Lax rules!: Just as soon as we show America the rich Native American (well, North American, anyway) tradition that is Lacrosse, soccer will slip down yet another notch. Looks like it's already beginning.

And what about Lacrosse?: The hue and cry over the unpopularity (at the professional/t.v.-watching level) of soccer in the USA reaches a fever pitch about every four years (usually and not coincidentally with the arrival of the World Cup on the scene). Part of the whining makes sense: youth soccer is wildly popular, so most figure that when these kids grow up, they'd really like to watch the pros play (maybe even play themselves). Moreover, collegiate level soccer is fairly healthy, although you don't see it on prime-time. And that, dear readers, may be the chicken/egg question. Is it not popular because it's not on t.v. or vice-versa?

You can't argue that soccer hasn't been around long enough, as it was surely played before baseball or basketball was even invented. But you can argue that a) it's not exciting enough; b) the field is too crowded (pardon the pun) in the world of American pro sports; and c) it doesn't have the storied history of the other sports in this country necessary to have taken it to the next level. Point (a) will never stop being debated among soccer afficionados, but when most games are 1-0, 2-1, maybe 3-2, it's just not enough to keep our attention spans going. Yes, baseball games often end up 1-0, 2-1; but you know that within a couple of days, you're going to see a 14-8 barrage. Point (b) sort of puts the rabbit in the hat, because we're talking why wasn't soccer popular enough before the other sports arrived (but it does answer why they can't get leagues going today). Point (c) can be used in the sense that with football, you have the storied Yale/Harvard games, with those grads probably ending up in high-level government and business positions, so there was a gravitation towards expanding the support with the money/influence to make it work. Plus colleges quickly turned the sport into billion-dollar businesses. Baseball is just our tradition - the myths behind this sport are not matched by any other.

However, I might also suggest a (d): black kids don't play it (here). Look at our top three sports - football, baseball and basketball. Each is dominated by black players (baseball may be a bit more equalized). Hockey has almost no black players and is routinely thrashed by PGA events when televised (hell, re-runs of Seinfeld probably do more business). Is there a causal connection or just a correlation? Well, I'm no sociologist, but I'd start there. Chances are soccer was played just about exclusively by european immigrants in this country at the beginning - and we all know how happy they were to invite non-members into the fold. But with baseball, you had the negro leagues, right alongside MLB, until the establishment woke up. Basketball was a natural because it required less space and therefore would attract more urban players. Football may be more of a conundrum, but it's clear that it with the college powerhouses looking for great players, and offering scholarships to boot, it was only a matter of a few years before black players took to the sport in droves. Now, try to get a soccer scholarship. Oh, and what do you do with those precious skills once and if you graduate? The Europeans aren't exactly bashing down the doors to get U.S. players - this young boy being the exception, and possibly a wave of things to come. Tiger Woods may be the test - can one shining example set the sport on fire nation-wide among similarly-situated mnorities (remembering, for a moment, that Tiger is more Thai than black).

And Another Thing: Just curious, but I'm wondering why, when we're not involved in the Middle East peace process (regress?), the world screams that we're forsaking our leadership role. Once we're involved, though, the world screams that we must be an "honest broker" and "impartial." Excuse me? You all knew, going into this, that the U.S. and Israel are close allies, didn't you? If you didn't, just ask any of the millions of Palestinians who, according to the news, don't trust us to deal fairly, who think we're part of the Zionist conspiracy. If you want a broker who isn't too close to either party, save yourself the screaming at us and call up the tree-dwellers in Irian Jaya to come negotiate.

Not likely, right? They'd be too hard to lay a first-world guilt trip on.

Chickenshit: Thinking of that Kerry speech last week, in which he noted the diversity of his audience and said he saw

people from every background, every creed, every color, every belief, every religion. This is, indeed, John Ashcroft's worst nightmare here.

Did he just call Ashcroft a bigot? A segregationist? I doubt there are enough spine-donors in the world to give Kerry the backbone he'd need to say that directly to Ashcroft, his former Senate colleague. That makes him a chickenshit, in my book. The more I think about this, the more I think that Kerry is simply a dangerous person. Is he really that desperate to be president, that scared by Howard Dean, that he has to call the AG a racist, a crypto-segregationist?

