the private sector, it's true. But that's not the end of the story. If you're saying a SDNY judge doesn't earn enough to raise a family, you may be right (though there are a whole lot of people raising families in the Southern District of New York while making 10% of that, so you are, in fact, wrong). But now place that SDNY judge back in his job at Cravath or Jones Day...now he's making more as a seventh year associate or even junior partner. But he still can't raise a damn family, because his firm owns him 18 hours a day with an option for 6 more. When there's no telling whether you'll be home at all, let alone in time for a 9 p.m. dinner, you're going to have a hard time raising a family anywhere.

Will the judiciary have a hard time grabbing the top lawyers? Yes, sometimes. But it's not firms they're going to lose them to, it's sophistry in America's finest law schools. If you offer the opportunity to become a federal judge to any 1st-8th year litigator, my guess is that your answer is going to be yes 9 out of 10 times. And that other prick is wearing monogrammed shirt sleeves and has had the goal of making partner since he got kicked off the tee-ball team for wearing metal cleats.

Now as to those I <3 Boobs T-shirts...

At long last, the Supreme Court has answered the vital question of what people in attendance at a murder trial can wear.

Carey v. Musladin

It lacks that certain Justice Thomas-I'm-overruling-stuff-that's-not-even-law-yet panache, but don't worry, Court fans, it's early season, where only the most unanimous of opinions are being thrown out at the women who insist on standing outside the Court throwing brassieres onto its front steps. And that's just Cindy Sheehan, who has to hang out somewhere. Oh, and although it doesn't sound like it, and although I don't think even Justice Thomas intended to, he made it happen in fine form today.

For those of you too intimidated by headnotes to penetrate the curt and breezy opinion's 6 pages, the Supreme Court determined that members of a victim's family can wear buttons with the victim's picture on them at trial.

Wait, no, that's too sweeping. Step back.

They decided that members of a victim's family can wear buttons with the victim's picture on them while the family members sit in the front row of the audience at a murder trial.

Hm. No, still too sweeping. That looks like a precedent.

They decided that when members of a victim's family can wear buttons with the victim's picture on them while the family members sit in the front row of the audience at a murder trial, it is not inherently prejudicial.

That's where it stops, right? Wrong.

This is the quiet beauty of AEDPA, the court systems are spent dealing with minutiae that can't possibly add up to a precedent, which is why the only thing that the Supreme Court can point to as inherently prejudicial is...damn, can't think of anything but shackling him. The best case the Court can point to as an analog here is Estelle v. Williams which is, under the O'Connor dicta the Court is adopting as a holding -- utterly meaningless in a habeas context. I will note that the trend of glorifying the street commodity of a bean balance that is the former Madame Justice is growing in popularity in habeas and Establishment Clause jurisprudence, proving once and for all that both fields of law are irreparably broken and the courts may fare better with a dart board or a party of five year olds pinning the case law on the majority opinion.

But now I must digress back into my point. Justice Thomas notes the O'Connor offering in a concurrence where she was only joined by Justice Stevens (hardly a font of beloved precedents these days -- just read Kyllo) that "clearly established Federal law" refers to the "holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of this Court." Then Thomas points out that this isn't clearly established law, there's no holding saying anything about people in the audience, there's no holding saying anything, in Estelle v. Williams, it was a question about dressing the defendant in prison clothing and so on.

But here's the lingering question. Why cite to these cases? What precedential authority does any discussion of Estelle v. Williams have? None. As Thomas states, it's a case where a defendant failed to object. It's like an exhaustion question. It has nothing to do with habeas in a non-exhaustion context. Any discussion of inherent prejudice from Estelle is, by his prior definition, pointless. Thomas then lists the panoply of disagreements from every court in the country as to whether the issue of whether Williams and Flynn have any application to people in attendance at trials or only state-sanctioned conduct and so on. Which all creates the illusion of an actually drafted legal opinion. That, my friends, it ain't. Ask yourself...what is the holding in this case? The holding in this case is not that the family's actions were not inherently prejudicial. In fact, the holding in this case is that there is no established federal law saying that they were not inherently prejudicial and there never has been. What's more, there never can be established federal law saying that it is not inherently prejudicial, because whatever Court offers that holding is exceeding its role under AEDPA.

