In his weekly address last Saturday, George III President Barack Obama brought up an interesting anecdote regarding the origins of Memorial Day. Naturally, the Obama-loving Daily Kos was all over it yet in their hosannas they seemed to be as irony-challenged as the President himself.

Toward the close of his address, the President mentioned a group of southern women in 1866 who'd arrived at a cemetery to pay their respects to fallen Confederate soldiers of the Civil War. Then they noticed the graves of Union soldiers who'd also fallen but whose graves were being ignored.

What Obama didn't mention was how those graves got there to begin with. Memorial Day didn't start with the formation of a Memorial Day Commission a few years later but days after Appomattox with a group of freed slaves in South Carolina, the state in which the war began. These men, the Freedmen, knowing the bodies of Union soldiers who'd fallen in Confederate territory were unceremoniously buried in mass graves, took the extraordinary step of disinterring those bodies one at a time and giving each man his own grave so he could be honored properly.

African Americans had to have their own Memorial Day because no one thought to honor them for their own brave service to their country and they started the tradition with honoring the Union soldiers who'd died to help liberate them.

But that's not why I'm taking the President to task.

In his four minute-long address to the nation last Saturday, Obama neatly extracted a page from the Bush/Cheney playbook, one revised and perfected by two draft-dodging scumbags, and conflated WWI and Korea with the defense of our freedoms. WWI had nothing whatsoever to do with defending our freedoms. World War One was a war between European empires.

As with Pearl Harbor and World War Two, which actually did threaten American freedom in a nominal way, President Wilson hurled us into WWI largely as a response to the sinking of the Lusitania and the deaths of many Americans in 1915. Yet even then, it still took us nearly two years to enter the war effort. In our brief involvement with the Great War, over 100,000 men perished.

Yet we could have sat out that war without suffering any fallout here at home.

Korea was all about the stopping of Communist expansion in the 38th parallel at the height of the Cold War. It was the first of the two great "police actions" (the other being Vietnam) that was waged to halt the spread of Communist aggression. And the Korean "War" was never officially ended. To this day, half a century later, we still have 5000 troops in South Korea that are rotated out every 12 months.

Neither WWI and Korea had anything to do with ensuring our freedoms. So should we honor those men and women who had fallen in those two conflicts? Absolutely but let's do so in the proper context and not legitimize the circumstances of their sacrifices by lumping them into "legitimate" wars like the Revolutionary, Civil and second World Wars.

And let's not glorify war, either. Never was there a single word or syllable uttered by the president, who also never served his nation's military, expressing regret or any actual sorrow that these men and women died in uniform for their country at the whims of European madmen, Communist dictators and our own military industrial complex that Obama is even now enriching at an even greater clip than we ever saw under Bush and Cheney.

As Rep. Alan Grayson, a real Democrat, says in his latest dispatch, "We've Always Been at War with Eastasia":

On May 30, 2010, at 10:06 a.m, the direct cost of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan will hit $1 trillion. And in a few weeks, the House of Representatives will be asked to vote for $33 billion of additional "emergency" supplemental spending to continue the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. There will be the pretense of debate - speeches on the floor of both chambers, stern requests for timetables or metrics or benchmarks - but this war money will get tossed in the wood chipper without difficulty, requested by a President who ran on an anti-war platform. Passing this legislation will mark the breaking of another promise to America, the promise that all war spending would be done through the regular budget process. Not through an off-budget swipe of our Chinese credit card.

The war money could be used for schools, bridges, or paying everyone's mortgage payments for a whole year. It could be used to end federal income taxes on every American's first $35,000 of income, as my bill, the War Is Making You Poor Act, does. It could be used to close the yawning deficit, supply health care to the unemployed, or for any other human and humane purpose.

Instead, it will be used for war. Because, as Orwell predicted in 1984, we've reached the point where everyone thinks that we've always been at war with Eastasia. Why?

Not because Al Qaeda was sheltered in Iraq. It wasn't. And not because Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. It isn't. Bush could never explain why we went to war in Iraq, and Obama can't explain why we are 'escalating' in Afghanistan.

So, why? Why spend $1 trillion on a long, bloody nine-year campaign with no justifiable purpose?

Remember 9/11, the day that changed everything? That was almost a decade ago. Bush's response was to mire us in two bloody wars, wars in which we are still stuck today. Why?

I can't answer that question. But I do have an alternative vision of how the last 10 years could have played out.

Imagine if we had decided after 9/11 to wean ourselves off oil and other carbon-based fuels. We'd be almost ten years into that project by now.

Imagine if George W. Bush had somehow been able to summon the moral strength of Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, or Martin Luther King Jr, and committed the American people to the pursuit of a common goal of a transformed society, a society which meets our own human needs rather than declaring "war" on an emotion, or, as John Quincy Adams put it, going "abroad, in search of monsters to destroy".

Imagine.

Imagine that we chose not to enslave ourselves to a massive military state whose stated goal is "stability" in countries that never have been "stable", and never will be.

Imagine.

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace."

It's kind of ironic that our new President, one who ran on and won the presidency on a vaguely visionary platform, can't imagine the same: A world in which we don't have to fold Memorial Day observations into an extended weekend more characterized by a day off from work, cookouts, beer and the official opening of local beaches.

There will always be war and there will always be war dead, with men and women fated to die young before raising families or realizing dreams and ambitions. That is a sad fact of life. But all too many of us, our own president included, completely lack enough visionary courage or desire to even try to imagine a world without needless, economy-crippling wars that kill uniformed and civilian men, women and more children than we also have the courage to contemplate.

Because, after all, great realities all too often begin with humble dreams.

This ain't no fuckin game! Arf! Arf!

The time is right. It's been over six months since I last did a Blingee, and this one is well-earned. Perfect game. Eleven strikeouts. No dudes on base.

Zero dudes on base.

Hustle. Loyalty. Respect.

Sadly, Philly sports fans were denied multiple orgasms this evening. The Flyers weren't able to pull out a win in the opening game of the Stanley Cup Finals. (Don't worry... that's why they make them 7 game series.) But as promised, history was indeed made tonight - Roy Halladay became only the 20th pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball to throw a Perfect Game. Words really can't express just how friggin ridiculously awesome this is. If you need me to explain this feeling to you, you're not a real sports fan and should leave our site immediately.

While I cannot say enough about the tremendous accomplishment Halladay achieved today, I'd be remiss to not mention the ultimate 'You called it' moment of all-time.

It was brought to my attention that an ESPN message board thread was started at 7:16pm with the title "Roy Halladay Perfect Game Alert". The first message read '27 batters to go'. Every few batters, another post was added reminding you how many batters were to go. Others joined in, first being sarcastic and laughing the whole thing off, but as the game went on, people were counting it down.

It's quite possibly the most epic message board thread ever - and it is 100% legit. See the complete thread HERE. dtboy1234 - whoever you are - I give you a standing ovation. Well done sir. Now go play the lottery, bet your bank account on RED, and predict the Flyers as Stanley Cup Champions for us.


