Hornswaggler | The culture, the humor, a bit of the sports, not so much the politics, and the workplace distraction

Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" --

"I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!"

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Friday, February 27, 2004

Wow. Great link from Atrios.

.: posted by hornswaggler 1:38 AM

Just when I had started to post with acceptable frequency, it's vacation time. So posting here is going to be light for the next 10 days. Enjoy yourselves. The light at the end of the winter tunnel is now visible!

.: posted by hornswaggler 1:06 AM

Eagles

Terrell Owens' biffing and neglecting to file the necessary paperwork to become a free agent actually plays in the Eagles' favor. He's burned his bridges in San Fran, so they'll be looking to trade him. Give the Niners Todd Pinkston and the 2005 second round draft pick we're going to get for A.J. Feeley, and we'll take Owens at a substantially lower price than he would have commanded on the open market.

And no, Bob Brookover of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Darnerian McCants of the Redskins is not an acceptable free agency acquisition. He's not in the same league as Justin McCareins.

.: posted by hornswaggler 1:00 AM

Thursday, February 26, 2004

Follow-up on Krugman Social Security Thang

Blogging is so current events driven. "Hornswaggler! What do you think about the amendment to ban gay marriage?"

"Shit I don' know, bitch. I'm just tryin' to sell this crack."

It's hard to stay on top of everything. And then the emails. God, the emails. Everyone seems to want to know my opinion.

You want to know my opinion? Yes, it's a sign of weakness that Bush made the call for the amendment to ban gay marriages, that Karl Rove doesn't think the economy and Iraq are going to cut general election mustard. Yeah, there probably aren't enough votes in Congress. Yes, Omarosa is a Queen Bitch and needs to get kicked off "The Apprentice." I mean, seriously. Who the fuck would hire that psychopath after watching this show? "You know what? That malingering, incompetent bitch is just who we need to shake up our marketing team."

But let's return to social security.

Publically, President Bush remained in La La Land regarding the budget deficit and the impending fiscal crisis vis a vis social security. "Don't worry, man. I've got it all under control. I'm gonna like cut this budget in half in like five years, dude."

"Do you have any numbers on that, Mr. President?"

"You betcha, I've got some numbers. This bag of reefer I just smoked from weights 1.3 ounces. Heh heh heh."

And he's going to continue on this line until he is reelected, if that meteor should happen to smash us. He'll continue blithely to say that there's no crisis, there's no problem, we can cut taxes and rebuild two countries and rebuild our economy and expand Medicare and do everything else we need to do. That's the bait. And then, after the election, mark my words, you'll get the switch.

"America's seniors will," he'll announce, "in this time of great sacrifice, be forced to take a cut in their benefits. But they will be able to take that money they lose and invest it in the stock market. And there's some other good news. I just saved a load of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico."

Bush's social security plan has, from the outset, defied logic. His proposal (echoed in the above Times article by a Republican congressman*) for Americans to take a portion of their social security payments and invest it in the stock market, as Krugman has hammered home over and over again, ignored one small factoid.

The money we twenty-somethings pay into social security right now every time a payroll tax is taken out of our paycheck doesn't go to us. It goes to current retirees. Accordingly, the money that will fund our social security payments will come from a generation that isn't even born yet.

The impending social security crisis is due to the fact that, when Baby Boomers retire, and that's happening soon, so many people will be due payments that there won't be enough money in the system to pay for it.

Bush's proposal would have required putting even more money into the system, because when the government takes money out and puts it into individual accounts, that amount would be subtracted from the money received by current retirees. To compensate, more money would have to be put into the system. And, if Bush's plan were adopted, this would hold true until the first generation that put money in their own accounts retired, or about 20-40 years.

So, without drastically cutting benefits to current retirees, Bush's plan for social security would cost significantly more to implement than is currently allocated for the program. And this is on top of the fact that social security was already facing a revenue shortfall. And this on top of the record budget deficits due to his tax cuts. How does he get away with ... with ... what was it he accused Gore of? Oh, right. Fuzzy math. Darn liberal media.

*"Those proposals are not the right answer," said Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr., Republican of Florida and chairman of a House subcommittee on Social Security. "There is a viable alternative that doesn't require tax increases or benefit cuts. Allow workers to save today through voluntary personal accounts that back Social Security with real assets."

This assertion is just flat wrong and the fact that the Times doesn't point this out is disturbing. It ought to run: "'There is a viable alternative,' said Shaw, offering an alternative that isn't viable."

Where did I read the other day that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the headlines the next day would be: Bush Claims Earth Flat, Opinions Vary.

.: posted by hornswaggler 12:23 AM

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Greenspan, Krugman and Starve the Beasters

Paul Krugman is looking prophetic right now, in light of Alan Greenspan's testimony to Congress urging them to cut Social Security benefits because we just can't pay for them, given the projected budget shortfalls.

What I mean by that is Krugman's assertion that supply siders, who claim that tax cuts will produce increased tax revenues because of crazy economic growth (something that flies in the face of all empirical evidence), are the happy face of "starve the beasters," more traditional, small government conservatives who see budget deficits as a happy necessity, because they'll force the government to get rid of the so-called entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- and return us to pre-FDR New Deal days when the elderly were mostly poor and the poor were mostly sick all the time. I do declare. Aren't they such nice people?

Greenspan testified that we ought to cut Social Security benefits rather than raise taxes, the other way ought of this problem. Greenspan added that his testimony should be taken with a grain of salt, because he'd taken a couple Viagras the night before while dallying with a Playboy model and his brain still wasn't getting enough blood, if you catch his drift.

Bush cracks wise

Some of you may have read Bush's joke yesterday where he said:

"The other party's nomination battle is still playing out. The candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions. They're for tax cuts and against them. They're for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They're for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They're in favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts."

That knock against Kerry seems like a good one when you read it in the paper. Touche, Mister Pussycat!

Then I saw the footage on the Daily Show last night. Bush's delivery is so awful. And when he delivers the last line, as the Republican governors guffaw ("Dur, that was a good one, wasn't it, Arnold?"), he doesn't even smile, but his lips kind of twitch and move around inexplicably in a manner reminiscent of former Dallas Cowboys coach and current Fox analyst Jimmy Johnson, who smacks his lips tourettically after everything he says.

Speaking of Jon Stewart, I was disappointed that, when he had GOP hack John Podhoretz on the same show to hawk his new book lauding George W. Bush, Stewart once again upbraided his audience for snickering at a GOP fool's pronouncements.

You can have neoconservative mad scientists like Richard Perle on the program, Jon, to maintain the balance of the show, but your audience doesn't have to like it. And you can make your guest feel better about it without clumsily, half-ironically telling his audience to behave.

Hey, that's what the most inane of your conservative guests will have to face. A polite and sometimes overly deferential host and a skeptical, but not hostile, audience. They can deal with it.

.: posted by hornswaggler 11:25 AM

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Behold! There's some new stuff on the right. The archives are being reconstructed and new links are being added. Feast on the verbiage.

.: posted by hornswaggler 11:50 PM

I studied German in high school and college and spent a semester in Berlin, so I have a greater degree of empathy for the German people, butts of so many easy Hitler jokes, than most people I meet.

But I still don't like hearing a guy with an Austrian accent telling Californians to respect the rule of law for the sake of order. "Wir muessen Ordnung haben!" Sorry, Charlie. Just don't like it.

Speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger, he confirmed the other day that he thinks naturalized, foreign-born citizens such as himself who have been in American for more than 20 years ought to be able to run for president. Schwarzenegger's buddy, Sen. Orrin "Eyes of the Misbegotten" Hatch, is working on changing the relevant law as we speak. If the prospect of Bush-Bush-Schwarzenegger-Schwarzenegger doesn't scare you, then perhaps you are the Chosen One, able to laugh in the face of death, in which case, quit the eXtreme snowboarding circuit, the human race needs you.

.: posted by hornswaggler 12:34 AM

Here's a story on climate change. When global warming is proved conclusively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be happening, by which time it will be too late to do anything about it, I shall -- while paddling around in my leaking, bedraggled canoe, scavenging for ointments to treat the itching of my radiation blisters, shotgun at my feet in case any "swamp bandits" should appear -- derive some small measure of satisfaction from yelling "I told you so!" at all the dumb fucks who pooh poohed the idea.

I shall identify all these fools by the "GOP" brand burned onto their foreheads, the result of a decree by the warlord governing my territory.

.: posted by hornswaggler 12:21 AM

Monday, February 23, 2004

Dave Chapelle and the space shuttle

I saw a headline on Yahoo! about astronauts leaving the space shuttle unmanned while performing a space walk and thought it would be ripe for a skit on "Chapelle's Show" where some black guys in space suits come in and burglarize the shuttle while they're gone.

For those who don't know, Chapelle is black and does the boldest racial humor on television right now, so it's okay that I said that. (Who's seen the WacArnold's sketch?)

Shootin' stuff

Maureen Dowd wrote an article a couple weeks ago meditating on the hunting trip that Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia recently took together. The article wasn't that great, but her description gave me pause. Apparently, at shooting clubs like the one Cheney and Scalia patronized, the birds are flushed out for you and you just sit in a blind and blast them out of the sky.

If that's true, then that is vintage Cheney: "Screw the hunt. Let's skip to the part where we kill the animals."