So what is Carey v. Masludin? It's officially the end of history. Six justices take no issue with O'Connor's two cents on AEDPA and from this day forward, established federal law with regard to trial practice in a criminal context cannot change until AEDPA is replaced with something more draconian.

Don't get me wrong, the result in Carey v. Masludin is rightly decided, nine justices knew there wasn't much reason to fight this conclusion. That said, the next victim's family better not stop with the "my kid's in the band" plain photo buttons that these people did. I expect production values. I expect T-Shirts that read in 45 point Comic Sans MS (to keep things light) -- Defendant Brutally Murdered My Child and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. Find me clearly established federal law that prohibits it. And if you do, change the word "And" to "--" and I've got you a habeas-proof trial.

AEDPA has proven once and for all that the Republican party has been idiotic with its approach to all controversies. Every time someone burned a flag, aborted a fetus, or stopped a school prayer, they threatened to yank the Court's jurisdiction. That got people who understood jurisdiction angry, it got the Court indignant, and it ended up vanishing into a puff of smoke. But thanks to O'Connor's desperate attempt to join a majority intent on rendering AEDPA meaningless in Terry Williams, now AEDPA has left the Supreme Court as the kid with the Playskool steering wheel in the backseat of Congress' Hummer.

Things the Democratic Congress* Should Do, But Probably Won't (for the *, see #6):

1) Open things up. This is the biggest sin that the platformless Republican party committed against America, but it's a grave one. More stuff got pushed behind closed doors into committee meetings that only took place when Republicans and only Republicans were in the room. Thousands of pages of things were silently put into a record that the Democrats who opposed the legislation never saw (not that it would matter, it was destined for victory).

2) Create open hearings on the secret prisons and rendition practices of the Bush administration. Listen, I know it relates somewhat to national security, but it's also KGBish. We don't do this stuff in this country, or at the very least we don't get caught.

3) Two words - trade deficit. We used to be a financial partner. We are now a financial purchaser. This is inevitably going to doom our nation unless we do something to correct it. We need to manufacture something other than weapons, we need to export something other than our troops, and we need to spark some sort of industry more meaningful than pets.com. It's not going to be easy, we're on a downward spiral and the "solutions" that are used to lessen the trade deficit don't help anyone but scions of industry (restrict all 50 non-municipal employees who are in unions, decrease wages, protective tariffs). But something needs to be done, and we could start by being more choosy about our trading partners. There's no reason our country should be funneling billions of dollars in profits to China, when China is the greatest threat to the United States' future survival.

4) The Estate Tax - Wah wah wah, cry me a gooddamn river. If you die leaving $7,000,000 and can't figure out how to avoid the estate tax, you should lose a lot more than they're charging you. For one, being born to rich parents has already entitled you to too much. Secondly, it's not an estate tax, it's a sloth tax. Any idiot can hide money from the estate tax through completely legal means. If you don't prepare for such events, too bad. I don't like the estate tax, but given the deficit 6 years of Bushonomics have caused, we need some money back, and a tax that only punishes the ridiculously wealthy who are also ridiculously stupid is a step in the right direction. Think of it as eugenomics. (both because it's my theory and because it's a mix of eugenics and economics)

5) Rethink our deployment strategies. We can't bring everyone back, the administration has dug its heels into a mass grave in Iraq that will only get worse if we pull everyone out and let the country fall into immediate civil war exceeding what will inevitably result. But we can at least prioritize our deployments and send those who are most reasonably expected to go. No more of the National Guard/Reserve deployment first strategy. Fact is, if you've gotten paid full-time military pay for years, you're the person who should go, not the guy who was willing to join the reserves in case his country needed him. It's not the job of the National Guard to guard other nations or serve in other nations. It's ours. They need to be here for when this nation needs them.

