Convicted, but not accused

            This should come as no surprise to anyone, but the NCAA, that great bastion of hypocrisy, has come up with a doozy. 

            The organization hit Penn State with $60 million in fines, a four-year bowl ban, a scholarship reduction and the threat of more sanctions if the school misbehaves again or if the NCAA feels like it.  The Big 10 decided to pile on by yanking $13 million of bowl revenue.

            All this because Penn State violated the NCAA’s rules against … well, that’s the rub.  Penn State didn’t violate any NCAA rules.  It violated the laws of Pennsylvania, of nature and of God, but it didn’t actually violate any NCAA rules.  (That we know of.  One theory has it that the NCAA and Penn State, knowing an investigation would uncover rules violations, skipped to the last page).

            Now the State of Pennsylvania has taken it’s pound of flesh, having convicted JerrySandusky of raping numerous boys, a case in which Penn State and its revered coach Joe Paterno, were all but unindicted co-conspirators.  And Paterno, having died, is getting his just reward from God himself (and finding out that he wasn’t God might be the cruelest punishment JoePa could suffer), Who, of course, knows exactly the extent and nature of Paterno’s guilt.

            But the NCAA, which holds itself above the duly constituted laws of the state and nation, has decided taking a backseat to God might give folks the wrong impression about who is omnipotent around here.

            Mark Emmert, the latest hairdo to serve as president of this August organization, has stepped up and proclaimed himself God.  At least Roger Goodell pretends to listen to a defense before handing down threats.

            Emmert, having put Penn State and the JoePa’s corpse in their places, will now presumably attempt to put Notre Dame on probation since the Catholic Church at it’s highest levels covered up child rape, the same crime for which Penn State stands, not so much accused by the NCAA as convicted. As for Baylor, it’s quite possible that Emmert will declare the death penalty for the Bears since they tried to cover up the murder of one of their own.

            The NCAA has ignored the rule of law here and they are doing it for PR reasons, the same reason that led Penn State to act as it did.

            But a closer inspection shows the penalties handed out are as meaningless as they are ridiculous.  Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

            First, let’s remember that Penn State’s football program made a profit of $43million last year. 

            So they’ve been fined $60 million, payable over five years.  That’s $12 million a year, leaving us with $31 million in profit. Then there is the $13 million in lost bowl money over four years, a loss of $3.25 million a year, leaving us with $27.75 million.  Then you have to add in the $280,000 a year the Nittany Lions will save from cutting 10 scholarships.  So the NCAA busted all precedent and threw out the rule of law in order to cut Penn State’s profit to $28 million a year.

            Then there is the 65-scholarship limit.  Well not exactly.  Recruiting is over this year, so they will have 85 on scholarship this year.  They lose 10 so they’ll have 75 on scholarship in 2013.  It won’t be until 2014 they’ll have 65 and then for just two years.

            And having 65 shouldn’t hurt.  That’s 3 deep on both sides of the ball. When was the last time you saw the fourth-stringer make a huge difference in big-time football?

Remember, Penn State, unlike SMU, doesn’t have 8 other instate teams to share it’s fertile recruiting home base.  It only deals with Pitt. Penn State will have to recruit a little smarter. But they can also tell recruits, “Son, we’re being super selective. We used to take only the best.  No we’re taking only the best of the best. Plus, if you come here, you’ll have less competition and a better chance to start.”

            Not to mention that they can tell their mamas that the program will be under such scrutiny that no one gets laid.

            Finally there is the bowl ban.  That will hurt.  But you can appeal to your current players’ pride and redshirt the next class so that they will be the first class to have a chance for a bowl.  It will be an honor.

            The bottom line is we won’t know if Penn State is suffering until the season starts. If they are selling out, then it’s all been for naught.

            But other schools need to be wary.  If Penn State can get hammered for not breaking the rules, so can you.  If the NCAA decides that the integrity of its member institutions is paramount, what happens when it realizes that Nick Saban makes 10 time what his boss does?  Or that Mack Brown is the highest paid employee of the state of Texas? Followed by Kevin Sumlin? Followed by Rick Barnes?  The NCAA adds very little to the football school and if they decide to walk, they can take the basketball tournament with them. 

            Of course, if they do, the NCAA will probably put Lamar on probation. 

You might be right, but you still aren't getting the guns

            I don’t own a gun.

            I am 43 years old and have lived in the South all my life.  Eleven years in Tennessee, 32 in Texas.  Growing up we had one gun in our house, an old carbine that belonged to my great-grandfather as legend had it.  Everyone once in a while my dad would go out and shoot it, reporting back to us that the bullets would go through trees.  I never saw him fire it, but Dad’s the most honest guy I know.

            I don’t have guns for a simple reason.  I have no reason to own one.  Crime is down significantly from the time when I was a child and I live in a low-crime area.  I have children in the house and as anyone with any curiosity knows, a gun in the house is six times more likely to injure a friend or family member than a bad guy.  I don’t hunt.  I prefer to stalk my meat in the aisles of my local H-E-B. 

            Most importantly, I believe I am free of the insecurity and machismo that seem to prerequisites for most people I know who own weapons.  The gun culture that has always pervaded the South and seems to be spreading across the nation comes from fear.  In the old days it was fear of the Indians (a realistic one) or fear of the slave uprising (a logical one, if not that realistic).  It has evolved into fear of The Other, to use a fancy literary term.

            When Hurricane Rita hit my hometown my father returned home almost before the storm had blown out.  He lives on five acres in a development about 10 miles out of Beaumont.  Beaumont had no power.  Streetlights weren’t working, power was out, gas stations couldn’t pump gas.  Our subdivision was worse. Heavily wooded trees made getting in or out problematic.  Dad had cut his way, having to walk the last quarter-mile to our house and use the tractor and chainsaw to get back.

            I was there on assignment and I tried to get him to come back with me.  Despite the fact that he was wobbling around on knees that needed replacing 20 years before and despite that fact that there was no way to call for help if he got hurt or sick he stayed.  Stayed there with the pistol he had inherited from my grandfather and, of course, Grandad’s old carbine.

            There was no looting going on in town and you can rest assured no one was going to waste precious gasoline to try to loot Bevil Oaks.  But he was staying and he wasn’t giving up his gun.  He was scared someone was going to take his stuff, so he was staying to fight them off, cowboy style.

            That’s the thing that gun owners forget.  They assume the bad guy will come calling, setting up a time to meet in the middle of the street, preferably High Noon, then the fastest will win.  It never enters their mind that the bad guys are likely to act out of self-interest when flouting the norm of decent society.  They never think their enemy might sneak up behind them, point the gun without so much as humming a Journey tune a moment before the screen suddenly goes black.

            The horrible news from Colorado has already brought out the gun control people, arguing that guns should be banned, an argument that is infantile and pointless.  It’s the right policy.  Guns do far, far more harm than good in this country.  One needs only look at a SWAT team outfitted like the Marines as they serve a warrant.  This militarization of the police is justified because they have to assume everyone has a gone, and they do.  No one is going to go hungry if all the guns are banned and a lot fewer people will be killed.