*many thanks from TWW friend and reader Troy for giving us the heads up

On the radio this morning, I heard the official song of summer - one none other than 'Summertime' by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.  That song is still fantastic and has held up over time as well as any other.  And with that, Memorial Day weekend has arrived.  Relaxing, BBQing, alcoholing, and all around good times are to be had for the next few days.  I believe there's even a little sporting event starting tonight...

In about 6 hours, the Stanley Cup Playoffs will begin.  Get ready for some fun... and history in the making.

GO FLYERS!  And grillin' goodness!

Much has been made of the use and effectiveness of pitch counts in baseball. The way MLB is currently managed, it seems nearly all teams enforce the pitch count out of fear their multi-million dollar walking investments stay healthy.  But does it all really matter?

Glad you asked anonymous reader. The Wiz Wit is taking it upon ourselves to hash out this pitch count hubbub. Our good friend Mike is on board to take the side of pro-pitch-count. Yours truly is here to show you why pitch counts make about as much sense as thewizwit.com without dick and fart jokes.

And away we go...





We’ve broken this subject down into three questions. Statistics prove that the human mind is subconsciously made up after processing pieces of information in multiples of three.* Bet you didn't know that.

1. How important to the game are pitch counts and do you think they keep pitchers healthy?

Chris - Pitch counts aren’t important because they don’t make sense. It’s an arbitrary number plucked outta the air. To a degree, keeping a pitcher on a count is a good idea for YOUNG player. Their arms are fragile. Like snowflakes or babies’ heads. You have to be careful not to burn out a young arm. Also, if a guy is going from a relief role to a starting gig, his counts should be monitored only until he stretches his arm out to take on the pressure of a full game. Otherwise, couldn’t you throw your arm out on the 15th pitch of the game just as easily as the 103rd? It’s more about proper mechanics than a blanket number of 100. You can stuff your pitch counts in a sack mister.

Mike - In the grand scheme in the game of baseball, I don't feel that pitch counts really add or detract value to the sport. I do however, feel that a pitch count can greatly improve a pitcher as an individual ball player. I feel keeping a pitcher within an acceptable pitch count can best suit their specific pitching role, and will greatly improve their effectiveness, overall arm strength, and longevity in both a season and a career.

2. Do you think Roy Halladay in particular has been affected by high pitch count workloads in games this year?

Mike - I believe that he has seen a workload of this magnitude his entire career. He has shown that he can make 30+ starts and average about 100-115 pitches per start in any given season. But this year, I fear his workload is trending towards an amount he hasn't experienced in over 6 years. To carry that workload into the post-season for the first time in his career makes me worrisome.

Chris – Fuck and no. Halladay is the last person I’m worried about throwing a ton of pitches. It’s what he does. It’s what he’s always done. And it’s what he prepares his body for year in and year out. Besides, Roy Halladay is not a human. He’s actually mostly made up of endoskeleton and rhinoceros bits.

3. Anything can be tweaked for the better - how would you improve the use of 'pitch counts' in baseball?

Mike - Specific pitching roles should have a general range of pitches that a manager feels is acceptable for effectiveness. Closers, MR, LR and Starters all vary in that degree. I don't think pitch counts should be so black and white.  If Hamels hits 109 in the 7th inning with 2 outs and 1 on with a 1-1 count, he shouldn't immediately be pulled in fear that a 110 pitch count is too much for him to handle. Being sure that each pitcher is limited to his comfort level of pitches each time they head to the mound will increase their chances of a follow up stellar performance.

Chris – I agree each pitcher should have his own specific count. I look at it a tad different thought.  Pitch counts should be derived from three specific things. 1). Most importantly - the type of pitches thrown. A guy that predominantly throws fastballs is putting a lot less stress on his arm than the one who throws a ton a of sliders. That is a fact**. 2). Pressure situations – pressing when making pitches inning over inning is going to have an effect on your mechanics and increase the chance blowing it for your team. And uh… maybe some ligament damage or something. 3). Probably the hardest to gauge, but figure out when your pitcher loses himself in games. If John Lackey (he’s the first overpaid and terribly awful pitcher I thought of) loses his mechanics at 80 pitches, cap him at that. You know he’s a ticking time bomb and will only hurt your opportunity to win. Plus, you have to deal with the fact you signed John Lackey for $80 million. Dummy. Now it’s up to Baseball Prospectus or some other sabermetrics nerds to devise a formula for this. I’ve helped the world of baseball enough.

There you have it folks. We can only educate you so much. It’s up to you to decide which side you fall on. Mike made some good points and had some good ideas, but with the advantage of writing last, I will unfairly call myself the victor – or be the reason your favorite pitcher is sitting in Dr. James Andrews’ office with a torn rotator cuff.  Anywho… feel free to sound off in the comments.


*[This is not at all true. I completely fabricated that statement, making up each word as I went along.]
**[This is an actual, documented fact.  I didn't make that one up.]

[This is from the latest Bill Simmons' mailbag.]

Q: Isn't the Eagles letting go of Donovan the ultimate "it's not, you it's me" scenario? Donovan has been dating the Eagles fans for years now. In the beginning it was exciting and risky. You never knew what he was going to do with the ball and he kept you on your toes. Like when my boyfriend liked to give me massages and surprise me with a card or a have breakfast for me. Each encounter (insert mood music) is hot and fresh. Then after 12 years you've found yourself faking moaning and hoping things get moving so you can fit in your 40 minutes of DVR before bed. I know all his moves and when he's going to high-step it two yards short of the first down. I know when he's going to throw it at DeSean's ankles. K-squared may not be perfect but at least his faults will surprise me. Donovan, it's been great. I loved the good times. But it's time to move on. It's not you, it's me.
-- Lauren

SG: Funny e-mail, concise, original angle. That's what I'm talking about! And by the way, only a woman could have summed up the McNabb Era in Philly.


I have to agree with Simmons on this one...she nailed it. I feel bad for her boyfriend though. He obviously sucks in bed.

Slumps happen all the time. It's a part of baseball, any self-respecting player, manager, reporter or fan will tell you that. But this is just ridiculous. The Phillies haven't scored in 27 straight innings, three full friggin' games, AND were swept by the absolutely hated Mets. No matter how you look at it, this team isn't very good right now.

Obviously it isn't time to hit full panic mode yet. Remember, this team was 39-37 last year in late June before they finally turned it on and ran away with the division. The same could happen this year, especially when you consider we now have Roy Halladay, a better Cole Hamels and J.A. Happ set to return in a few weeks. But the fact remains this team has been shutout in four of the their last five, all against non-ace type pitchers (although, admittingly, Pelfrey is pitching that way this year). If it wasn't for a three run ninth inning on Sunday, we'd be staring at five consecutive shutouts. Yuck.

