Link: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/9093823

...Comes from Tuesday Morning Quarterback:

Eric, Next Time Say, "The Coaches Did a Really Great Job and None of Us Wanted to Hold That 20-Point Fourth-Quarter Lead Anyway": It's a cryin' shame there was a flap involving Eric Moulds, who numbers among the most respected veterans in the NFL. Moulds has been a consummate competitor and a model citizen despite constant turmoil at Buffalo: enduring four head coaches and eight starting quarterbacks in his 10-year Bills tenure. Moulds has never complained and until last week always said the right things in public. Moulds' transgression was to criticize Buffalo play-calling during the Bills' meltdown at Miami. As reader Brian Sodeman of Baltimore notes, punishing Moulds was an example of shooting the messenger: the meltdown happened largely owing to play-calling. Buffalo coach Mike Mularkey, who calls the plays, created a huge distraction for his team by suspending a respected leader, rather than simply dealing with the criticism. Several veterans have clashed with Mularkey this season. When one player acts up, it is almost always the player's fault; when multiple players act up, it is almost always the coach's fault.

Link: http://www.necessaryprose.com/declaration.htm

Sometimes the line between satire and reality is difficult to determine...this could almost be true.

Quick thoughts:

1. The Patriots are almost unbeatable in the Winter. They demolished the Bills, who were in danger of being shut out until they got a late TD.

2. The Colts' win was very important. This gives them home-field advantage for the playoffs, which will at least ensure that if they have to meet the Patriots, they will at least do so at home.

Best Play of the Week
2nd quarter, Cowboys vs. Chiefs. Drew Bledsoe hands off to Marion Barber on what looks like a standard run play, with Barber about to run up the middle. The Chiefs' secondary moves up, expecting to shutdown the run. Barber pitches the ball back to Bledsoe, who throws deep to Terry Glenn, who ran an "out" route and then converted it to a post route. Completion, touchdown, with no Chiefs player able to get anywhere near Glenn. Beautiful to watch.

Worst Plays of the Week.
Lions at Packers. Needing a TD, the Lions find themselves with 1st and goal at the Packers' 1 yard line. The Packers DL is anchored by Grady Jackson, who has been giving a convincing impersonation of The Immovable Object all evening.
The Lions proceed to run straight at the Packers for 3 plays, They gain no yardage at all, with Jackson pushing Lions players back the other way every time. On 4th down, after a timeout, the Lions go for it (good decision; even if they fail, Green Bay is pinned against its own goal line). But what is this play? A quarterback sneak. It fails and Green Bay has the ball. Once again, Grady Jackson pushes back the Lions players like they are lightweights.
Let me think about this...you fail 3 times running the ball straight up the middle, using a running back. You now send a mobile quarterback to try for a fourth time, when you could have called a running play, run a rollout and possibly even had the QB run the ball in? Ye Gods. No wonder the Lions are in such a mess. That is the sort of play-calling that would get a high-school co-ordinator fired, let alone an NFL co-ordinator.

First Terrell Owens Franchise Discipline Imitation Award
...goes to the Buffalo Bills, who have apparently sent Eric Moulds a letter threatening to recover a portion of his signing bonus if he commits further infractions.
Frankly, this boggles the mind. Eric Moulds is about as far removed from T.O. as you can get and still be playing in the NFL. He does not have any sort of established reputation as a selfish prima donna. Yet, after a one-game suspension because he surfaced his frustration at what is currently a lousy Bills offense, and after he has apparently accepted the suspension with good grace, he is being threatened with discipline like a naughty schoolboy?
Come off it, Buffalo. What is good for the Eagles is not good for all franchises. This is pathetic macho posturing behaviour by the management of a floundering franchise.
Unless...this is all part of the posturing that appears to be infecting the whole collective bargaining landcape, with the NFLPA dismissing arbitrators and filing grievances up the wazoo over Terrell Owens' deactivation. Since anybody with half a brain who follows the NFL could tell the NFLPA a whole host of reasons why T.O. is about the last person they should be supporting in a fight, I have to wonder whether all the to-ing-and-fro-ing over player discipline has now become part of the larger game being played out over the extension to the CBA. We are getting dangerously near the point where the impasse over the CBA extension has to be resolved, or we will be looking at an uncapped year, which could seriously disturb NFL franchise economics and stability.

