NFL 2008: A Look Ahead

As another season dawns on the National Football League, the New York Giants, not the New England Patriots, are the defending champions. There are no embarrassing scandals involving dogs or hidden cameras. We haven't heard much from Terrell Owens lately. And, can anybody tell us if Jessica Simpson still has the hots for Tony Romo?

Otherwise, how are things?

• Brett Favre is now a New York Jet. We believe this falls under the category of being careful what you wish for.
• Adam Jones has resurfaced in Dallas after a one-year suspension, and no longer wants to be known as Pacman.
• Bill Parcells, last seen coaching the Cowboys amid all the distractions, is trying to reshape the Miami Dolphins in his own image.
• The sudden death of Gene Upshaw, the man who helped bring labor peace to football, leaves the NFLPA with a gaping hole to fill.
• Because a major hurricane threatens to destroy New Orleans and the Gulf Coast for the second time in three years, the Saints may be forced to look for a home again.
• Indianapolis (with or without Peyton Manning) opens their first season at Lucas Oil Stadium. Dallas and the two New York teams will be in new digs by 2010. The Vikings? We'll address that later.
• The Buffalo Bills sign a deal to play one game a year in Toronto. Time to say goodbye to the Canadian Football League? Or, for that matter, Buffalo?

Our choices for division champions are as follows:

NFC EAST Dallas Cowboys WEST Seattle Seahawks NORTH Green Bay Packers SOUTH Tampa Bay Buccaneers WILD CARDS New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles.

AFC EAST New England Patriots WEST San Diego Chargers NORTH Pittsburgh Steelers SOUTH Indianapolis Colts WILD CARDS Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars.

Almost every major football publication thinks the Minnesota Vikings will go all the way to the Super Bowl. We're not going to go that far. In fact, we don't think they'll even make the playoffs. Yes, they have Adrian Peterson. But they're stuck with Tarvaris Jackson at quarterback, having lost out in the Brett Favre sweepstakes. Yes, they've got free agent Jared Allen from Kansas City to bolster the defense. But Bryant McKinnie will miss the first four games of the season for violating league policy. The Vikings have the fourth-toughest schedule in the NFL this year, so an 8-8 record sounds about right.

The Vikings' latest stadium plan is to build a retractable-roof palace on where the Metrodome sits now. It's easy to fall back into the same old arguments pro and con about a new stadium, but the clock is ticking. The lease ends in 2011. Los Angeles awaits. What are they going to do?

McPalin: The May-December Ticket

Less than 24 hours after Senator Barack Obama became the first African-American to accept his party's nomination for President, Senator John McCain decided he needed to make a little history of his own.

The man who will be in St. Paul next week to receive the Republican nomination named Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, as his vice-presidential choice. She will be the first woman since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 to have that honor, and the first Republican to do so.

Palin's resume is rather thin compared to Obama's, for whom the McCain campaign has long complained about his lack of experience. She has been Alaska's governor for less than two years. Before that, she was the mayor and city council member of the town of Wassala, which has a slightly larger population than Cicely of TV's Northern Exposure.

That's significant when you consider McCain just turned 72. Palin is 44. She had better pray hard for McCain's continued good health for the next four years, if they're elected.

Palin is an obvious stab for disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters, even though the governor is her ideological opposite. Palin is an abortion-rights foe, a member of the National Rifle Association (she hunts and fishes--it's Alaska, folks), a critic of climate change, and supports drilling for oil in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)--which is where she and McCain part company.

Because of Palin, the scandal involving longtime Republican senator Ted Stevens might get a little more attention. The Godfather of Alaskan politics, who has brought in so much federal money to the state (including the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, which Governor Palin vetoed after originally supporting it), Stevens is running for another term despite being indicted for allegedly lying about concealing more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts from an oil services contractor.

And now a word about Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who along with Mitt Romney and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Conneticut were passed over by McCain: We never thought Pawlenty was VP material to begin with. Apparently, McCain didn't think Pawlenty could turn a blue state into red. So he turned to Palin, who comes from a reliably Republican state which was swinging in his direction anyway. Now Pawlenty can go back to serving his state instead of his political ambitions, at least for the time being.

The choice of Sarah Palin is a crazy one on all levels for John McCain. But if enough voters continue to be skeptical of Obama and the direction he might take the country, his gamble might just work.

Democrats In Denver: The History Maker

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, born to an African father and a Kansas mother, accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for president tonight before 84,000 of his closest supporters at Invesco Field in Denver. It is the first time that someone other than a white male has earned such an honor.