See, I can understand the thrill of hunting. The actual putting a bullet between the eyes or in the chest of a buck, not so much. But tracking an animal through the woods, or hunting with a dog, when you do that you're tapping into essential and in some cases primitive behavior, and there's a value in that. In the woods, stealthily stalking your prey, you can erase the thousands of years that lay between you and your ancient ancestors and come as close as is possible (outside of a mushroom trip, say) for contemporary humans to access the mental states and sharpened senses of our forebearers.

Then you whip out your machine gun and clear out the brush, crushing beer cans against your head.

I remember one of the reasons I loved playing Capture the Flag so much up at my camp in Maine was feeling, running top speed through the woods, wind whooshing through my ears, as though I were an Indian brave on the prowl.

All the tapping into primal mental states or sharpening your hunting skills, that's not what appeals to Dick Cheney, apparently. He likes watching the birds plummet from the sky stuffed with buckshot. If it's just target practice, if there's no skill or effort involved in flushing out the quail, why not just shoot skeet?

It must be tough for Cheney when he's "hunting" and fishing.* How does he extend the fueling lines out to his position so he can refill his hump with oil? Cheney does about one mile to the gallon, so he can't venture far without accessing a remote fueling station. Maybe unmanned drones are specially equipped to perform operations on Cheney akin to the mid-air fuelings they do for B-52 bombers.

*This consists of Cheney dropping a barrel of industrial slag into the river and collecting the carcasses.

.: posted by hornswaggler 10:57 AM

Sunday, February 22, 2004

The surprise of Saturday Night Live this weekend was Christina Aguilera's impersonation of Samantha during a "Sex and the City" skit. Ignoring the obvious jokes about a slut playing a slut, Aguilera did the voice impressively.

Tina Fey and SNL took their shots at "Sex and the City," but the final two episodes of "Sex" were far better than any of the SNL's I've seen recently. The only reason I watch "Sex" is because of my lovely girlfriend and I'm typically not one to praise the show, but the last two episodes had their moments: Carrie letting Big have it on the sidewalk in Part One and Carrie wandering Paris in Two, for instance the moment where the little girl on her dad's shoulder's batted Carrie on the head, then stuck her tongue out at her for good measure. The better half was ecstatic when the writers revealed Big's name is "John."

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon wrote a long article about how Charlotte, played by Kristin Davis, is the overlooked cornerstone of "Sex and the City." While Charlotte's quirky humor is amusing, I don't think anyone ever needs to devote 1,000 words to analyzing her character. I know what one of you might be thinking: How much time did you waste putting together that football post the other day? A) Leave me alone. B) Sports are different, and I'm not pretending football is important. (Speaking of that post, now that USC's Mike Williams has declared for the draft, I'll have to update it.)

The only real question I've ever asked myself, re Kristin Davis, and I think it's a question many a red-blooded male has asked himself over the years, is why couldn't she get naked all the time instead of Kim Catrall?

Returning to SNL: I've complained about the frequency of Britney Spears' and Christina Aguilera's appearances on the show before. This was Aguilera's first gig hosting the show. She's been a musical guest twice, as she mentioned during her monologue.

Is SNL just another kettle of pop cultural mush? Shouldn't they have some standards as far as the hosts and musical guests are concerned? Their satirical barbs lose their bite when the person they're roasting one week is getting their ass kissed the next. (One skit, where various backstage guests give Aguilera backhanded compliments after a concert, saying she can be as much of a slut as she wants since her voice is so good, provides the pop star with a few clunky editorial lines about double standards and how she's just expressing her sexuality onstage.)

A lot of the blame for all of this falls on Lorne Michaels. He makes the final call on everything, from the script to the guests. But a good portion belongs with Tina Fey, as head writer, who I think has kind of lost it a bit post 9/11. A profile in the New Yorker last year detailed therapy sessions in which she plays out combat scenes with imaginary terrorists. Once a staunch critic of Rudy Giuliani, she fairly fellated him in his first post-9/11 SNL appearance. Did Giuliani do all New Yorkers and many Americans a great service on that day with the leadership he displayed? Yes. Does that erase the fact that prior to that day in September he was an elephant dung-obsessed barnacle head and a glorified cop? Nope.

New Yorkers were obviously affected by Sept. 11th much more profoundly than those of us on the West Coast. Tina Fey was clearly traumatized. But by now her satirical instincts should be fully recovered. I'm just not that interested in a kinder, gentler Tina Fey, one who hugs Christina Aguilera during the gathering at the end of the show and tells her how well she did. I like the Tina Fey who, doing a Weekend Update bit two years ago on female Viagara and how it increases vibrations in the clitoris, said Aguilera tried it and her vagina achieved light speed.

Regarding the show that until Sunday followed "Sex and the City" on HBO, Heather Havrilesky recently wrote a piece for Salon, the premise of which just seemed to me to be manufactured, criticizing Larry David for transforming from "Everyman" to "Angry Man" and becoming merely annoying. Then tonight was one of the best "Curbs" I've seen, with Larry mistakenly leaving a profanity-laced tirade on the voice mail of David Schwimmer's father and faking heart attacks to get out of two confrontations, etc.

Everyone ought to watch "Arrested Development," if they're not already. The other shows that are most worth watching these days are "The Apprentice" and "Chapelle's Show," for utterly different reasons. Regarding Chapelle, the Rick James installment of Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories is an instant classic.

Notes: Max/Cam Cleland, Ann Coulter increased scumminess, Joe Conason, GOP crying foul while fouling, Natl. Guard - not settled. Vietnam - thought it was settled, Kerry fights.

.: posted by hornswaggler 8:08 PM

Thursday, February 19, 2004

So I saw my first trailer for Mel Gibson's much talked about "The Passion of the Christ" on TV today. Here's what strikes me. Gibson goes to such great lengths to ensure this film's authenticity that all the characters speak only Aramaic and Latin, yet the guy he has playing Jesus looks like John Corbett from "Northern Exposure"?

(And also "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", "Sex and the City" and untold Chevy, Ford or Dodge truck commercials.)

Hate to break it to you Mel, but people in the Middle East just don't look like that. Now, I'm no expert. I'm just going from what I see on CNN but, again, hair tends to be black, skin tends to be brown, eyes tend to be brown ... You get the idea.

I believe it was the spoken word artist, Ice Cube, who said: "Go to church but they tease us/Wit' a picture of a blue-eyed Jesus."

This is just one more illustration, by the by, of the inherent problems with the Evangelical Christians of the world who take the Bible and the story of Christ completely at face value. "You see, we believe down to the last detail in the Gospels regarding our lord and savior Jesus Christ, to the point of irrationality and the repudiation of science. Except for one detail. When we picture what Jesus looks like, we project a Western ethnicity onto him. We're going for kind of a Gregory Peck look. Ooh! No wait. Cary Grant. Now that's a handsome man. And an upright Christian to boot!"

I wonder if they'd feel the way they do about Jesus if they pictured him looking like, say, Osama bin Laden.

.: posted by hornswaggler 12:41 PM

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Okay Eagles fans here it is:

The best durned predraft wide receiver breakdown on the innernet

Part 1: The Preamble

The fact that the NFC came back from 38-13 to win the Pro Bowl 55-52 in what was, shockingly, an entertaining game, has to be encouraging for Eagles' fans, in that Eagles coach Andy Reid, who coached the NFC squad along with his staff, avoided further imprinting "loser" status on his forehead.

The play of Troy Vincent, who looked old and vulnerable, as contrasted with Redskins' unrestricted free agent corner Champ Bailey, who played extremely well, made it clear that there is no chance the Eagles will resign him.

Terrell Owens, Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid had plenty of time to pow-wow during this last week in Hawaii. If the Eagles don't sign him, it won't be for a lack of the chance to get to know one another and chew it over.

The outstanding play of Champ Bailey raises an interesting question. If the Eagles are going to spend major free agent money on one player this offseason, that cash has to be lavished upon someone at one of the following three positions: wide receiver, defensive line, cornerback. The Eagles have needs at linebacker but typically that's a position where a
team can secure a good player without paying as much.

If the Eagles went after Bailey and secured a shut-down corner who will be dominant for years to come, then their number one priority in the draft would have to be wide receiver. If the Eagles get a top receiver in free agency, then they can afford to spend that first round pick on a defender and wait until the second or third round to draft a receiver.

Part 2: The Free Agents

The three top receivers available through free agency, listed in order of ability, are Terrell Owens, Steve Smith, and Darrell Jackson. Though it is possible that the Eagles will take Owens, which is a very logical choice, given the team's needs, chances are against his signing, given Reid's tendencies as a personnel manager.

Steve Smith ought to have been in the Pro Bowl this year over Terrell Owens, who had a subpar season, but any doubts about his stardom were removed by his performance in the playoffs. He's a restricted free agent however, so the Eagles would have to make him an offer the Panthers couldn't match, which is unlikely.

Darrell Jackson is a very good player, who would be an upgrade over the current Eagles receivers and whom the Eagles could sign for a significantly smaller chunk of money than Owens will command on the open market. Even if the Eagles sign Jackson, it would be wise of them to invest a pick on a receiver in the first two or three rounds.

Owens, Smith and Jackson are the only proven number one receivers on the free agent market. Here are the other notables (from sportsdialogue.com), ranked in order of their best years of production, in other words: Who has done the most in this league.

