It’s finally arrived.

Eight sports: Fantasy Football. Baseball. Basketball. Hockey. NASCAR. Golf. NCAA Football Pickem. March Madness.

Ten players: Tom, Emily, Jeff, Ellis, Brad, Kevin, Chris, Leon, Andy (the pro), and me.

One league: The Ultimate Fantasy Sports League.

Yeah, we know.  It’s crazy.  But we’re doing it.

Because this is America. And we can.

I‘m sure many of you who love 1) football and 2) video games with the obsessive passion I do are fully familiar with the much-debated EA Sports monopoly - thanks to a ginormously expensive arrangement, they are the sole licensee of the National Football League, and use it to produce a handful of games - NFL Street, Head Coach, and of course Madden, all of which make them a ton of money. Biggest dog on the block. Have been forever. Inspires a huge following. Now if only the games they made were…more fun to play.

My top five favorite sports games regardless of console, in order, are: NCAA Football 06 (see! I don’t hate EA! This is about as close to perfect as a College Football game will ever be), MLB 08 The Show, Tecmo Super Bowl, NBA Jam, and Madden 64. None of these really get it right - Patrick Hruby had an excellent piece on why - but they were realistic enough to be true to experience, to reward the right decisions and punish the wrong ones, and fun to boot. (Remember fun? It’s what we had before setting a simple run-stopping defense required 14 button pushes).

Here’s the problem: last year’s Madden release was the first iteration of the game in history to sell significantly fewer copies than the prior iteration of the game. Like, almost THREE MILLION fewer games sold. EA lost 1/5th of their revenue, just like that. Now THAT’s gotta be fun.

I have more respect for EA - if you can call it that - than a lot of other gamers. Gamers look down on EA for feeding the sheep machine of beer drinking NFL fan frat boys, while gamers wear black drink Bawls and babble about how nobody appreciated Psychonauts. But it really is hard to put out a fully updated game every year on the clock, an ever expanding franchise system (run up to 30 years of simulation, imported draft classes with stats from NCAA games, realistic player performance, etc.) with all the marketing entailed and the vastness of the NFL property encompassed in one label. But when you get a quality experience - ESPN’s College Basketball game is a great example - it really is amazing how realistic these sports sims can be. The baseball games are just phenomenal now - when I have The Show running, the call of the game sounds so pitch-perfect that you’d think you’re listening to a radio broadcast of a real MLB game.

The EA designers really do respect the game, and they try hard. They’ve even gotten online at Operation Sports’ Forums to answer questions and gather glitches. And they’ve already put out an initial patch. But there’s no question that the most recent two games - the games since EA signed the deal to have a monopoly on NFL video games - have had major issues. Major issues as in, such a collection of glitches and problems that the games just don’t work as accurate simulations of the NFL.

I passed on last year’s game, along with roughly three million other people who’d bought Madden in 06. But I bought this year’s edition, primarily because I don’t have a single pro football game to run on 1080p (yeah, I know this one’s upscaled from 720 still), and it’s been 2+ years, so I figure this has to contain more than just a roster update. So I played a few games online, messed around with some of the new systems, and start a franchise. And here’s what happens:

Game one, week one. This is the game scheduled for right before McCain’s convention speech, opening night at the Meadowlands. They’ve got some great opening shots. The new voiceovers are decent. A lot more of a cinematic feel to the game, right from kickoff. The playbooks still suck in terms of a general lack of accuracy, but the play stats seem more accurate - nothing’s ridiculously exaggerated. It’s a close game, back and forth. The Giants pass rush is accurately fearsome, but their secondary is weak, and they get burned on the playaction. It’s 16-10 Giants at the beginning of the 3rd, but then a long drive, heavy ground game, for a TD. It’s 17-16 Redskins with minute left.

The CPU Giants get the ball back. They’re driving. The video game crowd is getting louder. Manning gets sacked, twice, but then they’re making long passes to the slot receiver, picking on the SS (starter got injured in simulated preseason). But time is running out, and they don’t have any timeouts left. Tick tick tick. It’s 4th down, they have to go for it. And then with 10 seconds left, they hit Burress along the sideline. Landry knocks him out of bounds at the 32. Only enough time for one 50+ yard attempt in the windy Meadowlands. It all comes down to this. Get read for the wide cinematic shot of a nervous Lawrence Tynes.

And then the CPU sends out the punter.

I started laughing. There is, of course, no earthly reason, no acceptable reason, NO freaking POSSIBLE reason that the AI would ever do this. EVER. It’s not even like it was fourth down and they were giving up - or the CPU couldn’t tell what time was on the game clock - it was just ridiculously bizarre. They have ten seconds and a 1st down on the 32. They can chuck it toward the endzone. They can kick it. I cannot believe what I am seeing. It is a travesty. As the kangaroo said: WTF, Mate.

They punt. Pooch kick through the endzone. Game over. Win.

I love football. So I hope, against all hope, this game bombs.

My latest oped in The Washington Times seems to be suffering from a CMS-based problem that cuts off the first sentence. Thankfully, if you got the paper on Monday, you know what it says. But in case you didn’t, here’s the lede:

The news last week that Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor had been contacted for vetting purposes by the Vice Presidential selection committee of John McCain’s campaign was met with one of two reactions: a whispered “now that would be interesting,” from conservatives who are quite familiar with Rep. Cantor’s history and capabilities – and from all other parties, the sound of one giant cacophonous “Who?”