Listen, this team will hit. They'll probably lead the NL in runs scored again too. But the NL East is stronger this year, with every team at .500 or better. The Nationals, who are in last place, are only three games back of the Phillies. Even the staunchest of Phillies fans have to realize this year won't be as easy as 2009 was. It would certainly be in the Phillies best interest to have a strong showing this weekend in Miami. This losing streak has to stop now. With that said, onto the matchups:

Friday: Kendrick (2-2, 5.66 ERA) vs. Volstad (3-5, 4.31 ERA)

Saturday: Halladay (6-3, 2.22 ERA) vs. Johnson (5-1, 2.43 ERA)

Sunday: Moyer (5-4, 4.55 ERA) vs. Sanchez (4-2, 3.23 ERA)

It isn't going to get any easier for the Phillies to score this weekend. Josh Johnson and Anibal Sanchez have both pitched excellent recently, Johnson especially. To understand how dominate Josh Johnson has been, consider this: in his past 57 starts he's allow more than three ER only eight times. Eight. That's really good. Thankfully, the Phils will send out Halladay to match him. Coming off his worst start of the year (by far) Halladay is looking to rebound. Knowing the type of pitcher he is, I'm sure he will. The Phillies just need to score. Especially with Kendrick and Moyer taking the hill in this series too.

Looking at how this series could play out, the Phillies really need to rock Volstad on Friday night and send a message that their offense is fine. If they don't, they face two pitchers on Saturday and Sunday that are hot and it could get ugly fast. Taking two of three this weekend is imperative, they have to stop the bleeding.

Go Phils!

It used to be a given in the industry that if an agent or editor found out you were posting your property online, they shied away from you. Exposure and a built-in audience equaled fewer potential sales.

All that's changed. Now, with literary agents getting stupider and stupider and acquisitions editors shrinking their strike zone down to the size of a Republican's heart, about the only prayer you have of getting noticed outside of a literary agency is to post your material online.

Meet Mike Flannigan, my alter ego and the guy who's been publishing the best articles on Pottersville this past one plus year. I've just posted American Zen in its entirety on Scribd, which is most popularly known as the Youtube of documents.

American Zen, to those of you not in the know, is Mike's "memoir" of what was perhaps the most important and emotionally-charged week in his life. As a 19 year-old boy, Mike was the erstwhile lead guitarist for a promising Massachusetts-based rock and roll band called the Immortals in 1978. When their front man Dave suddenly got signed to a solo deal during their very last gig, the band broke up and the members went their separate ways.

Thirty years later, Mike, now a liberal political investigative journalist/blogger, gets a mysterious email from his childhood friend and former bandmate, the keyboardist Jo Jo Vandermeer. The email is as cryptic as it is brief:

"Let's get the guys together."

Suddenly, Mike is the only political journalist not writing about the incoming Obama administration. Because what happens between that Saturday morning and the heart-rending climax on Thanksgiving is the defining moment in not just Mike's life but in the lives of all the surviving bandmates during their improbable reunion. Through the brawls, shocking decades-old secrets laid bare, Fox News-fueled scandal and ultimately tragedy, Mike and company realize that while friendship is amazingly durable it is also amazingly fragile. That salvation, while necessary to all of us, also sometimes comes at the ultimate price.

It's American rock and roll. It's American life and death. It's American Zen.

See the show.

If you have a Facebook account, it's very easy to open a Scribd account and everything you post on the latter will be publicized on the former.

If it wasn't for reader Stan "The Man" Banos at Reciprocity Failure passing along a newspaper article referencing this and other alternative publishing venues, I wouldn't have even known about this. So, Stan m' man, this upload is dedicated to you.

Update: For some reason, Scribd is stumbling right out of the gate. I've already uploaded this manuscript twice and both times it's turned into a 426 page blank document. If anyone else is having these issues, please email me and I'll see what I can get from Scribd in the way of answers.

2nd note: Apparently, Scribd doesn't have the hard drive space to store documents longer than 100 pages. At least, I haven't found anything even remotely as long as American Zen's 426 page size. So you'll have to content yourself with the first 7 chapters.

3rd Update: After a bit of detective work, I've discovered that, for some maddeningly inane reason, you can only view the .pdf file on IE but not Mozilla Firefox. I don't use Internet Explorer for reasons that are as numerous as the sheer number of viruses it lets slip into your hard drive. If any Firefox users are having trouble seeing the document, please email me or leave a comment. For the time being, I'm just going to leave the first 7 chapters up because I'm already sick of this uploading bullshit.

Now I know that this is pretty well-worn territory, but I feel compelled to speak up as a blog that leans on racial humor as a crutch features some colorful material. You know what, internet? There are some things I just won't tolerate. Very high on that list: Hitler Mustaches.

Michael Jordan, I know you're Michael Jordan. But I think you still live in this fantasy world where it's 1996 and Space Jam is still a big deal and everyone loves everything you do. The truth, Michael, is that you're really just a former basketball player.

Not a motorcyle rider/team owner, not a baseball player, not a golfer, not a professional gambling....person, none of this. You are a dude that was really good at playing basketball at one time. Maybe the best. But you were still just a basketball player. You know what that means? YOU CAN'T WEAR A HITLER MUSTACHE LIKE ITS OKAY.

You know why? Cause when the all-time leader in worst person ever has one unique feature about them, the person that later adopts that unique feature looks like an asshole.

And you look like an asshole.

This time of evolution from radar to GPS guided flight was described to me recently as “a period of dramatic and revolutionary change” by Nancy LoBue at the Federal Aviation Administration. She is not alone in this characterization.

Using global positioning information, airliners can fly shorter more direct routes to their destinations, engage in continuous descent approaches and narrow the space between planes as they fly. It’s a whole new world and its long overdue according to Ken Shapero, of Naverus an advanced navigation company that is part of GE Aviation.

“Today, we allow aircraft to navigate up to the boundaries of the terminal area, where controllers essentially take control, sequencing the aircraft by issuing specific headings, speeds and altitudes. This is not the most efficient way to handle traffic in the terminal area,” he told me.

With this in mind, one would think the airline industry would be thrilled with the Federal Aviation Administration, which on Thursday issued a new rule mandating that all airliners be equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS–B) technology by 2020. But one would be wrong.

I’m not going to get into the details of ADS-B, RNAV, RNP or any other part of the alphabet soup that makes up the much-touted, long-anticipated Next Generation Aviation System. What’s important here is that the kind of technology that lets parents know where their cell-phone equipped teenagers are, is coming soon to an airplane near you. And then it will improve efficiency, accuracy and performance.

Last year Bob Smith, the vice president of advanced technologies for Honeywell Aerospace described to me some of the capabilities of these satellite-based GPS systems, “The ultimate goal is to be able to push back, roll to the runway, take off and land and go to the gate all without ever having to hit the brakes.”