            Don’t listen to the fear mongers who want to tell you that guns are needed to defend us against muggers, rapists, druggies and other assorted misfits. And really don’t listen to the morons who tell you that we need guns to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government.  You really think you are going to bring down the tank, the RPG and that drone sneaking up behind you with the deer rifle?  There are a thousand reasons people will give to justify clinging to their guns. My favorite is heritage.  Well, I've got a family heritage with guns too and it's nothing to brag about.  

            There are no good arguments to allow this country to have such a lax gun policy.  But to all my liberal friends, especially those who aren’t from these parts, it doesn’t matter.  You are not going to get the guns.  The fear that creates the gun culture runs too deep and is too irrational.  We are having a run on guns because we elected a president who has never, not once, not a hint, not a single time made the slightest move toward gun control.

            You can bloviate all you want, but banning guns will be about as effective as banning marijuana.  You can talk a good game.  You can even throw a bunch of black people in jail. But the people who really own the guns aren’t giving them up.  They aren’t giving up the rifle their granddaddy used to show them how to hunt. They aren’t giving up the pistol Ma-Maw kept under her pillow. That gun is in their blood.

            You can get all fired up for a month or six months or a year or even until the next shooting. But you don’t care as much about getting the guns as my friends and family do about keeping them.  So you’ll keeping on yelling and you’ll keep on losing and the NRA will keep on raising a shit load of cash of your words.  And reasonable people who keep their guns locked in safes with the ammo locked in a separate safe, people like my dad who might be amenable to things such as registration, a ban on cop-killer bullets, better training an stricter laws against felons and lunatics wielding weapons, those people will feel the only options are all or nothing AND THEY WILL NOT GIVE UP THEIR GUNS.

            So you can ignore the fact that the salient point in Aurora, as it was in Columbine as it was in Oslo was some crazy motherfucker running around free because the treatment needed isn’t available and keep yelling about the guns.  You can continue to focus on the irrelevant and unchangeable or you can look hard and try to solve problems that are solvable.

It’s in my blood and I wouldn’t give up the family guns if I ended up in possession of them. I’d lock them away in a storage facility far from home, but I’ll be Goddamned if some Yankee liberal know-it-all son of a bitch is going to take my family’s guns.

            

From a winner to a whiner: The story of Lance Armstrong

            Just when you thought Lance Armstrong was getting it, his old habits come back to haunt him.                        

            If it were I, I wouldn’t give a shit.  I’d go all Gaylord Perry on them. “You think I was cheating? Hmm, interesting.  Good luck catching me.”

            Ol’ Lance should have Gaylord beat.  He’s literally on top of the mountain; actually he’s atop the Alps. Doesn’t mater (as in mater horn, get it?) how he got there.  I get tired just watching the cars follow those guys. Besides, he got there the same way everybody else seems to get there.

            Lance has never been known for his laid back acceptance of criticism, be it from snot-nosed wannabe sports writers or state senators questioning his demand that taxpayers fork over $3 billion to move the cancer closer to him.

            But last month in an interview with Men’s Journal, he seemed willing to reign contentedly while the delinquents blew spitballs at his greatness.

            “Other than a health issue or something with [my] kids, nothing will rattle me ever again,” the seven-time Tour de France winner said. 

            Looked like Ol’ Lance was content to swim, bike and run off to Hawaii to win the world Ironman championship.

            But that was before the United States Anti Doping Agency lobbed a grenade into those plans, announcing an investigation into possible performance enhancing activities had a bunch of witnesses and would prevent him from triathloning for a while, even though the USADA can’t actually take my freedom or my money.

            It’s not a health issue and doesn’t threaten his kids, so you gotta figure Ol’ Lance would slough it off, maybe call Ol’ Gaylord and have a good laugh.

            Or you thought he’d do what I’d do if I had that kind of jack and all those trophies. Tell the world to Fuck Off.

            I wouldn’t admit anything.  I might point out that all the steroids and doping allow you to do is work even harder.  I’d allow how you might take my name out of the record books, but I’d also point out that I’ve still got a copy and seven pictures of me on the stand, drinking the champagne, kissing the girl and wearing that yellow jersey.

            If I got real cocky, I might ask who the hell you’re going to give the wins to.  All those guys behind me, they’ve been caught.  I might even say, in world of artificially-created superbikers, I was still baddest son of a bitch among them, so go pass your resolution, reprint the record books, do what you have to do.  It doesn’t matter because those pictures of me sipping Champagne as I cruise down the Champs Elysee' will be harder to get off the Internet than a sex tape.

            You know what I wouldn’t do? I wouldn’t go all 9^th-grade girl and claim they just hate me because I’m beautiful. I wouldn’t try to poke holes in the case, if for no other reason than doing so might make people look even closer at the record.

            They might just start wondering how a guy who was a middle-of-the-pack rider gets a disease linked to PED use then comes back as a cross between John Wayne and a Kenyon on wheels.

            They might just begin to wonder why the testers are always behind the dopers and they might look into the tests I’ve passed and find something.  I don’t know. 

            But I wouldn’t worry about any of that. I’d just tell them all to kiss my spandexed ass.

Fun with Youtube

I have come to believe that Lisa from the Jessi Colter song is the woman he stopped loving today from the George Jones song. I wonder if Lisa showed at the funeral.

Tejus gets benched

Sorry Tebowmaniacs. Not even Elway believed in your guy. I guess the only thing to do is start praying for Him (or him) to strike Peyton down. Florida guys might be all right for schoolboy games, when there is money on the line you better get someone from Tennessee.

Here's the kicker. While Tebow has always been lauded for his work ethic and Christianity, its clear that his film study never approached the level that Manning attained. And while Tim was in the Philippines trying to convert a Catholic nation to Christianity, Peyton was giving millions so poor children could have medical care. You know, actually practicing Christ's teachings instead of looking for cameras in front of which he could kneel.

So you've got a better quarterback and better man in Denver. Tejus looks to be sent packing to some team that can either teach him to throw and put him him at tight end where he just might become a hall of famer, that is if he can ever learn to put his team's needs before his own.

