The Republic is Saved!

Ladies Night is constitutional!

It's closing time for a lawsuit alleging ladies' nights at nightclubs discriminate against men. Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum tossed the lawsuit out of federal court in Manhattan on Monday. She said nightclubs can price their products as they wish because they're not acting as representatives of the state.

The lawsuit was brought by attorney Roy Den Hollander, who has crusaded against feminism and recently sued a university over its women's studies program.

Hollander said ladies' nights at Manhattan nightclubs discriminate against men by offering women free or discounted admission and drinks. He tried to link the state to the discounts because it licenses the sale of alcohol at nightclubs.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would a guy have a problem with ladies' night? It's been a long time since I did the club scene, but aren't beneficiaries of ladies' night the men who go to these clubs to meet all these young ladies who are there to enjoy the free or discounted refreshment?

Everything must go

For sale - one fleece blanket.



Sweetheart deal! Our stadium is closing. (No, not that one. Shea. The Jets played there for while, too, you know! And the Beatles.) Must give away at once, heartbroken, but our loss is your gain! (Especially Philly and Milwaukee.)

Please keep out of direct sunlight - fades easily. Not recommended for use in the bullpen, as it will go up in flames. After September 10th, comes apart at the seams.

Interested? Call 555-Mstr-Met. Will pay all shipping costs ourselves.

Pennants & Bracelets

Thanks to the Yankees, the Rays clinched the AL East around midnight.

I was getting a little nervous after they lost to the Tigers again. I was having flashbacks of the 1964 Phillies ("Is that Sonnenstine on the mound, or Bunning?"). Of course, you Mets fans don't have to remember that far back.

Their series vs. the Chisox or Twinkies doesn't start until Thursday, so they can set up a playoff pitching rotation.

Here's a highlight from the debate:

See Barry with his flag lapel and his bracelet. See Barry having to read the name of the deceased soldier off his bracelet because he probably put it on ten minutes before the debate started.

You can kiss the GI vote goodbye, Barry.

The McCain campaign is already writing the ad for this one.

Decisions, Decisions

The Presidential Debate is @ 9pm tonight, which will be around the seventh inning of the Rays' pennant-clinching game.

I won't be watching the debate on NBC. The sight of Keith Olbermann makes me physically ill. This is why I don't watch the Sunday night pregame football show or halftime.

Come to think of it, do I watch anything on NBC?

Terrorist Hot Dogs...

...at the Phils home park.

The discovery of several hot dogs in packages outside Citizens Bank Park brought the bomb squad out and forced the temporary evacuation of the stadium Wednesday evening.

According to police, Pattison Street between Darien and 11th Streets was shutdown as officials investigated the discovery of several suspicious packages near a ticket office. Fans inside the stadium were evacuated, but players remained on the field during the incident.

Bomb squad members further investigated the packages and determined they were simply several hot dogs in foil wrappers. Sadly, the wieners were detonated as a precaution.

Once at the old Veterans Stadium I caused an evacuation of my section after eating hotdogs washed down with Ortlieb's.

Another Multi -Million Dollar Corporation..

...in need of a bailout.

But now the Mets are petitioning the federal government for funds to hire relief pitchers. "If we collapse and don't make the playoffs again, thousands of hearts will be broken. Think of the children" said one Mets front office executive. "Think of the seniors who've been waiting over twenty years for us to win the World Series."

Other sources say the team not making the playoffs would affect local vendors as well. "When there's no game I don't make any money," said a man who identified himself as Tony and runs a parking lot near the stadium. Local sandwich makers said that perhaps a ton of pastrami would rot in area delicatessens without playoff games to boost sales.

The Mets salary this year is $137,793,376. In comparison, the first place Phillies have a mere $98,269,880 yearly salary. These stunning numbers have led many experts to argue that the Mets are just too big to fail. "If the Mets don't make the playoffs, the damage to New York would be so grisly that I can't even discuss it. In the end, the entire country would be hurt."

Wife-beating, coke-snorting...

...athiest, cat-killing Mets.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Prosecutors say former baseball player and actor Joseph Petcka beat, stomped and kicked a cat to death in a jealous and drunken fury after complaining that his girlfriend loved the feline more than she loved him.
...
Petcka, who pitched in the New York Mets' minor-league system in 1992. ... claimed he unintentionally killed the declawed cat on March 27, 2007, while defending himself from it.