Yet while Cantor is not the household name among Republicans of other potential veep choices, such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, in many ways choosing the young Virginian would be in keeping with McCain’s unique style of principled risk-taking, a throwback to his maverick origins, and one that might just cinch the election in November for the GOP.

Since I wrote my column, an initial attack on Cantor from the Democratic National Committee has been released. Oddly, for such a brief attack, the word “Jewish” appears five times, including the line “Both Abramoff and Cantor are Jewish.” That’s apparently the best they can do.

Read the rest of the oped here.

This is, as the alcoholics refer to it, a moment of clarity. From now on, Barack Obama’s Democrats cannot complain when we refer to them as “pro-abortion.”

Even as Barack Obama claims to welcome a position of moderation on the difficult moral question of abortion, the Democratic Party has moved today under his leadership to fully embrace the Culture of Death. The newly announced Democratic Platform has tossed the old language of “safe, legal, and rare” over the side, finally rejecting the idea that abortion is a social ill.

No longer do Democrats ask that “women not have abortions unless they absolutely must.” They are reclaiming the moral imperative for the goodness of destruction. And they will not be ashamed to demand what is rightfully theirs.

For years, the merchants of abortion have struggled with the dichotomy of their political circumstance. While triumphant at the Supreme Court level, the pro-abortion movement has had difficulty convincing enough people that being “pro-abortion” is not a bad thing…in fact, many of them argue, that it has social benefits, decreasing the number of unwanted pregnancies, decreasing poverty, and perhaps, as the Freakonomics folks argued, decreasing crime.

Slate’s Will Saletan – himself a pro-choice author who argues in his book Bearing Right that conservatives have “won” the abortion wars by establishing in the minds of the public that 1) abortion is a social ill that should be avoided, and 2) no government or taxpayer funds should therefore go to support it – has confronted this split personality on more than one occasion:

Friday morning, leaders of pro-choice and feminist groups gathered at the Center for American Progress to debate the movement’s future. One of the panelists reported that the latest annual tally of abortions in this country was 1.295 million. The most recent comparative numbers, detailed in an article I brought to the meeting, indicated that our abortion rate exceeds that of every Western European nation. “Raise your hand if you think that number is too high,” the conference moderator told the 50 people in the room.I saw one hand go up. The woman next to me said she saw another. The two hand-raisers used to work for pro-choice groups but no longer do.

These leaders of the pro-abortion movement cannot accept, as most of America and Saletan do, that the act of abortion be considered “bad” – a necessary evil, in other words. They recoil when he uses the word, and react as strongly to the idea of “responsibility.”

I knew I’d get flak for using the word “bad.” But I was amazed at the group’s reaction to the word “responsibility,” which was the subject of the next panel. “Responsibility is to me a code word that has a lot of racial and class … implications,” said one participant. “I don’t like the word ‘responsibility,’ ” said another. “I don’t want to talk about responsibility unless we’re talking about the government taking responsibility,” said a third. Hoping to bring the discussion back to earth, the moderator suggested, “Is there a way for us to reclaim the idea of responsibility?” The answer was a chorus of rejection, punctuated by a “No way!” She retreated apologetically.

The new Democratic Platform is a firm reclaiming of the idea that abortion cannot be “bad,” that it never is anything but good and right and responsible. And in taking this step, Barack Obama’s Democrats have embraced an idea not just at odds with everything we know to be morally right, but at odds with what the rising generation of Americans believe to be morally right.

The Wall Street Journal headline on May 4, 2006 read: “Support for Roe v. Wade Hits New Low, Poll Shows.” The article details the latest findings with medical detachment:

“U.S. support for Roe v. Wade is at its lowest level in decades, according to a new Harris poll…The latest telephone survey of 1,016 adults indicates Roe v. Wade is supported by a slim 49% to 47% plurality, compared with 52% who favored the decision in 2005 and 57% in 1998…40% of those polled favor laws that would make it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, while another 40% say no change should be made to existing abortion laws, and 15% favor laws that would make it easier to get an abortion.”

According to Harris, the percentage of Americans who support abortion on demand—that is, the current law, which gives the right to obtain an abortion under any circumstance—has remained at a steady 24% for the past decade. That is the plateau of support that the abortion defenders turn to – and it is likely to be the only portion that will support the idea that abortion is a moral good.

The key to this growing sentiment against abortion on demand is the changing attitudes of young people, who view abortion not as a right to defend, but as a nagging socially disturbing activity, a relic of the days before the pill. In 2003, a poll by CBS News and the New York Times found that Americans between 18 and 29 had drastically decreased their support for the general availability of abortion from the respondents a decade earlier—a margin that fell from 48% to 39%. And a UCLA study of college freshman at 437 universities found a similar dropoff—54% of the teenagers supported legalized abortion, versus 67% in 1993.