But to turn those capabilities into reality, airlines must install the equipment on their airplanes and the FAA must modify the nation's aviation infrastructure. This is big money talk. Did I say big? I meant to say humongous. And now we are getting to the nub of the problem.

The Air Transport Association, said in a statement Thursday that it would carefully review the rule and its effects on the industry. But off the record, they complain the FAA is sloughing off to the airlines the entire cost of updating the system without sharing any of the savings that will result from shifting from radar to satellite-based systems.

Let me be clear, there’s no big resistance to adapting to the technology, the dispute is over who will pay for it and whether airlines will see a return on their investment anytime soon. An estimated 80% of U.S. airliners already have the equipment necessary to fly satellite navigation flights. See my article from last year on this subject in The New York Times.

USAirways, Continental, American and Southwest Airlines are using some aspects of satellite navigation. But the FAA has resisted requests by these operators that they be allowed to use their advanced capabilities to the fullest. Take the case of Southwest Airlines. The airline invested significantly so that it could fly continuous descent approaches at every airport it serves. But despite the fuel and time saving advantages, the FAA would not allow Southwest specially designed landings. So Southwest is dressed for the party but has no way to get there.

“There is a real distrust in the FAA’s ability to get this done and to do it in a reasonable time frame,” someone familiar with the Southwest situation told me.

Notably, this kind of criticism of the FAA stops short of the administrator, Randy Babbitt. Perhaps because he was the chairman of the task force overseeing the implementation of next-gen technology, several people say the decision to mandate ADS-B within the next 10 years is due largely to his perseverance and advocacy

At a news conference in Washington, D.C., Babbitt said, "We can appreciate the difficult economic times airlines have been through. It's been a tough economic two or three years for them, and the capital expenditure is going to be difficult, and I think that's the core of their concern."

"Tough economic two or three years" may be a bit of an understatement considering the industry claims of losing $65 billion since September 11, 2001. One can anticipate Capitol Hill lobbying will begin in earnest as airlines seek financial help for these expensive upgrades.

Considering how quickly after his appointment, Babbitt was able to calm the agency's years-long contract dispute with its air traffic controllers, my bet is that he will find a compromise and make peace with the airline industry on this subject. After all, when it comes to beneficiaries, there are no losers in next-gen.

This is the semi-racist giveaway of the family-friendly Reading Phillies.  I'm not sure who signed off on this, or thought a Ryan Howard lawn jockey garden gnome was a good idea, but you can have your own at their August 3rd game.  [philly.com]


Regardless, all gnomes are creepy little buggers.  And yes, I'm looking at you David.  Without Swift, you were NOTHING.

By TWW friend Rich
1997. That was a great time to be 13; Nike was in it’s prime and everyone my age craved the butt ugly 190 dollar basketball sneakers they made. Nike even made hockey cool, with commercials featuring Sergei Federov and our very own, Rod “The Bod” Brind’amour. A lot of boners happened in 1997, too, thanks to MTV spring break specials and scrambled porn.  However, the biggest boner I received that year came when the Flyers made it to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in my young life. Unfortunately, The Redwings took me to CB Perkins and ordered me cockblock waffles with blueball syrup.

And yet, here we are, 13 years later, as Flyered up as ever. The memory of the sweep still haunts us, but in retrospect, that 97 Redwings team was one of the best teams of all time(s) so it eases the pain a little, but damn, what if.... Anyway, the time has come to punish bad memories, win some mutha fuckin hockey games, take home the Stanley Cup, bring it to Old City, party with it at some stripper’s sorority, and drinkith from its herpes infested glory! Oh yes my friends, I can taste the Abreva already.

In order to drink from Stan’s mug of champions, we gotta take down the Blackhawks…like in that movie. The Flyers are the Somalian warlords that shoot down helicopters with bazookas, but instead of bazookas we have heavy slappers from the point. It’s gonna be great, I’m so Flyered up right now ova’ here!

Take a look at the matchups:


Toews vs Richards

Toews (pronounced- Tay-vz) is like the second coming of Joe Sakic. The kids like 15 years old, but he’s the captain, and is a great two way player. He has 26 points in 16 games which leads the league. Dude is nasty and scary.

Richards is the fucking man! Watch this goal. I don’t even want to talk about it. He’s got 21 points, second in the league, and he hits real hard too. Richards is like if B-Dawk was a hockey player. Check it out… get it?

Niemi vs Leighton

Niemi was a back up in Finland two years ago, he’s 26, and this is his first rodeo. He has a 2.33 GAA, .921 save percentage and 2 shutouts in 16 playoff games. The save percentage is nasty, and he has two 40+ save performances. But we’ve run through rookie sensations these playoffs like a Jim Johnson defense. He’s good, but he’ll have to stand on his head, and then do windmills like a jabawokee if the Hawks have a chance.

Leighton we got off waivers and he’s been a monster. He’s the most positionaly sound goalie in the playoffs and he’s fressshhhh. … like Pedro Martinez last year, only Chicago is not his father. 6-1 this postseason and he leads the league in GAA (1.45), save percentage (.948) and shutouts (3) NUMBERS!!!!

Kane vs Gagne

Kane is the best young player out period He is third in points with 20, and is pretty much like Claude Giroux but better. Not much to say about this guy, he’s a super star that you should know about already.

Gagne is technically the best Flyer still. He’s aggravatingly spastic at times, but means as much to the Flyers as Rollins does to the Phillies. He brought us back from a 3-0 hole with some big time goals, and his beard looks really good this year. Keep scoring goal, Gagne, and we’ll see what happen.

Byfuglien vs Briere

Byfuglien (pronounced Bufflyn) is 260 lbs. He’s a big friggin’ san-don-doan and I hope Pronger can keep him out of our crease. He’s a big time guy and has 4 game winning goals this year in the playoffs.

Briere is like the equal and opposite of this. He’s little, fast and skilled. He has been deadly in the playoffs for his whole career and is adding to his legacy with 9 goals this year. He also has 4 game winners this year, and his facial hair really does grow all French like that.

Sharp/Bolland vs Giroux

Sharp used to be a Flyer, and he still plays like one. He’s the retarded version of Mike Richards. Watch out for his short hand, it’s his strong hand.

Bolland “The Rat” shuts down elite players. He’s a pesky jerkoff that we would love to have on our team, but you’re gonna be like, “I can’t fucking stand Dave Bolland” by the end of the series.

Giroux is the reason the Flyers are where they are this year. He got us into the playoffs with his shootout goal, and has played his brains out ever since. He’s the most skilled player on the ice whenever he’s out there, he’s like a little Forsberg with a 99 offensive awareness rating. 8 goals, 17 points and a PLUS 10! Plus 10 is disgusting. He’s my favorite.

Keith vs Pronger

Keith is probably gonna win the Norris Trophy this year for being the best D-man during the regular season. Having said that, this isn’t the regular season, and Pronger is now the best D-man goin. If they win, he’s the reason why.

