Eight Feet Deep

Texas Tech fired Mike Leach as head coach today, just before the Red Raiders take on Michi­gan State in the Alamo Bowl. Leach was accused of mis­treat­ing wide receiver Adam James by order­ing the player into small, dark rooms after James suf­fered a con­cus­sion. James is the son of ESPN ana­lyst and for­mer SMU and NFL player Craig James.

One can only won­der if the alle­ga­tions are true. Espe­cially in light of other Texas Tech hires includ­ing retired bas­ket­ball coach Bobby Knight, and the pro-torture for­mer U.S. Attor­ney Gen­eral in the Gee Dubya Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Alberto Gonzales.

Did Gon­za­les order Mike Leach to tor­ture Adam James at Texas Tech?

Gon­za­les is a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at Texas Tech and is a diver­sity recruiter. No fig­ures have yet been released as to how many Mus­lim stu­dents Pro­fes­sor Gon­za­les has man­aged to sign at Texas Tech, located in Lub­bock. That is, with or with­out torture.

Goin’deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppppp

The Hous­ton Tex­ans held on for a sec­ond straight week to beat Miami and to escape once again with more Ws than Ls. Now, the entire AFC will not have to fall into a fresh open­ing in the ground and dis­ap­pear in order for the Tex­ans to cap­ture a wild card play­off spot. Per­haps, just the equiv­a­lent of an AFC con­fer­ence will have to be kidnapped.

With the Tex­ans fac­ing New Eng­land for their last game, Patri­ots coach Bill Belechick is report­edly play­ing coy to ques­tions as to whether hot­shot QB Tom Brady will play since the Pats are assured the AFC East title. That’s fine with me (see INDIANAPOLIS). It doesn’t mat­ter to New Eng­land whether Hous­ton wins. It does to Hous­ton, but the Tex­ans need a var­i­ous com­bi­na­tion of planet align­ment and voodoo for the team to head towards its first play­off game ever.

Jim Cald­well, a name which will live in infamy

And what is up with Indi­anapo­lis Colts coach tak­ing out his stars includ­ing QB Pey­ton Man­ning with a slight lead and an ulti­mate loss to the New York Jets? That was, of course, the end to a pos­si­ble per­fect sea­son for the Colts. Cald­well, the coach, didn’t want Man­ning and other stars to hurt a pinky or some­thing. Team pres­i­dent Bill Polian is now won­der­ing why most of Indi­anapo­lis wants to mount his coach on a fiery stick. Hmm. That’s a tough one Billy Boy.

And final­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­lly I’m hid­den inside this bowl

Not too many days longer until the national col­lege title game between Texas and Alabama. It seems many who know what they are talk­ing about when it comes to foot­ball pick the Crim­son Tide. Sorry, I have to go with Mack Brown and his boys, not to be con­fused with Johnny Mack Brown.

But before the BCS cham­pi­onship, we’ve got the Tampa Tam­pax Bowl, the Prepa­ra­tion H Her­bert Hoover Bowl, the Snap-on-Tools Idaho Bowl, the Watts 40-Oz. Bull Bowl, the Smith and Wes­son Cut and Shoot, Texas, Bowl, the Flam­ing Gay Bowl at San Fran­cisco, the I-Shot-the-Sheriff-Rastafarian Bowl in Kingston, Jamaica and so forth …

I have played phone tag with Verizon’s tech­ni­cal sup­port regard­ing my Broad­band access. After a trouble-free period, it has this kink where it switches from the faster Broad­band to the much slower National Access. I’ve talked with sev­eral peo­ple, now the trick is get­ting the right one who knows what they are doing and will do it for you. It’s more dif­fi­cult than you’d think. This could take all after­noon, so wish me luck and per­haps I will be back some­time today or tomor­row. — Mr. EFD

It was no sur­prise that polit­i­cal fall­out was the focus of the attempted bomb­ing over the week­end of an air­liner that was land­ing in Detroit.

It’s Christ­mas. Most offi­cial­dom is else­where. Pres­i­dent Obama was vaca­tion­ing in Hawaii. Hey, there’s noth­ing like tak­ing cheap shots at your oppo­nent when he’s thou­sands of miles away.

Our favorite car­bun­cle, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., was on CNN almost it seems before pas­sen­gers were herded off the North­west Air­lines Air­bus that Umar Farouk Abdul­mu­tal­lab allegedly tried to blow up upon descent from a Ams­ter­dam to Detroit flight. Abdul­mu­tal­lab man­aged only to ignite a small fire and roast his chestnuts.