The speech that followed were the familiar themes of creating change and restoring hope to an electorate beaten down by the policies and events of the last eight years. Then Obama started to kick butt, outlining point for point where Republican challenger John McCain wasn't all that different from President Bush, and what he would do if he were in the White House.

But when Obama told the delegates that "eight is enough", Charles Gibson of ABC News made the point that Bush said much the same thing at the 2000 Republican Convention after eight years of Democratic rule.

No matter. The sellout audience lapped it all up in much the same way as in 1960 when John Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Prior to the festivities, Wednesday was a day for setting the table. Senator Hillary Clinton (clearly auditioning for 2012 with all the face time she's getting), with her New York delegation alongside, did the honors in asking that Obama be nominated by acclamation. Emotion took over the Pepsi Center as delegates were cheering, waving banners and crying . . . all for the benefit of the few folks who still watch the network evening news. The pharmaceutical companies whose commercials were pre-empted must have been pissed.

Former President Bill Clinton spoke while the networks were running Supernanny and America's Got Talent. The man who was once dubbed the first "black" president swallowed his bitterness over his wife's primary defeat to give his emphatic endorsement to Obama, while reminding folks that he was younger and even less experienced than the nominee when he was elected. With the exception of Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky, Clinton (and the country) turned out all right.

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware accepted his vice-presidential nomination. He reined in his ability to run off at the mouth long enough to praise his new running mate, and to diss McCain for being less of a leader than a good soldier.

That's all well and good. But there were a few issues the Democrats chose to keep buried in the Rocky Mountains during the convention: The conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Same-sex marriages. Protecting the nation's privacy. Vice President Dick Cheney. Politicizing branches of government. Why they wasted their Congressional majority acquiescing to President Bush, and generally doing little else but bicker with the Republicans. Are we leaving anything out?

But the night belonged to Barack Obama. Now all he has to do is to convince the voters that he is indeed one of them, that he really means what he says about changing the direction of the country and its standing in the world, and is ready to lead on day one. It won't be easy.

On this day in 1963, an African-American man of the cloth stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and talked about a dream he had. It was about a world where people were judged by their character instead of the color of their skin. Forty-five years later, that man's dream is one step closer to coming true. But we have a long way to go.

Democrats In Denver: Yesterday's Gone

This year's Democratic National Convention is being held at the Pepsi Center in Denver, home of the NBA Nuggets and NHL Colorado Avalanche. Soon, Senator Barack Obama will be anointed as the Choice of a New Generation. (Next week in St. Paul, the Republicans hope Senator John McCain is The Real Thing.)

Before that happens, however, they have to deal with the ghosts of the past. The theme song might as well have been the old Clinton campaign staple, "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)" by Fleetwood Mac.

Senator Hillary Clinton, for whom there are still hard feelings among her supporters for the way she lost in the primaries, and for being passed over by Obama for the vice-presidential slot, gave a great speech supporting the presumptive nominee while touting her own record. And she didn't skimp on the McCain-bashing.

Now the problem is getting her fans on board to support Obama, who don't think he's ready to lead yet. Some of them have been moving over to McCain, a fact his campaign has been only too happy to tout.

On Monday, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who is dealing with brain cancer, got out of his sickbed long enough to deliver a rousing speech to the delegates. But everyone knew it may have been the last hurrah for the Senator as well as the Kennedy political dynasty.

Michelle Obama's speech didn't tell us much beyond what's already been written in celebrity magazines, reminding the delegates (and anyone else watching) what a great guy her husband is. (That's why I tuned out the speech, because what did you expect her to say?) And lo and behold, who should appear at the end but her daughters and a satellite image of their father from Kansas City?

What happens in Denver will go a long way towards determining whether things go better with Obama, or be discarded along with Clear Pepsi or New Coke. And I'm done with the cola references.

The Games In China: A Recap

As the Olympic flame is snuffed out at the stadium they call the Bird's Nest in Beijing, signaling the end of the 29th Summer Games, let's look back on what did (or did not) happen during the final week of competition.