Pronger is the best player in the playoffs right now. Fuck what you heard about Toews having half his name carved into the Conn Smythe trophy, Pronger is the MVP of the playoffs. He plays 30 crazy minutes a game, and doesn’t allow nothing to nobody. He’s a robot, and has the same preparation style and approach to winning as Roy Halladay. We need him to keep playing out of his mind like this or we aren’t going to win.

Hossa vs Carter

Hossa is an elite player and a Flyer killer. Like a Kovalev, he could very well have a 4 goal game at some point in the series if the Flyers don’t take him seriesly….seriously. He is cursed though, which is good, the last two years he’s played for the team that has lost the cup.

Carter is our most dangerous weapon. There’s a stat out there about how when Carter and Richards both score in the same game, we never lose. He looks great out there, and we need him to do heavy damage on the powerplay because Chicago is a kick ass penalty killing team. Putting him on the same line with Richards and Gagne is beastly. I like when the best players play on the same line together. It’s like when Potassium and Nitrous Oxide bond….Fireworks….Chemistry.

The Blackhawks are a great team, but they’re too young and they’re relying on their goalie too much. They are the clear favorites to win the cup, but guess what, I don’t fucking care. The Flyers are winning the Cup this year! That’s all I have to say about that.

LET’S GO FLYERS



*special thanks to the Canadiens for eliminating the Capitals and the Penguins. Thanks guys, we appreciated that.

Especially frustrated novelists like me who are sick and tired of playing ring around-the-rosey with bottom line-driven zombie literary agencies. There's a new sheriff in town and it's called Cambridge House Books.

Now, my regular readers no doubt recall a two part series I'd posted last week giving both 10 gauge barrels to the literary representation business. Perhaps it's a coincidence and perhaps it isn't, but I got a rare fascinating email that made a pitch I had to pay attention to. I don't want to sound like a paid shill because I'm not. But when you hear what they said in their introductory email, it's going to make those of you who've been in the sink-or-swim writing business realize how much things are changing.

Reflecting concerns and complaints I've been yelling about for close to two decades, Cambridge House had developed a progressive strategy that was first pioneered by Stephen King and his new publisher after he'd left Simon and Schuster in the 90's:

The deal King and his publisher had set was ingenious in its simplicity and one is amazed it took this long to spread and solidify into an actual corporate strategy: Instead of King getting seven figure advances that he plainly didn't need by that time, he and his publisher decided to split the risk. In lieu of a huge advance that in all likelihood wouldn't be earned out, they would split the royalties 50/50. By doing that, King was not only taking in half the profits, he was also assuming half the risk. If he failed, his publisher failed.

This is what Cambridge House Books is now doing with their growing author list.

Hopefully, this will catch on and we won't be seeing many more $7-$10 million deals given to Bible-thumping dorks like Sarah fucking Palin and Joel Osteen.

To be fair, Harper Collins was the first major publisher to tentatively stick its cloven hoof in the water over two years ago with their Writers Initiative but here's the drawback: They, like all major publishers, largely extend this deal to their biggest-selling authors and nothing's really changed for their firsttime and midlist authors. All those corporate clowns at Harper are doing is just hedging their bets and going with proven cash cows like King's publisher did with him. It simply wouldn't be worth the while for major publishers to extend such a risky deal to a midlist author even if they're the ones responsible for keeping him/her at midlist!

And while this created hardly a ripple in the industry (few if any other big publishing houses have followed suit), it's equally true that even the trogs who run these publishing houses are gradually coming to the same conclusions that I and many writers had reached 15-20 years ago: That there's incredible short-sightedness and waste that goes hand in hand with the book business.

A top publisher with an annual catalog of, say, 1500 titles just understands and accepts as business as usual that about all but five of those books will fail. More often than not, we see that those five books a year, the equivalent of a tent pole movie from a major studio, had benefited from the lion's share of the publisher's publicity and advertising budget.

Even in the digital age, in which the latest by Stephen King or Ann Coulter will be pre-publicized for pennies on Amazon and sold months in advance of publication, publishers still earmark most of their advertising budget for guys who already have national and in some cases, international household name recognition. They still get the full page ads in the NY Times Book Review, dozens of advance copies sent to top reviewers, writeups in trade journals, radio spots and in some cases, trailers that get TV spots.

The rest of their stable of authors don't get that.

Cambridge House amplified and expanded the idea that authors should take on more risk if not assume half of it and this could have a great upside. In the business, it's a given that the publisher, which typically will spend $100,000 (not including printing costs) over a year and a half to bring out a single title, assumes 100% of the financial risk. But what even Cambridge House doesn't mention (to be fair, neither does anyone else) is that while the publisher assumes 100% of the financial risk, they still get to keep 90% of the royalties and the reputational risk is assumed by the author.

An ugly reality in the publishing biz: If your book doesn't hit the ground running and start selling 3-4 weeks after arrival, heartless corporate booksellers like Borders, Inc. and Barnes and Noble can and will pull it off their shelves to make way for the next victim. Where do these remaindered books get sent? Back to the publishers' shredders. Three to four weeks after publication.

That's enough to make any tree hugger go on a ten state shooting spree. Same with a lot of authors.

The unfortunate author, not their publisher, gets stuck with the stigma of failure even though it's almost entirely the publisher's fault for underpublicizing his/her title because they were too busy drumming up publicity for bestselling authors who are already more visible and recognizable than 99% of our elected officials.

Cambridge House seeks to curb that waste and even established publishers are finally waking and realizing, if not how many trees they're needlessly killing, the insanity of such waste. If the publisher fails, the author fails with them. If the author succeeds, everyone's happy.

What Cambridge will do for you, considering they take on your project, is to actually work with you even to the point of editing your ms, a practice that's all but a boutique service afforded only bestselling authors. Not a vanity or subsidy press by any means, they'll also assume a real role in publicizing your book and will negotiate with the biggest distributors such as Ingram and even Book of the Month clubs.

In other words, everything a publisher is supposed to do in the interests of their success but making the author more of a partner than an underpaid resource. Far from being a radical concept, this is what publishers did in the old days and is bringing back Old School publishing. The only difference is, authors are no longer capped at 15% royalties for hard cover and 7-8% for paperback sales but are made full partners.

They print the book, do the editing, if needed, the cover art, the advertising, provide aid in the distribution, etc. They actually invite you to submit manuscripts whether you're multiply-published or an unknown, whether your book is finished or still in the planning stages. And the best part:

If this catches on, it will do one of two things: Make greedy, self-absorbed literary agents go the way of the Dodo Bird, CCRs and rewrite editors or force them to recognize that we no longer need them in their current capacity as second-string gate keepers and that they'd better think twice before sending newly-empowered writers form rejection letters and the blatant disrespect many of us talented writers are getting on a daily basis.