Dividing the Body

When I was 15 I did something stupid.
Well, that’s a little like saying Stalin had an empathy problem. But I did one particular stupid thing that had the good fortune to be saved for posterity, should I ever wish to run for office. I was photographed giving the finger.
I still remember it. It was the homecoming parade my sophomore year and I was on the football player’s float when the photographer, a good friend, said something obnoxious and I responded. He was a photographer for the yearbook, and when the they came out at the beginning of the next school year, there I was, extending both my perfectly formed teeth and my perfectly formed bird to the viewer, looking dead into the camera.
I cannot imagine that word could have spread quicker. Say what you want about Twitter and Facebook, nothing spreads information as efficiently as a Catholic high school grapevine. If memory serves the annuals were handed out at lunch, the picture was pointed out to me by the end of the day and I was standing in the assistant principal’s office the next morning.
I haven’t thought about the incident in years. By the time we graduated, it had stopped being mentioned. I’m not sure my wife knows about it and I know my children don’t. I’m not particularly ashamed. I wish I hadn’t done it, but my kids will hear about it one day and I’ll try to teach them the lesson I learned from it. But the GOP race for president and the general direction Christianity has taken in this country have me thinking about it more often these days.
There is a harshness and divisiveness in the language that’s deeply unsettling. The New York Times reported yesterday that Bishops were attacking a group set up to support victims of clergy sex abuse.
William Donahue, president of Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights sums up the bishops’ position by saying “The bishops have come together collectively. I can’t give you the names, but there’s a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough. We don’t need altar boys.”
He went on the say the victims should be fought. Note the emphasis on the Catholic Church as the victim, as the one that needs defending. It’s worth nothing here that what the suits are about is boys were raped by priests with the knowledge of church officials reaching all the way to the current Pope. Those priests were not turned over to the authorities, but shuffled off to other parishes where they were free to rape again.
A mandate that insurance companies pay for contraception was met by the Bishops with the same type of rhetoric as Pearl Harbor. The idea, which would not require a single person to violate the church’s archaic and misogynistic ban on contraception, is framed as an attack on the church. What the church really wants is a ban on contraception, a ban that will take away the free will that is the basis of Christian theology.
We’ve seen politicians refused communion for not voting to ban abortion (though we’ve never seen the Bishops attack politicians who support torture, unjust wars, the death penalty or universal healthcare). A lesbian was denied communion at her mother’s funeral. The Church, which is supposed to be a unifying force, the body of Christ, is instead moving away from the tenants of Vatican II and becoming more and more of a divisive force. Somewhere along the line attacking the sinner has become the norm, or in the case of the church’s complicity in child rape, transferring the onus of the sin from the sinner to the sin’s victim has become church policy. One wonders what happened to the idea that we should love the sinners, even the abortionists, the Pill takers and violated alter boys. Somewhere along the line the hierarchy has decided Catholicism is more important that Catholics. It is what Andrew Sullivan calls Christianism.
Which is why I’ve been thinking about that picture lately. It’s not my only sin and it’s nowhere near my worst. I certainly didn’t put the thing in the yearbook. But nonetheless I found myself in Mr. Conway’s office, almost a year after it happened, listening to him explain how he’s not punishing me for the picture, but for the action itself; that he’d be handing out the same punishment if he saw me doing it across the room.
He told me how he had to take show the picture to our principal, Mrs. Gagne, a tiny, soft-spoken woman, whose utter lack of wrath made you fear her disappointment more than anything. He actually had to point to my finger because she didn’t catch the gesture at first glance. Then she had to do the same for the Bishop.
My punishment was to write a letter to the Bishop apologizing and explaining what I learned. I can’t remember a single thing I wrote and it doesn’t matter because the lesson wasn’t taught until after I finished the letter. I had to hand it to Mrs. Gagne. She took the letter and without reading it, she hugged me.
“We love you Michael.”
That was all she said. It brought me to tears and quite frankly I cry much easier now than I did then.
“We love you Michael.”
It remains the purest expression of Christianity I’ve ever witnessed. I had embarrassed the school (which had a great sense of it’s standing in the community), my family, my church and myself. The response?
“We love you Michael.”
I had spent a lot of time in Mr. Conway’s office up to that point, all of it involuntary. I cannot remember being called to his office again, though I made it point to stick my head in every once in a while to say hello. The forgiveness that was offered and which I so greedily absorbed had a profound effect on this sinner. Mrs. Gagne reminded me that no matter what I did, I was part of that school, part of that church, part of that body of Christ and that there is no sin that is so great that it can’t be redeemed by love.
And with that gesture I was no longer angry at the photographer who shot the picture, nor with the editor who put it in nor the yearbook sponsor who allowed it to go to press. I was no longer even angry with myself for being so stupid.
I suspect that Bishop Dolan and Bill Donahue would demand my head if they were to become aware of my transgressions. For them it’s about ideological purity. These are the men who want to purge the church of its sinners. When they are done, and they look around, who will be left? A Jewish Carpenter and his mother. And I wonder if that Mary will put her arms around Donahue and tell him, despite it all, that she loves him. I suspect she will. And then maybe they will learn what I learned. And they will be filled with relief, love and forgiveness.

The selfishness of Tebow

I don’t like Tim Tebow.
Right up front I should tell you that as a Tennessee native I naturally hate anything that’s come through Gainesville, from Spurrier to Erin Andrews to Lane Kiffin’s wife, but my distaste for Tebow goes beyond that. As Bill James once wrote of Hal Chase, there is something about him that shines through so false, yet looks so true to so many.
I should also confess I have a natural suspicion of those who wear their religion on their sleeves. I am a bad Catholic, but I take Matthew 6:1 seriously (or at least I hide behind it). But it’s not Tebow’s public displays that bother me per se, but the theology that lies behind them, a prosperity gospel the belies everything I was taught and believe.

This idea that Tebow’s success is a direct result of his piety is patently offensive. Many have pointed out the flip side of that position. If Tebow’s goodness is responsible for his success, then those he vanquished must be evil. The idea that God is punishing evil football players when there are so many doing evil in so many more important positions seems a waste of His time. And what are we to make of Tebow’s losses? Did he lust after a cheerleader?
Even more offensive is Tebow’s chip on his shoulder, when he should be carrying humility. This attitude isn’t uncommon among evangelicals. They always see themselves as under attack. Tebow hasn’t bothered to step forward to contradict his supporters when they lash out at his critics as heretics, as if a slow delivery without accuracy is sanctioned in the Gospels. Tebow himself, after breaking his vow not to do any commercials until he was the starter, stars in a commercial stating that no one thought he could get a scholarship, and no one expected him to play pro.
The problem with that is Tebow was one of the most sought after recruits of all time coming out of high school. He was the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy and no one believes he can’t make it in the NFL. It’s just that few who watch him believe he belongs at quarterback.
Tebow’s Christianity, Christianism Andrew Sullivan would call it, is utterly lacking in humility. He gives lip service to God, but he gives him no credit. Instead he claims it for himself, referencing how hard he will work, how much time he will log in the weight room, in film sessions, working on his mechanics. Tebow tells his he will become a great quarterback through a supreme act of the human will. He mouths platitudes about how “first and foremost I want to give credit to Jesus Christ,” but first and foremost he’s finding a camera. Otherwise he would have already given credit to Jesus before the interview began.
In doing so he’s denying God, as is every professional athlete who claims their success is due to their hard work. Hard work is required, of that there is no question, but there are is minimum amount of athleticism one must have to even get a chance. Tim Tebow is 6-foot-5, weighs 240 pounds and runs like a deer. That’s a gift from God, a gift he has worked hard to maximize, but he works no harder than my friend Ronnie Grable who was 5-foot-3, weighed 130 pounds and ran a 5.0 40-yard dash. Ronnie busted his ass every bit as much as Tebow does. But he didn’t get a single call from a college coach.
I don’t want to get into a deep discussion of x’s and o’s, but Tebow’s wins all have the same look. He plays poorly, the defense plays great, keeps Denver within a single possession of taking the lead and Tebow rides his athleticism and ability to make something out of broken plays to pull out a late win. It’s not a bad strategy. It was the one that Dan Reeves used with Elway. But I’ve never heard Tebow give any credit to the staff’s strategy of taking the game out of his hands, or completely gutting their offense for him.
In the end, Tebow’s ethos is selfish. His idol is himself. Football is a team game. It’s about sublimating your needs to the needs of the team. Was Tebow doing that when he was whining this summer when he was whining about not having the starting job handed to him? Is Tebow acting selflessly when he insists on playing a position where he is a liability rather than switching to one, say tight end, where he really can be great? When was the last time you saw him defer the postgame interview to Von Miller?
Tebow and his fans like to frame his life in terms of his religion, from his missionary work converting a population that is 90 percent Catholic to “Christianity,” to his success on the football field. But what the story is missing is the humility on which Christ’s teachings rest.