In April of 2007, the Polling Company released a comprehensive survey which found that, given a set of six different options—“abortion should be illegal, illegal with an exception for the life of the mother, illegal with that exception and an exception for rape and incest, legal for any reason in the first trimester, legal for any reason in the first and second trimester, and legal for any reason throughout pregnancy”—a full 54 percent choose the three generally pro-life options, and 41 percent the three pro-choice ones. A mere 12 percent supported the current legal status, the most extreme position. The results are not surprising—in fact, they are virtually identical to those of a Wirthlin poll from November 2004. But there was something more: Young adults (18-34), and especially young women, were more likely than any of the other demographic groups to choose the pro-life options.

Even Hollywood is getting into the new anti-abortion rhythm – films like Juno and Knocked Up reject the decision for abortion – not ought of a deeply held moral sentiment, but out of the basic, ingrained belief that the decision for death is wrong. We’ve come a long way from Fast Times at Ridgmont High. These movies aren’t pro-life because of faith – they’re pro-life because being pro-death is so 1973.

Taken together, the trend is a shocking one – or, as the Times described it in their 2003 headline: “Surprise, Mom – I’m Anti-Abortion.”

In 2004, Liza Mundy described the difficulty of responding to a Newsweek article on new pregnancy technology, acknowledging that “[a]n atmosphere in which pregnant women happily scrapbook those early ultrasounds—have created a real image problem for the pro-choice movement.”

As Kirsten Moore, the president of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, told Mundy: the piece “kind of prompted us to realize, oh my God, our movement’s messages suck.”

The response:

“Consultants were called in, who urged abortion rights groups to ‘reframe the debate’ and ‘take back’ words like ‘baby’ and ‘mother.’”

But paid consultants can do little to change the out-of-touch nature of the pro-choice movement, and “reclaiming” words is very difficult when there was never any real ownership of them. Through foolishness, abrasive tactics, and a message that is increasingly weakened by the expansion of scientific knowledge, the abortion marketers are losing the next generation of American voters.

Essentially, a plurality of Americans now hold the Bob Dole position – that abortion in the case of rape, incest, deformity, or risks to the life of the mother ought to be protected, and that abortion rights as they currently stand are far too liberal. This is a position that is borne out by the polling data, which Ramesh Ponnuru describes here:

Twice in three days—in Slate and the New York Times —I have run across the claim that 75 percent of the public favors legal abortion. That seems incredibly high. The source for the Times claim, and the apparent source for Slate too, is a CBS/NYT poll that is currently at the top of the Polling Report’s abortion page. The question asked is whether abortion should be “generally available,” “available. . . under stricter limits,” or “not permitted.” The latest results: 39, 37, and 21. You can spin that to mean that 76 percent of the public thinks that abortion should be “available,” or that 58 percent of the public wants “stricter limits.” Or you can conclude that the poll is not terribly well designed.

More on the numbers here. The only way the abortion proponents can achieve a lasting political majority is by embracing the “safe, legal, and rare” triumvirate – by convincing enough people in that 37 percentile who believe abortion to be nasty but necessary in cases of rape and incest to go along with the idea that it ought to be an unlimited legal right. They have done this for most of the past two decades.

Now, Barack Obama’s Democrats are rejecting this idea and embracing the zealotry of their most pro-abortion constituency. They affirm the goodness, the rightness of their destruction. They insist: “We deserve to kill our babies without being ashamed – you will not just tolerate our decision as legally protected; you will accept it as morally right.”

Of note is the cast of characters who influenced this decision, which includes one Doug Kmiec.

The Brody File is told that people like Pastor Joel Hunter, (registered Republican) Jim Wallis, (President of Sojourners) Pastor Tony Campolo and conservative Catholic legal scholar Doug Kmiec all helped in the drafting of this new language. The Obama campaign has obviously been involved quite a bit too.

It’s a fitting cast, of course. Last night, in an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, former Reagan appointee Prof. Kmiec reiterated his belief that Obama is a candidate who will emulate the Gipper (?) in reaching out to all political sides on the issues, and finding “common ground” with those who do not share his views.

Kmiec, the most prominent of the apparently mythical Obamacons, has infamously argued that Obama is secretly open to the pro-life viewpoint, that he is a moderate on the issue – even as outlets like the New Republic advance the bizarre theory that John McCain is a “pro-life zealot.” Of course, when Doug Kmiec speaks to Barack Obama about abortion and finds common ground, it appears that Obama primarily leans on the common ground that both of the people in the conversation adore him.

Indeed, it has become clear in recent weeks that it was Obama who lied repeatedly about the most important votes he’s ever made on the abortion issue, votes that put him in the most extreme camp of all: favoring the abandonment and death of born victims who survive the horrors of abortion and emerge from the womb alive.

Obama’s cover story had been that the bill did not include protections to prevent the anti-infanticide measure, targeted at an Illinois hospital (named, in one of those little ironies which make your heart break, Christ Hospital) which was repeatedly engaging in the activity, from affecting legally protected abortions. But in fact, the bill DID include this protection. Obama voted for them, and they were added to the measure by a unanimous vote in committee, mere minutes before he voted against passage and killed the bill to defend the young, helpless survivors of their mother’s attempts at destruction.

Documents obtained by NRLC now demonstrate conclusively that Obama’s entire defense is based on a brazen factual misrepresentation.The documents prove that in March 2003, state Senator Obama, then the chairman of the Illinois state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, presided over a committee meeting in which the “neutrality clause” (copied verbatim from the federal bill) was added to the state BAIPA, with Obama voting in support of adding the revision. Yet, immediately afterwards, Obama led the committee Democrats in voting against the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4.