Bastard. What can a declawed cat do? Bite, maybe, but cats primarily use their claws in any confrontation - and we're not talking about a 100 pound dog or something. The largest breeds may reach twenty pounds. That's why a cat will usually retreat or hide, especially after coming off poorly in any initial meeting. Petcka would have had to follow the cat to wherever it tried to hole up, then drag it out and stomp on it to inflict all the injuries listed in the initial story.

This joker would have fit right in with the Dallas Green Mets - bleach squirters, firecracker tossers, and generally surly.

The trial took only four days. Hopefully I can update soon with news that this clown is going to the pokey.

What Dreams May Come...

...when you eat cheap hot dogs and fall asleep while watching the Rays on TV.

Last night I dreamt that I met the actress Jennifer Aniston at a Rays game. Except that the me in the dream didn't know that it was her. Someone had to tell me.

Jennifer and I became pals. I even went with her to her church.

In reality, Jennifer Aniston is pushing forty in an industry that worships youth and beauty. Any time spent in the grocery checkout will tell you about the misfortune she has had in her personal life.

This morning I prayed for her, that she would have a good church to go to and a friend to go with her.

Even if that friend is not me.

Burger King & Shakespeare

I went to Burger King for a pre-church breakfast Sunday, and I couldn't help but notice that they served a small sandwich called the Hamlette (a ham omelette sandwich I guess).

I mentioned this to the girl behind the counter, and then I said,

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more;
and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache
and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd.

By this time the girl behind the counter was looking at me like I had a third eye.

We are the Droogs we've been waiting for

Genius, thy name is Iowahawk.

The Rays Republic

The Rays clinch their first playoff spot.

"Pinch me," read the sign behind the third-base dugout.

Few words could better describe the feelings of Rays fans, who saw their team bust out from the basement in 2008 and make the playoffs for the first time in franchise history after never winning more than 70 games in a season, which they did one time during a fourth-place campaign in 2004.

Tropicana Field had a soul Saturday afternoon, and every time one of Joe Maddon's Mohawk militia did something right, the echoes of the sellout crowd of 36,048 responded with raucous cheers. And there were plenty of cheers, because the Rays did plenty right in a 7-2 win over the Twins that served as the turnkey to enter the postseason party.

There is no earthly explanation for the Ray’s fortune. Their stats reveal no Big Papis, no A-Rods or Jeters. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we believe.

A lot of the players are sporting Mohawks for the playoff run (Should I get one?). The next step is to win the Al East. The Rays are 2.5 games up with 9 games to go. They won the season series, so a tie would go to the Rays.

After that is to gain the best record in the AL. We are two games behind the Angels. The good news is that, after one last game @ home vs. The Twins, we end the season playing two stiffs, 4 @. Baltimore and 4 @ Detroit.

Of course the final goal is to beat the Mets in the World Series.

The Polls You Don't See

Political campaigns take internal polls which are not seen by you and I. But you can tell what those polls say by the actions of the campaigns.

Things must look bad for Obama in Ohio because this is an act of desperation.

With the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees in the Mahoning Valley today for a rally, two local Democratic state legislators said they believe a main reason polls show a tight race is because of racist voters.

“Race — that’s the only reason people in the Valley won’t vote for him,” said state Rep. Thomas Letson of Warren, D-64th, about Barack Obama, his party’s presidential nominee. “There are 1,000 reasons to vote for Obama and one reason why you won’t — race.”

“Staunch Republicans” who make up 35 percent to 40 percent of the population would never vote for a Democrat regardless of race, Letson said.

It is the independents, the “swing voters” and Democrats who are or will support Republican John McCain who are the “racists,” Letson and state Rep. Robert F. Hagan of Youngstown, D-60th, said.

I also must question the effectiveness. I would not respond favorably to this, but I would see it for what it is, political hacks trying to mau-mau me.

These people also don't care about the long term damage they are doing. Can you say "Cry wolf"?

I haven't taken Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson seriously since I quit drinking and started taking Jesus seriously. How many legitimate concerns of the black community fall on deaf ears because these two clowns and others like them have zero credibility?

I hope Obama doesn't pull this stuff here in Florida. I really respond poorly to this.

Not a good week at work for some families

During the last two minutes of the Denver/San Diego game this past Sunday, Jay Culter fumbled inside the Chargers' 10-yard line... only referee Ed Hochuili had blown his whistle and ruled it a misfired pass.

Replay, of course, showed that the ball simply squirted out of Cutler's hand before he was bringing it forward. But notably, this was the first time that Hochuili saw the play the way all of America saw it, from the side. At his angle, behind Cutler, and full speed, it would have been much tougher to notice.