Two executions

James Byrd has been dead 13 years. Mark MacPhail has been dead for 22 years. Both men were murdered and their killers were executed last night. This morning, both men are still dead and justice remains out of reach.

It's a funny phrase: "were executed." It's passive voice. We don't say "the state of Texas executed Lawrence Brewer." A state is a abstract concept not capable of action on its own. We don't say "the people of Texas killed Lawrence Brewer," although we damn sure did, through our viciousness and apathy. And we don't say "Jailer X and Dr. Y, who administered the 'lethal cocktail' (quickly becoming my favorite cliche) killed him," because, after all, they were only following orders.

Of course, the world is no worse off for the loss of Lawrence Brewer, truly a piece of shit if there ever was one. He was a racist, coked up caracature of a man and a great danger to the general public. His death will draw none of the angst that Troy Davis' has. Unlike Davis, there is no doubt about Brewer's guilt. There is no question of a truly guilty murderer wondering the streets.

But if you are truly against the death penalty — and I mean against it because it is wrong, not because it's applied racistly, costs more money, doesn't deter crime and runs the risk of killing an innocent man — if you are against it because the state doesn't give life and thus has no right to take it, then you should be as outraged at Lawrence Brewer's death as you are at Troy Davis'.

Davis' case is easy. There was no physical evidence to tie him to MacPhail's murder. No murder weapon every surfaced, no DNA, no blood. Nothing. There were witnesses, nine in all who testified against Davis. He was convicted quickly and sentenced to death in seven hours. But seven of those witnesses recanted, some saying they were threatened by police with jail time of their own if they didn't identify Davis. Of the two remaining witnesses, one was supposedly overheard bragging about the murder.

It's easy to be outraged that the people of Georgia killed Troy Davis last night. His guilt remains in doubt and the system simply said, "innocence or guilt is irrelevant." Davis' is the kind of case death penalty opponent dream about.

But the death of Brewer is no less wrong. There is no justice for James Byrd. His wife and children don't want to see Brewer executed. Doing so doesn't bring Byrd back. And, worse, it implies equality between the two. This ultimately is why I think we are so adamant about the death penalty in this country. We cannot abide a tragedy in which no one is responsible. We cannot stand loose ends. So we tell ourselves that once we stick the needle in the murderer the books are cleared and we can pat ourselves on the back for doing so. In the meantime we're telling the world that the two lives are the same, they are interchangeable. And most importantly we are absolving ourselves from any guilt. If you wipe the slate clean there is no need to look and see if society failed to protect the victim before he was killed.

And after all, that is when it would have mattered. We should have cared more about James Byrd when he was alive.

Romo revisted

But first a note. Today starts my new policy of beginning each post with the phrase "live nude girls" to see if it spikes my page views. Sorry, no photos, but we will speak of the manly arts today.

Romo was remarkable yesterday, from what I can tell from the highlights and the media coverage. (I'd like to thank the NFL, Congress and the idiotic, unAmerican policy of blacking out the Cowboys in Houston). Broken ribs are tough and I think he took a small step forward. As I said last week, it's easy to like this guy and it's easy to see why his teammates like him and his performance will help in the locker room.

Will it help him with the fans? Who cares? Doesn't matter what you think, doesn't matter what I think. What matters is if its really a step forward and if Romo will learn that winning can be painful, but it's worth going through that pain. He gave a Meredith-esque performance yesterday. Let's see if he keeps it going.

Romo

There are two kinds of Cowboys fans. There are those who scream "How 'bout them Cowboys" seriously consider the notion that Johnson might have been a better coach than Landry and wear jerseys to games. These guys disappear when the going gets tough, whether its losing or the sale of the team to Jones.

Then there are those of us who were raised Cowboy fans the way people in Iran are raised Muslim. We rarely scream anything. We don't get excited when Dallas wins, because that's what's expected. We go crazy when they lose (remind me one day to tell the story of Earl Wright, no relation). I suppose all of us who feel this way were fans in Staubach era, or at least the White era.

And that segs us nicely into the current era. Tony Romo has been reaped all the benefits of the Cowboy quarterback, as pointed out in this piece on the utterly wretched website Grantland. (I'll be writing about this tomorrow). Romo has dated pretty and famous women. He's grown to great fame himself, garnering invites to celebrity events that no other athlete in Texas gets and getting covered by national media for his hobbies.

Romo even carries himself like a Cowboy quarterback. His poise, his easy smile and his charm are that of a man comfortable with his place on top of the mountain. But one must look at this particular mountain. This is Romo's sixth year as the starter. Only two other quarterbacks have started as many years. They are both in the Hall of Fame. They won five Super Bowls between them.

Romo often talks of his desire to be in the Staubach/Aikman class and does so with an attitude that leads me to infer that he sees himself as approaching that level, just needing a couple of breaks here and there to make it. But Romo's not in that league and he's not in the Meredith/White league. He's closer to Hogeboom than White, to tell you the truth.

Which brings us to last night. I think my class of Dallas fans (we'll call us Landry fans) learned their lesson from the White/Hogeboom debacle (and our parents likely learned it from the Morton/Staubach debacle before it). My biggest gripe about Romo has always been that he seems like he's trying to be a good guy, rather than a good quarterback. Whenever someone kills a drive by making a boneheaded mistake, Romo has this goofy grin, as if to say "it's okay, it's just a silly game. I'm still your buddy." No one who has seen the clip of Aikman telling his line the previous series was a "Goddamn embarrassment" can imagine that Romo's approach is paying off.

When Staubach retired, Tony Hill said he was enjoying Danny White, because White was one of the guys. Hill said the pickup basketball games at Staubach's house always found Roger and Drew on the same, an attitude that carried over to the field when Roger would always look for Drew in the clutch. When Hogeboom was pushing White, one of the factors in Gary's favor was he was the kind of guy who would go drink a beer with the team. White was aloof. Meredith, of course, would drink a beer with anybody, but Meredith's hauling his rotting carcass out of bed to even play was enough to stamp him as something apart from the normal human being.

Simply put, one cannot simply imagine Romo telling the huddle what Seth Maxwell does at the :35 mark of this clip. And one senses that this is exactly what this team has needed for about 10 years.

Of course there is more to being a leader than being an asshole at the right time. And Romo certainly commands the loyalty of his players as Dez Bryant demonstrated last night in a clip I cannot find at the moment. But Bryant's defense is an indictment. One cannot imagine Butch Johnson needing to defend Staubach. Think about it. It boggles the mind.

If Romo wants to be a great quarterback in Dallas he needs to first realize what the standard is. Two Super Bowls, minimum. He's not close and he's not progressing. Last night was just the latest example. The Johnson-era Cowboy fans have been calling for Romo's head for a couple of years. But that's not a thoughtful move. Who is going to replace him? McGee? Kitna? Favre? Dallas has to start looking at what comes after Romo and it needs to start looking quickly. Unless he changes something about his fundamental approach to the game, he will never win in Dallas.

