Newspaper Synopsis

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they weren't on a freeway, or playing beachball, or at a Botox appointment or an audition -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country ... or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy provided, of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

12. Not a single one of these are read by the guy who is currently running the country.

From an e-mail sent by my uncle, Jack Stayton.

Golf with Ed at Falcon's Fire

Ed Johnson from Kansas City came to Orlando in August. Here we are at the clubhouse in Kissimmee, with a view of 18 over our shoulders, after the round. 18 was playing as a 465 yard par four -- I hit driver, 3-wood to four feet. And missed the putt, of course.

FEMA, Katrina, and the citizens of Louisiana

The right wing excuse machine has swung into full-time reaction mode. I repeatedly see people blaming the criminal element for the circumstances of New Orleans. (I was sent an e-mail of an absolutely mind-boggling news report taken from inside a Walmart, while it was being looted, with two uniformed policewomen pushing their own shopping cart and sharing in the free-for-all, while being interviewed on camera.) And of course, despite the purported acceptance of Dubya for the failures of FEMA caused by his cronyism and shortcomings, there is a lot of blame to go around for the abomination that is New Orleans.

Here's my thoughts about the blaming-the-victims crusade:

1. I don’t generally like to blame victims. Especially if you’re doing so just to excuse the shortcomings and failures of others.
2. There are, without any doubt, some really awful and bad people in New Orleans.
3. The state and local governments of Louisiana and New Orleans (City and Parish) were just criminally negligent in their tragically short-sighted and ineffective planning and response to Katrina.
4. FEMA is supposed to take charge of managing emergencies. It did not. There is no legitimate excuse for its failings.
5. The thugs and the victims that live in New Orleans are (as far as I know) U.S. citizens. The federal government, the Constitution, FEMA – all are designed with the thought of protecting our health and securing our citizens’ safety. The federal government and FEMA in particular disastrously failed their charge. Let me quote from the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

6. As you can see, the goals of the U.S. government are to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty – NONE OF WHICH WERE MET BY THE REACTION OF FEMA TO KATRINA.
7. Even people who live in bad neighborhoods and don’t evacuate in the face of a hurricane – or, to be more precise about what caused most of the death and destruction in New Orleans proper, those who don’t evacuate before a levee collapses many hours after a hurricane passes through – deserve some type of effective response from all levels of government.
8. "You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it." -Malcolm X

The Katrina Administration

Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.

This is the Katrina administration.

It has consistently squandered time, tax dollars, political capital, and even risked American lives on sideshow adventures: A war of choice in Iraq against someone who had nothing to do with 9/11; a full scale presidential assault on Social Security when everyone knows the real crisis is in health care - Medicare and Medicaid. And that's before you get to willful denial on global warming; avoidance on competitiveness; complicity in the loss and refusal of health care to millions.

From John Kerry's speech at Brown University today.

I love the NFL

I'm excited about this year's football season. I'm not willing to actually put any money on it, especially since I've never bet a dime on a football game, but I think both the Chiefs and the Bucs are going to be good this year. Or at least, for the Bucs, better than expected.

My starting fantasy football team has a bunch of gambles on it. Culpepper should be good, but at halftime, it looks like he might really miss Randy Moss. Fred Taylor will be injured -- he always is -- so that's a big roll of the dice. Cadillac Williams as a rookie is a big gamble, but he's getting a lot of carries in the first half of the first game. Deion Branch and Torry Holt should be good for receivers. Alex Smith, my TE, already has two touchdowns in his first half of professional football -- I bet that pace doesn't continue through the season. Janikowski, one of my favorite drunks, still should kick a lot of points. And the Steelers have a good defense, I think.

Football is a great sport to observe from a distance. The athleticism, the hits, the balanced competition, the excitement of a crowd -- it's a lot of fun. Up close and personal, the athletes are self-important prima donnas who have been worshipped by an adoring public at least since they were 13. Although there are probably a lot of decent, solid guys playing the sport, too many of them are obnoxious morons with way too much money and delusions of drandeur. I didn't tolerate very well the high school football athletes who thought too much of themselves either.

I don't care as much for most college football. Only a handful of games are balanced, with huge talent disparities the norm for most games. But a good college game is also fun. I didn't care much for the lengthy delays for video review yesterday.

Cooper at Innisbrook

Jack at Innisbrook