• If your primary source of Olympic information was on NBC's telecasts, you got the Chamber of Commerce version of what really went on in Beijing. The Chinese government went right on jailing dissidents, harassing Western journalists (a British TV reporter was arrested while covering a demonstration), and discouraging its own people from attending events.
• The International Olympic Committee was exposed as the toothless organization they really are, although that might not be news to some people. Besides caving in to China on human rights matters, they took a pass on complaints that the Chinese women's gymnastics team had underage athletes. Mustn't offend the hosts, you know.
• The United States won the overall medal competition with 110 (36 gold, 38 silver, and 38 bronze). China, in its quest for world domination in athletics, impressed the most with 100 (51 gold, 21 silver, and 28 bronze). Are we at the point where caring about the medal count is more than just a Cold War thing?
• Eight of those golds were won by Michael Phelps of the United States, surpassing by one the amount fellow swimmer Mark Spitz hauled out of Munich in 1972. Some are saying Phelps is the greatest Olympic athlete ever. At the swimming pool, maybe. Better than Jim Thorpe, Paavo Nurmi or Bob Mathias (just to name a few)? Maybe not.
• Another candidate for Greatest Olympian Ever (outside the United States) is Usain Bolt of Jamaica, whose gold medals and world records in the 100 and 200 meter track events make him this year's Fastest Man In The World--at least until the drug test results are made public.
• The U.S. track team won gold medals in the decathlon, and in both men's and women's 4x400 relay events. That was after they bungled their way through the competition, either by dropping the baton or not running fast enough to qualify.
• The American men's and women's basketball teams (otherwise known as the NBA and WNBA All-Stars, respectively) faced little opposition on their way to gold medals. Although the Spaniards did give the men's team quite a scare before losing in the championship game.
• On a related note: Becky Hammon, a Russian basketball player by way of South Dakota, risked accusations of traitorous behavior to lead her team to a bronze medal.
• The IOC has dropped baseball and softball from the 2012 London Games, in part because of American domination in both sports. The gold medal in baseball went to South Korea. And the gold in softball went to Japan. So much for that theory.
• The Americans won the women's soccer gold medal with a goal in extra time to defeat Brazil. Which means only one thing--vindication for goaltender Hope Solo.
• The American duo of Kerri Walsh and Misti May-Treanor defeated their Chinese opponents to win the gold in beach volleyball. It was raining, and the women were wearing their bathing suits that passed for uniforms. The rest we'll leave to your imagination.
• NBC, when they weren't doing PR work for the state-run Chinese Tourist Bureau (or whatever it's called there) that Anthony Bourdain would have turned down, did a great job in keeping the maudlin to a minimum, and brought us more action than could reasonably have been expected with a 12-hour time difference to work with. While NBC deserves kudos for telling viewers that on events such as soccer, the announcers covering it are in New York instead of at the stadium (ESPN, which wants the rights to the 2014 and '16 Olympics, doesn't do that), they also get boos for telling West Coast viewers that what they're seeing live really isn't.

The Olympics take a break until the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, and the 2012 Summer Games in London. But 2014 is their next minefield. The site of the Winter Games is in Sochi, Russia. That's fifteen miles from the Georgian border.

O'Biden

After weeks of listening to Senator Barack Obama reminding us to check our tires to save fuel, and Senator John McCain forgetting how many houses he owns, it was finally time to get down to the serious business of picking a vice-presidential candidate in time for the political conventions.

For Obama, that person is Joseph Biden, the longtime Democratic senator from Delaware. With 35 years in the Senate, including stints past and present as the chair of the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees, Biden helps out in areas where Obama is lacking: political and international policy experience. Oh yes, Biden is 65.

But Biden also has a reputation for shooting his mouth off, which is something the McCain campaign will no doubt have lots of fun with. Remember when Biden called Obama a "clean" and "articulate" candidate? Also, he tends to be a camera hog, getting his mug on C-SPAN every chance he gets.

Obama made his announcement via text message to his supporters and anyone else who signed up--at three in the morning. But thanks to good old-fashioned leaking from Democratic sources and by process of elimination, everyone figured out that Biden was the man hours before. After a good night's rest, the big news could be found on the front page of any major daily the next morning.

McCain will make his own vice-presidential choice public on Friday, the day after Obama's acceptance speech at the home of pro football's Denver Broncos. The VP choice, according to reports, is down to Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. Now that Biden's been chosen, the odds of Pawlenty remaining an obscure governor outside his home state has suddenly increased.

Is Biden the right choice for Obama? In a campaign where the emphasis is on change, having another Washington insider as your running mate--especially one who's in your opponent's demographic--is anything but a bold choice.

Please Stand By

Due to technical difficulties, we have been having problems getting posts out for the past week. We apologize for any inconvenience. We'll be back with a real post soon.

Georgia On Our Minds

The first thing we need to clear up is that, while Russian forces invaded-- and are taking their time pulling out of--Georgia, it does not mean Atlanta has been attacked.

The Republic of Georgia is a democratic nation of 4.6 million people, born in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its capital is Tbilisi, and its president is Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been in power since 2004.

The dispute is over the region of South Ossetia, which wants to break away and form an alliance with Russia (the northern half of the region is within their borders). Georgian troops had been fighting the insurgents for weeks before the Russians got involved.

