Football

I am the father of an absolutely football-crazed 8 year-old. That being the case, I watched all four NFL playoff games last weekend. I told the boy that if the Steelers won it would be because of some bullshit penalty that gives Pittsburgh a second chance toward the end of the game. Sure enough, on 4th and goal and down 28-23 with 3-some minutes left, Hines Ward is seen clearly dragging his defender by the facemask, yet the defender was called for pass interference. At worst, it should have been offsetting penalties. Not even Michaels and Madden up in the booth could explain away Ward’s blatant penalty.

And, of course, Pittsburgh got the call and 1st and goal at like the 1-inch line and punched it in for the lead. The crowd was going absolutely nuts and even my 8 year-old lost his faith in humanity (he’s conditioned to hate any team in the AFC North not from Baltimore).

The crowd stayed nuts until David Garrard ran 32 yards on 4th and 2 to put his team at around the Pittsburgh 11 yard line with about a minute left. After that the crowd got so quiet so fast it was amazing. It was also the most beautiful thing I heard on an NFL telecast this year. Then Jacksonville kicked a field goal to re-take the lead, Bunglesburger choked up the ball when the Steelers got it back with 30 seconds left and that was that. Squealer nation was silenced and my kid’s faith in humanity was restored. Thank you Jacksonville Jaguars.

(Steelers fans have been whining that holding wasn’t called on Jax on that 4th and 2 scramble. To them I say screw you… you shouldn’t have gotten that new set of downs to take the lead when Ward dragged his man down the field by his facemask to begin with.)

Baseball

So the Mitchell Report came out and painted Roger Clemens as the villian. It is shockingly unsurprising to me that he was accused as PED user. He was pretty much finished when he left Boston, then went on to become the greatest pitcher who ever lived. In his 40s.

What’s worse has been his reaction. First it was deny, deny, deny. Then it was an explanation that he was shot up with an anesthetic and B12. Then it was a softball interview on 60 Minutes. Then it was a defamation suit against the guy who fingered him, where he’s trying to convince the world that guy told the truth about everyone else but him.

My problem with all this is that when the story first broke, Clemens clammed up, huddled up with lawyers, agents and advisers and came up with a calculated plan to influence the public (and the media) his way. Unfortunately, the world knows that influencing the public doesn’t mean telling the truth, and Clemens looks every bit as bad as Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and every other suspected juicer whose only real defense is that there are no positive drug tests to prove their guilt.

Too bad that it seems to him that he has to prove his innocence, but he made the decisions he made in life to be a big-time, big-money athlete and he has to live with the spotlight when the glare is hot as much as he does when it bathes him with glory. Dick.

As a registered republican, I don’t have much to like about my presidential candidates. Romney? Ugh. Huckabee, AKA the soldier of God? Ugh. McCain? Enough with him already. I like Giuliani because he’s a letch like every man, but no.

On the other side, I can only watch the festivities. Let me make this as clear as possible: I fucking hate Hillary Clinton. I do not want to see her become president. Luckily, most other people don’t either, except for dumb fucks in New York who think they’re smarter than everyone. John Edwards is an ambulance chaser who is running on a populist message while inhabiting the largest house in his North Carolina county. Fuck him. Because of those two disasters calling themselves candidates, Barack Obama is enjoying a hell of a surge.

I have to admit that no one on either side can deliver a speech like Obama can. He can make people cry with the way he talks. The problem I have is that his actions don’t make him much different than Hillary, aside from health care, which he would so graciously allow me to keep paying for on my own if I can afford it. We have a pretty, silver-tongued governor here in Maryland who won election promising health, wealth and prosperity for all. In his first year in office my power bill has increased more than 70% (as a candidate he promised to do something about that even though it was going to happen anyway), income, property, sales, new car titling, cigarette and a bunch of other taxes have gone up a lot, and I am not kidding when I tell people it’s getting to where I can’t afford to live in Maryland anymore. Compounding that is the fact that while I’m paying so much more in taxes, my household income is too high to take advantage of most of the things my increased taxes are paying for. Martin O’Malley became governor and at his first opportunity he bent the state over and fucked it up the ass with a fat lead pipe. History will not be kind to that man.

Anyway, that was a long stray off the path to say that Barack Obama makes me think of Martin O’Malley (even though O’Guv is an avowed Hillary supporter, which is another reason to hate him). And Martin O’Malley doesn’t inspire hope or make me think of change. He makes me think of moving somewhere else.

The truth is that there is one candidate who can really point to his record and claim to be an agent of change. That’s Ron Paul. The guy who’s been in congress for 20 years and thinks of himself as a D.C. outsider.

Bleh, I’m getting depressed.