6) Do something to try and keep Joe Lieberman. Blame the blogs for bringing out the Lamont crowd, because lord knows why I'd stay a Democrat if I was Joe Lieberman. The Republicans should be offering him a position of major authority, because it'd give them the unholy power they've wielded unfairly in secret for years. But if Lieberman feels a loyalty to the party which he rarely supports, they will need to do the same. Biden's already cornered the Foreign Relations Committee, but there's plenty of plum deals for Connecticut's favorite incumbent. Make sure he gets one, or you're going to see yourself as a minority in the senate with a mere 50.

7) Listen to Jon Tester. He might be the wisest 7-fingered man in Congress, even if there are others. The Democrats need to consider a more libertarian strategy, or else they'll be back to being the only party without a platform.

8) Insist that every American receive a tax cut in 2007 in the form of a copy of Snakes on a Plane on DVD. It looks good (note the words "tax cut"), but has the same salutory effect that the illusory tax cuts the Republicans put into place had. And it would spark a serious cultural rise in this country.

I missed out on so much...

Item #1: from the IMDB...When Madonna arrived in Malawi last month she was amazed to discover her name took on a whole different meaning for all the people she met. The "Hung Up" singer has sparked furious debate after adopting David Banda towards the end of her stay in the African country - and began to wonder why locals knew her name when they had no idea of her superstar status. She says, "People started to say my name and they had never heard of Madonna. And, in Chichewa, the word 'madonna' means 'distinguished white lady', so I think they got very confused."
In a nutshell: "distinguished white lady"? Yeah, I can definitely see how that would confuse them.

Item #2: Neil Patrick Harris revealed that he is indeed a homosexual.In a nutshell: Unlike Mark Foley, he did not need to guise it under molestation or alcoholism. That said, Doogie Howser's computer journal might have given Mark Foley a few too many ideas about sharing emotions with a computer.

Item #3: Saddam Hussein sentenced to death by hangingIn a nutshell: This is commendable on one count, hanging, if done properly, is probably far more humane than any method of execution used in the United States. As for it being a product of the invasion force...you're damn right it is, and the trial was such a mockery as to be pointless. A fair trial might well have come out to the same conclusions and would have secured no more of Saddam Hussein's cooperation, in fact, it would have been impossible. But what they think they're going to accomplish by martyring him, I don't know. Enjoy your civil war, I hope our people aren't forced to fight it.

Item #4: Man, isn't it interesting that all the people who spread their message that homosexuality is sick and perverse are in fact, sick perverts who are homosexuals?In a nutshell: This is the Roy Cohn generation. Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, who's next, Fred Phelps? Bob Dornan? Jim McGreevey ranked high on the creepy scale when there were conversations about his affair, but he at least wasn't campaigning to stamp out his own existence.

Item #5: The Army Times says it's time for Rumsfeld to goIn a nutshell: Let me assure you that the "independent" publication is nonetheless not that independent. These are papers that are published for people in the military, and it really shows. Whether it's the Air Force Times or the local military newspaper (in Bellevue, it was the Air Pulse), these are not papers that are going to go out on liberal limbs that are going to make news very often.

Item #6: Comcast needs to learn how to write headlinesComcast's Headline: Renowned Screenwriter Schrader DiesIn a nutshell: Paul Schrader ( writer of, among other films, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and writer/director of Hardcore and Affliction) is, in fact, still alive. His brother, Leonard Schrader, has died. Paul Schrader is one of the most renowned screenwriters (though, in my opinion, he's living on borrowed time and has done nothing since 1980) and writers on the subject of film in the world. His brother, on the other hand, may be renowned to some, but I can count the people I know who have seen Kiss of the Spider Woman on one hand, probably a hand with no more than two fingers. It's not that Leonard Schrader isn't renowned, it's that I don't think there's a person in the country who would think of him first when reading that headline that wasn't personally aware of his death.

"We believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman and it needs to be defended."
-George W. Bush in Georgia yesterday

That's right southerners...the Republican party supports unions. Good luck...you're voting libertarian this year. Where's Michael Badnarik when you need him? Oh...that's right, he's been lurking outside your house talking about how he has the right to drive drunk unless he hits someone. And stalking your wife with a concealed weapon -- just because he has the right. And interrupting your adult education class ranting about the war on drugs and how it is the motivation behind your son's inadequate education that came from the failure of the education system because it left the market system.

You're right. It'd just be easier to support unions. Fine, Southerner, be a pinko.