With no one else to answer their ques­tions, the national media had the Repub­li­can noise machine handy to lay the blame. Yes, every­thing wrong is Obama’s fault 24–7 so why should this be any different?

That Abdulmutallab’s father, a wealthy retired Niger­ian bank­ing mogul, had sup­pos­edly warned the U.S. Embassy  that his son might be tee­ter­ing over the edge into rad­i­cal Islam is no doubt dis­turb­ing. And also unnerv­ing is that the alleged screw-up bomber flew from Nige­ria and Ams­ter­dam to the U.S. while being on some kind of watch list.

But if one might remem­ber, we’ve seen this all before and worse. Do you recall the so-called Shoe Bomber? Even worse what about peo­ple known by the FBI to have taken flight train­ing just to take off and not land, and ended up mur­der­ing 3,000 peo­ple in New York, Vir­ginia and Penn­syl­va­nia? Oh mighty mem­bers of the right who want to lay all the blame on the Obama admin­is­tra­tion might recall but won’t say so that all of this hap­pened dur­ing George W. Bush’s tenure.

Should the Obama admin­is­tra­tion have had some improve­ments made in air­line secu­rity dur­ing the past year? One would hope so. How­ever, when I last flew two months ago it was indi­cated I was on some kind of gov­ern­ment security-threat list. I know this because I was unable to print my board­ing pass online and was told as much by air­line per­son­nel. I wasn’t sub­jected to any strip search, how­ever, and I was able to print my board­ing pass on the return flight. And I have a very com­mon name, for God’s sake.

So yes, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion deserves some blame. But so does George W. Bush. Prob­a­bly so do many oth­ers. At least, thank­fully, no more life has been yet lost due to these cow­ardly zealots. Before pil­ing on the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, the flighty pub­lic should take a breath, read, and fig­ure out what’s going on with every­thing before join­ing in with the angry crowd of right-wingers who have no other agenda than regain­ing power in Con­gress and the White House.

Last night two of my broth­ers and I had a brief con­ver­sa­tion on Face­book con­cern­ing what some see as back­room deals made in the Sen­ate to pass the health care reform bill. Well, it really wasn’t a con­ver­sa­tion, we just posted our opinions.

My broth­ers, like the major­ity of my friends, have dif­fer­ing opin­ions from those of mine. It’s no big­gie. It’s the price for grow­ing up and con­tin­u­ing to live in Texas dur­ing this day and age.

Com­pro­mise and going all out to secure it looms large at the very essence of our polit­i­cal sys­tem today. We like keep­ing our local mil­i­tary base open (I’m just being rhetor­i­cal here) or we are happy when our local police and fire depart­ment get fed­eral grants. But some­times those good­ies come come to Papa smelling all the world like bacon, ham and spare ribs. Umm, umm, umm. You love you some pork.

Fed­eral largesse and its dis­tri­b­u­tion to the vot­ing pub­lic is actu­ally much more com­plex than that and because I am tired, I will leave the sub­ject to another day to dis­cuss. So why did I devote three para­graphs to the above? It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

Instead, I am going to spend a minute or two on the sub­ject of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and his role in even­tu­ally pass­ing a health care reform package.

Now this reform bill is some­thing Obama wants very much or you wouldn’t be see­ing mem­bers of Con­gress hang­ing around a snow-bound Wash­ing­ton three days before Christ­mas. But there are those who see Obama pro­vid­ing very lit­tle lead­er­ship in this extra­or­di­nary leg­isla­tive bat­tle. Some even say that it seems the Pres­i­dent is just sit­ting back and let­ting Con­gress fight out among themselves.

Until the Wash­ing­ton press corps gets off their duffs (what is a duff any­way?) and start report­ing instead of being stenog­ra­phers, or else, until Bob Wood­ward or some­one else on the inside of the Belt­way elite writes a book about it, we won’t know whether Obama fid­dled around while Capi­tol Hill (fig­u­ra­tively) burned.

So, indulge me in a sce­nario of the ques­tion regard­ing pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship of the health care issue, his num­ber one priority:

Off we go:

Obama and his min­ions are plugged in with tin cans and a long-ass string that runs down Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue from the White House to the Capi­tol, or how­ever they stay in touch, call­ing every shot. Some Sen­a­tors don’t like being told what to do, like Right­eous Joe Lieber­man. There­fore, Obama being the coach sends in another play.