Link: http://www.ipforum.org/display.cfm?id=6&Sub=15

One of the more interesting results of not paying any significant attention to the mainstream TV, radio and news media these days (I'll start paying more attention when they stop repeating lies as fact, and remember how to ask probing questions and not let people off the hook until they get proper answers) is that issues have a habit of sneaking up on you until one day you find yourself saying "Whoah! Where did that come from?".
Such the case with the War on Christmas. I didn't even know that there was a War on Christmas. It seems to be one of the best-entrenched execuses that currently exists for naked commercialism, needless indulgence and the necessity to spend whole days in a living room with folks who you normally wouldn't want to be within a thousand miles of.
But, I digress. According to a number of people, there is a sinister conspiracy that has been hatched by all sorts of evil people (for "evil people" substitute several classic groups of hate-figures, including "liberals", "atheists", and "secular Jews"). This conspiracy seeks to downgrade and even abolish Christmas.
Hum.
For the moment let us leave aside the rather inconvenient facts that Christmas came into being partly via the appropriation of a Pagan festival, and that nobody has any compelling evidence that Jesus was actually born on 25th December anyway.
What is this all about?
Apparently one major piece of evidence that points to a conspiracy is that schools are apparently asking teachers to wish people "Happy Holidays".
Now, the last time I looked, Christmas has been an excuse for countries to hand out public holidays just about everywhere. So that statement is factually correct in every respect.
It is also a fact that a significant percentage of the population belongs to religious groupings that do not attach any special religious significance to Christmas. Jewish people orient their year around other events such as Passover. They have their own festival name for Christmas - Hannukah. I get "Happy Hannukah" cards from Jewish friends most years.
Folks, this alleged conspiracy is just like every other conspiracy theory I have come across. It is short on facts and evidence, very long on conjecture, and completely out of touch with reality. In short, this is mostly complete hogwash, and a waste of frigging time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, somebody parodied the issue in this weblog entry.
However, what is more sinister about the whole issue is that bigots seem to be hijacking the issue to stir up obnoxious hatreds. This article here explains how Bill O'Reilly's delighfully tolerant response to a Jewish caller ("move to Israel") is actually only one example of how the issue is being used as an excuse to denigrate and demonize other people whose belief systems are supposedly, well, different.
Here's another article explaining why this is a pile of cack.
People need to start spending a lot less time worrying about shallow, logically defective nonsense like this "conspiracy", and a lot more time paying attention to more important matters. What about worrying about something important for a change, like the renewal of the Patriot Act, or the continuing budget deficit, or the misconceived conflict in Iraq?

One of the less savoury aspects of the political process is how people always strive to avoid being accountable. There are many stratagems to achieve this, ranging from scapegoating through to resignation, amnesia and outright lying.
However, one more sophisticated way to avoid accountability is to promote objectives that are so vague and meaningless in the first place that deciding whether those objectives have been met is almost impossible. Ergo, deciding that they have not been made is almost impossible too.
Here is an article explaining why the latest Iraq Strategy document from the administration is a clear example of adopting this approach.
Having read part of the document, all I can say is that if I tried to define a project plan like this, I would (at the very least) have been raked over the coals by my employer and customer...

Link: http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20051208/1066752.asp

..step forward Mike Mularkey, the head coach of the Buffalo Bills. The Bills are currently 4-8, are not winning right now, and are trying to run games with an inexperienced quarterback and a suspect offensive line.
In a situation like that, a team needs veteran leadership in the form of players being on the field.
Which is why I cannot fathom why Mularkey, who might be in danger of losing his job, has decided to get involved in a head-butting contest with veteran receiver Eric Moulds. Moulds may be past his best as a player, but he is still productive, and he has always been a team-first type of player.
That Mularkey has put himself out on a limb can be seen by the fact that Moulds' suspension has to be confirmed by Bills owner Ralph Wilson. This tells me that Mularkey has not made his case.
This article explains how Mularkey has dug himself into this particular hole. He needs to get out of it quick, before he completely loses the team.