Hochuili's hands were tied. The rules don't let you overturn that particular play on review. Denver, which was trailing with no timeouts, would have lost with a correct ruling, but they went on to score and win. The NFL announced publicly that they were downgrading Hochuili's status -a surprising rebuke for one of the most respected game officials in sports today.

I bring all of this up only because I happened across Baylor/UConn's football game tonight. With about ten minutes left, Baylor led 28-24, and their quarterback dropped into his own endzone and was dragged down, desperately trying to stretch the ball back across the goal line. The ruling on the field (which stood after review) was that he managed to succeed - no safety. Instead of a 2-point margin and a free kick coming their way, UConn had to defend another play, albeit from the 3-inch line.

The replay seemed to indicate to me that the QB's knee was down with the ball still in the end zone, but alas, not clearly conclusive. And the official in the end zone who made the initial call? Back judge Shawn Hochuili - Ed's son. (You can't make this stuff up.)

Right now there are four minutes left, and the younger Hochuili seems to be off the hook: after forcing the punt, UConn drove to score, aided by two Baylor penalties. The first came on the punt return, for running into the man trying to field the punt before it got there - but it was one of the UConn players who did it. (Yeah, not the best night for the officiating, but the crew is from three different conferences.) Baylor added a third penalty after the touchdown (late hit), and has committed another one on their current drive.

Oh, and the Mets won. They're in first place with a game in hand, nine games to play, and the Brew Crew continued to dissolve like a sandcastle at high tide, so the wild card lead is 2.5 games.

(update - 54 seconds left, Baylor just stalled out at midfield. UConn will win, barring a Pisarcik-sized brain fart. The star was the running back, Donald Brown - 34 carries, 150 yards, two scores (including the winning touchdown). He's from Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Rutgers REALLY misses Ray Rice.)

I Can Run For President...

...at least that's what the judge says.

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to remove John McCain from the California ballot because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled late Tuesday that the law at the time of McCain's birth automatically granted citizenship to offspring of U.S. citizens.

McCain's parents were both citizens when McCain was born Aug. 29, 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone, a U.S. territory where his father was stationed with the U.S. Navy.

Okay, it's about McCain, but I was born under the same circumstances in the US Army Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Run for president? Me? The opposition research on me would be a target-rich environment.

Interviews would be a disaster, "Cut the Pferdkaese, Couric. You hate my guts and your head is so far up Obama's orifice that you need a flashlight. Next question."

I would lose, but I would have fun doing it.

Love and Baseball (update)

Pastor H told me Mrs H loved the game.

And what was there not to love? The Rays won, drunk Bosox fans got arrested, and the Rays won the season series vs Boston and were two games up with twelve to go.

Pastor told me that he's going to take Mrs H to a Rays playoff game.

Heck, if we were Episcopalian I'd marry him!

Tell me again, who's mentally inferior?

I'm going to start with a language alert for the links below. Rachel Lucas and the Ace of Spades have been loading up with both barrels lately. But when you read the accounts, I'm not sure that you would blame them.

Starting here... there's the breathtakingly shallow, cruel, and self-serving opinion of one Nicholas Provenza -

Like many, I am troubled by the implications of Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome. Given that Palin's decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.

Notice how people like this are always "troubled by the implications," and it's ALWAYS about other people's actions. None of these jokers get troubled by the implications of what they do or say. Now, I'm not talking about making a mistake, because that's everybody - I'm talking about making a mistake, and being so emotionally involved in the mistake that one begins first to excuse it, and then to defend it, and finally to promote it. Every step escalates not only the original error, but leads one to new and worse errors, all taken (and justified) as necessary - even admirable! - in order to prove the point of the first mistake.

Why not just admit the first error and move along, happy? For all we hear of "it's the journey, not the destination," lots of people seem to be stuck in neutral, or worse.

That error, by the way, is in "reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus." It's already been confirmed that doing so is evil. There's your morality question, easily answered.

...it is completely legitimate for a woman to look at the circumstances of her life and decide that having a child with Down syndrome (or any child for that matter) is not an obligation that she can accept. After all, the choice to have a child is a profoundly selfish choice; that is, a choice that is an expression of the parent's personal desire to create new life.