Marcus Robinson, Baltimore Ravens UFA (unrestricted free agent) - Had 80+ catches, 1000+ yards in second season
Tai Streets, San Francisco 49ers UFA
Dennis Northcutt, Cleveland Browns UFA
Kevin Dyson, Carolina Panthers UFA
Dez White, Chicago Bears UFA
Drew Bennett, Tennessee Titans RFA (restricted free agent)
Justin McCareins, Tennessee Titans RFA

Now let's rank them in order of projected future production:

Justin McCareins: Big, fast and young. Fits Eagles' needs.
Tai Streets: Has been productive. You have to think Niners will make him an offer.
Drew Bennett: Big target with soft hands and body control (as evidenced in AFC Championship game)
Marcus Robinson: Injury problems and age make him a risk.
Dez White: Only two passes for more than 40 yards in four year career.
Dennis Northcutt: Small possession receiver.
Kevin Dyson: Scored the touchdown in Music City Miracle. Did he even dress for Panthers in Super Bowl?

The problem with this list is that Bennett and McCareins, who best fit what the Eagles are looking for, are both restricted free agents.

This article indicates maybe the Eagles could pry McCareins away from the cap-strapped Titans. It also makes it seem the Birds would never go after Owens.

Part 3: Draft History

Before moving on to this year's draft, let's look at the past five drafts and see what they tell us about the likelihood of drafting a good receiver. I have included every receiver taken in the first three rounds and then selected/notable receivers from later rounds.

Each player gets a variation on the following ratings: Undervalued (ie they were taken too low), Overvalued (they were taken too high), Bust (they flopped) Steal (they far exceeded predraft value) and Just About Right (they've justified their selection).

[This section UPDATED on 4/22/05] It's hard to judge the last two drafts, since so little time has elapsed. In the case of the 2003 draft, I marked some of the players "Jury still out."

1999 Draft

Round One:
6) Torry Holt - Just about right, undervalued even. Future Hall of famer.
8) David Boston - Overvalued, injuries, attitude problems, and his desire to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
13) Troy Edwards - Major bust.

Round Two:
32) Kevin Johnson - Overvalued, given lack of athleticism. Cut by Browns in '03.
53) Peerless Price - Undervalued.

Round Three:
71) D'wayne Bates - Just about right.
78) Marty Booker - Undervalued.
82) Karsten Bailey - Overvalued.
93) Travis McGriff - Overvalued.

Round Four (selected):
Dameane Douglas - Just about right. Good special teams player.
Brandon Stokely - Undervalued.

Round Six (selected):
Tai Streets - Very undervalued (due to college injury).
Martay Jenkins - Very undervalued.

Round Seven (selected):
Donald Driver - Steal
Billy Miller - Very undervalued (switched to Tight End).

2000 Draft

Round One:
4) Peter Warrick - Overvalued, given production. Has started to come around.
8) Plaxico Burress - Overvalued/Just about right. Sometimes dominant, but inconsistent.
10) Travis Taylor - Bust, relative to draft position. Another Florida debacle.
21) Sylvester Morris - Utter bust.
29) R. Jay Soward- Major bust.

Round Two:
32) Dennis Northcutt - Overvalued/Just about right.
36) Todd Pinkston - Overvalued/Just about right.
47) Jerry Porter - Undervalued (was new to position).

Round Three:
Ron Dugans - Overvalued/Bust.
Dez White - Undervalued/Just about right.
Chris Cole - Just about right.
Laveranues Coles - Steal of the draft. Undervalued due to size/attitude questions.
Jajuan Dawson - Bust.
Darrell Jackson - Undervalued/Steal. A Florida success story.

Round Five (selected):
Troy Walters - Slightly Undervalued.

2001 Draft
Round One:
8) David Terrell - Bust, given draft position.
9) Koren Robinson - Overvalued. Inconsistent. Can't catch.
15) Rod Gardner - Overvalued. A starter, but no fireworks.
16) Santana Moss - Just about right. Play in '03 justified his value.
25) Freddie Mitchell - Overvalued, though perhaps under-utilized by coaches.
30) Reggie Wayne - Just about right. Is now what Colts wanted: Legit #2.

Round Two:
33) Quincy Morgan - Overvalued.
36) Chad Johnson - Steal. Attitude questions dropped him.
41) Robert Ferguson - Just about right.
51) Chris Chambers - Undervalued.

Round Three:
Steve Smith - Steal of the draft. Size was probably the concern.
Marvin "Snoop" Minnis - Overvalued/Bust. Flashed early then faded.

Round four (selected):
Justin McCareins - Very undervalued.

Round Five (selected):
Eddie Berlin - Just about right. Special teams value.
Darnerien McCants - Undervalued.

Round Seven (selected):
T.J. Houshmandzadeh - Undervalued/Steal. Started well, didn't play last year.
Quentin McCord - Undervalued.

2002 Draft (worst receiver draft in recent years)

Round One:
13) Donte Stallworth - Overvalued. Has shown flashes. Time will tell.
19) Ashley Lelie - Bust, given inconsistency.
20) Javon Walker - Undervalued, given breakout year in 2004.

Round Two:
33) Jabar Gaffney - Slightly overvalued, may develop into legit #2.
36) Josh Reed - Overvalued. Hasn't produced yet.
46) Tim Carter - Overvalued/Bust.
47) Andre Davis - Undervalued/Steal.
48) Reche Caldwell - Overvalued.
62) Antwaan Randle El* - Undervalued.
63) Antonio Bryant - Just about right.
65) Deion Branch* - Undervalued.

Round Three (selected):
Marquise Walker - Overvalued. Hasn't gotten on the field.

Round Seven (selected):
David Givens - Steal.

2003 Draft

Round One:
2) Charles Rogers - Just about right. Looked great when healthy.
3) Andre Johnson - Just about right.
17) Bryant Johnson - Way overvalued. Jury still out.

Round Two:
44) Taylor Jacobs - Jury still out/Bust. Didn't get on the field.
45) Bethel Johnson - Just about right. Good on special teams.
54) Anquan Boldin - Steal of the draft.
61) Tyrone Callico - Undervalued/Just about right given poor 2004.
63) Teyo Johnson - Jury still out. Tweener position-wise.

Round Three:
Kelley Washington - Just about right.
Nate Burleson - Just about right.
Kevin Curtis - Jury still out.
Billy McMullen - Jury still out/Overvalued.

Round Four (selected):
Brandon Lloyd - Steal.

Round Five (selected):
Justin Gage - Undervalued.

Here are the top five wide receivers taken in each of the last five drafts and where they were taken, with a percentage for the number of top-five receivers who were first-round picks. Asterisk denotes best receiver in each draft.

1999: 40 percent round one
Torry Holt* 1st Round
David Boston 1st Round
Peerless Price 2nd Round
Marty Booker 3rd Round
Donald Driver 7th Round

2000: 40 percent round one
Peter Warrick 1
Plaxico Burress 1
Jerry Porter 2
Laveranues Coles* 3
Darrell Jackson 3

2001: 40 percent round one
Koren Robinson 1
Santana Moss 1
Chad Johnson* 2
Chris Chambers 2
Steve Smith 3

2002: 40 percent round one
Donte Stallworth 1
Javon Walker 1
Andre Davis 2
Antwaan Randle El 2
Deion Branch* 2

2003: 40 percent round one
Charles Rogers 1
Andre Johnson 1
Anquan Boldin* 2
Tyrone Callico 2
Brandon Lloyd 4

2004: 80 percent round one
Larry Fitzgerald* 1
Roy Williams 1
Lee Evans 1
Michael Clayton 1
Keary Colbert 2

Part 4: The 2004 wide receivers

4/22/05. Okay: Below is what I wrote last year. I was wrong about a few things, right about a few. I've ranked Fitzgerald as the best receiver of the '04 class. Clayton had the best statistical year, and Williams had the most dominant and spectacular year, but Fitzgerald, given how young he is, showed that five years from now he'll be the best of the group. Here's how I saw it last year:

Here's a list of the top wide receivers in this year's draft, listed in approximate order of predraft ranking:

Larry Fitzgerald - Pittsburgh
Roy Williams - Texas
Mike Williams - USC
Reggie Williams - Washington
Michael Clayton - LSU
Michael Jenkins - Ohio State
Rashaun Woods - Oklahoma State
Lee Evans - Wisconsin
Devery Henderson - LSU
Derrick Hamilton - Clemson
Devard Darling - Washington State
James Newsom - Oregon State
Ernest Wilford - Virginia Tech
Keary Colbert - USC

There are some third-tier guys that I've left out because I just don't know who the hell they are. And I'm not that familiar with Darling and Newsom. Don't worry, I doubt they're very good. But our focus is really on the first couple rounds.

Mike Williams has altered the picture favorably for the Birds, because he'll bump down the other receivers expected to go in the first and second rounds. He's a freak and the Eagles would be lucky to get him, if they trade up, but that's unlikely. He could go higher than Roy Williams and will no doubt be gone by pick 15.

Fitzgerald and Roy Williams are expected to go in the top 10, so let's assume that they are out of the Eagles' reach, since the Birds would have to jump up at least twenty picks to get either player. Fitzgerald, a college sophomore, is a bound for the NFL Hall of Fame, barring catastrophic injury (knock on wood for old Larry), that's how good he is. Williams ought to be dominant in the NFL, provided he can avoid a worsening of some of the nagging injuries that apparently plagued him in college.

The receivers, therefore, who will be in the range of the Eagles' first overall pick in the draft, meaning either they slide down for whatever reason or the Eagles trade up to obtain them, are Reggie Williams, Michael Clayton, Lee Evans, Rashaun Woods and Michael Jenkins.

