Northbound

Finally, the irony-free zone around the Blessed Redeemer has been punctured:

“That was pretty good, right?” Obama said to cheers as he finished a round of golf near his $9 million rented vacation home near Honolulu.

The woman sitting on a nearby wall shouted, “Better than your bowling.”

Rimshot! But it’s just a good thing that the woman wasn’t identified (at least not in this story); you just know the lefty bloggers are just dying to check out her professional licenses and child support records and all that other stuff that comes with putting the Blessed Redeemer on the spot in public.

You stay classy, Bradie James:

On the day Dallas Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips was saying he plans to change, linebacker Bradie James got into an altercation with a fan outside the team’s training facility.

James confronted the fan, who was protesting the team’s 44-6 loss to Philadelphia, which eliminated the team from playoff contention. The fan was wearing a sandwich board that said, “Cowboys have no heart” on one side and “Wade is an embarrassment to the star” on the other.

James apparently stopped his vehicle and demanded the fan give him the sign. When the man refused, James removed it from him, breaking the man’s eyeglasses in the process.

Oh, and it gets better:

According to The Associated Press, James then went to his locker, got a pair of expensive shades he’d been given and returned with an apology, a handshake and a gift. Police came and left without taking any action.

“He was like, ‘Why you guys didn’t have that fire last night! You should’ve showed that much heart last night!’ So the next thing you know I’m just ripping that sign off of him,” James said. “So I went and gift-wrapped some Oakleys, and he got something out of the deal. I told him, ‘I share your frustrations. But where we differ is I wouldn’t go to anybody’s job, especially not up here with 300-pound guys, trying to tell them what they didn’t do right.’”

That came shortly after Phillips told reporters he would do things differently.

Why you guys didn’t have that fire last night. What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.

Last night was, I think, not the worst Cowboys regular season loss ever; that will probably always be either the Leon Lett game or the 44-0 shellacking that the Cowboys took at the hands of the 1985 Bears.  (Postseason-wise, of course, there’s the Tony Romo Game, and the Patrick Crayton game, and the Ice Bowl and the Catch, all much, much worse.)  But combined with the Baltimore loss last week, it’s probably the worst two weeks of Cowboys fandom ever. 

I can live with bad teams.  I can live with 1989-esque levels of failure.  I can live with narrow losses against good teams.  But what I can’t deal with – what no self-respecting Cowboys fan can deal with – is gutlessness, and there really isn’t another word.

Pity the Blessed Redeemer:

President-elect Barack Obama has said all along that neither he nor his team was involved in any eye-popping dealmaking over filling his vacated Senate seat. Obama’s hand-picked investigator agreed.

“Everybody behaved appropriately,” declared Greg Craig, Obama’s incoming White House counsel and the person asked to conduct the internal inquiry into contacts between the transition team and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Prosecutors have said Obama is not implicated in the case against Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. But the corruption scandal has drained precious energy from Obama’s preparations to take over the White House. 

Oh! The poor man, his precious energy has been drained.  How will he ever cleanse the planet and halt the rise of the oceans without his precious energy?

If the MSM had put one tenth the energy into this story (just the Rezko connections alone!) that they put into Gov. Palin wanting her idiot no-good brother-in-law out of a state trooper uniform, it would be a nice change.  But no.  You get the AP wringing its hands about Obama’s energy levels.  Is he sleeping at night?  Is he eating right?  Is there… you don’t think… any chance that we might not get all the change we could believe in?  Oh, the tragedy!

(Oh, and you remember what I said about Obama being Siegfried (and/or Roy) and the press being the white tigers?  It’s still going to happen, you know.  The Rick Warren thing is just the beginning.  You just wait.)

UPDATE:  This is just sickening:

Between workouts during his Hawaii vacation this week, he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.

Seriously, this is what passes for journalism in this country?  This is a mash note, if that.  I fully expect that reporter Eli Saslow is at this very moment writing ELI LOVES BARACK in his notebook and drawing little hearts around it.  Vomit.

DJ Gallo is probably the worst columnist ESPN employs, but when the man is right, the man is right:

Dear Jane Seymour,

 Regarding your jewelry design that you hope will become the “international symbol for love and hope”: a) Way to keep your expectations realistic; b) please stop running your ad 100 times during every football game; and c) your design looks like a snake with giant buttocks. Just saying.

 Sincerely,

 DJ Gallo

The great Nolan Ryan wants his Rangers pitchers to be more like him - even going so far as to suggest a four-man pitching rotation.  Sounds plausible on paper, but you will remember that Ted Williams (the first Rangers manager) was thought to be such a horrible manager because he expected his players to be able to be as good as he was, and you saw how that turned out.  (Not that it matters; Jon Daniels is telling us to look to 2010, oh, goody.)