And this is the end result of trying to defend that initial error. It eventually turns one inside out, mentally - freedom is slavery, war is peace, and parenthood is selfish. To bring new life into the world, and to dedicate oneself to its service, is selfish. How dare you sacrifice your own prime years of life and all that time and money on somebody else! You thought it was noble to accept the grave responsibility of feeding, clothing, educating, civilizing, and above all unconditionally loving a creature who is at turns helpless, demanding, petulant, resentful, rebellious, and ultimately not even answerable to you in any way! Selfish bastards.

And most parents seek to create healthy life; in the case of the unborn fetuses shown to have severe developmental disabilities, one study reports that over 90% of these fetuses are aborted prior to birth. But if you notice, the anti-abortion zealots try to attach a dirty little slur to these abortions, labeling them a form of eugenics.

The Spider is fond of quoting the old saying, "Sin makes you stupid," and this is yet another example. Yes, Nicholas, this IS eugenics. That's what the word "eugenics" means. Aborting developmentally challenged fetuses is merely a means to achieve the ends of eugenics. Incidentally, so is demanding that others murder their own children in order to satisfy's one standards of racial purity.

Incidentally, that blends smoothly with the item that doubled my blood pressure: "Saving Bristol":

These are not empty words. I, Doug Stanhope, am offering you, Bristol Palin, the sum of 25,000 dollars so that you can abort your child and move out of that draconian home.

Yup - if you can't convince the mom to abort, convince her daughter. Mr. Stanhope (hereafter referred to by his initials, "scum-sucking lesion on the buttocks of humanity") is a D-list comic whose entertainment resume is nearly as thin as Obama's political one. Apparently, soliciting a contract murder on an unborn child is a step upward for his career.

Never in history has a woman been under more pressure to keep an unwanted pregnancy than Bristol Palin. She is the teenage daughter of Alaska Governor & Vice-Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin - a conservative, Creationist Christian power-vampire and pro-life huckster who has put Bristol and her un-welcomed fetus at the center of a politico-religious crusade to stop her exercising her constitutional right to terminate the pregnancy.

The creationist thing has been disproved, as far as I know. "Power vampire" is a hoot, coming from someone who is trying to further his own interests with this monstrous stunt. "Pro-life huckster" is stupid almost beyond fathoming. Huckster? As far as I can tell, asking someone not to kill their baby isn't a scam or a scheme. The pro-lifer gains nothing, and is in fact regularly reviled for it by morons like this. (But blessed are we who are cursed for the sake of righteousness...) And obviously the parents know what they would get into - in fact, many of them abort precisely because they DO know and wish to avoid it - but from purely altruistic reasons, of course...

I was once in a similar situation where I'd accidentally impregnated a girl and she had to make that same fateful decision that now faces you. It was easy for her... We made the right choice and rather than end up bitter rivals in court battles over custody or support, we are great friends who high-five over our decision and have all the free time and disposable income that young mothers never know.

I guess this stunted little troglodyte doesn't read enough Provenza. Alternately, he's making a huge sacrifice by taking on all that free time and disposable income... Lonely are the brave.

(Come to think of it, that would explain the socialist mandate to confiscate all private possessions and redistribute them - a noble sacrifice on behalf of the state, to amass all property and wealth so that we the people are not burdened by them. Or by the kids that we ought to be aborting. And if we can't be trusted to choose correctly, that choice can be made for us, capice?)

It's a spectacular, epic fail of a piece, really - it's a shocking low even for the likes of Stanhope, who is apparently so bad at his chosen field that he's been sacked from the Man Show on Spike, and failed as the on-screen host of the Girls Gone Wild video series. Mind you - this guy is so bad at what he does that he can't be trusted to attract paying customers to booze and sex.

Prohibition couldn't stop people from selling booze - Doug Stanhope did.
Sex is the one thing everyone uses to sell everything else - INCLUDING BOOZE - Doug Stanhope can't sell it.

You don't need to ruin your future in order to support the megalomaniacal self-promotion of a mother whose every action is rooted in a demonic ego and archaic superstition. Don't become victim of the same pressure that had your brother "volunteering" for duty in Iraq.

There's that selfish meme again. There's also the "burdened with a child" meme. And the "soldiers are all dupes" meme. And "ZOMG Xians are so DUM!!1!" I'd call this standard Palinsanity, but really, in a way she's just the lightning rod. The storm that rages is merely stooping upon her as the most convenient target.

If I were still the pro-choice leftist that is de rigeur in my family, this would clear the scales from my eyes. I can't fathom telling a mother that it's selfish of her to bear a child, or to suffer hardship for another's sake. It's so obviously the mirror image of what these pinheads say it is. And as far as "smarter than others," this is also proof positive that evil is not a matter of poor intelligence, but a poor heart. Provenza is obviously much more educated than Stanhope. He is possibly possessed of greater raw intellect. Yet they both come to the same conclusion - one through his intellect leading him astray, and the other through pure bile.