Even­tu­ally, the bill gets passed. It is 2010. Con­gres­sional races every­where. The oppo­si­tion no longer has health reform as the dead horse on which to beat. And, by sum­mer­time the econ­omy has dras­ti­cally improved. Sure, unem­ploy­ment is still  higher than we would like, but that sit­u­a­tion too is turn­ing around.

Only the true believ­ers of the Tea Party still harp on health reform, social­ism, tax­a­tion, gay­ness and other evils of the Democ­rats. It could prove to be the undo­ing of the Repub­li­can party though  if some respon­si­ble lead­er­ship does not arise from the GOP in the nick of time.

Come Novem­ber, the schism in the Repub­li­can party rears its ugly head as inde­pen­dent con­gres­sional can­di­dates and the GOP nom­i­nees split the vote, result­ing in a huge win for the Demo­c­ra­tic con­gres­sional candidates.

And guess what? A good many of those can­di­dates were vet­ted by the Obama machine. When they take their seats in Con­gress in 2011, unre­li­able Democ­rats like Ben Nel­son or Repub­li­can In Name Onlies like Susan Collins or Inde­pen­dent flakes like Lieber­man will no longer be needed for a super major­ity vote.

As this plays out, we see some of the failed mea­sures which almost split the extreme lib­eral wing from the Demo­c­ra­tic party over the health care com­pro­mises return. For Repub­li­cans, the dreaded “Pub­lic Option” once again rears its head. And the next thing you know, Obama is on  his way to a  sec­ond term.

Now granted, all of the above sounds like a ter­rific tale. When I say ter­rific I mean way out there, although I think it might be ter­rific in other ways. It’s just a guess though. It’s just pick­ing up a dart and throw­ing it at the wall when there is no dart board in sight.

But it could hap­pen. And if it hap­pens, then don’t say I didn’t warn you. Then I’ll start on pre­dict­ing the next Super Bowl win­ners fol­lowed by those in the World Series. Or whichever comes first.

Tommy Kelly lost his pants.

Such is a lede (lead) that could launch prac­ti­cally any clas­sic tale of the vul­ner­a­bil­ity or humil­ity of man. But here it is, likely for the Oak­land Raiders defen­sive tackle, a source of embar­rass­ment that will fol­low him for some time if not ensure him a place in his own locker room’s best jokes.

If you didn’t hear or see the clip on the Web, Kelly’s pants some­how fell off while play­ing in front of a CBS tele­vi­sion audi­ence and only 67,000 some-odd live peo­ple at Denver’s Invesco Field at Mile High Sun­day. At least the Raiders picked up a win, putting them at a grim 4–9-0 for the season.

No mat­ter how dis­con­cert­ing the inci­dent in which Kelly was em-bare-assed it is likely that only fools, drunks and drunken fools who aren’t foot­ball play­ers will bring up the mat­ter if they run across the Raider in per­son one day. At 6-feet, 6 inches tall and 300 pounds, yeah, only his fel­low pros might make him the butt of their jokes and then likely only those around his height and girth. Cer­tainly few place kick­ers will deride him.

But all kid­ding aside, it was an inter­est­ing and enter­tain­ing week in pro foot­ball. And sad.

The week­end games car­ried the shadow of Cincin­nati wide receiver Chris Henry’s death on Thurs­day. Henry fell out of a pickup truck bed dur­ing a domes­tic dis­pute. Such things shouldn’t hap­pen dur­ing one of the Ben­gals’ most promis­ing sea­sons after years of rare win­ning sea­sons. But they do and they did.

How­ever, the games go on and are big­ger than just one man. That is, unless you are Brett Favre. When his head coach wanted to bench the star Vikings quar­ter­back, the Methuse­lah From Mis­sis­sippi just wouldn’t go.

Then, no mat­ter how much the loud and the not-so-loud Saints fans were dis­ap­pointed, their unde­feated streak finally came to end with their loss to the Dal­las Cow­boys. Oh well, as I (a Saints fan) told an acquain­tance watch­ing the game, it’s not the Super Bowl.

As for my main team, the Tex­ans, well, they man­aged to climb their way out of the hole with a three-point win over St. Louis. There is hope for a wild card berth if they can win their last two games and a hole opens up and swal­lows half the AFC who knows what other teams have to win and which have to lose.

So why write about the NFL on Mon­day when I could write about the Sen­ate pass­ing their ver­sion of the health care bill and the cli­mate change talks in Copen­hagen? Are you nuts? It’s the NFL in December!