I am 2-2 lifetime at Texas Stadium.  The first game I went to would have been in 1978 or so, a Thursday night game against Minnesota, where the Cowboys got properly thumped – the only time I saw Roger Staubach play.  We left at halftime when it was clear that the Cowboys were getting whupped, and it was a school night.

Then, November 20, 1983, which I remember clearly because it was the day that The Day After showed on ABC, and I didn’t get to see it because we went to see the Cowboys beat the Chiefs.  I don’t remember a thing about the game – I do remember walking back and forth to the stadium in my new cowboy boots, but that’s about it.  The next win was the new Cowboys, in December 1990, right after I graduated from college.  The Pokes were a year away from 1-15 and were playing the Phoenix Cardinals, as they were then known, for the last playoff spot, and prevailed.  I remember this primarily because my best friend got in a fender-bender on an icy Highway 183 on the way to the game, which dampened the enjoyment somewhat.  And then two years ago at Christmas, with the best seats I’ve ever had at a pro football game, the Cowboys horked it up against the Eagles.

I would say that I would miss it, were it not for the fact that the new stadium looks to be a postmodernist re-creation of the old.  But I saw it on TV a lot more than I ever saw it in person.

UPDATE:  When they blow up Texas Stadium, I want Wade Phillips (and Chan Gailey and Dave Campo, just to be safe) standing on the middle of the star.  If Wade Phillips is coaching the Cowboys this time tomorrow, I will be appalled.  I am ashamed to be on the same planet with the man right now.  Jerry ought to fire him, then hire him back, and then fire him again just to be sure.  You can do lots of things in coaching.  You can lose games all sorts of ways.  But you cannot, c-a-n-n-o-t give up TWO HUGE EIGHTY-YARD RUSHING TOUCHDOWNS ON THE FIRST PLAY FROM SCRIMMAGE AFTER SCORING A TOUCHDOWN IN THE LAST TWO MINUTES.  (And the second one to a converted fullback, ye Gods.)  These are the laws of the Medes and the Persians, and they cannot be changed.

UPDATE:  I was hoping TMQ would say this:

Single Worst Play of the Season — So Far: Baltimore leads 26-24 with 1:36 remaining in the final game at Texas Stadium. The Boys have three timeouts, so a comeback that ends the stadium’s run happily, and causes Dallas to advance, is possible. On the previous Ravens possession, McGahee went 77 yards for a touchdown as numerous Dallas defenders simply laid on the ground and watched, and megabucks corner Terence Newman made only a halfhearted chase attempt. The previous Baltimore play was a pathetic effort by Dallas. Now fullback McClain runs 83 yards for the icing touchdown. McClain is a slow 260-pound power back, yet no Dallas defender catches him. Most Dallas defenders didn’t even try to catch McClain; they merely stood watching him go the length of the field, or jogged halfheartedly in his direction. Watch the tape and there’s a blur to McClain’s left — it’s Neal, the blocking back, who beats all the Dallas defenders down the sideline to escort McClain. Two fullbacks outran the entire Dallas defense, racing past the team’s highly paid speed-merchant secondary. Dallas Cowboys defense, you are guilty of the single worst play of the 2008 season — so far.

This is a national disgrace:

Pirates holding a ship full of tanks and ammunition off the coast of Somalia are likely to be paid millions of dollars in ransom within days, senior U.S. military officials said.

Military officials said the cash payment will be brought on the ship, directly to the pirates. Such a procedure is common because of the lack of electronic banking in Somalia.

The officials would not say how much ransom is being paid or who is paying it because it would be up to the individuals or company to make that announcement.

Ridiculous.  I don’t care that America may not be the ones paying off the pirates — hell, maybe they’re eligible for a bailout, everyone else seems to be.  But the United States of America has no business serving as paymaster for pirates, whoever is paying the ransom.  Our business (properly) is blowing that hijacked ship out of the water with as many missiles as we can to keep the armaments aboard from reaching enemy hands, and sending the pirates aboard to Kingdom Come.  Sen. Robert Goodloe Harper is spinning in his grave.

(Note:  Yes, there are hostages aboard, and one could be more concerned about their plight, etc. etc.  And it is cold and callous to throw them on the bonfire, yes.  If it’s feasible, certainly, raid the ship, hang the pirates – but if it isn’t, then bombs away.)