…In the record of the vote taking on March 12, 2003, the amendment was adopted unanimously by Chairman Obama’s HHS subcommittee. That added the neutrality clause to the bill — which then went down to defeat on a party-line 6-4 vote, with Obama voting against protecting infants born alive during abortions.

They have a Comfort Room in Christ Hospital, where you can say your goodbyes to all those inconvenient lives. I’ve stood in a Comfort Room like it before - other hospitals have them as well. One wonders if, now that abortion is declared by The One’s Own Disciples as a social good, there will be any need for such a room. The whole of society will supply it, instead.

There is no sound in the Comfort Room. It is a deafening sort of quiet. It is sterile. There is a scent of chemicals. Time hangs suspended. There is no glimpse, however brief, of the world as it might have been – no, there are no small footsteps in the hall – if all the broken, fragile lives snuffed out in this room of quiet death had lived to see the sun.

It is a room of nothingness, filled with the silence of the life not lived, and whispers of the breath not taken.

Barack Obama’s Democrats will no longer be silent about their mission to make America one vast Comfort Room. Abortion is a moral good that you must respect. And they will not be ashamed to demand what is rightfully theirs.

crossposted from redstate.

>> You’ll rarely hear me say “I wish I was in San Francisco.” But next weekend’s Outside Lands arts and music festival is fantastic (including Grace & The Nocturnals). If you’re lucky enough to be on the West Coast, head on down.

>> A quick post on Obama v. McCain at Saddleback: the initial reports confirm my feeling that McCain was surprisingly good, and Obama performed very poorly in a venue that seemed otherwise made for him to make inroads.  Revolution in Jesusland correctly points out that Warren teed up the abortion question perfectly for Obama. And he still couldn’t manage it.  Jake Tapper points out that Obama caught very few breaks, and meandered through answers as the audience sat silent.  This isn’t just the advantage of McCain’s incredibly powerful story - I love how they still have to explain IXOYE to folks - he seemed genuinely at home with a group of evangelicals that are not, frankly, part of his natural base, in front of a pastor who is decidedly favorable toward Obama.

And frankly, I found the one question I thought Obama would’ve been prepared for - about judicial nominations - to be one of his worst answers of the night.  How does Doug Kmiec respond to arguments from the candidate he has risked all to support when he says things like this?

Asked which existing Supreme Court Justice he, as president, would not have nominated, Obama immediately said he “would not have nominated Clarence Thomas…I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of constitution.”

For good measure, he added he would not have nominated Antonin Scalia, “although I don’t think there’s any doubt about his intellectual brilliance.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, whose confirmation Obama voted against, “was a tougher question only because I find him to be a very compelling person.”

>> Mary Ann Akers posts this inspiring news:

Detroit’s embattled mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention, is holding out the possibility that he’ll actually be able to go to Denver this month.

Truly, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is a great believer in democracy and freedom.  He will travel, even equipped with a lo-jack, to cast his vote for the man he believes in.  He is not speaking to the DNC, as he did in 2004, but he will fulfill his duty as a superdelegate, even as he battles these false charges that “constrict his ability to lead,” and ultimately prove that he did not steal from the taxpayer coffers, did not obstruct justice, did not perjure himself, did not cover up a killing, did not assault a police officer, and no, those were never strippers in that room in the first place.  He is a patriot, doing his duty as an American to ensure the election of Barack Obama.

After all, Gov. Granholm won’t pardon him.  He’s going to need some friends in high places.

>> A quick aside on Barack Obama’s new tax plan, as described by Obama advisors Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman, which is purportedly in response to polls saying he was losing on the issue (unlike, of course, all other Obama policy shifts).  Essentially, they say President Obama would bring back the old and not missed 39.6% tax rate (as opposed to the current 35%) and a new payroll tax on top earners, because of course raising taxes on the entrepeneurial class will really help the country by taking away the disposable income they would otherwise reinvest in the economy. This is all kind of pointless, though, because essentially what Obama’s proposing is the same as what will happen when the Bush tax cuts expire - he doesn’t have to lift a finger to make them law, and none of these hikes will pay for the grandiose governmental expansions he favors in other areas (hello, trillion dollar deficits).

But it’s in the New York Sun’s hard-hitting editorial on the plan that we see an astonishingly anti-woman element to it that Austan and Jason aren’t particularly up front about, and that I had missed myself on first glance:

Meanwhile, the most astonishing sentence in the op-ed is this one: “His plan would not raise any taxes on couples making less than $250,000 a year, nor on any single person with income under $200,000.” It amounts to a declaration of war on two-income families, a marriage penalty of punitive proportions. If those two single persons with income just under $200,000 get married, Mr. Obama is going to hammer them with a huge tax increase. If the second earner, who in many cases is the woman, is going to have to give 54% of what she earns to the government, she might as well stay home with the children.

Ah, the full-throated return of the marriage penalty.  Here’s the problem with this area of tax policy, which has had a huge impact on society (read this Blankenhorn essay for more): the marriage penalty discourages people from getting married, economically - but it also encourages them to be a one-income household, with the kind of societal benefits on health, education, lifestyle, etc. that social conservatives (and the populist working class) approve of wholeheartedly.