I'm not sure what it means

I am strangely uncomfortable with the commemorations of the attacks on Washington and New York. I'm not sure exactly what it is we're supposed to commemorate. I watched on television as 4,000 people were murdered in an act of madness so obscene it took Letterman to add any perspective. I keep reading admonitions to "never forget" as if I could somehow forget what I saw that day and what I learned about human nature since.

As I write this, a man is singing the national anthem at the Chicago-Atlanta game, a rendition that will surely be described as "stirring" (it was). I muted the TV and turned up Springsteen's "The Rising." The giant American flag, crisp and bright against Soldier Fields pastoral green seems to me an attempt to sanitize what's happened, as America always sanitizes its history. What's missing are the shots of desperate people leaping from the towers, taking a chance (in my mind) that a wind gust or an awning will give them the miracle that never comes. Perhaps if Marvin Gaye was singing the anthem it would seem less sterile. Where are the images of the dead. It seems its okay that we remember them as a prop to our greatness, but to show the awful ugliness is too much.

My memories of 9/11 are blurred because I was working at a newspaper that was literally in the shadows of a massive petrochemical complex, a complex that, to this day, could easily be lit up by one loon with an RPG. What I remember most is coming home about 2 a.m. and turning on the BBC coverage. After 18 hours of hysterical American reporting in my ear all day the BBC was strangely reassuring. It made no attempt to minimize the horror and the evil of what happened, but there was a perspective lacking. The overall theme seemed to be "Welcome, America, to the real word. It's horrible that you had to arrive, but know that we are with you." (Tony Blair's presence in Congress days later as Bush spoke re-emphasized this feeling). Britain had been through this. It had survived. Despite the '93 attacks, despite McVeigh and Koresh (who were after all loony Americans, familiar to anyone in the South who has more six relatives), America and never quite admitted that it too was vulnerable to acts of madness.

But we didn't join the rest of world, even though it was so desperate for us to do so (can anyone forget Iranians singing our national anthem outside the embassy they had stormed just 20 years prior). We instead gave in to that ugly anti-intellectual emotional streak that pervades so much of our history. Terrorists killed more Americans in the last 10 years than they did Sept. 11. Are we going to mourn them today as well?

So I am not sure what to commemorate. Because a group of madmen executed an act of madness, we turned our back on what made us great. The government can now spy on its citizens without cause and without an easily obtainable warrant. Our president approved "methods of interrogation" that would trigger an invasion if another nation used them on our citizens. Some of those methods, in fact, led to the execution of perpetrators when used against our soldiers. We have tortured innocent men, and we have gained nothing from the guilty ones we tortured, but we have given up a part of our soul in the process. Perhaps emboldened by the law's inability to be applied to those in power, the governor of Texas gleefully executed a man who is surely innocent and is fighting to execute a man who might or might not be cleared by DNA tests which haven't been performed.

Our national debate coarsened over the past 10 years. A president with a resume that reads like a Horatio Alger story is vilified as an alien, a traitor and worse by a significant segment of our population, a segment that once held respect for the presidency as a sacred. A large portion of the House of Representatives believes compromise (on which this nation was built) is a sign of weakness. Political differences are no longer treated as political difference, but as heresy. Something that must be rooted out and destroyed.

Not all of this is a result of 9/11. Much of the coarsening took place long before. (No one could be uglier than the Clintons). Many have used 9/11 to justify a massive expansion of the government's power and reach.

So I'm not sure what to commemorate today. The lose of 4,000 lives grieves me, but it grieves me no more than the 5,000 or so who were lost avenging 9/11 in a place that had no connection. The loss of our civil liberties grieves me even more. In a sense, Bin Laden has won. He never posed, nor do his followers now pose, an existential threat to this nation. But he has forced us to turn on ourselves. He has convinced us to give up our sacred protections against the government, a government that is a far, far greater threat to our freedoms than anything Al Qaeda ever did.

As we cast this as a religious war, and make no mistake, the wars that we are fighting are, at this point, nothing but Crusades, how long before the religious strife turns inward. Once the warmongers lose the ability to convince us that Islam is a threat, how long before various Christian sects are excluded from the big tent (I'm looking at you Gov. Perry). I will pray today. I will pray for those who lost their lives and for their families. I will remain in awe, as I have always been, of the men who raced into Armageddon to save others. But I won't pray that God is on our side.

Ultimately, 9/11 isn't about this country. It's about the individuals such as the one pictured above (the picture accompanied Tom Junod's remarkable story in Esquire)

I will pray that we are on His.

Roger has stepped in it.

Joe Posnanski makes a good point about Roger Goodall looking the part, but being totally over his head during the NFL lockout.

For the newcomers, let's review.

The owners and players agreed to a deal in 2006. The owners decided they weren't making enough money and tore up the deal. The players said "open your books and prove your claims are true." The owners said "Kiss our collective asses." Then they locked the players out.

Now Goodall has written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that's the biggest load of shit this side of Jim Tressel.

"For many years, the collectively bargained system—which has given the players union enhanced free agency and capped the amount that owners spend on salaries—has worked enormously well for the NFL, for NFL players, and for NFL fans.

For players, the system allowed player compensation to skyrocket—pay and benefits doubled in the last 10 years alone. The system also offered players comparable economic opportunities throughout the league, from Green Bay and New Orleans to San Francisco and New York. In addition, it fostered conditions that allowed the NFL to expand by four teams, extending careers and creating jobs for hundreds of additional players.

For clubs and fans, the trade-off afforded each team a genuine opportunity to compete for the Super Bowl, greater cost certainty, and incentives to invest in the game. Those incentives translated into two dozen new and renovated stadiums and technological innovations such as the NFL Network and nfl.com."

So, I have one question Roger. If they collective bargaining deal was so great, why did the owners tear it up?

Lance Armstrong retires, hold on to your wallet

Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France Champion, and suspected PED user is calling it quits to his bike career. Armstrong, 39, was clearly done at last year's Tour where he finished just three spots ahead of two French kids riding their bikes to school. He's going to retire and raise more money for cancer, um, awareness I guess?

Armstrong says he wants to work with California lawmakers to create a cigarette tax to fund more research on cancer. He did similar work in Texas and we're going to be paying for it here for the next decade. In 2007 Armstrong shepherded a bill authorizing $3 billion in bonds to fund research here. As testimony showed, the money would do little to nothing to advance a cure. What it would do is allow Texas to pay higher salaries to researchers and attract them. That's right, the taxpayers of Texas are on the hook for $3 billion to increase the odds that a cure for cancer is found here. As if a cure found in California wouldn't be available everywhere. That's less than 10 percent of what the NCI alone spends each year. I can't find the numbers from CDI, states and other nations, but it's clear that Texas' $300 million a year is a drop in the bucket.

Now Armstrong is going to push his shell game to the Golden State. I guess we'll have a bidding war, but other than enriching the researchers, it's hard to see the benefit to cancer patients or their families. But Armstrong, who was a mediocre biker until he contracted a disease linked to PED's, has never been shy about pushing himself to the front. Whether it's dumping the wife who stood by him through his cancer, or dumping the fiance who contracted cancer herself, the Armstrong behind the headlines has never been worthy of the Armstrong the media created.