Neal Pollack, you big tease.  How do you headline a column “What if LeBron James and Wolverine joined the New York Knicks” and then make it about just LeBron.  What about Wolverine?  What kind of basketball player would he make?

According to Wikipedia:

Wolverine is a mutant, possessing animal-keen senses, enhanced physical capabilities, retracting bone claws, and a healing factor that allows him to quickly recover from virtually any wound, disease or toxin, enabling him to live beyond a normal human lifespan. This healing ability enabled the supersoldier program Weapon X to bond the near indestructible metal alloy adamantium to his skeleton and claws. 

Okay then. First question: how old is Wolverine? Wikipedia says he was born in the 19th Century, which is clearly stupid. Let’s say he’s as old as Hugh Jackman, who recently turned 40, so no long-term contract.  (Having said that, Wolverine is clearly in good shape, though, and it looks like he can avoid most injuries, so that’s a plus.)  Next problem: Wolverine is apparently only five-foot-three, so you probably wouldn’t want him in the front court. He’d be a shooting guard, which means on the Knicks, he’d be replacing Quentin Richardson, who is averaging eight points a game with a .398 field-goal percentage. So nobody’d be expecting that much.

Wolverine would (presumably) not be allowed to use his claws in an actual NBA game, so that’s a problem.  Animal-keen senses and enhanced physical abilities describe pretty much everybody in the NBA except maybe Eddy Curry, you have to have at least what I’d consider to be enhanced physical abilities to at least get to a high level in the NBA.  Where Wolverine differs would be in his stamina (you could pencil him in for 48 minutes a night, even on back-to-back games on West Coast road trips) and his strength (you don’t lightly foul a man with a metal skeleton).  Even if he had below-average ball-handling ability, you’d think he could drive the lane on a consistent basis and no one would want to mess with him.  Wolverine would, you’d think, be able to intimidate every wannabe tough guy in the NBA from Shaq on down.

The question would then be – could he shoot?  Beats me.  It would seem that superheroes wouldn’t be as good as shooting a basketball as anyone else – probably worse, because their strength would kick in and send the ball sailing.  I think Wolverine could certainly learn to shoot at least as good as Jason Kidd.  (I think I could learn to shoot at least as good as Jason Kidd.)

Would Wolverine be a good teammate?

Wolverine is frequently depicted as a gruff loner, often taking leave from the X-Men to deal with personal issues or problems. He is often irreverent and rebellious towards authority figures, though he is a reliable ally and capable leader. He has been a mentor and father figure to several younger women, especially Jubilee and Kitty Pryde, and has had romantic relationships with numerous women (most notably Mariko Yashida), as well as a mutual but unrequited attraction to Jean Grey, leading to jealous run-ins with her boyfriend (later husband), Scott Summers.

So probably not any worse than Kobe, then.  I think the Knicks could do worse.

Note:  I am NOT a comic-book fan and realize that this analysis is incomplete, probably idiotic.  But at least I did better than Pollack.  (Who is busy calling me a nerd, among other things.)

This is… just NOT RIGHT:

The Rangers announced $4 million in ballpark upgrades at the club’s annual media luncheon today:

• A full color Daktronics Pro Star Video Display Boards will replace the manual scoreboard in left field. The board will be about 12 feet high and 84 feet wide and shows replays and scores from other games. That means those of you in right field who can never see a replay should be able to do now.

Great John God.  Remove the manual scoreboard from The Ballpark in Arlington?  Why not just spray-paint the Mona Lisa while you’re at it?

And as far as not being able to see the scoreboard in right field, that’s the reason to sit in right field, so you don’t have to be assaulted by ads between every inning.  The right-field seats at the Ballpark are some of the best in baseball because there’s no huge giant video wall to distract people, and they’re mostly in the shade.

Nolan Ryan knows this is wrong:

“Our stadium is as pretty a stadium as there is in baseball,” club president Nolan Ryan said on a conference call Tuesday. “We are trying to balance as best as possible, the old-style beauty of the stadium with enhancements which are available.”

Translation:  this sucks, but the ownership said we had to do it.

Fie on you, Tom Hicks.  Double fie.  I don’t care that you own the team, defacing the beautiful contours of the Ballpark is a sin, and you will go to Hell for it.

I just love all these earnest articles explaining to Americans exactly why shoes are insulting to Arabs. I just wish that there was a similar article explaining to Arabs that, oh, I don’t know, flying passenger airplanes into skyscrapers is insulting to Americans.  Or that sending terrorists on paramilitary missions to take over American hotels and to massacre Jews in India is really insulting, too.  It would be nice for a change.