I already wrote to them asking for exact submission guidelines and will send them American Zen. If you're a writer and you've produced a quality ms, I'd suggest you click on this link and try them, too.

Well, before one can answer that, one must first determine which American power we're talking about: The political establishment or Big Business. And we've gotten several indications during countless congressional testimonies and lax to nonexistent oversight during the past generation to know where the real power lies.

The graph above was created by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a right wing think tank named after its principle money man, infamous right winger Pete Peterson. In a nutshell, it predicts the impact the American Power Act will have on US energy usage in the decades to come. You'll note that this energy industry-friendly legislation cooked up by Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman and John Kerry has little impact on reducing coal and oil consumption and has virtually zero impact on renewal energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Any supposedly progressive legislation that has the support of an energy CEO like Duke's Jim Rogers should make any true statesman shriek and run from it as if it was radioactive.

Fortunately for the energy industry, there are virtually no politicians who are handicapped and hobbled by such scruples. Same thing goes for the bureaucrats who run the Obama-era Interior Ministry and EPA. In fact, a former EPA investigator just confided that BP, currently the world's biggest polluter, won't be disciplined for spilling nearly 20 million gallons of crude (and counting) into the Gulf Coast and we can be assured such generous impunity will also be extended to Halliburton and Transocean, the rig's owner.

Of course, that's because the government can't afford the luxury of righteousness.

It's one thing to give these world-class polluters endless dispensations and exemptions. It's another thing entirely for our government to actually lie to the American people and to act as paid shills or mouthpieces in a laughable attempt at perception management. In fact, BP is actively forbidding scientists with more sophisticated instruments to investigate the extent of the spill and the government isn't exactly militant about letting them in. Plus, Jason Leopold of Truthout reminded us recently about the Bush-era DOJ actively scuttling an investigation that allowed BP to in turn scuttle away after paying the government a $20 million fine for a crime occurring in Alaska's Northern Slope that was downgraded to a misdemeanor.

What we're seeing is bitch-slapped, hat-in-hand compliance from two successive administrations, one very Republican and the other technically Democratic. And just as most of the Deepwater Horizon's oil spill is still underwater and not even visible to NASA satellites, this endless compliance toward the energy industry is just the tip of the iceberg.

Despite lying to the American people just 22 days before the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers, in which he said,

So today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration, but in ways that balance the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect America’s natural resources

President Obama then did what President Obama does and publicly clucked his tongue at BP in a faux populist vein. However, even that risible righteousness in turn earned a cluck of the tongue from Tea Party Flavor the Day Rand Paul, who said that Obama criticizing BP, a British oil company, was "unAmerican."

It is now unAmerican to criticize a huge corporation, even one headquartered in Europe, something that Teddy Roosevelt, a true progressive Republican, was doing a century ago. And what's being criticized as unAmerican, this token righteousness, is further made even more ludicrous by the realization that since the spill, Obama's Interior Dept. has issued 27 more drilling leases that we know of to other oil companies, including two to BP.

When one carefully parses the American Power Act, the new health care bill and the much-ballyhooed financial regulatory bill, we see an unmistakable pattern: A Congress that's being used as contractors and subcontractors whose job is to allow huge corporations to continue to self-regulate and self-deal. Look at the bankruptcy bill of 2005, one that was actually written by the nation's biggest lenders around 1997.

Then think of what Sen. Dick Durbin blurted out in a fit of frustration at having his homeowner relief bill blocked by Republicans and the usual swarm of lobbyists: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

Truer words were never spoken on Capitol Hill.

And if the BP rig disaster doesn't show the endless compliance and forever put to rest the illusion that Congress and the administration will ever enact real reform and regulation over these world-eating corporations, nothing ever will. And the tragedy is that it doesn't even matter which party is in power. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss and they both smell like sweet light crude.


They have the money and the lobbyists and we don't. On Capitol Hill, money doesn't just talk: It screams with thousands of megaphones, drowning out the voices of even hundreds of millions of people. They'd drunk our milkshake long ago and there's only that irritating hollow sucking sound.

I don't know much about hockey, but this is a pretty big deal. Chicago, here we come.

Go Flyers.

(Spoiler alert: For those who have yet to see last night's finale of LOST, you may want to hit your backspace button and not read this post.)

Years ago, I suspected that this is how LOST would end: The castaways would find out they were dead all along. But I dismissed that as beneath J.J. Abrams' talent as a writer. Doing so would've been been a limp retread of that entire season of DALLAS in which we find out the entire year was just a dream. It was one of the most notorious jump-the-shark moments in TV history.

Little did I believe that Abrams would go for that very ending. For six years, we always had faith that by the series finale, all loose ends would be tied up tighter than a Jack Shepard tourniquet and no stone would be left unturned. Instead, we were left with more loose ends than we can count.

For instance, I can understand the philosophical ambiguity of us not knowing where the "dead" castaways are going but we can assume they've moved on and will transition to heaven. While somewhat unimaginative and something a second string writer would conjure, it remains a perfectly valid explanation as to their ultimate destination.

However, what was the island? What was the purpose behind it? Why was the Dharma Initiative so obsessed with it other than a vague mission to harness the island's potent but largely unexplained power? And Charles Widmore never adequately explained his own obsession with the island or what specifically he was after other than an equally abstract desire to also harness its power?

If they were dead these past six years, why were Kate and Sawyer/James Ford allowed to leave the island with Miles, Richard and Frank? Leave the island to go where? Richard had lived on the island most of his life and Frank and Miles arrived on Widmore's freighter and weren't on Oceanic 815.

Same with Desmond and Ben Linus, who were left behind on the island with Hurley, the new Jacob by default. And if Hurley and Desmond (and possibly Ben, who preferred to remain outside the church) transitioned to their final journey, then how could they remain on the island?

And if the island could in a metaphysical way resurrect the dead, then why were there only 48 survivors from the fuselage in the pilot episode (more from the later discovered tail section) and why did most of the passengers immediately perish in the crash? And why wasn't Michael, one of the original characters, at the reunion?

Midway through LOST's run, after we find out at the end of season three that some of the castaways managed to escape the island, it became very difficult to follow the twists and turns visited on us every week what with time travel, alternate universes and realities and so forth. But I managed to see every single episode of this series and the lack of resolution, while it isn't enough to justify a feature length movie, left me hungering for more.

While there's something universally satisfying about all of us coming to terms with our individual ends, it nonetheless is kind of a bittersweet resolution considering that almost all the characters went on to better alternate lives only to be told through overwhelming consensus that this, too, was an illusion and that their transition would be an ambiguous one. Many of these characters, especially Hurley, Jack and Desmond, finally figured it all out and set up lucrative, satisfying lives for themselves only to be told this was a lie and they'd have to give it up for an ambiguous fate with no guarantee of eternal happiness.

It was like "Lets Make a Deal" and being forced to choose the one door offered.

