The Cup Wings Back to Detroit

The Detroit Red Wings have been in the National Hockey League since 1927. In that time, they have won 10 Stanley Cup championships, more than any other American-based franchise (the Montreal Canadiens have done it 22 times). Wednesday, the Wings made it 11, defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games.

When the series began at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena, the Red Wings' goaltender Chris Osgood held the Penguins scoreless during the first two games. Once they got to Pittsburgh for Game 3, however, the big guns of Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby started scoring, and the Pens finally won a game. But the Wings took game four, and they were ready to clinch the Cup back in Detroit.

As proved at other times in the playoffs, the Red Wings couldn't put away an opponent in Game 5. They came within 30 seconds of doing so, until Pittsburgh spoiled the celebration with the tying goal, and then the winner in the third overtime period.

The Penguins would have sent Game 6 into overtime had it not been for (A) goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury "rear-ended" the puck into his goal, and (B) a last-second reach-in in the Detroit goal crease which would not have counted, anyhow. And the Red Wings held the Stanley Cup aloft on the Mellon Arena ice.

The TV ratings on NBC for the Stanley Cup finals were the best in years (though they were beaten out by CBS' controversial mixed martial arts show in a few places), since the last time the Red Wings played here. Maybe that's the solution to the NHL's problem with showing puck in the late spring-early summer. Promote the Red Wings as hockey's version of the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees. Except for one thing: Red Wing fans already do show up at every NHL arena.

Next fall, when the latest championship banner hangs from the rafters of Joe Louis Arena, the Red Wings will know what it's like to be the hunted. And the cycle continues.

History Made, History Denied

History was made Tuesday night when Senator Barack Obama of Illinois earned enough delegates to qualify as the Democratic presidential nominee, the first African-American to do so. He will make it official in Denver this August.

History will be made this weekend, according to news reports, when Senator Hillary Clinton of New York ends her campaign to become the first female president and supports Obama.

The primary season has been one long, strange trip. Debates nearly every week. Appearances on late-night comedy shows. Pastors who talk too much. Charisma versus competency. A former president stumping for his wife. Disputes over delegates in states that held their primaries too early. Gaffes the size of bomb craters in Kosovo. And others too numerous to mention.

But it's all over now. The time has come to praise both Clinton and Obama for running excellent, if not always perfect, campaigns. They have brought a new excitement to a moribund political scene, bringing in more voters than any campaign in recent memory.

The race for the White House has reached the next phase, with Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain of Arizona mulling over which running mate they should pick.

For Obama, the choice should be anyone but Hillary Clinton, no matter how much pressure he is getting from other Democrats. Clinton is too strong a personality to ever want to play second fiddle to a man whose office she covets. And, of course, there's her husband to contend with. Let her go back to her day job.

For McCain, he should pick someone who has better conservative credentials than he does. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is one possibility. But he needs to focus on running his state instead of dreaming about what it would be like, sharing the podium at the Republican National Convention in his home base of St. Paul with nominee McCain. Besides, if Pawlenty does become vice-president, that means disgraced Lieutenant Governor Carol Molnau takes over.

The road to Denver and the Twin Cities has just begun, with Obama and McCain taking potshots at each other on various issues and raising even more money for the fall campaign.

Come November, one of these men will be making history once again.

Lakers vs. Celtics: The Reboot

The national Basketball Association, after years of deadly dull finals mostly involving the San Antonio Spurs, is going back to its storied past for this matchup: Los Angeles Lakers vs, Boston Celtics.

Think of it. In the 1960s, it was Jerry West and Elgin Baylor vs. Bill Russell and Bob Cousy. In the 1980s, it was Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs. Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. In all but two occasions, the Celtics and Red Auerbach smoked their victory cigars at the old Boston Garden.

Today? The Gahden has been replaced by TD Banknorth Garden (originally called the Fleet Center), and the Forum in Los Angeles by the Staples Center. The Celtics, who have won more NBA titles than anyone else (16), fell on hard times since they last won in 1986. The Lakers have won five championships since then, the last coming in 2002.

