Quick Take on the Sunday Post

Back in DC, and reading the Post on newsprint as opposed to on line (but as it was on the Outer Banks, I'm still not wearing a shirt; I offer that up as a warning to my coworkers and fellow Metro riders for Monday).

After an hour of reading the paper, here are three quick takes on the news:

• The lead article in the Post is on another infamous Alaskan plane crash that killed Reps. Begich and Boggs in 1972.  The article also references the 1978 plane crash that killed Sen. Ted Stevens' first wife.  I bring that up only to point out how odd - and ideological - Sen. Stevens was.  In December 2005, when he failed to successfully include Arctic Refuge drilling language in a defense appropriations bill (he was chair of that committee at the time), he called the day he lost that vote "the saddest day of my life." Really, sadder than the day your wife died in a plane crash?
• Dan Balz's column points out how Ds hope to weather voter dissatisfaction in the November midterm elections by pointing out how crazy the Rs are. Of course, the only agenda the Republican have is to repeat how mad they are; they do not have an agenda or a single idea on how to end the two wars Bush got us in, fix the economy, put people to work, or protect the planet. 

Pointing out how nutty folks like Dookie Rand Paul are is certainly a valid point.  But it also is a depressing statement about the American electorate.  Obama ran and won - in part - on being aspirational and solution oriented on health care, the economy, financial reform, clean energy, etc. Then again, he mainly won because the electorate was fed up with George Bush. Is the political shelf life of being optimistic and aspirational a mere two years in contemporary America?  Are we that cranky and distracted and immature, that we are only happy complaining about things rather than trying to implement difficult solutions to serious problems like energy and health care?  Seems like it.

• Finally, I close with two mundane items from sports.  One, FIFA is thinking about eliminating ties in World Cup matches.  But football should not stop there.  Ties should be banned from all football/soccer matches.  One of the frustrating things about soccer is that not every team in every game plays to win, and you gain a point for not winning.  Think about how stupid that phrase is: in some games in certain scenarios one of the teams is NOT playing to win. If you are not playing to win you should not be playing.  Banning ties would also get rid of the stupid point system employed by soccer; it should come down to wins and losses.  One important way to dramatically improve soccer is to ban ties from every league and tournament. 

And two, the right-wingers in charge of the USA Basketball, Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski, are not picking any Tar Heels for this year's team set to play in the 2010 World Basketball championships in Turkey at the end of this month. But that's not all.  Colangelo had famously stated that anyone who does NOT play for the national team in 2010 will NOT be eligible for the 2012 Olympic team.  Predictably, Colangelo has backed off on that statement, in effect throwing the players who are playing in Turkey for the U.S. under the bus: 'thanks for playing in 2010, but sunshine patriots like LeBron and Wade are here for the Olympics so we don't need you any more.'  More right-wing hypocrisy.  As it was in 2006, this is not my America, so I will likely root for Greece if they play us in Turkey.