Rainy Day Post #s 12 and 35

This was passed on to me. http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7448&context=expresso

It's pretty derogatory, considering it's coming from Oklahoma City University of Law, but he has a point, because I think everyone has at least one professor that writes articles solely to attach inappropriate titles to them. In fact, I can testify on my classmates' behalf that we had a professor who is responsible for anywhere between 5-15 of the Bob Dylan attributions. The abstract, however, tips that this is perhaps the ultimate law review article, because its conclusion is something like "it's all cool...it could be used successfully" while also being written by a student who is in no position to determine what successful use is.

All in all, it's an awful article for failing to mention my own work, which went through about fifteen titles, all less successful then my Neil Young rip-off. And I can't fathom that it's true that R.E.M. gets cited more than Neil Young.

As a side note, if he's going to use Guided by Voices to open the article, I would have suggested "A Salty Salute", "Watch Me Jumpstart", "I Am Produced" or at least "Little Lines". (In fact, maybe the article should be titled "Your Name Is Wild". But that's just me -- and Bob Pollard.

The Blog About Federalism is on indefinite hiatus to recover from a stingray wound and mourn the loss of Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin.

Rest in peace, sweet prince.

Tell it to Air America before your career goes Apocalypto

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/28/gibson.dui/index.html

I'm going to christen your statement FairyTale: a True Story. Lies are a lethal weapon, Mel. And your pile of bullshit is just a chicken run.
Ok, no, it's a load of bullshit, if you were actually a lifelong alcoholic, you wouldn't turn into a rageaholic when you're at 0.12%, because that's barely even over the real limit (not the illusory South Dakota v. Dole .08 limit that was railroaded through by MADD that accomplishes nothing) You, with your newfound lifelong drinking problem, should have a tolerance greater than that of an infant, you should at least be able to handle a tequila sunrise now and then. You were acting about as stable as a bird on a wire at 0.12%. I'd expect something a little better from anyone, because at 0.12%, you're barely intoxicated, you're not exactly taking on the role of the Road warrior or turning barrel roles like Maverick in top gun. You're barely even doing battle with remaining conscious. At 0.12, you should still be able to observe basic road signs.

You're clearly an anti-semite, which is comforting to know that the council of Elders actually had a point with the whole Passion of the Christ thing. This is good payback, frankly. And intoxication is no excuse, you don't become a different person when you're drunk, you become you in a more revealed fashion. Moreover, let's tear away the facade, how dumb are you? Do you really figure in the town of Los Angeles that there's that many Jewish police officers? Even your concocted theory of the Jews being out to get you doesn't even make sense for a concocted theory of ethnic inferiority. The KKK would be like "hey, Mel, back off, there's not a whole lot of Goldbergs on the highway patrol". There's no Julius Epstein, the singing detective. At least their theories involve banking, law, or Hollywood...and let me assure you, each is an infinitely more plausible ethnic Conspiracy theory than your own, sir. I only hope that the substance of your statements makes it to the mainstream media, so it can be reported about Mel's statements making this the year of living dangerously.

Lastly, I am officially issuing a decree that in the Court of my opinion, a confession to being an alcoholic is admissible as proof that you are not an alcoholic, but are trying to excuse yourself from obedience to societal mores and laws. (See also Eustachy, Larry) Actual alcoholics don't have the time nor the desire to call press conferences to announce their drinking problem, because they're concerned with other things. Or they're in denial. So...if we're playing Who's the Alcoholic?...David Hasselhoff might be, Mel Gibson decidedly is not. But I guess you're a braveheart who can reveal your problems to the world...that's what your average drunk is apparently missing?

So why the lies? Is it what women want? Is it to keep the paparazzi at bay?

Signed,
Tim
PS: If you want anything from Dublin or London...when you get to Canada, turn right and then keep going. :) If you get to Gallipoli, you've gone too far.

PSS: By the way, yes, I do deserve a Pulitzer, and half of the award money will be donated to the IMDb.

Overheard in my sarcasm...