One other point in defense of John Ashcroft: It may be true that Ashcroft thinks that people he believes to be threats to America should have their library records subpoenaed. Does anybody recall, though, what previous AGs' policies were? That we send a paramilitary FBI force to a private home to assassinate that person, his family, his friends, and his pets. William Barr presided as AG at the time of Ruby Ridge. Janet Reno presided over the cover-up, the destruction of evidence, the defense in court (at taxpayer expense) of the practice of snipers killing U.S. citizens, and the protection of (confessed) guilty parties from administrative penalty.

Why doesn't Kerry tell us why he voted to confirm both of those AGs, but somehow that facist Ashcroft sticks in his throat so badly? All I can guess is that Kerry must think it fine for federal officers to shoot unarmed American citizens on their own property, just as long as those agents don't look at their library records, goddammit!

No demand for soccer: Just think of the sports that are comercially viable (from a broadcaster's standpoint). Not just the four major sports, but golf, tennis, bowling, billiards. In small doses, at least, ESPN, the four big networks, and cable outlets find a place to televise everything from the X-Games to Little League Baseball. How pathetic must viewership have been for nobody to want to pick up women's soccer? And for that matter, I don't see men's soccer storming the nation. With the exception of the World Cup, if it's played in America, there's virtually no demand for it, no matter who's playing.

Update: Julie Foudy was on Kudlow & Kramer tonight, being interviewed about the WUSA's demise. What's wrong? You guessed it, not enough corporate sponsors. So your challenge, lady soccer stars, is to convince corporate execs why pitching their products through you will be more effective than other methods. Take a cue from the PGA and LPGA tours. Corporations aren't sponsors of the sport, but of individual events. They own the week, they get massive TV time, be it on a big network like NBC or a cable outlet like USA or The Golf Channel. It's harder with a team sport that plays a traditional season, granted, but you have to find a way to create a compelling event every week (or month, whatever is feasable) and make it appealing to Kraft, Nike, or whoever wants to reach women, kids, or families.

It's not just about associating their product with soccer, it's about giving them a chance to communicate a message to your audience. Better luck in the future.

Who Would've Thunk? The women's pro soccer league, the WUSA, folds. Does this explain why USA Today has been humping it these last few weeks with gratuitous, multi-page player profiles of Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy? Anyhow, USA Today says, in its print edition:

. . . the 3-year-old WUSA had seen a steady decline in attendance and paltry TV ratings. But the overriding reason for its $20 million budget shortfall for 2003 and $90 million overall loss was a lack of big-time corporate sponsorship, WUSA founder and chairman John Hendricks said Monday.

But the league was capitalized with $40 million, which was expected to last five years. They blew through it in one year. There's a clarion call of responsible fiscal management. Who can even guess why corporations weren't running to dump money into such an enterprise? Expect this to be editorialized by Christine Brennan and her cohort as a "tremendous blow" to women's sports, or some other dire formulation. Its a tremendous blow only to people who still think, despite years of evidence to the contrary, that Americans have some burning desire to watch soccer -- if only it were offered to them!

Spend more money!: Obviously that's not the solution to education problems in America.

The United States spends more public and private money on education than other major countries, but its performance doesn't measure up in areas ranging from high-school graduation rates to test scores in math, reading and science, a new report shows.

"There are countries which don't get the bang for the bucks, and the U.S. is one of them," said Barry McGaw, education director for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which produced the annual review of industrialized nations.

More money and smaller classrooms is what the pundits and the DOE always say. Wrong! Teachers who are qualified, administrators who are held accountable, parents who are encouraged to get involved, and students who are forced to shut up and sit down are the answers, or at least a start. But some still don't get it.

Federal education spending has grown by $11 billion since President Bush took office, Paige said, but that includes spending beyond the first 12 grades. Even increased money for elementary and secondary education doesn't cover the law's sweeping expenses, said David Shreve of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"You can't just mandate that things happen and then not follow up with the resources to make it happen," said Shreve, senior director for the conference's education committee.