About five minutes before the series ended, I just knew, being a writer with an instinct for the circular, that the closing image would be the exact reverse of how the show opened six years ago: The dying Jack Shepard closing his eye, with Vincent the yellow Lab by his side. It was a nice, elliptical touch but not so nice as to make up for the unanswered questions and untied loose ends that offer lack of resolution while not seeming to justify a feature-length film that would.

Was anyone else as dissatisfied with the ending as I was?

From her days as an Air America host, it's always been very tempting to compare liberal icon Rachel Maddow to fictional liberal icon Murphy Brown. Both ladies are smart, funny and always seem to be on the right side of every debate. The only difference is that Brown's character was a fierce pitbull in the face of Republican idiocy whereas Maddow never loses her composure and remains ever the lady while nonetheless remaining true to her journalistic credo.

Therefore it was almost preordained that Rachel would eventually get someone on her show that personifies the positions taken by the odious Stuart Best, a former colleague of Brown's who ran for, and won, a seat in Congress. Anyone who's ever seen that infamous episode knows that this was one of the few times that Brown didn't actually earn her paycheck. All she had to do was ask three candidates for their positions, three politicians consisting of one Democrat, one Republican and Wallace Shawn's character, proto-Tea Bagger Stuart Best.

Best quickly got himself into hot water when he was forced to spew racist right wing talking points given to him in a position paper by his donors, including a White Supremacy group that would deny basic civil rights to those who weren't "at least 7/8ths caucasian" and a "radical offshoot" of the NRA.

Rand Paul had just such a moment on Rachel Maddow's show just days after winning the GOP primary for Kentucky's senate race. After having made some pretty inflammatory remarks on TV and radio about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was Maddow's turn to put his feet to the fire.

If you've seen this interview, you'll easily note that while trying to remain on the side of private business and its right not to be dictated to by the federal government, Paul is also trying to walk down that rope on the side of racial equality. Instead of walking down that rope, however, he only wound up hanging himself on it.

It's difficult to know where to begin dissecting this Tea Party lunacy from which Paul is now forbidden to stray. He tries to compare apples to hyenas by conflating racial equality at lunch counters with peoples' right to carry firearms into such an establishment and tries to portray it as an academic debate that we on then left are trying to politicize,

Then he tries to accuse Maddow moments later of conflation.

OK, I'll concede that Paul has a point: This shouldn't be a political football. Civil rights never should've been allowed to become a political issue and should've remained what it truly was all along: A human rights issue. But it isn't us who's turning this 46 year-old landmark legislation into a deflated political football. You can credit Tea Party Republicans for that.

But Rand Paul, a man who every time he opens his big, mealy mouth seems bound and determined to prove himself worthy of being named after Corporate Goddess Ayn Rand, uncomfortably waddles down that rope while trying not to alienate blacks and liberals or private business owners who own little Walgreen and Woolworth lunch counters.

Rand Paul seems perfectly comfortable, however, in tacitly siding with such people who should be allowed to discriminate against others because of skin color and their right to allow firearms into such establishments. Looking back on the lunch counter beatings that are still preserved on film from those days, one shudders to think what would've happened if more white people had brought their guns to Woolworth's.

This is what Rand Paul is cravenly trying to support without seeming too obvious about it:



As well as this:



...and this...


...and this...


...and this.



What Paul doesn't realize is that the civil rights struggle is not a political, abstract or academic issue. In fact, as long as idiots like Rand Paul continue championing the rights of white business owners to practice racial discrimination over the equal rights sought by people of color, that struggle will never truly be academic or resolved.

I don't believe that Rand Paul is any more racist than the pathetic Stuart Best. But defending a person's right to practice racism is racism. In other words, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. And Rand Paul is not the solution to any problem, least of all the racism that still thrives in the Tea Party that helped him win the primary.

By now, we all know that last night the Senate passed their version of the financial reform bill that was mightily hated and fought by corporations, their swarm of lobbyists and the US Chamber of Commerce. I guess we should thank whatever God we pray to for small favors that it didn't drag on as long and as bitterly as the health care debate. In fact, a comprehensive bill may be on President Obama's desk as early as Monday next week.

And while it's certainly a good thing that Congress ultimately resisted the forces of darkness, there are three major issues I have with the bill. I never had any illusions that this "sweeping" "reform" bill would either be sweeping or benefiting from any actual reformist zeal but I just want to have three things clarified for me:

1) If the cost of regulating risks will make too "expensive" for banks to comply with the added oversight and if they pass these additional expenses onto their account holders, then how is this real regulatory reform? Isn't protecting Joe Accountholder from rapacious banks the main impetus for drafting such reform, in the first place?

2) Regulating interchange fees may or not prove to be a good idea in the long run. Yet if debit card holders like me (although I use a community bank, which isn't the concern of the bill) find fewer places where their cards will be accepted, in theory this could lead to bigger headaches than not being able to pay with the plastic. If more people are forced to withhold liquid capital from their banks and keeping more of their cash to themselves to make purchases that used to be made with debit cards, doesn't that hurt banks in the long run and wouldn't they, once again, be forced to retaliate by hiking fees and surcharges to make up for this shortfall in liquid capital?

3) If Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are still owned lock, stock and barrel by the federal government, then why are they exempt from oversight from Uncle Sam? You'd think this would be the perfect time to keep an eye on these troublesome twins to ensure they've learned their lesson.

Even the most cynical of us have to concede that this bill could've been a lot worse. Think of the Bankruptcy bill of 2005, for instance, another product of hideously misplaced and badly-aimed zeal. Forming a consumer protection agency, something bitterly fought by the US Chamber of Commerce is, in theory, a good thing for US consumers. Hopefully, it won't be underfunded or neglected when no one's looking so banks will continue making usurious, predatory loans to unwary home buyers that can then be bundled and profitably sold as toxic assets by other predators such as Goldman Sachs.

Going back to the regulatory risks aspect of the bill: One thing I do like is the creation of a $150,000,000,000 slush fund to help bail out "distressed" banks. Why shouldn't they pay for their own bailouts instead of passing the buck, or 700 billion of them, to the taxpayer? And if they try to make up for that shortfall by jacking up fees and surcharges or lowering interest rates on interest-bearing accounts, there's always the option of amending the bill.

The Sixers have agreed to terms with their seventh head coach since the end of the Larry Brown era - Doug Collins has reportedly agreed to a 4 year deal with financials still unknown.

The Sixers and GM Ed Stefanski interviewed quite a few candidates in their search, but ended up settling on the guy they pretty much wanted from the start.  Since the firing of Eddie Jordan, it's been widely considered that Collins was the front runner for the position.


I'm glad the deal is done and Collins can immediately begin preparing for the upcoming season. It's encouraging that a guy who had a cushy job at TNT even wanted to come to the Sixers - a team in certain rebuild-mode. But good karma was awarded and now he gets to coach the second pick in the 2010 draft (PleaseBeEvanTurner,PleaseBeEvanTurner).