Armstrong will continue to push to keep his name out there. But it will be at the expense of the cause he claims to care about. Texas agreed to borrow the money before there was a $27 billion deficit. California's woes are already legendary. How much meaningless money will taxpayers want to spend while schools are being closed?

Wail of a tale

Anyone else sick of Yankee media ripping Dallas for the weather? Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN has been the worst of the bunch, though Bill Simmons has made a strong run at biggest whiner. Simmons even ripped Dallas for not having enough strippers. Of course, when the Super Bowl was in Houston, the best stripper town in America, the luckiest writer in the business didn't like that either.

Let me explain it to y'all. I'll type slowly so you can understand. Dallas gets three or four snows a year on average. We don't buy snow tires. We don't use chains and we don't salt the roads. Those things cost money and the snow will be gone in three days. What are we supposed to do with them the other 355 days of the year? I'm sorry you're stuck in your hotel, having to live off an obscene expense account while you write for four hours a week to promote the most over-hyped, overrated, corporate whoring convention in the world. But that is the career path you chose.

Let me explain the facts of life. We have a $27 billion budget deficit here. We don't get much snow or ice. When we do, we're perfectly content to stay home until it melts. We're not going to go spend a bunch of money on snow plows so the idiots who bought hotel rooms in Dallas can have an easy trip when they learn the game isn't being played in Dallas, or that the strippers are on the other side of town. We don't do winter here. We do summer. It starts about April 23rd and goes through Halloween. We're going to spend our money on freon. The next time I read about people dying in Boston because the temperature hits 90 and they don't have air conditioning, I'll try to stifle a laugh.

Meanwhile, real reporters are doing great work

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has slipped past the barricades and his tweets alone are quite moving. He's told us of an 80-year-old woman prepared to sleep in Tahrir Square. The Great Christiane Amanpour has interviewed Mubarak.

Meanwhile, Anderson tells his van got attacked again and as I write this CNN is reporting on Charlie Sheen. But Anderson also tells us everything is okay. Might be time for him to take a step back and look beyond himself.

Where is Buzz Bissinger when you need him?

Anderson Cooper is an idiot

CNN's top throat got beat up yesterday. No word on whether the blows to his face will cost him his job, but if they don't heal, Cooper certainly doesn't have any journalistic acumen to rely on. His beating brings journalism's main problem to the fore.

Cooper might or might not be a good anchor. I don't watch television news unless there is something live happening, because I can read. Thanks to the Internet, I've been watching Al-Jazeera's outstanding coverage of Egypt. Cooper's trip to Egypt isn't unusual. Rather, Brokaw and the boys were all at Tienanmen Square and we all remember Bernard Shaw's wonderful reporting from Baghdad when the first Gulf War started.

But all those men had extensive experience reporting. Not just reporting, but reporting from war zones. Cooper is a news reader. His performance in New Orleans during Katrina showed how bad he is at collecting information. And reporting a hurricane is fairly simple. Reporting a revolution from the ground, I would guess, is next to impossible. There would be nothing wrong with Cooper sitting above it all and bringing all the reports together. It's not something he can do from the middle of a riot.

The reason Al-Jazeera is killing CNN is they have people on the ground. CNN seems to have three reporting teams there. Al-Jazeera is everywhere. CNN has a talking head (a throat in print speak). AJ has a team of hardened reporters. And this begs the point. Cooper is making $7 million a year. He's grossly overpaid. What if CNN paid him $2 million a year and used that other $5 million to hire 25 more reporters. I'm guessing on the market value, but for six figures and a good benefits package, I'd take the job. We'd all be better off and poor Anderson wouldn't have to risk having his only asset smacked with a stick.

Live blogging the SOTU

10:20 Wrap up:

Good speech. Not on the level of his Philadelphia speech, but a solid effort that sets the stage for the months to come. It will be interesting to see what the GOP says about the investment. The problem with all our overspending the last 30 years is that most of it's been wasted. The roads, the bridges the rails have been falling apart.

I’m not all that thrilled by cuts in discretionary domestic spending, but Obama met the GOP on that one, but the pointed out that’s just 12 percent of the budget and will not get us anywhere near the goal.

Obama did not go into detail, but he did offer specific plans. Most importantly, he endorsed the debt commission's approach. The GOP cannot get away with shouting from the rooftops that things need to be cut, but fail to offer any specifics or offer the Ryan plan that will balance the budget by 2069. Obama is following the same model he did with health care. He's setting the target. How we hit that target is going to be up to Congress.

Will the GOP take that bait? They can either rise to the challenge and genuinely work with him to reach these goals, or they will refuse to work with him. If they choose the former, they're going to have a hard time running against Obama in two years. How can they do that if they've worked with him? If they choose the later then they are going to have to explain why they've pissed away another two years, when they had one house. Will voters continue to support a party that offers nothing but criticism?

Obama's approach of leaving the detail work to others has several advantages. One is that it gets everyone involved. The door is open for the GOP, just as it was for health care. If they refuse to walk through the door this time, they are going to have to explain it. The other advantage is that Obama maintains his leverage. By setting the target he becomes the parent. If things bog down he can step in if the opportunity is there. If not, the blame doesn't fall on him.

Bachmann gave him a huge boost. She offered nothing but cheerleading, a word I choose after giving careful though to the potential for sexist connotation. But Bachmann’s speech was nothing but “Yay America, Boo Obama.” She can’t even do basic math. She pointed out that Obama promised (he actually predicted, but let’s not get bogged down in facts, right Michelle?) unemployment would be capped at 8 percent by the stimulus. Then she claims that Obama said unemployment would actually go down from 2006 levels. Which is it?

Bachmann simply isn’t serious about governing, and neither is the tea party. Obama on the other hand has made the necessary pivot from staving off economic collapse to dealing with the issues that he ran for, namely the deficit. Tonight’s endorsement of the debt commission’s approach and his reach across the aisle on tort reform and spending freezes is a good start.

9:57 We had 110,000 Marines on Iwo. The Japanese had 23,000. Against all odds?

9:55 Did you know that Iwo Jima was a battle Americans won against all odds? Do these people have the first freaking clue about history? Are you kidding me?

9:54 Michelle Bachmann, who can't take her eyes off the teleprompter believes in American exceptionalism. So does Obama.

9:53 How is medical malpractice reform a free market solution?

9:51 Obama's added less to the deficit than Bush. She did say that Bush's spending was unacceptable. Don't recall her saying that at the time. I could be wrong. Continues to repeat the lie about health care reform increasing the deficit. Cap and trade? Isn't that dead?

9:49 Bachmann starts. Deficit was 10.6 trillion. How much lower would unemployment be without the stimulus? She doesn't mention that. Then she says Obama promised lower unemployment after saying he promised 8 percent. Which is it?

9:38 Thank God. A poll. I was worried we'd have to wait. CBS isn't running Bachmann.

9:36 Ryan is saying we want to work with the president. But he's pointing out that the GOP has cut the House budget is restoring "spending discipline" to the way it was in 2006. Great, more Bush spending. Ryan is doing a good job of explaining why the debt is a problem and framing it as a children's issue "no one person or party is to blame. Then goes right on attacking Obama on spending increases during a recession.