And, Mr. Shreve, you can't just appropriate $11 billion and expect to get nothing in return. And yet that's what we've done, decade after decade. It's time to try something else.

Bad news for media (and pretty much everybody): So much for the importance of controlling the Senate.This is what we get.

The Republican-controlled Senate dealt a blow to the Bush Administration today, voting to rescind new Federal Communications Commission rules that would allow large media companies to get even bigger.

With friends like these...

Canadian ditch weed: What kind of neo-socialist, beauracratic committee of pin-heads screws up marijuana ? The guy down the hall in my dorm freshman year, with about six bucks in capital, could grow better shit than Canadians with 7.5 supersize. Christ, just give them a "get out of jail free card" and let 'em get it on the streets. And can you imagine anything more terrible than the "chill-out room?"

Props to Eugene.

Heroes of Long Ago: Remember Judge Sauls, the Florida judge who distinguished himself as that state's lone judicial voice of reason in the Bush v. Gore headache? Viking Pundit quotes him today de re California recall. It's a good point, a subtle point, worth reading, that implicitly ponders the implications of making the perfect the enemy of the good in election administration: Imagine a grade school class president election, administered by the DMV.

The Market Works: Once again, the market can please people with various demands, without meddlesome legislation. USA Today reports that Procter & Gamble will begin selling "fair trade" coffee under its Millstone brand:

Many of America's biggest companies are discovering that social consciousness is part of the price of doing business. McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's all have improved the treatment of animals under pressure from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts and now P&G have agreed to sell fair trade coffee following activist pressure. And P&G's Millstone also will begin selling a shade-grown blend certified by the Rainforest Alliance.

So consumers can choose to support "fair trade" (still an appalling misnomer) just as they might support, say, dolphin-safe tuna. What's more, the trend has legs:

P&G's fair trade versions could filter down to its Folgers and private label brands. "We've seen lots of trends start in the gourmet segment and move down." says Tonia Hyatt, P&G's coffee sustainability manager.

This is how capitalism works, folks: You want something, you pay for it, no less for the fair trade stamp than when you work with a company that has an ISO certification.

Of course, if you believe the market can work more generally, more globally, then you won't be inclined to think so-called fair trade prices are helpful anyway. But that's another debate.

At least you don't live in Philadelphia: Boy, if I had a nickle for everytime I've said that. Anyway, at least the Steelers have hope. They have three great receivers, a QB that is usually very stable and accurate, plus a decent running game. The defense isn't what it used to be, but then again, Priest Holmes is not your average back.

With Philly, our quarterback actually completed less than a third of his passes. Some were so bad, you honestly couldn't tell who he was throwing to. Seven sacks, four lost fumbles (out of 5 total), two picks. McNabb was the leading rusher with 53 yards! The coach has no ability to compensate when things go wrong. The defense, granted it was missing three starters from last week, and about 5 overall, was porous, with too many rookies making too many mistakes. We've scored one touchdown in two weeks, at home yet!! My only hope is that with the upcoming bye, things will get turned around. It's ugly.

Israel's Test: Tom Rose sums up the case for expelling Arafat in the Weekly Standard. He focuses on three specific areas of progress, or lack thereof, regarding Arafat. First, the peace process:

For three years, Israelis tried everything short of facing the Arafat question head on. Nothing worked. The Mitchell Plan, the Tenet Plan, the Seven Quiet Days, the Zinni Missions, Bethlehem First, the Wolf's Lair, and finally the road map: all failures. Now, 800 dead Israelis later--15 last week alone--Israelis have concluded that it is more dangerous to host Arafat than to eliminate him.

After a while, one has to assume that Arafat is not a proper negotiating partner. For one thing, he has too much invested in his movement to settle for anything as mundane as the administration of a state. Nothing would be worse than a blandly functioning state, making some GDP gains and improving the quality of life for many Palestinians, living like refugees, who have gained nothing from the leadership of Arafat.