Henderson and the others are bound to be second round picks and lower.

Reggie Williams has the size and the speed the Eagles are looking for. I don't see any real caveats here, except for cockiness/attitude problems. But over the last few years, guys with supposed attitude problems, like Chad Johnson and Laveranues Coles, have become Pro Bowlers.

I may be utterly wrong about this, but I'm not completely sold on Michael Clayton. He has the size the Eagles are looking for and a lot of skill, but watching LSU's last couple games of the season, I don't recall him standing out as a playmaker. It could be that he's the combination of size, speed, skill and dedication that'll turn him into a perenial Pro Bowler and I just don't know it. We'll see how he pans out.

Michael Jenkins, on the other hand, has made big play after big play for the Buckeyes, including a fourth down catch in overtime in the championship game against the Hurricanes two years ago. Like Reggie Williams and Michael Clayton, he's 6'4" and strong. Clayton and Jenkins may not pose as great of a vertical, down-the-field threat as Williams, so it would be wise for the Eagles, if they select either of these two players, to make a strong move in free agency as well.

Rashaun Woods is the receiver I covet the most in this draft. He doesn't have the physical attributes that Williams, Clayton and Jenkins possess - he's still 6'2" 195 - but on the field he gets it done. He had more than 100 catches as a junior and last year, as a senior, he caught 7 touchdowns in one game against SMU.

The problem with Woods, as far as the Eagles are concerned, is that he doesn't fit their specific need this year to increase their physicality at the wide receiver position. If the Eagles drafted Woods, it would be imperative that they a) had already gotten a big receiver in free agency b) got another receiver later on like Wilford with some size.

Incidentally, the three late first round/early second round players I've coveted over the last few years have been Clinton Portis, Deshaun Foster and Josh Reed. All were selected in the 2nd round. Scouts said Portis was undersized. Foster, who in college was a dominant athlete who could run you over, juke you or beat you to the corner, was plagued by the dreaded combination of attitude questions, fumble-itis and injury questions. Reed, the only one who hasn't emerged as a big-time player yet, was a guy whose toughness I liked and whose ability to break tackles in the open field reminded me a little bit of Duce Staley.

(The year that the Eagles selected defensive tackle Corey Simon, they had the sixth overall pick and I coveted Peter Warrick, who in college was the best open field runner I've ever seen outside of Barry Sanders, and Plaxico Burress, who made it look easy in college like a young Harold Carmichael. Simon has turned into a good player, but the Eagles' other starting defensive tackle, Darwin Walker, who arguably had better seasons than Simon the past two years, was an undrafted rookie free agent. Warrick hadn't lived up to expectations until this year, when, not coincidentally, a good coach, Marvin Lewis, came to town. Meanwhile, the 6'5" Burress would have made a difference this year in the playoffs for the Eagles. The Panthers' Ricky Manning Jr., at 5'9", just wouldn't have been able to cover him.)

Lee Evans - 5'11" 200 - could wind up being the steal of this draft. A major injury his junior season is the reason he may fall to the second round.

Devery Henderson, a track star with limited experience at the position, could also wind up being a steal, as could Ernest Wilford, a big receiver in the Muhsin Muhammad mold. I like Keary Colbert, from USC, a small guy who reminds me of Laveranues Coles. Derrick Hamilton is big and fast.

The history of the last five drafts tells us that three of the top five receivers in the 2004 draft will be selected after the 1st round. The questions are: Who will be this year's later round steals? Which 1st round receivers will bust? Which later round gambles will not pay off?

The bottom line for the Eagles is that, if they draft any of the receivers below Lee Evans, they would have to supplement him with a big-time free agency acquisition. If they expend their first-round pick on a receiver, they can afford to upgrade their roster spending a gazillion dollars in free agency, but they'll need to bring in someone who upgrades their physical talent just the same.

.: posted by hornswaggler 3:12 PM

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

There's a few good things on the unofficial Paul Krugman Web site. For you to read. Read Krugman's review of Ron Suskind's "The Price of Loyalty" and "American Dynasty" by Kevin Phillips, as well as the debate with Richard Perle, which isn't that great, as far as debates go, but worth looking at maybe. (The site indexes like a blog, so I can't link to the articles, but they're not hard to find. Just scroll down.)

.: posted by hornswaggler 1:01 AM

Monday, February 16, 2004

I've finally figured out how to fix my broken archives, which is good, since that's been a problem with this blog for a long time. The bad news is that reading some of the stuff from my archives fills me with intense self-loathing.

Going back to politics for a second, I've been reading a lot of Talking Points Memo and Calpundit lately, one result of which is that I read a Peggy Noonan column for the first time the other day. She's a former Reagan speechwriter who writes an Op-Ed column for the Washington Post, for those don't know, and the reason I've never read one of her pieces is that I've been too lazy to fill out the registration to read the Post online, so I'm unfamiliar with the Post's Op-Ed page.

Peggy Noonan is a special kind of stupid. The subject of her column Sunday was how the Democrats have gotten all the positive attention recently, while the Bush White House has gotten creamed, but how, look out!, it's going to get interesting.

Here are a few examples of wrong things she said.

Regarding John Kerry, she referred to his opposition to the Vietnam War in '72 as his "youthful political idiocy" and his having been a "left-wing flake." Granted, with respect to the latter term, she employed it as coming from GOP critics. Nonetheless, the idea that opposition to the Vietnam War is disreputable strikes me as bizarre. Isn't it pretty much agreed upon that the Vietnam War was a huge and costly mistake, a colossal blunder that sent close to a million people to their graves? People in this country have such short memories, are so poorly educated in matters of history, that first supply-side economics has been allowed to make a comeback, and now it's possible to spin a war hero's opposition to the Vietnam campaign he served in as idiotic and flakey?

On Bush, she said: "Will people buy George W. Bush as a shirker and an operator? Those who hate him will. But the rest -- that would be the majority -- have watched him for three years in dramatic circumstances, and they know who he is."

Oh I know who he is. Everyone else? Recent polls have shown people in the middle are responding negatively to the recent news on WMDs and the National Guard. It's his hard-core supporters and the incurably stupid who have remained unfazed.

"Everyone I've talked to," Noonan said, "including a senator who had just come from a meeting with him, says the president himself is feeling feisty and peppery, up for the battle."

"Feisty and peppery"? What planet is Peggy Noonan from? Does it resemble an ultra-WASP country club from 1956? Peggy, tell me this. It's all well and good that he's feisty and peppery, but what pizzaz? Does he have any of that? What about hutzpah? Oh, no wait. That's too Jewish for your taste. Sorry.

"He continues to hope," Noonan continued, regarding the president, "that the question of what happened to Saddam's WMDs, which the dictator had used before in Iran and on the Iraqi Kurds, will be fully answered in time. Were they destroyed, or sold? Are some still hidden? I was told that whenever U.S. troops find and search a new facility, Bush wonders if something will be found."

Were the Johnsons out of Kibbles 'n' Bits? Or were there still some left in the cabinet next to the fridge? Every time Mrs. Johnson opened a drawer, her dog Mr. Wiggles hoped some food might be found.

As for Kerry, Noonan said she talked to a strategist who claimed that, while Kerry has some good points, he's "also liberal, angry and not particularly likable."

The whole problem with Kerry, for liberals like myself, is that Kerry isn't liberal enough. He rails against the war, but is that what he believes, or is that what's politically expedient? He says the lobbyists in Washington will have to take care not to let the door hit them on the way out, yet a recent Washington Post article demonstrated that he's taken more money from lobbyists than anyone else on Capitol Hill in the last 15 years. The fear for progressives is that he's just another phony Democrat who won't effect any kind of real change in office.

Another thing: It's amazing that "liberal" is a dirty word, according to the Noonans in this country. Half of this country is liberal and more would be, if they a) could think straight b) were ever properly educated c) didn't literally believe that the world began 6,000 years ago when God made Adam and then made Eve out of one of his ribs and if d) liberals like me weren't such snide assholes about it.

Noonan concludes by making a bold call.

"Here's a prediction: This is going to be a big election with a lot of twists and turns, with drama -- it's going to decide how the war for American safety is led, or not led, or misled -- and some desperate fighting on both sides."

You don't say. The election is going to be "big" and dramatic? I have to say I am looking forward to more of this kind of insightful analysis that's not insipid and fatuous now that I'm registered with the Washington Post.

How can you be so reverential about George W. Bush, about an idiot? I just don't get it. Either you're lying to us or you're lying to yourself.

.: posted by hornswaggler 10:01 PM

Eagles

I've pretty much lost my patience with Dave Spadaro, who's in charge of the Philadelphia Eagles' official Web site. What I like about the site is Spadaro's access to the team, which bears occasional fruit, the fact that it's updated daily, and most important, the reports from training camp.

But his bias as a shill for the Eagles organization is at times intolerable. Despite his affiliation with the organization, he presents himself as a journalist. However, that pretense falls apart when he, for instance, exhorts fans two days after another devastating championship game loss, "Hey gang! There's always next year! Who's happy? Yippy-skippy!" (Slight paraphrase.)

The latest example is this analysis of the Eagles' offseason needs. He ranks defensive end first, perhaps in an effort to go against the grain, since wide receiver is the more obvious choice. "A premier pass rusher is needed," he begins. He continues:

"Hey, maybe it's Derrick Burgess, returning from his second injury in as many seasons. Maybe it's Jerome McDougle or Jamaal Green heading into year No. 2. Maybe it's a combination of depth and speed and giving N.D. Kalu some much-needed rest and allowing him to flourish as an edge rusher."