Yet there’s no question here that Obama’s tax plan is, at its heart, anti-woman.  Forced to choose because of our tax structure to either stay at home and care for the kids or stay in the workforce, the overwhelming majority of married couples has mom stay at home, and dad go to work.  I’m frankly amazed that Obama’s policy shop has a blind spot on this, as this is the ideal sort of issue for McCain to point out in front of Hillary supporters (that, and he should announce as soon as possible as big an increase in the child tax credit as is feasible - he currently has said he intends to double the dependent exemption, but there’s tons of available political ground here by supporting a pro-family tax code).  This is amateur hour.

According to the latest report from Fox’s Jay Glazer, Brett Favre has been traded to the New York Jets.

Consider: From 1968 to 1991, the Packers had a total of five winning seasons. The lack of star talent and terrible facilities kept them in the bottom rung of team earnings. But Ron Wolf and Favre changed that fundamentally - his jersey was a top seller every year, and many people became Packers fans nationally simply because of his style of play (they don’t have a footprint rivaling the Steelers, Cowboys, Redskins, or Patriots, but it’s still huge). This is one of the most public breakups in history, rejecting the runner up in MVP voting from the previous year who threw for 4000+ yards and led his team to an improbable 13-3 record. In the minds of many Packers fans, you just were given an enormous gift - the opportunity to shed an untested, injury-prone young QB (who only your GM ever wanted anyway) in favor of one last run at another championship with a Hall of Famer - and the Packers management was too wedded to the idea of creating their own form of victory to suck up their egoes and welcome him. The only comparison I can think of off the top of my head in terms of having one individual divorce have such a massive effect on an entire state’s attitude toward a team is if the Rangers or Astros had given the public finger to Nolan Ryan when he offered to be team president.

One of the key things that Green Bay has gone through since Favre’s decision in March is a rising shedding of jobs. The ticket market has collapsed. The announcers who had stayed in Green Bay hoping to call one more Super Bowl have retired. I think this could end up having enormous ramifications in terms of lost money for the franchise - and exactly the kind of financial decision you would expect from the only publicly owned franchise in professional sports, with 111,000+ shareholders.

This season ought to be very interesting for Green Bay, particularly after Aaron Rodgers inevitably goes down to injury this season (if we learned anything last season, it’s that the NFL still has karma, people). Get ready for the Brian Brohm show.

One of the interesting dynamics of the slow car accident of the Brett Favre unretirement saga is the unique yet unremarked upon status of General Manager Ted Thompson. As Peter King noted in a surprisingly astute point in his most recent column, Thompson, unlike every other GM and head of player personnel in the NFL, does not work for a sole owner. He and the team’s board of directors instead report to a small sample of the thousands of stakeholders who own the Packers franchise. Because the shareholder meetings aren’t exactly daily activities and not everyone is included, Thompson gets to fend for himself on most decisions without any significant input from an owner - there’s no Jerry Jones, no Robert Kraft, and certainly no Dan Snyder looking over his shoulder. And since Thompson picked the current Packers head coach, Mike McCarthy, for the team (McCarthy, a former coordinator with the lackluster Saints and 49ers offenses, wasn’t getting any serious looks for head coaching gigs from other teams at the time he was hired), he’s not going to get any guff from the HC’s office, either.

So unlike every other GM, when it comes to the personnel moves of the Packers franchise, the buck really does stop at Thompson’s desk and no one else’s. Which is why I think it’s safe to say that, lacking any excuse of owner bias or a powerful coach, Ted Thompson is quite possibly the worst General Manager in pro football.

Yes, I know that’s an extreme statement. But I believe it’s Thompson’s moves - and his mangling of his 34 draft picks, the most of any GM in the NFL over the past three years - that provoked the current status, where the Packers are embarrassing themselves to a ridiculous degree by offering a Hall of Fame Quarterback $20+ million to stay retired.

Consider the following facts, arranged chronologically:

2005

Thompson was hired in 2005 after a rather brief front office run under the tutelage of Mike Holmgren in Seattle, and wasted no time putting his mark on the team. While the Packers were only slightly over the salary cap, and were at that point a veteran team (winners of three straight division championships), built around Brett Favre, with Ahman Green and Javon Walker as their chief playmakers, and one of the best offensive lines in the NFL, Thompson declined to resign or sufficiently replace several key members of the team.

-Thompson outright released safety and defensive leader Darren Sharper, who promptly defected to the Minnesota Vikings (and has had two Pro Bowl seasons, including leading the league in interceptions from his position, since being released).

-Thompson declined to resign either of the Packers Pro Bowl Guards, Mike Wahle and Marco Rivera. As any veteran QB knows, not resigning two of your primary protectors has to be a bad sign for your health. A worse sign? Thompson did not draft a single Offensive Lineman to replace Wahle or Rivera in the first day of the draft, and instead signed low priced guards - and, most considered, career backups - Matt O’Dwyer and Adrian Klemm. At the time, Thompson praised both to high heaven, saying that they had solved the offensive line problems and saved money at the same time.