Ryan is blaming healthcare costs on a law that hasn't taken effect yet. Saying people are losing coverage under a plan that mandates coverage. Now I'm waiting to see what the GOP plan is to reduce health care costs and insure the uninsured. Nope he just repeats the lie that health care reform will increase the deficit. He ignores the fact that repeal will add to the deficit. Ryan offers no specifics whatsoever. So far, more of the same from the GOP.

Ryan: "We need to chart a new course." That's conservative? Is he promising that we won't have to impose painful austerity measures? He's calling for us to avoid the fate of Greece. How exactly can we avoid tax increases and painful austerity measures. He also bemoans the actions that broke our economy, just minutes after bemoaning the fixes that were required.

Now Bachmann. This should be fun.

9.18 SHELIA JUST GOT TOTALLY DISSED!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

9:15 I love Bob Schieffer and he's the reason why I'm on CBS. But he's gone a little soft on the reconciliation.

9:14 Before I forget. Shelia Jackson-Lee is a aisle hog and a camera whore (hat tip to Banjo Jones) and I love it that Obama blew her off on the way in. Now if he would just slap her on the way out, he'll lock up my vote. Katie Couric is calling him Reaganesque, that will be tomorrow's blog. Beaumont folks need to know that Ted Poe is kissing up to the president. Jeff Greenwald is saying Reagan was non-partisan. More on that in tomorrow's post as well.

9:13 "The state of our union is strong." Love it, from a style standpoint that he held that to the end.

9:07 "It will be harder, because we will argue about everything." Let's face it, we don't want to hear that. But he turns it into a national strength, which it should be, of course, then panders to American exceptionalism for some cheap applause. "We all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution." He is arguing that we all agree on the goals, just differ on the means. I'm not sure that's true anymore. (Boehner is about to cry). If we haven't crossed the Rubicon, there is a large faction of the body politic looking for a place to ford.

9:04 We stand with Tunisia and support hopes of democracy from all people. Egypt? Egypt? Anyone? Egypt?

8:59 Respect for the rule of law might carry more weight if he would not attempt to assassinate U.S. citizens with no judicial or congressional check. And actually use our Constitution to fight terror instead of trying to get around it.

8:56 Wants meetings with lobbyists on line. I'm laughing my ass off. Everyone in that room just shat themselves.

8:47 The debt. Deficit is "not sustainable." Freeze domestic spending for next five years. Gets a bogey clap. Reduction of 400 billion and lowers deficit to Ike levels in relation to GDP. Cuts to community action programs. 10s of billions in spending from defense. "I'm willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without. Let's make sure we're not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens." Decries any plan to cut deficit by cutting investments in education and innovation. Admits cuts are in 12 percent of our budget and here we go. "We have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending will be enough. It won't."

He just put the GOP in the corner. He has endorsed the methods of the debt commission and points out that repealing health care will add $250 million (or billion missed that). He is taking the first step across the aisle by offering to work on tort reform.

The GOP simply cannot brand him a tax and spender in response to this. He is willing to cut. But he also says it's more important to educate our kids than to give millionaires tax breaks. How, exactly, is one going to argue against this? He again comes back to tax code reform. This is the candidate who ran for president, who befuddled Hillary and destroyed McCain. Government must be more affordable and efficient. He's now listing inefficiencies in government, giving salmon as an example. Pretty good line.

8:44 So Boehner doesn't clap when the president talks about preventing insurance companies from exploiting patients. Is he pro-patient exploitation? Can't wait for Jon Stewart's take on this.

8:41 Tax code reform. Yes! He's calling for a simplified system that will lower the corporate rate without adding to deficit. Again, no specifics.

8:37 Immigration. Willing to take it on after a call for allowing children raised to be safe from deportation and pointing out it's idiotic to educate foreign students then kick them out to compete against us. But again, I have to point out there are no specifics. This is along the same lines as health care. He's setting the goal and leaving the means to reach that goal open.

Now he's on to infrastructure. This is an issue on which the GOP is vulnerable if it gets pressed. Private firms aren't going to build the new rail and new roads that we need.

8:31 Interesting note about Race to the Top. Texas is one of the 10 states that refused the money, citing the strings that would be attached. The strings, of course, are higher achievement standards. At least one school board and superintendent in my area asked that they be allowed to compete. Their explained to their (Republican) reps that they had no problem meeting the standards. They felt that they should have the option to go after the money, and that doing so would be consistent with Republican rhetoric about local control. They were turned down cold. There was no interest in leveraging federal money to help schools in Texas, even when it cost nothing because of the fear that it would help the other side. That it would help the children and the state was irrelevant.

8:29 Talking about importance of education. Wonder if Perry is listening? Points out that families and communities are responsible for their children's education. Gets standing O on science fair line. Wonder if those are the same folks ripping him for being an Ivy League elitist? No specific proposals at this point.

8:27 Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. Calls for ending subsidies to oil companies. Got claps from the audience. Not sure they meant it. But that's one point for a specific proposal. Or semi-specific anyway.

8:24 "This is our sputnik moment." Calls for investments in things we desperately need. But no word on how we pay for them while heeding his call to reign in the deficit.

8:23 Nice golf clap. GOP seems to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think they like what they hear so far, and that scares them.

8:16 America is a "light to the world." So much for the lie that Obama rejects American exceptionalism.

Indications are the president will call for a five year freeze on discretionary spending. I don't see how that is possible with the infrastructure challenges that are facing us unless we're going to seriously rethink our military presence in the world.

He's starting out where he left off in Tuscon. I'm waiting to find out what's going to happen with the deficit. I'm hoping he'll take the commission's recommendations as a starting point. Let's see, shall we?

Boomer bust

It might help to read William Strauss and Neil Howe's book Generations: The History of America's Future, but it takes a while, so slog on.

Our political discourse is uglier than it has been in my memory (which stretches back to Watergate as a young lad). I don't know why it's popped up in the blogsphere today, but here is Glenn Beck's exhortation for the tea baggers to shoot in the head, anyone with whom they disagree because they are the enemy and trying to destroy this nation. Of course Palin claims that liberals are trying to bring this country to its knees.

So what the fuck is happening here? How did we get so far apart? Growing up in a Goldwater household I always thought that liberals were folks who wanted this country to be great, but were silly and ignorant about how to make it happen. I never realized they were bent on the destruction of everything we hold dear.

But now, I'm not so sure. Not about liberals, but about what Andrew Sullivan defines as the Christianist right. You have to ask yourself, which party has decided it's okay for the president to do as he damn well pleases, regardless of constitutional checks? Which party has run on a platform of imminent danger to this nation? Which party has decided it's okay to spy on citizens without a warrant? Which party has decided it's okay to torture? And most importantly, which party automatically vilifies as weak, dumb and un-American, anyone who dares oppose those positions.

But this isn't a left/right issue. The left is just as immobile, if not as dangerous at the moment. This is a generational thing. With credit to Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, let me explain. The boomers are an idealistic generation (much as FDR's generation, or Ben Franklin's generation was). Fueled by the type of religious awakening that occurs every 80 years or so in this country, they have come of age believe with religious fervor that they are right.