Get the needle out of your arm, Spadaro. Burgess? I hope Derrick Burgess returns to full strength, has a great season and a wonderful life, but you have got to be injecting Dilaudid if you think the Eagles can count on him at all this year. Anything from him will be a bonus. He's a fourth-year player who had a promising rookie season and has not played a down the last two seasons because of season-ending injuries to his legs.

N.D. Kalu? Yeah, let's create a situation where he can flourish. Maybe while we're at it we can create a real-life Jurassic Park where prehistoric creatures can flourish, a reptilian wonderland filled to the bursting with brontasauri and velociprators.

At wide receiver, Spadaro says:

"It's time that Andy Reid makes the decision to get better at wide receiver. I'll argue that he's made that decision every year -- drafting receivers, the latest being Billy McMullen in last year's third round -- but the Eagles must be better at wide receiver next season."

Uh, okay. So what do you suggest?

"Maybe it's McMullen who makes it happen. Maybe it's a free agent. Perhaps it's a wide receiver in the early stages of the draft. Whatever. The Eagles must create another matchup problem on offense."

Maybe it's McMullen? A free agent? Early stages of the draft?

Billy McMullen, last year's third round pick, was a big-bodied possession receiver at the University of Virginia. He was thrown to once last season and the ball hit him in the face. Spadaro, if you think sitting pat and seeing if McMullen becomes a big-time threat in '04 is an option, then it's clear that Andy Reid dresses you in a leather one-piece, stores you in a trunk and calls you "the gimp."

As for free agency, there are only three options: Terrell Owens, Darrell Jackson and Steve Smith. Smith is restricted and it's doubtful the Panthers will let him go. No one else would represent a significant upgrade. Who else is there? Darnerien McCants? Dedric Ward? Please.

Early rounds of the draft? Yeah, let's be nonchalant about it. First round, third round. Whatever. Listen up, baldy. If the Eagles don't get either Owens or Jackson in free agency, then that first pick has to go on a wide receiver. Anything else and Eagles fans will be jumping out of windows.

I have a big breakdown of the wide receivers in this year's draft and the history of receivers taken in the last five years that I am going to post here shortly. It's better than anything else you'll find online, Eagles fans, so be sure to check back.

.: posted by hornswaggler 3:52 PM

Friday, February 13, 2004

Here's a good article on the National Guard fiasco by the Boston Globe, which broke the story the first time around in 2000. They're inching closer and closer to the information. Hopefully they'll keep pushing all the way through. I still fear that this story will go away before we get to the bottom of it once and for all.

I mean, all I want is the facts of the matter. Is that too much to ask in America, year 2004? The president served in a branch of the military. The records ought to be there. Where are the records, and what do they say?

The Globe story reminds me of just how shoddy the San Francisco Chronicle's national coverage is. Have they every broken a story? Do they devote any time or resources to investigative reporting? Besides Barry Bonds' steroid use, that is?

The Drudge Report's attempt to insert the Kerry infidelity scandal into the news has failed so far. No one has picked it up. Drudge's timing strikes me as interesting. Consider that he is connected up to the highest levels of the Republican Party at this point. He did the religious right a great service by breaking the Monica Lewinsky story. Now he fills in occassionally for Rush Limbaugh on his radio show. I would not be surprised to learn that the primary motivation to leak the Kerry story this week was to get the media off the National Guard story and that the idea was vetted at the highest levels of the Republican Party.

The fact that the story didn't gain any traction with the press could point to Drudge rushing the story out before it was ready in order to provide that needed distraction to the press, which appears to have really seized on the National Guard story now.

If, in fact, major outlets like Time and ABC News are sitting on this Kerry story and investigating it, it could be that they just don't have the information at this time to run it, provided they have the inclination.

I'm reminded by Drudge's method of "The Insider." The facts of that case, as I remember it, are that CBS killed Lowell Bergman's story because the tobacco company in question threatened a multi-million dollar lawsuit at a time when CBS was up for sale and the lawsuit presented a liability that could have threatened the deal. Bergman ultimately leaked the story to a reporter at the New York Times. Once the story was out in the public domain, "60 Minutes" could then go ahead and run its story.

If the major news outlets are reluctant to pursue yet another salacious sex scandal (and Lord knows why; isn't that pretty much their MO these days?), then maybe Drudge was trying to force their hand by getting the story out.

Of course, the difference between Bergman and Drudge is that Bergman is a highly respected journalist and seemingly an honorable man, while Drudge is a worm. A worm who's good at getting information and who has helped the Internet develop into an alternate source of news from the stultified print and the dumb and clammering television media, but a worm nonetheless. And a GOP shill.

I forgot to mention one thing about Bush's "Meet the Press" interview: At one point Russert asked the president if, in light of all the WMD developments, he considered the campaign in Iraq to have been a war of "choice" or "necessity." Bush acted as though his interest was piqued, saying, "I've never heard of" that way of describing it.

It goes to show how out of touch he is with the debate and discourse that is taking place in our society and in the media. Thomas Friedman, the Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times and one of the most influential supporters of the Iraq war, given his generally liberal tendencies, has been writing about the war of choice versus war of necessity thing for ages now. Bush not only never picks up a newspaper, something that he has admitted, but also is patently apathetic towards the national discourse that his actions create. He's said he gets all his information from the most objective sources possible, from his staff. (I'm hunting for the actual quote. I thought it was reprinted in a New Yorker article on Bush and the media from Jan. 19, but no luck so far.)

.: posted by hornswaggler 2:14 PM

Thursday, February 12, 2004

I'm noticing that there's been a long stream of politics on this blog, so my plan is to hop on the good ship Endeavor to Stop Doing That for a Little While.

But first I have to finish up with the transcribed George W. Bush stuff.

[UPDATE: All the Drudge stuff has probably changed by now.]

But first! The Drudge Report has a report about possible marital infidelity by John Kerry. Notice, if you navigate to the main page, how big the headline is, versus how tiny the type is in the actual "report."

Second of all, calling Drudge on his logic: If, as Drudge asserts, Dean has decided to stay in the campaign because Kerry's doom is imminent, then why is Wesley Clark dropping out, especially if he told a group of reporters earlier this week in an off-the-record conversation, "Kerry will implode over an intern issue", as Drudge claims.

Moving on.

The first thing I jotted down this weekend was from the Evangelical Christians segment on "60 Minutes," in which they played the moment at the 2000 Iowa Caucus where George W. Bush wooed the religious right with the following:

Moderator: "What political philosopher or thinker do most identify with and why?"
Bush: "Uh, Christ. Because he changed my heart."
Moderator: "I think the viewer would like to know more on how he's changed your heart."
Bush: "When you accept Christ as the savior it changes your heart, it changes your life."

He really elaborated on his first answer, didn't he? Whew!

What I noticed about the first response was the serious, self-satisfied, deliberately clipped way Bush delivered it. His tone was defiant.

On the second response his seriousness gives way to the trademark smirk. Typically, there's no discernible reason for the smile. It's not as though he's expressing the beautific mental state of a man who has found God. This smirk accompanies his pronouncements on even the most mundane matters of policy, as we'll see below in the "Meet the Press" snippet. Also note that, though he didn't add anything to his first response, he didn't have to. For the Evangelical Christians across the country, the message was delivered.

I'm going to take over for the moderator for a second.

Me: "It kind of follows that if something changes your heart, it's also going to impact your life. Is there anything else you can say about how the discovery of religion changed the way you look at the world?"
Bush: "Once you accept Christ as your savior and put your life in his hands, then your heart is forever changed."
Me: "Okay. You didn't add anything new there."
Bush: "There's nothing you can add that the Lord can't take away."
Me: "Touche. What year was Jesus born?"
Bush: "Whew! Askin' specific questions, there! I believe that would be 6 B.C."

The second thing here is a rather lengthy snippet from the "Meet the Press" interview with Tim Russert.

Now that I think about it, it's really not the best excerpt. But I took the trouble to copy it, so what the hey. The key thing to note is that, when asked to justify making permanent his record tax cuts against two specific criticisms, the exploding national debt and the huge costs of rebuilding and providing security for two Middle Eastern countries, all he can do is resort to platitudes about leaving money in people's hands.

I left virtually all of Bush's stammering in, so to be fair, I did the same to Russert. Hopefully it's legible:

Russert: "But your base conservatives - listen to Rush Limbaugh, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute - they're all saying you're the biggest spender in American history"
Bush: "But they're wrong ... "
Russert: "Mr. President ... "
Bush: "If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton discretionary spending goes up fifteen percent, and our's has steadily declined. And and the other thing I think that it's important for uh the uh people who watch the the expenditures side of the equation, is to understand we're at war, Tim, and anytime you commit your troops into harm's way they must have the best equipment, the best training, and the best possible pay. That's what he owe it to their loved ones ... "
Russert: "That's a very important point. Every president since the Civil War, who has gone to war, has raised taxes, not cut them, raised the pay for the ... Why not say, 'I will not cut taxes anymore until we have balanced the budget.' If we're, if our situation is so precious and delicate and, because of the war, why do you keep cutting taxes and draining money from the treasury?"
Bush: "Well, because I believe the best way to stimulate economic growth is to let people keep more of their own money, and I believe that if you raise taxes as the economy is beginning to recover from really tough times, you'll slow down economic growth, you'll make it harder. see, I'm more worried about the fellow looking for the job, that's what i'm worried about. I want people working, I want people to find work, and uh, and so when we stimulate the economy it's more likely that person's gonna find work and the best way to stimulate the economy is not to raise taxes but to hold the low taxes down."
Russert: "How about no more tax cuts until the budget is balanced?"
Bush: "That that that that's a hypothetical question, which I I I can't answer it to you because I don't know how strong the economy is going to be. I mean the the president must keep all options on the table. but I do know that raising the child ... that lowering the child credit, by thereby raising taxes on working families, does not make sense when the economy is recovering. and that's exactly what uh some of 'em were calling for up on capitol hill. they want to raise the taxes of the families with children, they want to increase the marriage penalty, they want to get rid of those taxes on small businesses that are stim ... that are encouraging the stimulation of new job creation and I'm not going to have any of it."

