With All The Appropriate Apologies in Advance ...

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the web

Many creatures were stirring, the Internet ain’t dead.

Wikileaks was regaling many people with tales

Of our poor chargés and their gentlefolk’s mails.

Obama was safe on a tropical isle,

Though Leon Rodrigues won’t be free for a while.

When out on the lawn there came such a noise

I thought Aaron was partying again with his boys.

I sought to divine the source of the clatter

And spied a short little guy who couldn’t be fatter.

Hey you, I yelled, at the crimson-clad stranger

You got the wrong house, we don’t have a manger.

We do not observe this holiday eve,

Nor consider it part of our liturgical weave.

I don’t mean to bring you down with the blues,

But see, at this house, well, here there be Jews.

Oh, that is all right, said the queer little elf.

I am just taking a break, and resting myself.

I landed right here to avoid all the lights

Showing up other places can contribute to frights.

Please don’t be fooled by my sartorial roses.

You see, I too, am a follower of Moses.

Who else, do you think, would be working on Christmas?

I schlep and I haul and I take care of business.

On this holiday, for my friends do you see

A mitzvah I do. For a very small fee.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

Merry Christmas to all. Oy Vey and good night.

It is time, long past time in fact, to end this fiction of student-athletes and scholar-players and state-supported institutions involved in big time, Division I sports.

And I say this as one who lives and dies with my beloved Spartans of Michigan State every year, and who covered my share of basketball tournament games. (In a bar one winter night, I could only see a small part of a TV screen across the room, but I was able to discern who was playing basketball by recognizing the coaches. Rollie always stood out.)

Let us disband the NCAA and let the teams act in whatever manner they deem appropriate. End the charade of classes for boys and girls who have no interest in broadening their minds. Even if they do, how do you fit classes into those schedules?

Don't drop the requirement to attend class, bar anyone involved in a team from campus entirely. Erect gates, post armed guards, and allow them on the premises only in the last few minutes before the contest begins.

Impossible, you say? Sacrilege, you fume? Economic suicide, you opine?

Pshaw, I counter. In the first place, sports is a terrible way to make money and in fact only a very small percentage of schools turn a "profit." http://www.dallasnews.com...

But the tradition! The camaraderie! The parties! The beer! The vomit! The DUIs!

Hey, license the school name to the team, let them take on the debt for the stadium and the facilities and the coaches' $1 million or more salaries and be done with it.

If the kids are successful and reasonably talented, they will be able to put away enough money to PAY for college after their playing days are done.

I am not saying you can't have a "school" team, just end the corrupting fiction that when he is not bashing defensive players, that 320-pound, 6'2" offensive lineman is staring into a microscope or dissecting a sonnet.

And for kids who really fit that mold, that want that experience, there will always be the Division II and Division III schools to accommodate them.

I daresay that there are few sports fans as nutty as soccer fans in England, but to get a flavor of how they treat sports at university, check out the Oxford football club website, http://www.ouafc.com/ . Here is my favorite line, "If you're not sure whether you're good enough to play for the University, why not come along to trials anyway? You might surprise yourself."

Doesn't really sound like Woody Hayes, now does it?

Unfortunately, big time college sports is a sewer and there is little reason and almost no profit in cash-strapped, tax-supported schools climbing into the muck on the off chance they can raise their national profile.

But, just in case my prescription falls on deaf ears, I'd just like to point out its been more than 1,000 days since the University of Michigan beat Michigan State in either football or basketball. (Who says OSU is "The Game?")

Go Green!

smoke and fire and the end?

I suppose it would be easy to be snarky and funny and dismissive of Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican and evangelical Christian, who is resigning from Congress as part of the fall out from an affair with a staffer.

I will be bigger than that. Sort of. Except for this part, "In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain."

Any personal failing? I'm sorry Mr. Congressman, but this one is not just "any personal failing." This is one of the big 10, a major transgression, a serious boo-boo. One of those "Shall Nots" that Moses brought down from the mountaintop.

A "personal failing" is forgetting to pay parking tickets, may be, or overdue library books, or being grumpy in the morning before your coffee. An affair with an underling is bigger stuff. One could say that my dislike of guns is a personal failing, or my ability to drone on to hear myself speak is a personal failing.

I don't understand why everyone refers to the debate over health care as one party or the other's "Waterloo."

True, it wasn't a good couple three days for Napoleon Bonaparte, but he was only one of three leading generals on the scene.

For the Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, it was a pretty good weekend's work.

Congrats to my friends and colleagues

You can find the official citation at the LIU site. http://www.brooklyn.liu.edu/polk/press/2009.html

A team of Bloomberg News reporters who produced a series of stories that demanded accountability from the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board will be honored with the George Polk Award for National Reporting. The late Mark Pittman collaborated with colleagues Bob Ivry, Alison Fitzgerald and Craig Torres to help make transparent the transaction of trillions of dollars toward bank bailouts. Their stories, which kept a running tally of the government’s and the Fed’s commitments to banks, were invoked by legislators on Capitol Hill and were cited on international radio and television. When the Bloomberg staffers’ Freedom of Information Act requests were denied, their employer filed a lawsuit against the Fed. The media outlet won the case, requiring the central bank to make available to the public more detailed information about its loans. The decision has been appealed in court.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=axd4zwYGfdv0

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=armOzfkwtCA4

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7CC61ZsieV4

The real question is not, "How can the Democrats pull out the Massachusetts Senate seat to preserve the supermajority?", but rather, "Why are the Republicans completely unwilling to negotiate a health care bill that is good for the country?"

That the health system in this country is broken can not be argued. By any number of measures -- infant mortality, numbers without access, cost to the individual and society as a whole, outcomes for patients -- the system is in danger of collapsing of its own weight. As a result, even more people will go without coverage and be sicker and cost more to treat. If nothing is done, healthcare costs will rise by about a third again to $3.1 trillion by 2012, or more than one fifth of U.S. GDP.

So, I ask, why is the GOP willing -- nay, eager -- to see this bill, or any health care bill, go down to defeat? Can it be that they are so enamored of power and control that the good of the country has no merit? Is no one among them willing to put the good of the nation before their desire to "see Obama fail?" How can it be good for a nation for a significant minority wish ill on their president solely for the perceived benefit to their party?

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