Quotation #1: Floyd Landis is an American hero, just like Barry Bonds, except in a sport we only care about when we win through cheating. He's just like the guy who rode faster because he only had one testicle weighing him down...and was pedaling to avoid hearing his girlfriend play "Soak Up the Sun".

Quotation #2:
You could compare Gary Majewski to pouring gasoline on a fire, but that's a specious analogy. Say what you will against Exxon, BP, and OPEC, but gasoline doesn't start a fire where there was none before.

Quelle merde!

I'm an American. I ought not care about soccer, and for the most part I don't. So take what I say with a grain of salt.

What do I say?

That the end of the World Cup was the steamingest pile of stinky diarrhea shit I've ever seen, and every time I attempt to watch the World Cup, it ends the same feces-encrusted way -- with the aberrant termination of a game through the penalty kick. It is the worst abomination that could possibly befall any sport, especially in its finest hour.

How can I illustrate this? Well, put it in American terms. It's the Super Bowl. The goddamn Patriots are playing any NFC team (unfortunately, we know how it ends). It's 21-21 with three seconds left. Vinatieri comes on...and misses a field goal (he'll do it now that he plays with the non-loathed Colts, but Martin Gramatica will be doing great this year). So the time's out, there's no time left. We're going to...the punt, pass, and kick contest!

Or...it's the bottom of the ninth in the 1997 World Series. Jose Mesa blew the save. Instead of extra innings, where we would continue to play baseball and allow the Indians to lose in a soul-crushing fashion...it's home run derby time. Hope you're up to it, Matt Williams!

Or...it's the NBA playoffs. Ah, I can't watch this crap, the playoffs began last January and aren't ending until May 2009, change it to Major League Soccer.

They've played soccer for an ungodly period of time. They're dead tired, they've got nothing left, the game will grind to a near halt. In other words, this is where it finally gets interesting. The game could end at any moment. But instead, after two overtimes, soccer substitutes the shootout. This doesn't work. Hockey has used the shootout after overtime fails, and generally, it's pretty exciting. Good stuff. But they have the good sense to drop it when it counts. If it's November and the Penguins and Blue Jackets have skated (I use the term loosely) to a 1-1 tie and overtime didn't settle it, fine, use the shootout, because those fans haven't been able to get a beer since 10 minutes into the third period, and they know that even though more than half the teams will make the playoffs, these aren't among them. But in the playoffs, it's overtime, overtime, overtime, and then when that doesn't work, more overtime. They know that the reason the teams are there is because they're good at hockey, not just a particular facet of the game. No matter how passable the shootout is to casual fans, it's just not a real game. It's not as if a goalie is playing by himself against five guys shooting the puck. There's a team component that's totally neglected by the shootout. Sure, you have five guys shooting, but a good team isn't one that is made up entirely of scorers (see the aforementioned Pittsburgh Penguins).

With soccer, it's even more egregious, because it's not a test of skill on skill, it's a test of skill on total and utter luck. There were nine penalty kicks taken in the penalty kick phase that settled the game. 8 of them were goals. This tells you how preposterous it is for resolving a game. For one, nine shots is an astonishingly high percentage of the shots you'll see in a game. Secondly, that's a conversion rate of 89%. How many saves were there by these goaltenders, among the best in the world? None. Not one single save. The only shot that missed was because a French guy was not content to fire into the Red Rocks ampitheater that is a FIFA soccer goal and hit the crossbar.

What's worse, what the penalty kick phase rewards isn't even a major component of the game. The goal is huge because it's rare to get a shot, and because if you do get a chance at a shot, you'll just about never get it off with an opportunity to just focus on putting it in. There's not a whole lot of soccer breakaways. If a scorer gets a shot at a net with no defenders but the scrawny antsy looking guy with the different jersey, he will score way too often.

Maybe that's fine if you're settling some regular season match, but it's not fine when you're settling bragging rights for the World for four years. That's utterly preposterous. And what reason do you have?