For the record: John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee (unless this infidelity thing is true and explodes in his face), has not pledged to raise the taxes on working families nor does he want to rescind the so-called marriage penalty. The taxes he wants to roll back all fall on the wealthiest segments of the population.

Watching the interview, I was reminded of an article I read in the New Yorker a couple years ago about a San Francisco psychologist who studies the different expressions the human face makes, the muscles that control them, and how we read those expressions to convey emotional meanings.

There's the old adage, "It's not what you say, but how you say it," and I really think that applies to Bush and how he appeals to many Americans. Frequently in the Russert interview, when making certain points, he would lean forward, brow crinkling, eyebrows cocking, with a tight-lipped smile.

I think that, to many Americans, that signifies (use your inner Homer Simpson voice or something akin to it), "Friendly." What I see is behavior that doesn't mesh with the subject of the conversation. There's no reason to be smiling, and yet, there he is, leaning forward towards Russert, physically stretching towards some kind of connection that, mentally and linguistically, he is unable to establish. If I were Russert and this conversation weren't a staged interview, televised for millions, I would be creeped out if someone were acting like that while talking with me.

Sober discussions of policy don't lend themselves to constant smiling. Yet you can be engaging while making your case, as Bill Clinton frequently was.

I think the bottom line is that Bush engages in ape language, in more than one sense of the word. For one, he's "aping" or mimicking a friendly conversation that isn't there. The result is a primitive communication where the fact that he's smiling overweighs everything else that's going on, from his fumbling grasp of policy to the fact that he doesn't actually appear to be a nice person. To one segment of the population, the disconnect is obvious. To the other group of Americans, the fact that his facial expressions and body language are divorced from the real substance of the dialogue escapes or doesn't mean anything to them.

I'm not saying this applies to all Bush supporters. I'm sure there are plenty who dismiss his awkwardness in moments like these because they support his policies or who say, "Well, he doesn't come across well in this kind of setting." But his physical bearing clearly has an impact on many Americans, as evidenced by the post 9/11 support that once seemed insurmountable and only recently has begun to crack.

(There's another element to the smirk as well. As many commentators have observed, he seems to smirk a lot when he's making a point, in a sort of self-congratulatory way that has so far eluded my full understanding.)

Anyway, that's it for now. I still want to get to "The Peculiar Case of Thomas Friedman," after all this time, but other than that I'm going to try to get away from politics a little bit in the coming days.

.: posted by hornswaggler 4:34 PM

Spam poetry, an idea whose time has clearly come. I might suggest to this inspired bloggeress spam haiku, a form that I suspect may extract the ripe fruit of meaning from spam subject lines in a profound manner.

Incidentally, I was told awhile back that the reason spam subject lines often trail off into gibberish, a la "Make Your Spunk Trunk longerishhkljsdf," is to throw off spam guard software. Did everyone know this? Further reason, I fear, that I may be a retard.

.: posted by hornswaggler 2:44 PM

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

(Ihr wollt mehr Politik? Naja. Hier ist) die Politik

Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo continues breakin' niggas down like Evander Holyfield, if by niggas you mean the unfolding drama about old George Dubya's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

For those of you who are paying only oblique attention to this whole imbroglio, let me make a couple of things clear for you, so that you're not distracted by the spin coming out of the White House via the president himself in his "Meet the Press" interview and spokesman Scott McClennan.

1) This issue is not "dirty politics." This is the ongoing effort to determine the factual record of George W. Bush's service in the National Guard. It's an endeavor to determine whether he's lying about that record, which it appears that he is. Though he said as recently as Sunday that he would make all the records available regarding his service, it appears he's already gone back on that promise, as Josh Marshall points out, apparently deeming the release of pay stubs, which are ambiguous and narrow in scope, to be sufficient.

2) This issue was not resolved in 2000. The story broke right before the election, but the press never fully pursued it, for whatever reason, and the White House has managed to dodge the issue, as they've done on any number of issues where the press and the government have requested pertinent records (Valerie Plame, the 9/11 commission, Cheney's task force minutes). After Sept. 11th, it was utterly abandoned. The press, like the coward in the movies who starts to feel his oats once the tide has clearly turned in his favor, has finally gotten its cajones back.

3) This matter is relevant. It's relevant because Bush has made his leadership as Commander in Chief a big issue. How many times did he mention the word "war" and "terror" in his "Meet the Press" interview? He's made it an issue with the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln stunt. He's made it an issue with his macho posturing on Iraq and al-Qaeda ("bring 'em on," "wanted: dead or alive," etc.)

And now on we prance to other dandelion-dotted fields of inquiry.

Al Gore has unveiled a new motto, unrelated to any current campaign, but to be employed in all future private and public endeavors: "Soy un Perdedor."

Yes, Al Gore, as Lloyd said to Harry, "Boy! You are one pathetic loser!"

You could tell, when Gore endorsed Howard Dean for president back in December (or was it January?), that he enjoyed flexing his political muscle as one of the most powerful leaders of the Democratic Party. Much was written about Al Gore taking over the mantle of symbolic leadership from Bill Clinton.

And now Howard Dean is dead to rights. Gore's endorsement, it turns out, didn't do him a whole lot of good. Yesterday Dean was trounced in Gore's home state of Tennessee, as voters continue to shovel dirt onto Dean's political grave.

One striking aspect of the endorsement was its timing. It came two months before the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary, as Dean strove to deliver the knockout blow to his opponents before any of the voting had actually taken place.

It goes to show how congenitally poor Al Gore's political instincts are. By the time Dean was getting hammered by the press and everyone else with a blunt instrument, his anti-war message having been co-opted by John Kerry, he had no ammo left in his belt, nothing new to deliver. Especially since he never seemed to establish a strong economic message. Gore's endorsement would have helped Dean so much more if it had come as the wave of attacks was starting to crest. Instead it was washed over and crushed into the rocks like every other positive result Dean had achieved up until that point.

And now Gore has lost a friend, poor Joe Lieberman, with nothing to show for it. Maybe there's a tearful reconciliation in their future at the Lusty Perdedor restaurant and bar during a vacation in Mexico.

Okay, a couple more things. I transcribed two things from TV over the weekend and I'm going to post them here and then add commentary later, including my overall impression of the "Meet the Press" interview.

I need, incidentally, the guy who does "ER" promos to preview my coming postings, you know the guy with the deep, breathy voice who you can't tell whether he wants you to watch something or whether he's planning to come to your home and kill you? In place of, "On the next ER, it's the most shocking day ever for the ER staff, and then, the guy played by Mekhi Phifer faces the toughest decision of his life, even tougher than the one last week, which up until this one, was the all-time toughest," you'd have: "In tomorrow's Hornswaggler, in the most difficult posting of his life, Aaron Kinney bears his soul about John Edwards, and then, you don't miss the moment where he ponders how long it's been since he's eaten pistachio nut ice cream."

.: posted by hornswaggler 12:57 PM

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Meet the Press-ident with the big bag under his left eye

I watched two things this weekend so that you didn't have to: George W. Bush and Tim Russert from the Oval Office on "Meet the Press" and the NFL Pro Bowl. The latter, it turns out, was a great game, and I have a big football post upcoming.

Two quick notes on that interview, however, with more to come in a bit. When Bush is talking about the deficit and trying to defend his policies against a General Accounting Office report that the White House's tax less and spend more fiscal policies are unsustainable (whunh? you don't say), why doesn't he just come out and say that tax cuts on the rich actually increase tax revenues, if he really is a believer in supply-side economics.

That is, after all, the bogus assertion underlying supply-side economics, one that many of the individuals formulating Bush's tax policies and numerous conservative pundits (including Ann Coulter) believe to be true. Why doesn't he come out and say it? Oh right. Because he would be ridiculed.

Second, he addressed his service in the National Guard, claiming that he wouldn't have gotten an honorable discharge if he hadn't served to the fullest. Two quick debunkings of that pronouncement: One, Scott Cohen (looking for the link) wrote an article in the Washington Post detailing how he went AWOL from the Guard during the same time frame and still got an honorable discharge. Second, Bush had major political connections through his father, the same connections that allowed him to leap frog the snaking line and get into the Guard in the first place.

Bush made a clumsy attempt at a diversion, when he warned his political opponents not to denigrate the fine people of the National Guard. No one is denigrating the Guard. We're denigrating you for not serving in it, o wrinkly smirker.