When we 13 genners were coming up (GenX is a term hung on us by a boomer that we learned to despise 25 years ago) we thought of our parents' generation as a bunch of hippies, weird, but harmless. Well, not harmless, but well meaning. They had Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. We got AIDS, crack and Madonna. We resigned ourselves early to cleaning up their mess. But we assumed the Boomers' dominant trait was a leftist outlook toward politics and society. That turned out to be a crucial mistake.

Boomers dominant trait (other than group narcissism) is idealism. They simply take it as an article of faith that they are correct. This explains the how rise in fundamentalism that started in religion 25 years ago has spilled over into politics, as Sullivan so eloquently explains. And if you believe you are right based on faith (and from Todd Willingham to global warming to levitating the Pentagon, we've seen Boomers constantly ignore empirical evidence in favor of what feels right), then any disagreement isn't opposition, it's heresy and must be destroyed.

So it doesn't matter if death panels or a lie or not. It doesn't matter that there is no government takeover of healthcare. It doesn't matter that they impeached a president for lying about a blow job. "We're right Goddamnit, it doesn't matter if we lie to save they country from evil."

Boomers cannot compromise. Look at health care. You've seen the extreme right and the extreme left go absolutely batshit over the bill that came out. Have you seen any room for compromise? Here in Texas, look at Voter ID, which the state senate is debating today. Every senator has seen the estimates of zero impact on turnout for either party, but it's a matter of life and death for both sides.

I think we are going to see something different tonight. President Obama is on the cusp of the Boomer/13Gen divide. In temperament he is certainly one of us. If you step back and look at what he's done, not what its said he's done, he's shown the ability to compromise over and over. He's been painted as a hardcore liberal (or sellout) by people who simply cannot understand any narrative but the one that's been going on for 40 years. The boomers got control of the media early and they continue to hold it. Obama isn't one of them. He understands the Boomers, but they don't understand him. And that's why I think he'll prevail in the end. That's why I think Gary Johnson is the GOP's best hope.

The Boomers are too old to change, and — as Strauss and Howe point out — they don't have the numbers every one assumes. They have become monolithic and predictable. Flexibility and pragmatism will always win that battle. We got a president long before anyone thought we would. That doesn't mean we won't bear the brunt of whatever cuts and reforms are necessary to fix things, just as The Lost Generation went and voted for medicaid and medicare even though they would never get it. It certainly doesn't mean the Boomers won't overtake the so-called Greatest Generation in enriching themselves off the public teat. But it does mean that doctrinaire solutions that place more value on orthodoxy than effectiveness will lose out to things that really work.

And we can go on to the next crisis.

Texas' war on science has a victim

Cameron Todd Willingham is dead and I doubt anybody misses him much. He was, by all accounts, a genuine piece of shit who beat his wife, ran around, used drugs and got tatted up. If Willingham had been shot in the street, it’s likely his assailant would have gotten off on the old Texas defense of “he needed shootin’.”

But Todd Willingham wasn’t killed by somebody in street. The State of Texas killed him, despite having no significant evidence he was guilty. In fact there is no significant evidence that a crime even occurred.

The short version is this. Willingham’s three children died Dec. 23, 1991 in a house fire at the Corsicana home he shared with them and his wife. A jury convicted him of killing them by arson based on testimony from the fire inspector — who had little formal training — that there was evidence of accelerants present and a burn trail that followed the path Willingham took out the door.

Prior to his execution numerous arson specialists, men with PhD’s who had actually done experiments, came forward and said there was no evidence of accelerants, no evidence, even, of arson. But the appeals court and our fine governors have all ignored the science and Willingham lies buried far from his children, his last wish — to have been buried next to them — denied by an ex-wife who first defended him, then claimed he confessed.

For the best account of the case, read David Grann’s piece in the New Yorker. I’m not here to debate guilt or innocence of Willingham. There is a darker force at work than just a bad verdict. Even after the New Yorker police brought the science to national attention, folks worked diligently to suppress it. Our fine governor applied a little extra mousse to his coif and pronounced Willingham a monster, as if he’d ever met the man. Then Governor Fonzerelli fired the head of the commission appointed to investigate forensic science in order to push back hearings till after the election, as though the news that Bush killed an innocent man would impact Fonzie’s re-election chances. Or surprise anyone. The commission did meet, the man sent to defend the science was a lawyer, a sure sign that you haven't a leg on which to stand. (
Correction. Willingham was executed in 2004, under Perry's governorship).

Now I’m against the death penalty. Forget all the arguments about how it fails to deter and is more expensive than life in prison and is racistly applied. Bottom line is this: State doesn’t give life. State shouldn’t take it.

But Willingham shouldn’t threaten death penalty supporters. Because the biggest threat to the death penalty in Texas isn’t my view. There are only about six of us in the state against the thing and we ain’t casting our votes on it. The biggest threat, the only threat is if the state executes innocent people, then turns around and says, so fucking what?

No, the darker side to this is the rejection of science. Texans, when confronted with a conflict between what we know and what the evidence shows, have long disregarded the evidence. When faced with 7,000 professional soldiers in San Antonio, the 187 volunteers said, “Fuck it. We can take them.” Faced with the chance to fill state coffers at the expense of 49 other states by taxing all oil that crosses the Sabine, Red or Rio Grande, Texans said, “Fuck it, we don’t need the money.”

And faced with evidence that what had traditionally been regarded as signs of arson, was in fact evidence of a flashover, evidence that had been demonstrated in actual fires designed to test the science, the state of Texas and most Texans said, “Fuck it.”

It was painful to watch the Frontline piece on Willingham. The investigators convicted him immediately. The lead investigator decided he was a loser. Who gives a shit what happens to a loser? They could tell he was guilty by the way he acted. Guilty, not of being a damn coward who let his children burn, but of setting the fire. So anything that didn’t fit with that theory was rejected. The prosecutor followed suit. Even his defense attorney piled on. It’s a sorry Cover Your Ass spectacle by all involved.

And where does that leave us? It leaves us with two public Tier One universities when California has nine. It leaves us with a woefully underfunded public school system that faces $5 billion more in cuts this session because lawmakers, evidently products of that failed system, couldn't do basic math when they were designing a new tax system and ignored those who could add and subtract. It leaves us with a school board that believes the earth is 6,000 years old and that brown people had no impact on the history of this state or this nation. It leaves us with a Legislature that thinks dropping Medicare might be a good idea.

We, as a state and as a people simply reject whatever facts don’t fit our prejudices. If we don’t learn to respect science and to respect intelligence, it’s not just Todd Willingham that will get tossed into an early grave. It’s the future of the state of Texas.

Trouble for Lance Armstrong

Sports Illustrated will hit the stands Wednesday with an investigative piece on Lance Armstrong and it doesn't look good for the 7-time Tour de France winner.

Armstrong has steadfastly denied any doping, but blood samples and witness testimony have contradicted his claims. He's the subject of a grand jury investigation looking into whether the $31 million he took from the Post Office was fraud. If they find he was doping, he's in big, big trouble.

My feeling on Armstrong is this: He was a middle of the packer. Then he got a disease that is caused by PED use. Then he was the best in the world. Too much smoke. He's also basically argued his it's not in his character to cheat. I'm guessing his first wife and Sheryl Crow might disagree with that.