Evil is rooted in the will and the soul. Unchecked and undisciplined, evil rots the whole person - the emotions and the intellect. When that happens, even the strengths of a person become weaknesses, as those faculties are converted from their true ends to servants of that evil. An honest person becomes a liar, and a compassionate one turns cruel, and a smart one turns into a double-talking apologist for every sin and folly. It's like a virus turning a healthy cell into a factory for replicating viruses.

Eventually, it can reach what we see here. Everything that brings people closest to each other - family, community, faith, service - are called traps for chumps, conformist schemes designed to enslave people. But what does he offer that's so much better? Money. That's it. That's all he's got. He'll PAY to see his will done.

This guy is the turd in humanity's punchbowl. All the things he scorns are freely-chosen obligations accepted by the consent of those involved, and he thinks that money is a sufficient replacement. It's pitiable.

By contrast, virtue transforms even the humblest raw materials into great strengths. Brother Lawrence could not be trusted to handle anything more complex that answering the door to his monastery - and yet people flocked to see him rather than any of his more gifted brothers. The cart collector at the local Acme supermarket brightens everyone's day - ceaselessly cheerful and polite, and eventually named Employee of the Month. In fact, people campaigned for him to win! Who does that for anyone at a supermarket? When I worked at Friendly's our busboy and dishwasher, Frank, was about the hardest worker you could imagine. Whatever he had he poured into his menial tasks as if he were working the cure for cancer... how many "superior" folks could dare to claim that sort of commitment to their "more important" careers, or earn as much respect?

These three men are greater in the Kingdom than I. I would never dare to suggest that they were better off dead, much less that any of us would be better off if they were. The two colossal nitwits above can pour themselves a long tall glass of bugger off with a side of kiss my ass.

(update, 9/19 - noonish - ricki asked how long it would take, and the answer is, "Not long at all." [hat tip to Rachl Lukis, yet again])

Unfrozen caveman voter

My friends, I'm just a simple caveman. Your modern machines confuse and frighten me. Your alternate media and grassroots citizen punditry upset me. It's all I can do to bitterly cling to my primitive faith system and magic bang stick in today's uptempo world of iPhones and taxpayer-funded corporate buyouts.

I don't know much about your world, but I do know one, simple thing... and that is that we must vote for our betters in this election:

Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You're an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we're going to agree to disagree. This isn't one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I'm not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren't scared out of your freakin' mind, then you're mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it. ... Vote for someone smarter than you.

Clearly, to fail to do so - to intentionally decline to be led about by the hand like the mentally-shrivelled moonshine-chuggers we are - is to insult these great and elevated thinkers, who have so generously come down from being on high to shepherd us poor puzzled Jesus-yokels.

We should be grateful that they want to tax us into oblivion and take all of our rights. We'd just waste the money and freedom anyway! And it's a privilege to be paid any attention at all by such gods among the earth.

We are not worthy. Really, just ask them, they won't sugarcoat it for us. And thank our culturally-created God for it!

(hat tip to IMAO, where I lived up to this post by initially not believing that this could actually be written with a straight face. Well, yes it can!)

Love & Baseball

Today is my pastor's wedding anniversary, so he asks his bride, " Bride, what do you desire for this occasion?" And she replies, "I want to see the Rays!"

So they are going to see the Rays vs the Bosox tonight. The Rays are only one-up, so this is for the AL East lead.

A woman who loves baseball. I hope my pastor knows he has a keeper.

Of course, the concept of a pastor having a wedding anniversary is a pretty foreign concept to my Catholic friends out there.

Fly, deja vu all over gain for the New York Metropolitans?

Tim Keown, how could you?

"It's pretty much unquestioned that quarterback is the most important position in any team sport. "

Oh, Tim.... In the middle of that otherwise excellent article about quarterbacking, you dropped a plonker.

I grant that a great QB can elevate teams that have no business winning, and bad ones can sink their teams at inopportune times. But if you look at the timing and intricacies involved in a typical pro offense - as well as the intricacies facing them in the typical pro defense - then you'd have to conclude that there's a lot out of the quarterback's control. Without an offensive line to block or a credible running game, even terrific quarterbacks can look mortal. Elway didn't win* until he had Terrell Davis and the chip-blocking, borderline-kneecapping offensive line to support him. Marino never won. Neither did Jim Kelly nor Fran Tarkenton, in four tries each. Even if everything works perfectly for the offense and the QB, a team can lose a lot of 41-37 games if their defense is unequal to keeping the other team's attack under control.