Some might say that Saakashvili was the one who picked this fight. But he's the one who's been making media appearances in the West pleading for help from the United States and its allies (they also want to join NATO), making it sound as though his little country is being swallowed up by the Big Bad Russian Bear.

Georgia isn't going to get much of anything other than humanitarian aid from the U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice can condemn the Russians all they want. The fact is, having started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's a lot like the pot calling the kettle black. Raise your hand if you want another war.

Russia had been dormant militarily since the Soviet breakup, concentrating more on trying to find itself as a country. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin--who used to be president, but everyone assumes he's still calling the shots--is attempting to bring back the glory days when the Russian Bear was feared rather than mocked.

Lately, the Russians have threatened Poland (formerly a Warsaw Pact nation, but now a NATO ally) with nuclear annihilation if they went through with letting the United States build missile defense systems there--which they did. They are also reportedly talking to Cuba about putting nukes there.

Is Georgia worth throwing away years of diplomatic peace between the West and the Kremlin? Or has the Cold War never really ended, just lying dormant for a short period? If that's true, then Atlanta (and the rest of the world) might really be in danger.

The Games In China: Day Six (Or Is It Seven?)

We are six days (seven if you're seeing this the following day) into the Summer Olympics in Beijing. So far not one dissident has been thrown in jail, nor has one Western journalist been censored. Is that a good thing or not? If there's one thing we've learned, it's that the Chinese can't protect itself against stupid behavior.

The Opening Ceremonies, which were attended by President George W. Bush as Russian troops invaded the Republic of Georgia (In answer to your question, a certain soft drink brand which happens to be the Worldwide Olympic Partner isn't based there), went off without a hitch. That is, unless you count the computer-generated fireworks and the nine-year old girl who lip-synched the song Ode To The Motherland. Sounds like the Chinese have learned a few things from Hollywood.

On the other hand, the Chinese government has been so security-conscious that they've forgotten about those who pose an actual threat to safety at the Games.

Americans Todd and Barbara Bachman were attacked by a knife-wielding individual outside the Drum Tower in Beijing. Todd was killed, Barbara is recovering, and the alleged assailant (who authorities said had family problems) jumped to his death in a nearby river. The fact that the Bachmans (A) are from Burnsville, Minnesota, (B) owned a chain of floral shops, and (C) whose daughter (a 2004 Olympian) is married to U.S. men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon is beside the point.

As for the competition thus far, you might have heard that American swimmer Michael Phelps won a few gold medals, and is looking for more. The Chinese women's gymnastics team is allegedly old enough to be fans of Hannah Montana. Bela Karolyi, who molded many a gymnast in his time, complains about the lack of a perfect 10 in the new scoring system. And the skimpy uniforms the women beach volleyballers wear must be a culture shock to the Chinese.

NBC (a unit of General Electric, another Olympic Worldwide Partner) reports record audiences for the first few nights of prime time coverage, obviously helped by convincing (if that's the right word) the International Olympic Committee to put the swimming and gymnastics events in the morning so they could be shown live in the U.S. Otherwise, when there's not much else on TV and families can't afford to go on vacation . . .

Among the ads you'll be sick of watching before the Olympics are over (besides the new NBC fall shows you probably won't be watching anyway): Senators John McCain and Barack Obama spending their hard-earned money on the same spots that have been running elsewhere all along.

Obviously, there is more to come. We haven't even had the first medal winner to test positive for a banned substance.

Here's Something I Just Read

I just read an article by Doug Grow in MinnPost, which is an interview with former presidential candidate Walter Mondale on his experiences in making acceptance speeches at the Democratic Convention. I recommend it to anyone interested in what John McCain and Barack Obama will soon be facing, as well as for anyone who's into public speaking. You can find it at www.MinnPost.com

Scooped At The Checkout Aisle

It took an admission from former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, in an ABC interview, that he had an affair with one of his campaign staffers to spring the national media into a story they'd been sitting on for quite awhile.

The woman in question, Rielle Hunter, worked in Edwards' campaign as a video producer in 2006, in spite of her lack of experience. (Apparently, in this case, being attractive to a presidential candidate was all the experience she needed) She allegedly got together with Edwards, lived in one of his houses for awhile, and possibly had a child together (though neither party will submit to a paternity test) before they broke up.

One reason why the media held back on the story was that they didn't want to be insensitive louts when you realize that Elizabeth Edwards, John's wife of 31 years, has been battling cancer almost since the end of the 2004 presidential election. At that time, her husband was a vice-presidential running mate with Senator John Kerry, who had just lost to George W. Bush's drive for a second White House term..