The White House has released some records on Bush's service. Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo has the deets. The one thing that jumps out at you, that the media isn't really fastening on, is that none of these records really explain what happened during his time in Alabama, where it continues to be Bush's word (I showed up) against the Alabama National Guard's (No, you really didn't). There's still no indication that I can see that he ever showed up there when he applied for, was denied and then eventually got a transfer, so that he could work on a political campaign. In fact, my understanding is that he took off from Texas prior to the transfer order being okay'd.

Calpundit seems to have the best breakdown on all of this. I would trollop over there for the most thorough examination of all the available records.

.: posted by hornswaggler 12:22 PM

Monday, February 09, 2004

I have managed to avoid mentioning Janet Jackson at all, except for one oblique reference in the post about George W. Bush not watching the second half of the Super Bowl, and I would like to congratulate myself for that. And I'm sure you, the hornswaggler readers, are also appreciative.

The fact is, it's just not that interesting. The only interesting aspect of it, in my opinion, is whether she is lying about it, whether she intended to do it, but we may never know that. This event may go down with the Kennedy assassination as an event the reality of which will never be determined. (Incidentally, in the readings section of the latest Harper's, there's a really good excerpt that I recommend you to read in which Don DeLillo evaluates the persistent mystery of the events in Dallas in '63, the first sentence of which is: "What's at stake is our trust in a coherent reality." You know you're in for a satisfying intellectual meal when that's the aperitif.)

Or maybe we already know, maybe Janet Jackson has already admitted it. See? I'm just not paying attention. I don't f'ing care.

But it has led me to think along these lines. There's a debate out there among the rest of the people in the world (remember them?) about whether America is, in fact, more dangerous to the world community than people like Saddam Hussein.

I'm not going to entertain that dispute right now, that's a Pancho Villa super burrito of a philosophical exercise. But I will say this: If you're in Europe or some other developed part of the world and you're watching from afar this debate about the exposure of Janet Jackson's mammary consume American culture like a rapid-burning fire for days, you have every reason to be very, very afraid.

The most powerful nation in the world, waging war in the Middle East -- exerting economic, military and political forces that are almost beyond comprehension -- and this is what concerns us? This is a big deal? We are, in terms of the inverse relationship between our wisdom and our power, like a two-year-old with a semi-automatic pistol in his hand, it would seem.

I recently saw some HBO program, "Shock Video" or something like that, which showed examples of sex and nudity on television in other parts of the world, and it is outrageous what's going on in some of these places. I'm not saying some of these things I saw are cultural achievements that we ought to strive for, but it does make it pretty clear how Puritanical we remain as a society, by comparison.

And then I saw the "60 Minutes" last night on Evangelical Christians and, my God, it just made me want to find a skyscraper that's under construction, climb up it, find one of those huge steel I-beams that's being swung into place by a crane, you know?, and position myself right in front of it, and let that twenty tons of steel swing into my face.

Nothing against Evangelical Christians per se, mind you. It's the political power they're wielding. According to "60 Minutes," 40 percent of George W. Bush's votes in 2000 came from people who take the Book of Revelations literally. Take hit off of that one, why don't you. 70 million people out there who think armageddon is coming ... well, this is a topic for another day. It's a topic for another lifetime, really, because that's how much time you could take studying the implications this may have for the future of the human race.

An example: You have people in the White House, including the president, who believe literally in the rapture and the "end of days" etc., and they are determining the course of our nation. One could make the argument that there's an element of self-fulfilling prophecy involved. If you believe that the end of the world could be imminent, then that's going to inform your decisions, to the point that you're unconsciously, even, helping to bring about catastrophe, because that's a result that, frankly, wouldn't surprise you.

And then there's environmental policy. "Hey, world's going to explode like the fucking Death Star next Tuesday? Well then, who cares if you chop down a few more trees, blow the tops off a few mountains? Global warming? Could have catastrophic environmental consequences? Hmmm. I kinda like the sound of that. You're singin' my tune, mister!"

Much much more to come (and I mean it this time; look how much I've been posting recently!) but I've got to run for now. To my brothers and sisters on the East Coast, enduring the cold: It's been 60's and sunny without a cloud in the sky since Saturday in San Francisco. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

.: posted by hornswaggler 2:16 PM

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

K-E-R-R-Y. Why? Because he's Kerry Kerry Kerry Kerry Kerry Kerry ...

Well, Newsweek has gotten what it wanted. Howard Dean's in the doo doo pile, stinky and deep, and John Kerry - ahh the patrician tones, the Skull and Bones pedigree - has taken the lead.

Their cover for Jan. 26 shows a dynamic close-up of Kerry, jabbing his finger in the air, with the words: "Bring it on." Subhead: "Kerry's hard charge."

You need a degree in semiology to get at what Newsweek is doing, to parse the various agendas that make up the Newsweek stew. It's kind of appalling to observe how they shape the presidential narrative according to their whim. One week their cover story is: "Angry midget Dean can't win. Give it up, loser!" The next week: "Hey, whaddya know? Kerry won!"

Anyway, the troubling aspect for Republicans who have been attacking Dean has to be that Kerry does appear to be the more dangerous candidate in a general election. Last week I started to feel really optimistic about how a Kerry-Clark ticket, say, would fare against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, especially in terms of credentials on military issues. Can you imagine the debates?

George W. Bush: "I avoided the Vietnam War, and then I avoided the thing I avoided it for."

Kerry: "I was shot, like, fifty times."

And the vice presidential debates:

Cheney: "I sit in a dark room filled with video monitors, thinking about the coming Armageddon. Sometimes I glower. On other occasions I cackle. I have a hatch in my back where you pour the oil in."

Clark: "I have more bars on my uniform than there are teeth in your dessicated skull."

Not that I'm casting a moral judgement on getting out of the draft for Vietnam, mind you. Plenty of people did it, including Dean and Bill Clinton. What I am condemning is the profound hypocrisy of being a draft dodger turned war monger who sends soldiers off to die seemingly indiscriminately, of a guy who fails to complete his obligations to the National Guard and then struts around the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit like a supply-side monkey.

I'm condemning the hypocrisy of a man who partied and snorted coke in his day, yet wants to make harsher the drug laws that send people to prison for marijuana possession. Meanwhile his niece gets busted for narcotics and goes to rehab, because she's got the money, never mind the political connections, to afford good legal representation.

And I'm condemning the religious posturing of a man who talks about Jesus while ignoring every single thing that Jesus ever taught, and who believes morality applies to the private lives of citizens but not to corporations that take advantage of the public, that pollute - causing real-life damage to real, live people - and are allowed to get away with it.

And the hypocrisy of a man for whom free-market principles always apply, except when political expediency says otherwise.

Back to Kerry. I feel for Deaniacs who are disappointed by this turn of events. But he has to take some responsibility for his topple from the pedestal.

It's true that Kerry doesn't have the credibility among liberals that Dean has when it comes to Iraq. Kerry's saying the right things now, but the bottom line is that he voted for the congressional resolution authorizing the campaign.

But Kerry will have better credibility on Iraq with the general public in the November election. I think Kerry's tax policy is better articulated than Dean's. Dean wants to roll back all of Bush's tax cuts, whereas Kerry wants to retain the elimination of the so-called marriage penalty and a couple other things. That's a smart move politically and, though I'm no tax expert, it sounds like good policy as well.

One last thing on Howard Fineman of Newsweek, who wrote the negative cover story on Dean in the Jan. 12 installment, which prompted this article by me.

The inaccuracies are astounding. For one, he perpetuates the myth that Dean is "short" and "diminutive," which continues to make the rounds. My roommate has met and stood right next to Howard Dean and swears that Dean is 5'11", about the same height as George W. Bush. For whatever reason, the media likes the idea that Dean is the short guy with the short temper, the Napoleon archetype.

For another, Fineman refers to Dean's relatively upscale background by calling him a "Brahman." As if Newsweek's new poster boy isn't the epitome of blue blood? Compared to John Kerry, who married into the Heinz fortune, Howard Dean is as middle class as they come.

But Fineman's real inaccuracies come when he talks about Dean's supposed campaign-trail gaffes. Fineman says that Dean "inferred" that all Southerners have confederate flags on their pickup trucks. A) Dean did no such thing. B) Fineman commits the cardinal sin of mixing up "imply" and "infer."

The difference between imply and infer is, of course, the following: Implying is on the giving end and inferring is on the receiving end. I may imply something to you. Whether you infer it is a different story.

Columbia University's School of Journalism asks you the difference between "imply" and "infer" on the writing test you take to get into the school. In other words, in order to begin studying journalism, you're supposed to know the difference, and Fineman and Newsweek screw it up.

Fineman removes any doubt about his error when he does it again in the next sentence, saying that Dean "inferred" that his fellow candidates are Republicans. How can Howard Fineman possibly know what Dean is inferring in such a situation? You'd have to have access to Dean's thoughts.

Fineman is wrong on the substance of both his assertions as well. Regarding Southern voters, what Dean said was: I want to be the candidates for "guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks." Nowhere does Dean imply, let alone infer, that all Southerners have flags on their pickup trucks. Fineman is using faulty logic. The spirits of Greek philosphers are slapping themselves in the forehead as I write.

What Dean was saying was, Democrats have to do a better job of appealling to a certain cross-section of rural Southern voters, whose socio-economic interests actually lie with Democrats, not Republicans. He'd been using the phrase for a long time and no one noticed until the media, no doubt prompted by a Republican National Committee press release, found that it fit the negative trend on Dean.