* By "win" I mean the NFL title; obviously these are successful quarterbacks, one and all.

Besides, there's a long list of pedestrian (or worse) signal callers with Super Bowl visits: Morrall, Lamonica, Morton, Grogan, Grossman, Humphries, Chandler, Collins, O'Donnell... and possibly Hasselbeck and Delhomme (jury's out on them so far). Some have gone on to win: Trent Dilfer, Brad Johnson, Mark Rypien, Ken Stabler, Jim McMahon, and Eli Manning (until proven otherwise). Important, clearly: but there are too many other important factors to make this the sine qua non of individuals in team sports.

I'd argue more for a possibility that Keown didn't even consider - the hockey goaltender. Admittedly, my bias as a goaltender is in play here, but the primary reason I love being a keeper is precisely this. The game always goes through me. If I'm bad, then we're most likely done. If I'm great, then my team, no matter how lousy, has a chance. We only need one fluke shot to ping off a defenseman to have that chance, as long as I'm at my best. Recently I saw a game where the shots were 60-11 (no joke) and it still went into a shootout; the goalies were the leveler. One guy was a little soft, and the other was lights out.

Sure, the goalie has no control over the offense. He can't possibly win if nobody scores a goal. In fact, the goalie and the baseball pitcher (at least the AL version) are alone in that distinction - they can never win the game alone. But if they do their job perfectly, then the least mistake by the other side will win the game for them. On the other hand, if a QB does his job perfectly, his team can still lose. He needs somebody to catch those pretty passes, and give him time to stay upright to throw them, and a kicker to turn near misses into three points, and a whole team of guys to keep the other team from scoring.

That brings up what I think is the biggest argument for the goalkeeper as the most key individual in a team sport - the mistake factor. A QB can make a ton of mistakes that wind up, ultimately, not hurting his team. He can bounce passes off defenders' chests and hands, or fumble, or get sacked, and still not turn over the ball. His team can score despite him, or simplify their offense to get more out of him, or take the game out of his hands as much as possible. Likewise, a basketball player can miss tons of shots but his team can rebound those misses; a pitcher can walk a bunch of guys and still squirm out of it, or groove a fastball that gets fouled away or smoked right at a fielder. A forward can miss a wide-open net, or a defender can give up a breakaway... but those mistakes do not automatically lead to goals against. None of the other mistakes are directly harmful in the way that a goalie's mistakes are. If the keeper screws up, then it's likely going into his net, and that's that. And if it's a soft goal it not only hurts immediately on the scoreboard, it usually dampens his team's performance. Nothing is worse than five minutes of domination without result, followed by a weak counterattack that leaves you down a goal.

Bottom line is, if the goalie is perfect, his team can never lose the game. You can't say that about a quarterback, so I'd give the edge to the keepers.

And that being said - I agree with the other 90-ish percent of the column, as usual. If you do need a quarterback, draft one before you need him, not the moment you do. Learn from the unfortunate fates of Alex Smith, Joey Harrington, Rick Mirer, Akili Smith, Andre Ware, Browning Nagle, Ryan Leaf, etc. etc. Much shorter than any QB list above is the list of rookies who made immediate Super Bowl visits, much less won them. The difference between rushing and ruining a guy vs. seasoning and succeeding with him is the difference between Steve Walsh and Steve Young.

Believers for Barack

Believers in what, I'd like to know.

The Obama campaign is preparing rolling out a new line of “faith merchandise” – the latest move in an ambitious effort to win over religious voters.

“Check out the Believers for Barack, Pro-Family Pro-Obama, and Catholics for Obama buttons, bumper stickers and signs….” says Obama Deputy Director of Religious Affairs Paul Monteiro in an e-mail obtained by the Beliefnet Web site.

They even have stuff for the Fly and the Ladybug. Do you think Nancy Pelosi has a "Catholics for Obama" shirt?

I don't know how much of this is selling. Two weeks ago Obama was running pro-abort ads on country music radio. Last week I was told that my Savior was a mere community organizer like their savior. We Bible thumpers can be pretty slow, but I don't know how many of us are that slow. Here's more:

We'll soon be rolling out merchandise for other religious groups and denominations, but I wanted to get this out to you without delay,” he adds.

Other religious groups? You mean, like these people?