Mickey

Maybe it was the channel I was watching but I recall seeing plenty about the rest of the Gulf coast, especially where that entire Casino floated out to the shore. I must have seen 20 reports filmed with that casino in the background. I also didn't see one film of anyone carrying a big screen TV wading through flood waters. I did see plenty of people with arm loads of clothes. I'm not saying that there wasn't such footage, just that I didn't see much of it. I'm sure all those dead people at that nursing home would love to give thanks to the President, FEMA, Brown, Blanco, Nagin and their Parish President for their rescue efforts if they weren't, you know, dead and all. Did you mean the irony inherent in a post blaming the media which says "don't shoot the messenger"?

I wish you were too.

Yep, and everything bad that has happened since Bush's (s)election in 2000 is all Clinton's fault. In fact, Clinton's bombing of Iraq is what ended Saddam's WMD programs which is why they weren't there when Bush invaded. Therefore, ergo, Bush's bogus justification for the Iraq war was really all Clinton's fault. I'd compare body counts of dead Americans during the term of each but that wouldn't be fair since George still has a few more years to run up the score and besides, you'll just find a way to blame the Iraq war on Clinton as well. How you'll do that and give Bush the elder a pass on letting Saddam stay in power, I can't wait to see. Will there ever come a time when Bush will have to take responsibility for his decisions or is that "its Clinton's fault" hall pass a perpetual one? I think I'll send him a plaque for his desk: "The buck stops with the last administration" or maybe "the other President ate my homework".

Not exactly, I am only too happy to not pretend that Charles Schumer invented the practice or that my own guys are above it. Further, since the Constitution mandated a political process for judicial appointments, I see no reason not to defend the Constitution. By the way, if Charles Schumer is scum for voting against Roberts based on his perception of the rulings Roberts is likely to make, are those who voted for him also scum for doing so based on their perception of the rulings he is likely to make?

Yes, God forbid we ever experience the peace and prosperity we did circa 1992-2000, lord knows I couldn't stand another second of that. I am not sure what I would miss the most, the wars, the recessions or the record deficits.

I don't really agree with Schumer's vote but I think he had a "valid reason" and we could probably drain the blood right out of our brains until we passed out trying to define what, in this context, "valid reason" means. The bottom line is that this guy is going to get confirmed and it managed to happen without the nation undergoing a mass anal seizure over the whole thing. Despite how anyone might feel about Bush, he did a solid job with the Roberts pick. He is enough of a mystery to give the needed cover to republican moderates and conservative democrats alike. If he does trash Roe, pro-choice republicans can shrug their shoulders and credibly say "who knew?". We'll see what he does on the next one.

I have said many times that no offensive system yet devised can succeed without blocking. I finally watched the tape last night of the Atlanta game. I was appalled at the performance of the offensive line. Teague allowed a sack from DT lined up on his nose. The guy blew by him without being touched and hit JP in, I think the announcer said, .9 seconds. You can't have pressure up the middle, the distance is so short that the QB doesn't even have the time to throw it away. At least pressure from the edge has to cover some ground, enough to give the QB a tiny window within which to do something. A couple sacks were like that, totally unblocked defenders. I know, I know, Willis had 140. Yippee. That game shows that even with a strong ground game, you have to be able to throw the ball now and then unless you plan on doing nothing but kicking field goals all day. That defense was trying to cover their problems at CB and so they didn't committ to stopping the run much and instead held their ground in coverage. They did sneak the SS up quite a bit but we didn't make them pay for that by passing the ball, we obligingly ran. I also am concerned about the blocking of the TE's, some of those whiffs might have been mistakes by TE's as to who was blocking who.

Yes, and listening to a few thousand drunken creeps chanting obscenties at the top of their lungs is exactly the way to impart that important knowledge to our kids. If only I could thank them for their public service somehow. Maybe go to their house and chant "clean that crotch" to their wives because I know they'll appreciate the sound advice. Seriously, I have very low expectations for fan behaviour at a football game but that was a new low, even for the endzone sections.