The other reason is the National Enquirer, the supermarket tabloid that has been on this story for months. The legitimate media (whatever that means these days) don't like to admit that they've been scooped by a publication that breathlessly reports on Oprah Winfrey's weight gain, or Dr. Phil's marital problems, or Lindsay Lohan's night on the town.

This isn't the first time the Enquirer broke stories on politicians who failed to keep their penises in check. Remember Gary Hart and Bill Clinton? Hart had to drop out of the 1988 presidential race after a photo of him and a blonde on a yacht was published. As for the former president, well, what doesn't kill him only makes him stronger.

(At this point, we should tell you that we here at Bludog Chronicle are longtime readers of the Enquirer. Nobody does it better when it comes to junk food journalism, which should be taken with a grain of salt. Although sometimes, their hypocritical moralism in reporting is baffling.)

So where does this leave John Edwards? He dropped out of the presidential sweepstakes months ago, throwing his support to Senator Barack Obama. The Democratic Party won't have anything to do with him right now. Most of all, Edwards has not only let down his wife and family, but also those who have worked for him during the campaign, those who voted for him during the primaries, and those who believed he was a worthy alternative to Obama and Hillary Clinton. He's become just another politician who can't keep it in his pants. And in this country, people can't handle that.

The Games In China: Sanitized For Your Protection

What was the International Olympic Committee thinking when they awarded the 2008 Summer Games to Beijing, China? Maybe they thought they were getting a China that has become a world economic power, stepping out of the shadows of its dark past, and on its best behavior in the face of charges of human rights violations.

What they're getting instead is possibly the most repressive Olympics since Hitler's Germany hosted them in 1936. China still has a dictatorial Communist government made up of control freaks. Protests around the world, citing the government crackdown in Tibet and its role in the ongoing Darfur tragedy, have greeted the Olympic flame to the point where it was actually snuffed out at times. (And you thought the Bush Administration was bad.)

Those who do make the trip to China will find that security is everywhere, Internet access has been restricted, and its cities are choked with pollution despite the country's best efforts to clean up. To that end, factories have been shut down and few people are allowed to drive.

For those who choose to watch the Games on television, NBC and several of the cable networks they own will air thousands of hours of Olympic coverage. How much of it we actually get depends on whether or not the Chinese government pulls the plug somewhere down the line.

Most of NBC's coverage in prime time will be devoted to female-friendly sports such as swimming, gymnastics and volleyball, plus the occasional profile of an athlete who either has a fatal disease, or is competing for someone who does. Marquee sports such as basketball and track and field will be relegated to cable.

It's as if the network is telling millions of men not to watch. Go watch baseball, the NFL pre-season, even a rerun of Ice Road Truckers. This one's for the ladies, they tell us.

As for the athletes . . . Oh, that's right, the athletes. You know, the ones who are supposed to be the focus of the Games? Well, unless an athlete loses a gold medal because of a positive drug test, is arrested for wearing a "FREE TIBET" T-shirt, or fails to live up to expectations of greatness, who really cares?

We mean no slight to the people of China, but it will be a long two and a half weeks for everyone involved, and after it's over, we'll be hearing tales of those who couldn't wait to get the heck out of the country. Compared to that, the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the 2012 Summer Games in London will seem like a breath of fresh air. Literally.

John McCain's "Toxic" Campaign Ad

The latest political ad from Senator John McCain's presidential campaign tells us that his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, is a celebrity on the level of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and is not ready to lead the country. Besides, they say, he'll raise your taxes and say no to offshore oil drilling.

Just for comparison's sake, has the Illinois senator ever had hit records with titles such as " . . . Baby One More Time" and "Oops, I Did It Again"? Traded a smooch with Madonna during the MTV Video Music Awards? Performed with a snake? Married an itinerant dancer, divorced him, then gave up custody of the kids? Been in and out of rehab? Voted for President George W. Bush in the last election? That's Britney Spears.

Does Obama also want to be compared to a woman whom no one has figured out what she's famous for, besides being an heiress to a hotel chain? Trademarked her catchphrase? Allegedly appeared in a sex tape that somehow turned up on the Internet? Co-starred on the reality TV show The Simple Life with another daughter of privilege, Nicole Richie? Spent time in jail on an intoxicated-while-driving charge? That's Paris Hilton.

Obama deserves praise for taking the high road so far in this campaign. Unfortunately, we live in an era where negative political advertising has been the difference between winning and losing an election, and if you don't fight fire with fire, you're toast. Remember Willie Horton? Michael Dukakis in a tank? The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?

Seriously, folks. The McCain campaign shouldn't be going down this road, not when you're comparing your opponent to two women who aren't known for using their brains.

Besides, wasn't Miley Cyrus available?