The Lakers, with Phil Jackson currently tied with Auerbach (now deceased) for the most NBA titles won by a coach (9), have become Kobe Bryant and Four Other Guys. Bryant, who didn't get along with Shaquille O'Neal during the championship years before he was traded to Miami (and later Phoenix), and was making noises about leaving himself, is now attempting to win a title all by himself.

The Celtics, on the other hand, had been lousy for years until they got rid of their deadwood to acquire star players Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, to go along with their own star Paul Pierce. The result? The best record in the NBA during the regular season.

So everybody is happy that the Lakers and Celtics are playing for the NBA title, Commissioner David Stern is happy. ESPN on ABC is happy. Boomers who remember the earlier series are happy. Junior is listening to his iPod and wondering what all the fuss is about. That said, Lakers in six games.

Wolves Radio Out of the Shadows

Who says you can't go home again? After two seasons on obscure country station Bob 106 (KLCI-FM 106.1), the Minnesota Timberwolves have moved their radio broadcasts back to KFAN-AM 1130, where they were since the franchise began.

This is a surprise because the front-runner was fellow Clear Channel station KTLK-FM 100.3, which has a stronger signal than KFAN does. What happened? First, KTLK is rumored to be one of the Twin Cities stations about to be sold in the wake of Clear Channel's ownership shakeup. Second, the conservative talk station presumably didn't want to pre-empt Jason Lewis' or Sean Hannity's shows.

With the Twins on KSTP-AM 1500 and the Wild on WCCO-AM 830, sports talk station KFAN must've figured they needed another professional sports franchise to go along with the Vikings. (Dan Barreiro wouldn't mind being pre-empted every once in awhile, would he?) Now all the Timberwolves have to do is to provide a team worth listening to.

Split Decisions

Those of us who watched all or part of the Democratic National Committee meeting on TV Saturday, which was held to essentially determine Senator Hillary Clinton's immediate political future, must have been wondering the same things:

• Are those people in the audience really this passionate about their candidates? Do Republicans get like this too?
• Why was this on TV? Aren't things like this usually decided behind closed doors?
• The GOP must be licking their chops right now.

At stake for the DNC (besides Clinton) were the fates of delegates from Florida and Michigan, whose primaries were held earlier than the party wanted. Clinton, who unofficially won both primaries with little opposition, needed those delegates to be seated with full voting rights as a last-ditch attempt to unseat front-runner Barack Obama--even though both candidates initially agreed not to campaign in both states.

What Clinton got was a compromise worked out behind closed doors, in which the Florida and Michigan delegates were seated, but only got half a vote. This doesn't change the math much in her favor. With Clinton's victory in the Puerto Rico primary earlier today, the new formula (according to MSNBC) reads like this, with 2,118 needed to nominate:

OBAMA 2,072 delegates, needing 46 more.

CLINTON 1,915 delegates, needing 203 more.

Which means that, after the primaries in Montana and South Dakota--and with enough superdelegates in his pocket, Obama can claim victory Tuesday night at the site of this year's GOP convention, the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. That is, if Clinton doesn't spoil the party by carrying out her threat to take this matter to the Democratic Convention in Denver.

While all this was going on, Obama and his wife Michelle have left the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where they had been members for decades. The Illinois senator must have decided enough was enough after videos of a visiting Catholic priest named Michael Pfleger (who happens to be white) made an idiot of himself, mocking Clinton in a racially insensitive manner.

One controversial preacher was bad enough, but two is just too much for Obama. And you wonder why religion gets a bad name.

Bursting The Bubble From The Inside

We've known for a long time that President George W. Bush has presided over one of the worst administrations in American history. Now comes a book from a former official that seems to confirm those suspicions.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (out on store shelves next week), has sparked a lot of news coverage. That's because it isn't often we see a tell-all tome about a president from the inside before his term expires, written by someone who used to work for him.

Among the revelations in McClellan's book, if you want to call them that:

• Bush used propaganda to sell Congress and the public on going to war with Iraq, even though there was no real basis for doing so. McClellan wrote that it was all part of what he called a "permanent campaign". With sky-high approval ratings following the 9/11/01 attacks, any opposition was considered heresy.
• The President, according to McClellan, approving the use of Scooter Libby to leak the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame.
• The slow response to the disaster unfolding after Hurricane Katrina because administration officials didn't take it as seriously as they should have.