In what would become a pattern for the players Thompson singles out for praise, O’Dwyer was cut in training camp, and Klemm was eventually benched. Thompson’s other free agent pickups included RB Samkon Gado, TE Donald Lee and WR Rod Gardner. Today, all but one of these free agents Thompson acquired in 2005 are “out of football” - including Gado, O’Dwyer, Klemm, and Gardner. In other words: they couldn’t even cut it in the league for another two seasons.

Instead of drafting O-line help, Thompson chose QB Aaron Rodgers with his first pick overall. Rodgers was a controversial choice: he had been expected to go as high as first overall, but dropped to the bottom of the first round, as many teams viewed him as a product of a college system with a bad reputation in pro football (having also produced Joey Harrington and Kyle Boller, two first round busts at the pro level), and had injury concerns as well. But Thompson’s choice to pass on O-line help to draft Rodgers after so many other teams had passed on him, and the nature of the contract he signed as a first round pick, clearly showed that the GM did not anticipate Brett Favre being the quarterback for the Packers beyond one or two more seasons.

Thompson did attempt to bolster the defense after letting go of Sharper, choosing safety Nick Collins and linebacker Brady Poppinga on the first day. Both Collins, a small school safety considered a huge reach even at the time, and Poppinga are now in danger of losing their starting jobs after two full seasons in the league. Both have also had injury issues.

2006

The 2005 season was an incredibly rough one for the Packers. They lost several key players to injury, including Walker, Green, TE Bubba Franks, and backup RB Najeh Davenport. They finished 4-12, their worst showing since 1991. Usually, in a season this injury plagued and his first with a losing record, a coach with as much success as Packers HC Mike Sherman would get a pass, especially after re-signing a contract at the beginning of the season. Sherman’s offense was extremely successful and consistent prior to the decimation of injuries. Under his leadership, the Packers had won three consecutive division titles for only the fourth time in team history (Lombardi and Holmgren were the only other coaches to do it). Sherman’s Packers teams had been 2-4 in the playoffs, yes - but it was still a surprise to many that Sherman was summarily fired.

It’s interesting to read that linked story considering the current crashing disaster of Favre v. Thompson - in it, Thompson notes the following:

Thompson said Sherman, who signed a two-year contract extension in August, was surprised and disappointed when he learned of the decision early Monday morning…Thompson also spoke to the players Monday morning, calling the meeting “very quiet and somber.” But Thompson said he had not discussed the decision with Favre. The three-time MVP is mulling retirement and has said he might be less willing to return if he had to learn a new offensive system and work with a new coaching staff.

Thompson said he wants Favre back, but he needs a coach who will bring the team long-term success. “Eventually Brett Favre’s going to retire and go back to Mississippi,” Thompson said. “But that didn’t have any sway in this particular decision.”

Thompson brushed off Favre’s concerns about learning a new offense: “He’s a pretty bright guy.”

Thanks to Thompson’s el cheapo decisions from the prior year, the Packers entered the 2006 offseason with more money available under the salary cap than any other team: a full $32 million, a king’s ransom in NFL terms. But to amazement of the entire league, Thompson refused to spend a significant amount of money. He was content to go low-dollar, and again ditched veteran players in favor of amassing young, cheap draft picks.

Thompson passed on re-signing Pro Bowl kicker Ryan Longwell (who’d kicked more clutch field goals in windy Lambeau than anyone since the era of Starr, and followed Sharper to Minnesota) in favor of the erratic Dave Rayner, and also ditched All-Pro center Mike Flanagan and reliable LB Na’il Diggs.

Thompson did re-sign Pro Bowl DE Aaron Kampman and RB Ahman Green (in a move that raised eyebrows coming off an injured season), as well as guard Kevin Barry (another questionable move) and FB William Henderson. He also signed Marquand Manuel away from the Seattle Seahawks, brought over DT Ryan Pickett from the St. Louis Rams, LB Ben Taylor from the Cleveland Browns, and cornerback Charles Woodson from the Oakland Raiders. Of Thompson’s free agent acquisitions from 2006, only Pickett and Woodson have played well - Manuel was an unmitigated disaster, and several others (Barry, Henderson, Taylor, and several other minor players) are today, less than two seasons later, all listed as “out of football.”

In the 2006 draft, Thompson made 12 picks, including LBs A.J. Hawk and Abdul Hodge, WR Greg Jennings, and (perhaps overcorrecting for his mistake the previous year) guards Jason Spitz and Daryn Colledge. Hawk, a much studied pick, has been steady if not a game changer; Jennings has had flashes of brilliance, but also caught the injury bug and has failed to consistently produce for a second round pick; the rest have been fair at best, with Colledge being benched for poor play and Hodge, a third rounder, never getting close to winning a starting job (he has 10 tackles after two seasons).

After opening the season with a 26-0 loss at home to Chicago, the first time in 15 years the Packers had been shut out, Thompson signed troubled WR/KR Koren Robinson, who had been released by the Vikings after his second DUI in two years. He spent most of his time with the Packers bouncing in and out of league suspensions, and was released at the end of the following season.

2007

So what do you do, as Packers GM Ted Thompson, after an 8-8 season under rookie coach McCarthy in 2006, missing out on the tiebreak and the playoffs on the last day of the season? What do you do when you’re in need of those handful of critical free agent moves to put you over the top, with a veteran quarterback who’d thrown for close to 4,000 yards in the prior year, ripped off four straight wins to close the season, saddling up for one more run at a championship?