I think we have much greater problems with our credibility overseas like going to war over WMD's that turned out not to be there. No matter how much you might disagree with that assessment, you have to admit that there is no way we are living that one down in Berlin, Paris, Moscow, London, Japan, etc. After that one, I'm not sure the mix of good, bad and indifferent reporting in Katrina really mattered all that much. I don't see a bunch of people on the fence about Bush that jumped off because Mayor Nagin repeated rumors of mayhem at the Superdome. If where we are headed with this is to blame the media for a tough war that is getting tougher or the mess our foreign policy is in, stop the train, I want to get off. Besides, the images they broadcast and much of the reporting was in fact accurate. There actually were thousands of people stranded at the Super Dome and the Convention center without food or water, etc. There really was a FEMA director whose prior experience was in horse shows. He really did get fired. The town really was underwater. There really were nursing home patients left on their own to drown. The bickering back and forth here in the states over whether the feds or the locals screwed up worse than the other is of little impact elsewhere. I don't think the loss of credibility you are worried about would be improved much if the initial report was "Mayor Nagin is losing his cool and running wild with the latest rumors of mayhem, back to you Nancy." The lack of any credibility for the President overseas has nothing to do with him being misunderstood or treated unfairly by the US media. Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, etc, etc all have their own media. Their people have reached their own judgments on this administration long ago. If anything, Katrina offered him an opportunity to change some of that. It didn't work.

Breyer was considered a moderate at the time and even Phil Gramm voted for him stating that he was about as good as they (republicans) had a right to expect. On top of that, Clinton was so deferential that even Hatch complimented him on how he handled the nomination in terms of his choice of justices and the way he treated Republicans. By and large, the President has tried to follow that script with Roberts and as a result, his confirmation has been a cakewalk.

The Senate gets to confirm these people and in keeping with the notion of constitutional minimalism so popular on the right these days (unless we are talking about guns), I see nothing in the Constitution that limits when the Senate can refuse to confirm a nominee. It was meant to be a political process which discourages extremism. That is done by giving all sides enough power over the process to force consideration of their respective positions. There are hundreds of qualified candidates, probably more. The word "qualified" is probably overused in this context. For example, if you sincerely believed that position X was the proper and true constitutionally mandated position on a given issue and you knew Judge Y, based on faulty legal analysis, takes a different position, couldn't you decide that his faulty legal analysis makes him unqualified to be on the court? The truth is, for the Senate and the President, the far right and the far left, "qualified" means "vote the way I want him/her to".

I guess it all depends on what you think constitutes a "valid reason". Were you upset with the way Specter was publicly eviscerated for suggesting it was possible that he might not vote to confirm a Bush appointee? I believe that Bush would not, in a million, zillion years have named Roberts if he didn't think he would overturn Roe. I also think that by and large, the right would not support Roberts at all if they thought for a second that he would leave Roe alone. If the President and his "Justice Sunday" followers can use a litmus test for the Supreme Court, why can't Charles Schumer? Bush and the right could be wrong about Roberts, I doubt it, but it happens. The fact is though that both sides are using a litmus test despite all their pretense to the contrary.

Let me see, the President and his handlers don't try to keep him in the headlines? Good one.

What was wrong with voting against Roberts?

Idiot? Granted, he is no towering intellectual like Tom Delay or Sam Brownback but he did graduate from Harvard College and then Harvard Law School. He passed the bar but never practiced law and instead was elected to the State Assembly. I think he was the youngest ever elected since Teddy Roosevelt. He was there for 6 years before running and winning a seat in congress which he held for the next 19 years. He then defeated Al D'Amato and as I recall, it was a landslide. He has been in the Senate since 1998. I disagree with him on a number of positions so I do think he is flat out wrong on a number of points but "idiot"? Naaah. Compared to most Senators he is a freaking prodigy.