Keep in mind that McClellan, as press secretary, played the good soldier in parroting the White House line on these and many other issues before his resignation in April of 2006.

The reaction to the book, at least among those who are past and present employees of Bush, can be distilled to this: "How could you do this to us?!" The administration prides itself on its loyalty to the President. Which is fine, unless all that loyalty blinds you to the needs of the country you're supposed to be governing.

McClellan has taken off the blinders, all right. But at what cost to him personally and professionally? Those who are still inside the bubble are wondering: Why didn't he raise these objections while he was on the job? Does he really believe these things, or is he just trying to make a few bucks at the expense of the President?

The mainstream news media is as guilty as anyone for letting themselves be hoodwinked into supporting a misbegotten war. They took the bait on having reporters embedded with troops, used former generals as analysts who--it was later learned--were on the payrolls of defense contractors on the Pentagon's payroll, and generally held back on asking the tough questions for fear of being labeled unpatriotic.

Even today, five years after the war in Iraq started, we're still not getting the full story because it's considered too dangerous to do any decent reporting outside Baghdad's protected Green Zone, unless you're accompanied by an American soldier. If the military isn't spinning the story of the war in their direction, telling the folks back home that things in Iraq are better than they really are, then the White House probably is.

It's not Scott McClellan's fault that he worked for a man and an agenda he was loyal to, until he didn't believe in either of them anymore. It's ours for not seeing through it to begin with.

Political Foot-In-Mouth Disease Rampant

Now that the presidential candidates have completed their obligatory salute to the American military, whether the wars have been justified or not, it's time to get back to the business of waging war on each other. They also have some major fence-mending to do.

Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, still clinging to the hope that the Democratic nomination is within her reach, continues to dig a hole for herself the size of Long Island. In an interview with the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader newspaper in South Dakota (where she hopes to win another primary), she said the following:

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California".

Clinton is referring, of course, to that night nearly 40 years ago when another New York senator who was running for President was gunned down in a Los Angeles hotel ballroom. She just happened to say it a few days after Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts--the only Kennedy brother who got to live a normal life--was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. To say that the Kennedy family has seen enough tragedy in their lives is an understatement.

This isn't the first time Clinton has brought up RFK's assassination. Time magazine said on its website that Clinton said about the same thing a few months ago in an article they published.

The senator's unfortunate remark also implied that her main rival, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, is an assassination target for the simple fact that he is an African-American running for president. Both have had Secret Service protection since the campaign began. In Clinton's case, she's had it ever since she became First Lady.

Clinton has apologized for what she said, and Obama has accepted. But it does put Robert Kennedy Jr. in a spot. You see, he is RFK's son and a Clinton supporter, which makes him an anomaly in the Kennedy family--most of whom are supporting Obama.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, has been having his own problems with pastors afflicted with bigotry. Or he did until he cut them loose: John Hagee, who once said something about how, in Biblical terms explaining the Holocaust, Hitler was the hunter and people of the Jewish faith were his prey, pushing them to move to Israel. And there's also Rod Parsley, who called Islam a violent religion.

The fact that both of these men of the cloth got less attention for their remarks than the Reverend Jeremiah Wright did implies that the words of two white preachers are more socially acceptable to mainstream voters than those of an African-American preacher. We certainly hope not.

We're not letting Obama off the hook. In an interview seen on ABC's Good Morning America, he told critics of his wife Michelle to "lay off". Excuse me? She became a public figure the moment her husband announced her candidacy, especially since she made those comments at a campaign stop in Milwaukee about finally being proud of America. It's nice to defend your spouse's honor. Based on what we've been able to see, though, Michelle Obama doesn't appear to be a fragile creature that needs to be defended. Just ask Hillary Clinton.

The road to the White House for any candidate is littered with mines of stupid statements, unsavory characters and bad timing. The person who gets through this unscathed is rare, but the value of letting the voters see how you really operate is incalculable.