Collins is a guy who will coach defense and fundamentals - two things the Sixers of 2009 knew diddly-poo about. A team that plays solid defense will go a long way to adding some points to the win column. Now, don't be fooled, Collins isn't a "great" coach. But at this current point in time, he's about as good as anybody else available to coach a young team with glaring flaws.

As for drawbacks - I'd have to say that it’s Collins' propensity to slow the game down. If nothing else, the Sixers squad is athletic and when they pushed the ball under Mo Cheeks, good things happened. Don't expect too much of that. Collins runs a very deliberate offense. Lots of play calling and not much running the floor. In all of Collins previous seasons coaching, not one of his teams finished higher than 4th worst in the league at number of possessions.  Collins has been out of coaching for a while, so maybe his philosophies have changed a bit.  He's at least stayed in touch with today's game and today's players through his television commentating .  We'll see how that translates to his coaching style.

All in all, my final verdict is that this was a solid choice for the team. And more importantly, we will never have to see the shit-show that was the Princeton Offense.  Ever

So I can prove I'm not a spambot but I have to prove my racist bona fides? Not a very good tradeoff.

I captured this image then refreshed the page because I refused to type that word.

A young, pre-blackboard Glenn Beck demonstrates how Drew Carey is the anti-Christ.

OK, your turn.

There aren't many teams over the last 100 years that have been less successful than the Phillies. 10,000 losses is pretty hard to compare to. But know this, if you asked a Cubs fan to trade the Cubs history for the Phillies history, I bet they'd say yes. Two World Series titles since 1980 looks like millions when compared to none since 1908. (But at least they aren't Cleveland, right?)

Tonight the Phillies start a quick two-game set with the Cubbies, before they get ready for the Sox this weekend. While the Cubs have struggled mightly this year, the Phillies would do best not to look past them. There are still some dangerous hitters in that lineup, even if most of them have been slumping all year. Plus, we'll face their best pitcher (Ryan Dempster) tomorrow. Here are the matchups:

Tonight: Moyer (5-2, 4.57 ERA) v. Gorzelanny (1-4, 3.60 ERA)
Tomorrow: Blanton (1-2, 5.49 ERA) v. Dempster (2-4, 3.49 ERA)

Gorzelanny is a lefty who has actually pitched rather well this year. His K/9 rate is higher than it has ever been and he's only had one start with more than 3 ER allowed (albeit his last one). Considering the Phillies can struggle against lefties they don't see often (they haven't faced him since 2007), it could be a tough matchup. Especially since Chase Utley may miss a third straight game with flu-like symptoms.

I do, however, expect the Phillies to bomb the hell out of Ryan Dempster tomorrow. Why? Because he's on my fantasy team, no other reason. I see a line of 5 IP, 7 ER, 2 HR allowed. Mark it down, it's a mortal lock.

Go Phils.

Arlen Specter won't magically reappear and certainly not intact.

That's right, big surprise. Rep. Joe Sestak, one of the few actual Democrats running for office this year, has just defeated in PA's Senate Democratic primary one of the most nakedly ambitious turncoats in recent US history. As with John McCain and so many other flipfloppers, Specter's ouster in a primary race this spring points to not only comeuppance for those who don't toe one party line or the other but a predictable anti-incumbent fervor sweeping the nation.

Republicans are getting swept out, Democrats are getting swept out and many of their seats will fall into the hands of the other party.

In the end, not much will really change. The Republicans won't make any significant gains in the House if at all, none in the Senate and Congress will still be loaded with subcontractor psychopaths charitably referred to as lawmakers.

The real test will be not in the midterms but the 2012 general elections when the Democrats will have no choice but to ride Obama's coattails. Their chances of survival will depend largely if not entirely on the success of Obama's agenda.

And considering the results thus far, with Obama keeping Bush's fascist infrastructure and two unwinnable wars intact and actually covering for Bush and his war criminal cronies, the GOP in '12 just may sweep in like it's 1994 again.

But for now the midterms are shaping up to be like kabuki: Interesting in a train wreck sort of way but ultimately pointless.

But let's not forget one thing: The Tea Partyers just got a huge credibility spike when their man, Rand Paul, won his GOP primary in Kentucky tonight.

There is no way around it...the Flyers are the hottest team on the planet. Pick a sport, any sport, it doesn't matter. There isn't a team anywhere playing better than these guys. Maybe there is a girls high school softball team somewhere in Iowa playing better, but who the fuck cares about them?

Right now, Philadelphia is in a frenzy as the Flyers sit just two wins away from their first Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 13 years. Yet again, Michael Leighton and the Flyers defense allowed the Canadiens to score the same amount of goals as this girl has boyfriends. That amount, in case you don't know, is zero. The Flyers have absolutely silenced a Canadien team that came in playing with a ton of confidence. With Gagne and Briere both scoring at will (or so it seems) this team just looks good. I mean, they've scored 13 consecutive goals without allowing any. That's just silly.

To put it simply, things are very good in Flyer land right now. Hopefully, in 48 hours, we're discussing a 3-0 series lead.

Go Flyers.

Get your Evan Turner jersey ready - the Philadelphia 76ers triumphed over mathematics and won the 2nd overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. While it's been no secret John Wall has been locked into the #1 overall selection since he was in high school, the Sixers are getting a pretty friggin awesome consolation prize in Turner.

If you weren't able to watch the ping pong balls drop live, it was quite the dramatic event. I think I peed a little as the Sixers were skipped over (thus guaranteeing a top 3 pick). At that moment, I could not have been more excited.

I'm sure Jrue Holiday, who was attending the event as the Sixers representative, was sneakily happy about getting #2 over #1. By winning the first pick, Holiday would've found himself fighting for playing time with Wall. But instead, the Sixers will getting a guy who can slide right into the role of shooting guard - a position which has been a huge hole for this squad for quite some time.

Since a lot of people don't follow college basketball, I’ll give a quick glimpse of what you can expect from Turner. As a junior from Ohio State, Turner averaged 20ppg/ 9 boards/ 6 assists and has had his game widely compared to NBA star Brandon Roy. Evan Turner is going to give the Sixers a creator on offense.  He's a true scorer with an ability to establish an offensive flow. But not to be overlooked, the guy is a willing defender and will be an above average one at the next level. And God knows the Sixers need a guy with all those qualities.

For those keeping score, the Wizards get the first overall selection. The Nets and their gigantic Russian owner were left holding their dicks on stage as they were awarded the #3 pick. Did anyone else see the sly, snickering look come across Jrue's face at that moment? Classic.

Today is a day to be happy Sixer fans. There weren't many of them this season. But the excitement this pick will garner made the awful 2009 campaign kind of worth it.

I'll leave you with the most dramatic highlight reel I could find.  Enjoy what's to come.

*if the Sixers blow this and pick someone else – or worse, a...European – I’m gonna be hella pissed