John Adams

New York Jets. A-. The motto of the Jets' draft was quality over quantity. Mark Sanchez's selection made this team's draft because he's a franchise-maker. New coach Rex Ryan likes his defense, so the organization felt it could focus on the offense in his first draft. The Jets picked up Iowa running back Shonn Greene, who will fit into the rotation with Leon Washington and Thomas Jones. Guard Matthew Slauson was an OK pick in the sixth round, but the key to this draft is up top with Greene and Sanchez. Buffalo Bills B+. Aaron Maybin was the pass-rusher this team needed to anchor the defensive line. Here is someone's breakdown of Mel's 2004 grades. http://bottom-of-the-barrel.blogspot.com/2011/05/grading-mel-kipers-2004-nfl-draft.html

Watching that highlight reel, he sure is not afraid of contact.

As far as conspiracies and attacks go, shouldn't the all powerful government do a better job than a couple small bombs that kill 3 people? (Special prize for the first person to respond using the word "sequestration.")

While they're at it, they should pick up a Mike Singletary linebacker in the 4th or 5th round.

There Re 5-6 impact TEs in the NFL. Be great if the Bills had one but they don't. Neither do most teams. The Bills have 70 holes. TE is about the last one that needs filling.

I like that the consensus best pick for where he was chosen has the least comments. Says something about us as fans.

2 guards were taken after him. Still plenty of them to be had. Drafts are not filled with stud TEs. The TEs left are not likely studs.

Pass OC the Kleenex.

I read about it a little, then just started doing it. There are many ways, but most involve just sitting and watching your breath. I find timing it helps as I cheat with no timer. I aim for 10 minutes each session. Would love to get to 20. The transcendental meditation people like Stern swear by it but you don't need to spend 2 grand to meditate. It's pretty frigging simple. Just requires discipline.

Every day before I wake and sleep. I sit on the backs of my legs (lotus positions are hard for me). I use eyes open and closed depending on the visual distractions present. Having done it for a year, I'm calmer and happier. Also more focused.

It's been on NPR, Slate, and other big network media, although it seems like most of the right wing media is reporting on the lack of attention to it. This is an ultrapoor neighborhood and a suspect doctor office. This and worse is probably happening all over big cities.

That's a winning theory. I'm in the "who gives a sh*t about Al Gore" club. I have read and enjoyed some of Woodward's books. He gets some great access, although these days he's not breaking stories as much as recounting interviews..

I want to talk about Walter Mondale. Go.

He skewered Obama good in the price of politics. I thought the Iraq war books were pretty favorable to Bush.

We are a 1200 player club outside of Philly. Nowhere near the uber Elite USSF Development Academy model.

Not entirely sure about this. Clearly the better soccer is played in Europe but some of the most aggressive players are MLS players. If the US Style is going to be more European (better touches, more possession) than the better players need to go to Europe for now. If the US men's style is going to be like the way the women win--athleticism and aggressiveness--MLS players are good at that. The USWMNT wins because they are so much more athletic than other teams. Japan is much much much better women's team with better players. But the US women grind everyone down with their great athletes. On the men's side, the gap between athletes is minimal or nonexistent so the US men can't just beat people up with size and speed--still, the US MLS players impact the game because of their downhill style. Which brings me to your wife's dilemma regarding youth soccer. I'm a youth travel soccer coach and also our club's travel coordinator (shoot me now for the later!). Currently my team is U11 moving to U12. I drilled the ever-loving crap out of my girls on footwork and touches for 3 years. We juggle, we do Coerver moves, we practice controlling airborne balls with different body parts. I rarely have a ratio of more than 3:1 kids to balls in any drill I do. And I do a fair number of touches drills. And then in practice and games, I emphasize possession soccer. Now possession soccer for U11 is hard....they try to string together 4-5 passes and they are young so one disconnects and a bigger more physical team takes advantage. But my girls have the best feet of any team in my area. But...we don't win a lot. We have not spent a ton of time playing games, learning to be pushy, etc. And that's what many US parents (I've helped mine see that our game is pretty) want: Wins. I have tried to decouple wins so far from teaching skills. Now here we are at that magic moment of U12. And lo and behold, all those skills are starting to translate into wins over teams that used to beat us. And many of our wins are coming in big gulping wins...by 3-4 goals. Because our keepaway possession game just obliterates the dump and chase teams. But it took a good 3 years and many losses while we worked on skills to get here. Coming full circle on that ramble, the problem is that youth soccer coaches mostly try to find big athletic kids who can push other kids around and football their way to a goal. That works for a long time in youth soccer for wins and requires little teaching--we still struggle with the brawny teams. Teaching soccer is less fun for the kids (with a bad coach) and harder for the coach (need better coaches). To me, that's why our game suffers. We spend way too much time emphasizing games and far too little time on skills at young ages. Imagine if a baseball coach just sent his U9 kids out to play ball every practice and didn't work on all the details that baseball requires...his team would blow. It's shocking that anyone thinks soccer is different. By the way, on this point of games, a U9 "Select" coach I was talking to recently was bragging that his team was playing in 100 games this year. 100 games for 8 year olds! WTF?!? MLS improiving is helping the US game. NSCAA and USSF putting out more standard programs is helping clubs focus on more important things at younger ages. The needle is moving. Just slowly.

For the last few years, I was saving at 10% and felt like I was really behind. Thanks for cheering me up America. I am ahead of the curve!

I stopped eating wheat and grains and my chronic ones went away--haven't had one in years. There are few if any home remedies while you're suffering. The neti pot probably works best.

On top of which, Pepsi has a similar basketball "prank" that is fake. It's a shame because the hoops one is a great idea and the video is excellent...until you notice all the extras in the "prank" are holding Pepsi bottles and look way too Hollywood. http://joshspector.com/2012/05/22/kyrie-irving-just-made-one-of-the-best-basketball-commercials-of-all-time

You're the only person on this website who could point to Turkmenistan on an unlabeled map.

Looks interesting.

Winner winner chicken dinner

"This is not the plan we wanted to cut spending but it is a start. When the debt ceiling negotiation comes around in a few weeks, we will build sequestration into that too if we can't agree to more cuts. This president is not serious about cutting spending but we are [a lie]."

He's a terrible leader, I get it. But people here are talking like Obama is an idiot just because he came up with the idea for sequestration...when sequestration was a bipartisanly agreed to idea regardless of who came up with it. And...it was a good idea since both sides realized they needed to cut spending and both sides at some level knew they were too messed up to ever get the deal done. I say Bravo to you Barack Obama for the idea of sequestration, and bravo to the right for making sequestration happen. It was a bipartisan effort that actually cut spending. We need more of that.

The sequestration was agreed to by the right! Both parties bought into this penalty for their own ineptitude. Again, at least they built in some medicine for their idiocies. I hope every spending bill has sequestration built in.