1) TV coverage - cry me a damn river. Maybe Americans shut it off when it wasn't 5-2 after 90 minutes, but this is the biggest sporting event in the world. People would watch this if it went on for three weeks. And I'm not an advertising seller, I don't know how it works, but sell contingency ads. You say to GM/Nissan/Renault, "All right, you've got the ads for the transition between the third and fourth OT if it happens. It'll cost you forty billion dollars, if the game gets to that point." They'll buy it. I don't know how the Super Bowl operates with respect to overtime ads, since no Super Bowl has ever gone to overtime, but I'm pretty sure the ad revenue is still better than when the European station switches over to reruns of Webster after the game.
2) Excitement - Oooh, look, it all comes down to this, there's 2 out in the bottom of the ninth! No. Bullshit. It's only exciting if the excitement arises in the organic and natural course of the game. If you tack on generated "excitement", you're just obliterating the nature of the sport. And if you really want to make it more exciting by changing the game...you've got better options. First, shrink the number of players on the field. 11? Screw that. Time for 7. That's still more guys than you need and more names than just about any American will know. Second, make it sudden death. In soccer, overtime doesn't end upon the first goal, the periods are actually played out in their entirety. The paucity of goals scored in your average match renders it essentially sudden death except the losing team has to run around embarrassed until the game's over, but that's besides the point.
3) It's FIFA's bedtime. - You got it. That's all I've got.

These aren't excuses, I don't like soccer as a general rule, it's just not a game I can really get into, because I've been raised in a generation of video games. There has to be something more instant about gratification. If you can be the greatest player of your generation and I won't know by watching four or five games, then I'm not going to give a damn. If your goalie is amazing because he saved actual bona fide shots...I'm not impressed. Even Victor Martinez stops a wild pitch now and then. But that said, if I was a fan of soccer, I'd be utterly irate right now. The World Championship of a sport needs to be decided by playing that sport, not its XBox equivalent.

And you think your state is a mess...

Government shutdown will cost New Jersey millions a day in pure filthy lucre.

The regulation of gambling is a huge cash cow for states, and New Jersey is going to give up pure revenue because the state bureaucracy is all-encompassing for the casino industry. As a result, during the peak of the year for the industry, casinos shut down, New Jersey loses millions of dollars of mostly out-of-state tourism revenue, and New Jersey continues to add to its reputation as the greasy, overweight, mesh-shirt-wearing armpit of America.

Do you like golf? Or do you just hate people who aren't boring?

Women's U.S. Open postponed by fog. In related news, golf loses its last chance of credibility in claiming that it is a sport.

Seriously. Fog. FOG.
Not a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG), the U.S.S. Fogg, John Carpenter's The Fog, not the fog of war (nor the shadow of the future), not Phileas Fogg, nor Josh Fogg, just plain ordinary fog. FOG???

The Indy 500 delayed by fog, I'll buy that, there's genuine peril in driving in fog (that said, it's auto racing, not going to rank #1 on my list of things I consider sports, it's right above curling). This ends the list of sports delayed by fog. Baseball has a credible claim (just ask Ray Chapman), but I've never seen a game undergo a fog delay. Football, they play through anything except lightning, there's no such thing as a weather delay. Baseball, if it's pouring rain, they delay it.

In golf? It really doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference if it's foggy. Maybe they're doing it because they're worried the fans won't see enough, but how much are they going to see anyway? If you're at the tee, you see Annika Sorenstam swing the club and the ball go off somewhere where you couldn't see it anyway. Even if it's pea soup fog, you know what, you've got a caddy, his job will be to find the ball if the Golf Channel doesn't first. And maybe it's the TV networks that are delaying it, but again, NFL games get played through fog, so I don't see why broadcasting golf in fog would be so impossible, except that it might add an element of something interesting, which would infuriate the PGA/LPGA, who limit their areas of potentially interesting occurrences to Phil Mickelson sucking and Annika Sorenstam playing with men, proving once and for all that women and men are both equal at boring the shit out of me.

Oh, by the way, after reviewing the book of Exodus, I noticed that God didn't promise not to cause more floods. He just said he wouldn't kill everyone with a flood.

So, for instance, wiping out Delaware with a flood...not a breach of his oral agreement with Noah. For that matter, given that God's promise was not fully performable within one year, it needed to be placed in writing, and rainbows do not fulfill the statute of frauds. Hence, unenforceable. Now as to whether mankind was an intended third-party beneficiary, that's a different question...