Well, if you’re Ted Thompson, you take your hands, put them on your chair, and then sit your ass firmly on top of them.

For the second year in a row, the Packers led the league in available money under the salary cap - a full $21 million. With this money, the Packers targeted and obtained exactly one free agent prior to the start of the season: NY Giants DB Frank Walker, a career backup. Walker would finish the year with one (1) pass defensed.

Despite all the available cash, and a plethora of mid round draft picks, Thompson declined to part with a fourth rounder for disgruntled yet immensely talented Oakland WR Randy Moss, who greatly admires Favre. Favre personally lobbied Thompson to make the move, but Thompson told the press that the team had no need of another WR (though he would later draft not one but two WRs). Moss instead went to the New England Patriots for a fourth rounder, setting up a record-setting tandem with Tom Brady that propelled the Pats to an incredible offensive season.

In the 2007 draft, Thompson chose Tennessee DT Justin Harrell with the #16 overall selection. The choice was met with shock and dismay; Harrell was widely viewed as a reach, and not a position of need for the Packers. Thompson was loudly booed by the fans at the Packers Draft Day party, and again when the choice of WR James Jones was made in the third round (though Jones turned out to be a decent selection, but how his 676 yards for a third rounder beat Moss’s 1,493 for a fourth, I don’t know). Harrell was coming off of an injured bicep, and ultimately contributed very little. Nebraska RB Brandon Jackson, Thompson’s second round selection, was intended to be the team’s starter and replacement for Green - but Jackson never seemed capable of owning the position, and ultimately finished the year with only 267 yards rushing. Ultimately, out of the long list of choices, Thompson’s best selection turned out to be kicker Mason Crosby, a solid choice who replaced the skipping-stones style of Rayner.

In September, Thompson made one more move: he traded a 6th round pick in the 2008 NFL Draft for New York Giants’ running back Ryan Grant. Thompson had no idea of Grant’s ability, and in fact chose the player because of his size and special teams experience - he was merely looking for another back to fill in following injuries to other backups. But luckily for the Packers, the Giants didn’t know either: to Thompson’s good fortune, Grant exploded in Green Bay, developing into an incredible player and propelling the Packers to an incredible 13-3 regular season record.

The Packers ultimately made it all the way to the NFC Championship game, losing 23-20 in Overtime to the eventual Super Bowl champion Giants.

So what does this all add up to?

Consider this for a moment: exactly four players out of Thompson’s ridiculously high number of draft selections (more than any other team over the same period) in any of the three years he’s been Packers GM have contributed anything significant to the success of the team. This is: Jennings, Jones, Hawk, and kicker Mason Crosby. An equivalent number of his most high profile picks - first rounder Rodgers, second rounder Collins, second rounder Colledge, and first rounder Harrell - have all proven to be fragile underperformers. Collins, Colledge, and Harrell have all been benched and missed games with injuries in their young careers, and Rodgers is a total question mark - not just because he’s been Favre’s backup to this point, but because of fears that he may be the most injury prone of all of Thompson’s selections.

Even in very limited regular season action, Rodgers has had his left foot broken and torn a hamstring, in both cases missing the remainder of the season. Rodgers gets testy when he’s asked about this, but the point is that the Packers are coming off of a QB who’s been, let’s just say, hard to kill. With Rodgers, the reverse may be true. It seems that the Packers are eager to find out if Rodgers can take them beyond the 13-3 Favre delivered last year - hard to do if Rodgers turns out to be, like so many other QBs, mortal.

With Rodgers at the helm, Thompson’s strategy for the Packers will be complete: he’ll have total ownership of the season to come, whatever happens. The GM decided, in almost every area, to go for the cheap, injury-prone player over the tested, higher-dollar veteran. He chose to adopt a long term strategy in an increasingly short term league. And now, he chose to pass up on the desire of a Hall of Fame QB to play one more season in favor of an untested young QB (but one he’s personally invested in).

Thompson’s up to his old tricks again in other areas, though - despite plenty of room under the cap, Thompson is currently low-balling Ryan Grant, leading to the RB holding out and skipping training camp. For all the sound and fury about Favre, this may turn out to be the decision that seriously impacts the team this year (Note that the Packers have complained regularly that Favre’s decision affected their offseason moves - but an examination of their draft shows that really only one pick, that of QB Brian Brohm in the 2nd round, was changed - and Brohm is still a great developmental prospect who will almost certainly end up the 3rd QB, with 7th Rounder Matt Flynn on the Practice Squad).

I can’t tell you what’s going on in Brett Favre’s head, or how this whole thing is going to end. But I can tell you this: we’re all about to find out if Ted Thompson is as horrible a GM as I suspect. Packers fans should hope I’m wrong.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

James Baldwin

President-elect Barack Obama’s busy schedule yesterday of epic-length non-hybrid motorcades (11:00 a.m.: En route TBA. 12:05 p.m.: En route TBA. 1:45 p.m.: En route TBA. 2:55 p.m.: En route TBA. 5:20 p.m.: En route TBA.) was interrupted by what we may, as Jules once did, describe as a “moment of clarity.” For perhaps the first time since the beginning of this campaign, Barack Obama finally realized who he is, and the power of what he represents.

