Goldberg and Guthrie

I've been meaning to make fun of this for a few days. As you are no doubt not aware, the Bengals recently resigned running back Rudi Johnson to a long term deal for $26 million or some such amount.

Here is the first part of the article about it on the Bengals' web site:

Maybe the turning point in the deal came on one of those myriad of calls to the Bengals’ offices while Peter Schafer was on hold listening to the stream of radio highlights from the Marvin Lewis era. That’s when Rudi Johnson’s agent realized his client is on a first-name basis with all of Bengaldom.

It would be, “Carson Palmer drops back to pass,” or “Chadjohnsonwideopentouchdown.” But with Rudi Johnson, it is always, “Rudi up the middle, touchdown,” or “Rudi gets a big hole and busts it for the first down and more.” And, of course, there are always the “Rudi, Rudi,” chants from analyst Dave Lapham.

“Any time you have a connation like that, the player should stay where he is,” Schaffer said as he and Johnson soaked in Wednesday what has been reported as a five-year, $26 million deal.

Clearly, Bengals fans have singled out Rudi Johnson as the best player, and this is the only reason his first name is used and chanted. Why, we've taken to him to the same way Notre Dame fans took to that scrappy player who was able to walk on and play for them after being on the practice squad for years. What was his name again?

(Although, FWIW, I think this was a good signing.)

I was going to put this in the comment thread below, until I remembered that this is actually my blog and that I could put it in a post.

(1) The recently passed Bankruptcy Bill was apparently unpopular on both the left and right. Democrats did not mount a public campaign against it until the very last minute. Why?

(2) Large portions of the American public are homophobic. How do you plan on dealing with this without betraying the basic principles of our party (and common decency)?

(3) This question involves multiple sub-parts. In answering these questions, please refrain from listing mistakes that are in fact not mistakes at all such as "I was too passionate" or "I paid too much attention to my critics."

During the last Presidential campaign, a popular theme put forth by Democrats was that the President refused to admit his mistakes. What mistakes have Democrats made? Specifically:

(a) What mistakes did you, Howard Dean, make that prevented you from winning the Democratic nomination? (As an aside, do you think the huge lead you were enjoying in the polls was real or illusory?)

(b) What mistakes did John Kerry (and the leadership of the Democratic party) make that caused him to lose the 2004 election?

(c) What mistakes did Al Gore (and the leadership of the Democratic party) make that caused him to sort of lose the 2000 election?

(d) What mistakes did Bill Clinton (and the leadership of the Democratic party) make that caused the Democrats to lose control of Congress in 1994?

(e) This is the most important sub-part. Please compare the answers to (b), (c) and (d) (and to a lesser extent (a)). To the extent that any mistake appears on more than one of these lists, why are these mistakes being repeated? What will be done to prevent the Democrats from making the same mistakes in 2006 and 2008?

(Obviously, I understand that this question could be asked in a face to face meeting, but you get the idea.)

(4) To what extent could and should the Democrats use the "Contract With America" and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress as a model for becoming the majority party in Congress again?

(5) Joe Lieberman. What the fuck?

That's all for now. If I think of more later, I'll put them in this post.

Explain this to me. I have received about 10 e-mails from loser John Kerry since he lost the election due to his loserness. Many of them focused on forcing Donald Rumsfeld to resign, mostly due to mistakes made in a war that we started more than two years ago and that John Kerry initially supported no matter what he says. Some of them talked about some health care bill of rights that has absolutely no chance of passing. Yet not one mentioned the god awful bankruptcy bill* that will almost certainly pass in the Senate today. Why?

I suppose some time in 2007 I will receive an e-mail demanding the resignation of Bill Frist because of this bill.


*By the way, I haven't had time to study this bill and it might not be that bad. But as pure politics, it seems like it should be Democratic gold - the GOP and some traitorous Democrats apparently voted down amendments to exempt very sick people and veterans, as well as amendments to end the "asset protection trust", which allows rich people to essentially avoid paying their debts - an option not open to the rest of the country.

As a good U of C grad, I realize that if credit card companies think that lower income people can declare bankruptcy to avoid paying their debts, they will simply stop lending money to such people. If people want to avoid having large amounts of credit card debt, might I suggest that they stop charging things on their credit card that they can't afford. Of course, a large number of these same people apparently voted for George Bush because they thought John Kerry was French looking and they didn't like the idea of the gays a marryin'. I have to be honest, I think it's awesome that some of the people who thought this when they voted last time might lose their house because of this bill (although I am sure their simple minds will still, somehow blame the liberal, Hollywood elite). It's too bad a lot of good people will suffer as well.

Apologies for the outburst. I'll go back to not posting for a month.

The Michael Jackson trial reenactments on E! are, simply, the greatest accomplishment in the history of Western civilization.