As far as Dean "inferring" that his Democratic opponents were Republicans: What Dean actually said was that Democrats aren't going to win in November by being "Bush-lite," by being a bunch of milquetoasts, by going along with the war in Iraq, by saying, "You can't have a $1.2 trillion tax cut! I won't stand for that. How about $1.13 trillion?"

[UPDATE: Howard Dean has now made the assertion that Kerry is a Republican. Fineman is still wrong, however, for using "infer" in place of "imply."]

And that's a true assertion. What he was implying was that some of his opponents, Dick Gephart and Joe Lieberman in particular, were too similar to Bush on key issues, issues that have polarized the American electorate. Basically, he was saying they're pussies. He was making a case for presenting a stark contrast with Bush. Not only has Dean been proven right (Gephart is gone and Lieberman has gone insane, imagining he still has a shot), but he has provided a valuable service to Democrats by making the anti-war stance so prominent and by firing up the liberal base of the party. (It's Kerry's job, if he wins the nomination, to keep those people involved.)

If Dean actually "inferred" that all his opponents were Republicans, well, that would be a Fineman-esque lapse in logical judgement, because Dean's opponents are, in fact, all members of the Democratic Party. While Howard Fineman is looking into the portal that opens into Howard Dean's mind and reading his thoughts, he ought to tell us what's in the gubernatorial records that Dean had sealed for ten years. (That was an example of an extremely damaging political mistake that Dean made all on his own, without the aid of the media, as were the disparaging comments he made four years ago about the Iowa caucus that were played on television just prior to this year's event.)

Hopefully, this will be the last time I ever write anything about Howard Fineman.

.: posted by hornswaggler 11:10 AM

Monday, February 02, 2004

According to the Associated Press, President Bush didn't see Justin Timberlake expose Janet Jackson's booby during halftime of the Super Bowl, because he had already gone to sleep. The real scandal here is that the president of the United States didn't watch the second half of the Super Bowl. What good is it having a yahoo for a president if he doesn't even watch the Super Bowl? Hell. Nixon would have watched the Super Bowl.

I can see the Democratic attack ads now:

(Announcer with deep, breathy, insidious voice): "George W. Bush claims to be patriotic. He says he loves freedom. But where was the president during the second half of Super Bowl XXXVIII? Asleep in in his cozy White House bed, unconcerned about who won America's most cherished contest. Can a man who doesn't watch the Super Bowl really love America? Can you rely on a president who doesn't even care about the Super Bowl to protect you from terrorists, evildoers who want to destroy the National Football League? No way, Jose.

"Sen. John Kerry loves freedom and he loves football. When the Patriots' Adam Vinatieri kicked that game-winning field goal, John Kerry jumped up from his seat in jubilation, knocking a full beer onto a distant relative. The clothes of George Bush's relatives remained completely dry. If George Bush doesn't care about the Super Bowl, what does he care about? John Kerry will protect American freedom and the football that is nestled in her bosom. George Bush hates NASCAR, and he hates you. In 2004, vote for a real American. Vote for John Kerry." (Paid for by Patriotic Sports Enthusiasts for John Kerry.)

.: posted by hornswaggler 4:56 PM

Lessons for the Eagles from Super Bowl 38

[UPDATE: Good article by Sam Donnellon on the need as a coach for flexibility. Reid is too dogmatic in his West Coast offense ways (remember the conservative crap from the NFC Championship against the Bucs?), whereas Belichek and Fox displayed adaptability in the Super Bowl, shifting strategies to fit the game.]

There is no shortage of lessons. First of all, it was another great Super Bowl, the third in five years. There's a pattern that's emerged according to which every other Super Bowl is entertaining: Titans-Rams (good), Ravens-Giants (bad), Pats-Rams (good), Bucs-Raiders (bad), Pats-Panthers (good).

Eagles fans who watched post-game coverage on Sports Center may have noticed a play in the fourth quarter in which Patriots receiver David Givens, when Ricky Manning Jr. jammed him at the line of scrimmage, throw the diminutive corner to the ground and come wide open for a big twenty-yard reception. That's the same Manning Jr., of course, who pimp-slapped the Eagles' diffident wide receivers and came up with three interceptions.

That's not only a difference in personnel (Givens and Deion Branch were both exceptional draft picks by the Pats), it's a matter of coaching. If the other team is playing you rough, then you have to get rough too, rather than take it and whine to the refs. If the officials are going to let pretty much anything inside five yards slide, then you have to adjust your strategy. Givens could easily have been called for offensive holding, seeing as he grabbed Manning by the jersey and threw him down, but he wasn't. If it's not being called as a foul, then go ahead and do it.

The Patriots have pretty much the same offensive strategy as the Eagles -- short passes out of three and five step drops, a tendency to run the ball only as a second option, no big names among their receivers and running backs -- with the big exception being they actually run their system effectively. Their receivers are more effective and better coached. They run better routes. The Eagles have this perverse dependence on screen passes and dinky dunks to the running back. The Eagles actually run plays where the running back is not the safety valve or third or fourth option, he's the number one option, and Donovan McNabb doesn't even bother looking down the field before he checks down to the back. That's stupid, and it's predictable.

You have to scratch your head (or, depending on the circumstances, bang it against a wall) when Andy Reid throws that quick out to Todd Pinkston and asks him to break a tackle or make a guy miss. I mean, has that ever even worked in practice? Pinkston's limited skill set does not include making people miss in the open field and if a defender gets one hand on him, he's done for.

The short passing offense depends on a quarterback's being extremely accurate. It just so happens that accuracy on short throws is McNabb's greatest weakness.

Watching Tom Brady and Jake Delhomme last night raised questions in my mind about McNabb's personality. I love Donovan and I think he can win at a high level, but (besides the skills that he lacks that Tom Brady possesses in abundance -- great accuracy, superior decision-making), he doesn't seem to possess the fire that Tom Brady and Jake Delhomme displayed last night, those moments of pure exultation, passion and competitive spirit.

Brady showed it when he scrambled for that first down to the three-yard line on the Pats' first scoring drive and made the emphatic first-down signal, helmet pulled down over his face from the impact of the tackle, letting out a yell of battlefield intensity. Delhomme showed it when he threw that 85-yard touchdown pass on 3rd and 10 to Muhsin Muhammad that gave the Panthers the lead in the fourth quarter. Evidently, members of the Pats defense had been chattering at him, and he pointed at them and offered a high-volume rebuttal as Muhammad streaked towards the end zone.

McNabb tends to dance and laugh when the Eagles score, which is fine, most of the time, but on occasion I want to see him display that fire, to show how much he cares. I want to see him get pissed off. All the comparisons between Brady and Joe Montana over the weekend demonstrated that Montana, Joe Cool, never got worked up. He's a case-in-point that you don't have to be fiery to succeed at the highest level, which ought to be heartening for Eagles fans.

McNabb cares about football. We know that. No one works harder in the offseason that he does. And he is emotional. Underneath the laughter, we know there is anger and pain. He just tends to internalize everything, like the humiliation he felt when Eagles' fans (louts) booed Philly's decision to draft him over Ricky Williams. He represses his emotions in a way that's almost neurotic. He never seems to say what he feels but rather speaks in bland cliches that bely his intelligence. Hopefully, as he matures, he'll become better at managing his emotions and finding avenues for their expression.

Tom Brady wasn't sacked once last night. The Eagles are going to have to improve the play of their offensive line, and Donovan is going to have to a better job getting rid of the footbal and being decisive when he decides to run with it, if they want to go all the way.

The Patriots' success along the offensive line is all about coaching. The Pats lost three of their starting linemen this year to injury, yet still played at a very high level.

Both the Panthers' and Patriots' defensive teams are sure tacklers who are extremely physical and play with discipline and ferocity. The Eagles have to get bigger, faster and fiercer along the defensive line and in their linebacking corps. Their linebackers, with Nate Wayne and Mark Simoneau starting at the weak side and in the middle, are undersized. (Michael Lewis and Brian Dawkins have the ferocious hitting thing down quite well in the secondary.)

Muhsin Muhammad and Steve Smith are prototypes of two different, but equally effective receivers. Muhammad is a big, imposing athlete who will fuck you up on a block, jump over you for a catch, yet has the speed to get deep. Smith is small but well-built, with outstanding quickness and blazing speed. On his touchdown catch, he demonstrated one way to beat press coverage: put a move on the defensive back that would break every bone in the lower half of a normal person's body, then have the strength to establish position on the defender on the way down the field. Givens for the Pats showed the other: simply throw the defender out of the way.

Todd Pinkston and James Thrash are capable of doing neither of those things.

If the Eagles approach the draft and free agency with these things in mind -- improving the offensive and defensive lines, getting faster and more physical at wide receiver, and becoming more physical on the defensive side of the ball -- and if Donovan McNabb works on his accuracy and decision-making, they have a shot at getting to the Super Bowl next year.

The Patriots are proving a lot of things: Tom Brady is the real deal and beyond; Bill Belichek is the best coach in football; you can win the Super Bowl without relying on the running game, so long as you run it effectively when it matters. They're also proving the following: it is possible to remain at the top in this up-one-year, down-the-next NFL. Eagles fans can take heart from the Patriots' example that Philly's window of opportunity to get to the Super Bowl remains wide open, so long as Reid and his coaching staff recognize what the team's needs are and address them in aggressive fashion.

.: posted by hornswaggler 2:32 PM

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