One of the least attractive human failings is hypocrisy.
While the Boston Globe has not been my favorite newspaper in the past for reasons of accuracy, I think that this editorial accurately exposes the fundamentally duplicitous and hypocritical actions and posturing of the current administration, which ran on a platform of restoring "honor and dignity" to the White House, and now exhibits neither of those attributes.

...is a fascinating subject, because so many people try to do it, yet they often do it so ineptly or obviously that one is left to wonder how the hell they thought they were going to get away with it in the first place.
However, it seems to be fairly common for all sorts of aspirational folks in the world to, er, enhance their past lives, sometimes by inventing utterly spurious educational certifications, degrees etc. Or, as in this case, by the expedient of inventing details about their supposed military deeds.
The columnist is right; neither side comes out of this very well. The associate professor, on the basis of these reported events, is clearly an amoral scumbag. However, you're left wondering just where the words "due diligence" slotted into the original hiring process...

Link: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20051204-9999-1m4filner.html

...In which U.S. Rep. Bob Filner (D), having criticized his original opponent for buying expensive suits and putting his wife on his payroll, appears to have employed his own wife for at least the last 5 years...
I read an interview with management guru Daniel Yankelovich in Strategy+Business a few months ago. Here is quote from that interview:

In 1999, I conducted a 50th anniversary survey of the Harvard Business School class of 1949. They were mostly in their 70's. The guiding principles that they used when making business decisions were articulated using phrases like "work hard" "live by the rules", "distinguish right from wrong", and "practice self-discipline and self-sacrifice". That's enlightened self-interest.
These attitudes were replaced in the 1960's and 1970's by unenlightened self-interest: win at any cost. Strip away regulations and constraints. Anything that isn't illegal is OK. Conflict of interest is not a real issue, except for a few straightlaced dummies. Everybody bends the rules.
Someody caught in an ethically questionable situation would then say "well I didn't do anything wrong - I didn't break the law". For somebody of my generation, ethics doesn't have anything to do with breaking the law. Essentially, there was a dumbing-down of morality that happened in the 1960's and 1970's.

Now, which form of self-interest has been practiced here?
Ayeee!!!! At a time when the Republican Party is being shown to have been ethically challenged just about all over the political landscape, one would have thought that a Democratic politician would be trying to put his house in order and be ethically clean, rather than find himself attempting to basically defend the indefensible. So far Rep. Filner's responses show no understanding of the ethical hole into which he had dug himself. He appears to have no conception that this is a serious apparent conflict of interest that makes him look like a devious hypocrite.

In 2002, the Republicans rammed through a re-districting in Texas for Congressional seats. This had the effect (surprise, surprise) of increasing the number of Republican seats for Texas. One of the representatives who was de-elected was my local representative, Martin Frost (D) who was replaced by Pete Sessions (R).
Now, it seems that the Justice Department had actually warned in advance that the re-districting plan was probably illegal, but was overruled on the issue.
While this raises all sorts of issues about the honesty and integrity of the Republican administration, this further confirms my basic philosophy that allowing an incumbent political party any influence over electoral district definition is exactly analagous to handing the fox the keys to the henhouse because he asserted "I've gone vegetarian, honest". The long-term result of partisan political control over district boundaries is gerrymandering.
The only durable long-term solution is to create independent commissions comprised of eminent persons who do not have any current political roles. This would mean that the US has to move away from its current attachment to electing governance officials at all levels; however, how anybody can assert that the current system leads to equitable outcomes is beyond me. Proof can be found in studies that show that the number and percentage of truly "open" races continues to decline. Most seats are probably not worth contesting, since incumbents generally hold an unassailable advantage. This article discusses some of the negative outcomes of the current system.