In his closed door meeting with House Democrats this evening, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama delivered a real zinger. According to a witness, he was waxing lyrical about last week’s trip to Europe, when he concluded, “this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for.”“I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,” he said.

As Dana Milbank refers to it, Obama’s “adoration session” with House Democrats came at the end of a day spent serving the needs of mankind. The Obama, so generous with his time, spent a good portion of the day at a fundraiser at the Mayflower Hotel, where any common man or woman could have a picture taken with him for a mere $10,000. $10,000! Such a bargain for a brief touch of the aura of the lightbringer! Can you imagine the spiritual benefit of being in the incredible presence of this … I am sorry, I was going to write “man,” but I mean: SYMBOL?

Parting with mere money for this opportunity is a no-brainer, my friends. How much would you have paid for a Polaroid with St. Peter? Well, now you can meet the Symbol who gave him the keys in the first place.

Humility makes great men indeed. “It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion,” Calvin Coolidge said. We are glad that Obama has seen fit to heal himself – he knows what he represents now, to America, to the World, to the Hosts of Heaven.

He is beyond us now – it is not enough to say that women want him, and men want to be him. He has become the HopeChange of our Generation, who exceeds all our greatest dreams of what humanity could achieve in this mortal sphere.

Consider: even the facts bend for him now, as the reeds of the Nile from whence he was taken in a basket. One need only examine the scene that played out in the midst of last week’s otherwise fawning coverage of Obama’s long overdue trip to Iraq, in which he was accompanied by all three anchors of the broadcast news as befits the travels of any Symbol (some might say the three mewed and cowered at the heels of the New Yeshua as cerberus in toy poodle form, but they are the non-believers, and deserve only to be shunned).

After meeting with top U.S. military brass, talking with soldiers at a gym rally, and engaging in as limited media opportunities as possible, Obama sat down for a brief interview for Nightline with ABC’s Terry Moran, a skeptic and a doubter, who posed a dangerous and heretical question:

“The surge of U.S. troops, combined with ordinary Iraqis’ rejection of both al Qaeda and Shiite extremists has transformed the country,” said Moran. “Attacks are down more than 80 percent nationwide. U.S. combat casualties have plummeted, with five this month so far, compared with 78 last July. And Baghdad has a pulse again. … If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?”“No, because,” Sen. Obama responded, “keep in mind that, that…”

The incredulous Moran couldn’t help himself, interrupting: “You wouldn’t?”

“Well, no, keep in mind - these kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult,” Sen. Obama said. “You know, hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is that at that time, we had to change the political debate, because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.”

There is no audacity in this statement. The Obama merely suggests that his position opposing this critical and now undeniably successful military strategy was adopted, in opposition to the strongly held opinion of men like Gen. David Petraeus, for the purpose of “chang[ing] the political debate.”

You may think this is a demonstration of callous disregard for the very real consequences of a decision impacting the lives of millions and the future of an entire region. But remember that only a year and a half ago, Obama introduced his Iraq War De-Escalation Act in that soon-to-be discarded institution known as the United States Senate (what need have we for checks and balances when we have this man in the White House?), calling for a phased redeployment that would have commenced no later than May 1, 2007, and removed all American troops from Iraq by March 31, 2008.

There is no subtlety to Obama’s January 2007 plan – no malleable phrases, no wiggle room, no possibility for misinterpretation. The facts are clear: he emphatically opposed the strategy that made possible nearly all of the gains made over the past year and a half, in which brave men and women from our nation and others have laid down their lives to give the Iraqi people hope – not hope for a politician, but for a future Sen. Obama never believed in.

But his otherwise irrational opposition can now be explained, you see. Yes, even the mainstream media now admits the surge policy they once opposed has been an overwhelming success. Yet this is not a man, not just a candidate – he must be a Symbol for us, not a mere politician.

“We had to change,” the Adonis invokes his watchword, his handsome eyes shining with the depth of a galaxy of stars, “the political debate.”

You see, Obama’s policy for withdrawal came at a time when he wanted to clearly focus the minds of Democratic primary voters on his opposition to the unpopular war effort, and create distance between his pure anti-war record and that of former war supporters and total heretics Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. By embracing fully the doctrine of surrender, favoring running from the field in spite of the recommendations of the wisest and most experienced military minds, Obama achieved his purpose, and changed the political debate in the Democratic Primary. This had to be done, you understand, not because it was right, but because it was necessary: for this was a moment the world has been waiting for, foreordained since the foundations of the planet, and even Obama could not argue with the Fates.

Of course Obama considered the results of his politically motivated view, had it prevailed in 2007. Of course he weighed the results for the Iraqi people of a nation lost in chaos - measured the price to the global economy of a Middle East that could spend a generation locked in civil war - and paused to consider how many lives, so many of them the lives of young Americans, would have been lost in vain had his argument won the day. But do you not see: these are the costs we must be prepared to bear for the sake of this moment of achievement, not just for ourselves, but for the whole human race.

So come! Exult! Make a joyful noise! Dance in the streets with garlands of the finest flowers! Sing glorious hymns of praise to the firmament above! Behold – the Son of Man comes, riding upon a golden ass!

The weight of His glory is a heavy burden, indeed – but He will bear it, yes, for you and for me.

crossposted at redstate