I think the general rule is that when the media reports things one agrees with, they are thought of as credible and when they report things one does not agree with, they are not credible. The problem with "the media" is immediacy. They make money by being there fast and first and then keeping viewers with as much drama as possible as the story develops. Accuracy, and the time it would take to find out the accuracy of a story just doesn't stand a chance if they want to make money. Can you imagine if they refused to air those first call, hysterical claims by saying "we are not going to air the Mayor's statement until its truth can be determined after a full and fair investigation?" Bad reporting is bad reporting and they deserve to get lambasted for it whenever they blow it. By the same token, lets not hold the media responsible to do a job it was never meant to perform and then act shocked and dismayed when it fails to do that job right. The media isn't meant to be the most accurate source of information around. That should be pretty obvious. That is why you can't sue them simply for being wrong in a story. They are allowed to be wrong so that they can be fast and pretty much everywhere anything of note is happening. That doesn't mean we shouldn't call them on it when they are wrong nor that we shouldn't admire those especially who can be fast and accurate at the same time. It just means that we shouldn't act like Mother Theresa got caught turning tricks in the Mission District everytime they manage a major blooper.

We blitzed and he bought just enough time to hit a receiver open in man to man coverage and on a few occasions, tacked on PF penalty for an illegal hit from a frustrated blitzer. When we sat back in coverage he just hung on until we were dropped so deep that all he had to do was dodge a defenisve lineman or two that were all ready engaged by offensive lineman to run for good yardage. The only thing I can think of to stop that is maybe to use delayed blitzes or modest one where you send only one or two extra people.

Understand that I don't have any objection to him trying to hide this kind of thing even if it is a pretty lame attempt. What bothers me is not how he answers the questions but that we don't have arguably the best player on the team on the field in crucial situations. I hate situation substitution because it takes too much time and is a tell as far as what you plan to do on the next play. Third and six or less and Willis should be on the field imho.

I was so proud of the Bills fans who were chanting "STD" over and over so that all the fathers in the stands had to answer their child's question "Dad, what is an STD?" I'm not saying people don't have the right to be crude, drunken cretins, I'm just saying that it is too bad that we have so many crude, drunken cretins at the Ralph on Sundays. What a great moment for the entire city of Buffalo when they broke out in a chorus of "Fix your dick" for 10 minutes.

Why does going long to the WR's from the git-go not count? During the first series, I believe we threw on every first down. Does that count?

Are they really "patting" the ball? It looks to me like they rooster the arm back just before launching it but then, when they change their mind and decide to go to another receiver, they bring it down briefly holding it with two hands while they re-load and re-aim thereby keeping the ball safe until they are ready to fire it. I think they are taught to minimize the amount of time they have the ball in just one hand so as to help prevent fumbles.

MM answered the question like that because he had to. The alternative would be to tell other teams what we are doing. If you watch the game, it is obvious that on almost all third down passing situations, Willis comes out and Williams goes in. Rather than tell teams that whenever Shaud is in the game we are passing, he gives an answer like that, fig leaf that it is. Every so often we play the down with both Willis and Shaud in but rarely. It seems that we run screens from that formation as often as not. I am sure on occasion, Willis is in fact winded but we pull him on 3rd and long so often that it can't be explained by random temporary exhaustion.

Oh good, another Sheehan thread, just what we needed. She has become the conservative equivalent of "Flight Suit".

Favre won his first game and played lousy the next three weeks, a pace Losman is on track to match. The point is, it is too early to decide whether JP is a bust or not and Favre is a good example of that based on the numbers. It is not fair to compare Favre's season ending numbers with JP's numbers now after he has only played a handful of games. He is doing no worse than Favre did in his first 3 or 4 games.

Actually, in his first season Favre played in Atlanta and threw 4 passes, zero completions. Favre did win his first game in his second year in the league after Don Majkowskin was injured. He won 17-3 against the Steelers and then rattled off three straight losses----24-10 to the Falcons; 17-6 to the Browns and 30-10 to the Bears. JP won his first start and has lost the next two soooo...in order for JP to play as well as Favre did, he needs to lose once more. I think the point is that if people judged Favre as quickly as they are JP, the Packers would have missed out on a heckuva QB. I have seen the footage from Atlanta when Favre was there including the pre-season games he played and he was just plain terrible. That is why the Falcons let him go. We just have to sit tight and hope for the best with JP, its just too early to know what we have other than to say that he hasn't become an instant sensation.