Second, the independent Palestinian Authority:

By wedding themselves to Arafat, his international allies allowed the Palestinian dictator to loot and plunder his people. Since Israel brought Arafat back to the West Bank in 1994 as part of the Oslo Accords, Palestinian GDP has declined 70 percent. Think of it: two-thirds of the collective national Palestinian wealth destroyed. During that same period, despite the high-tech bust and the terror war waged against it, Israel's GDP doubled.

Ever wonder what Arafat is worth, personally? Anywhere from $300 million to 1.3 billion, depending on who you ask. Meanwhile his "people" live in grinding poverty, much of which is imposed by the corruption of the PA and the harsh restrictions that Israel has put in place during the intifada. As I asked about Osama last week, do you suppose Arafat is a true believer? He seems more like a Tammany Hall politician with international fund-raising power.

Finally, the progress made by going over Arafat's head:

Neither the road map's collapse nor Israel's looming "removal" of Arafat prompted Morocco or Jordan to alter or condition its decision to reestablish relations with Israel, broken off at the start of Arafat's terror war. Nor did it prevent Prime Minister Sharon from celebrating the tenth anniversary of an extraordinarily significant relationship that Bombay and Jerusalem were calling the "Indo-Israeli Alliance" during his high-profile state visit to India. The growth increment alone in this year's trade between Israel and India will be greater than the entire GDP of the Palestinian Authority.

Is it possible that one of the clearest aftershocks of September 11 might be for Arafat to lose some stature? (That outcome seems more likely than the American public being able to keep its spine in place regarding Iraq.) If so, that is the best news for Israel since Begin and Sadat shook hands. Israel's best bet for the future is to make a seperate peace with Arafat's Arab friends. Remember how big a coup it was to make peace with Egypt, how much it took off the table, strategically and militarily, to have Israel's biggest and strongest hostile neighbor sign on for non-aggression. Jordan and Morocco next. Syria may begin to feel the chill of isolation -- not something a slowly reforming Bashar Assad wants -- though Syria is in so deep with terrorism, a sharp break would cost Assad his head, as Egypt's turn cost Sadat his. But these things move slowly; as Rose notes, much of the progress was made in Arafat's absence, and he came back in '93 supposedly ready to deal.

I don't consider myself blindly pro-Israel, and I have a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. But I don't see how Israel can pass this up. Bibi Netanyahu once pledged that, as Prime Minister, he would kill Arafat upon the first suicide bombing. The result spoke for itself, though it won no friends in the Clinton administration. It might be the perfect time for Israel to get serious.

Meanwhile, USA Today has a front-pager that, while grim, notes that more Palestinian citizens and politicians think the intifada robs legitimacy from their cause.

Monday Morning Blues: Man, it's like a broken record with these guys. The Chiefs beat the Steelers 41-20. Fourteen points of the margin of victory can be attributed directly to special tems lapses. As the Post-Gazette's Ed Bouchette muses:

Yesterday, the Steelers were in AFC championship game form. They committed four turnovers, blew two 10-point leads, and had enough touchdown returns against them it might well have been the Patriots in the title game two seasons ago.

If we're going to have another godforsaken season in which a strong P-burgh team loses on turnovers and special teams sit-downs, I'm not even going to watch.

TMQ Note: What will he say about Jamal Lewis, currently on pace for a 4000-yard season?

Wanted for Attempted Journalism: I'm reading Peter Stothard's Thirty Days, his book about the time he spent shadowing Blair during the pre-war and early-war days in March and April. It makes a mighty brief book, but no doubt was a long enough "think piece" in whatever magazine took it that Stothard's editor advised puffing it up a bit for a book. (If that's the case, I can point to all the stuff he added, I think.) I wonder if Stothard got anything out of his time. I see little on Blair that I hadn't already heard (there's plenty on the Bush-Blair axis of Jesus) and not much new on Blair's political crises (Stothard agrees that Blair is content to let history judge, and spends beaucoup inches wonder just what that means). There are some fun bits (Colin Powell is considered quite dangerous when speeding about in his golf cart at Camp David; Condi Rice traipses about the Cotoctins in high heels) and some slices of life (three-year-old Leo Blair, the PM's son, making clandestine cookie deliveries about the offices of #10; Tony is irritated because the press thinks he lives on bananas) and some old-fashioned, fair-and-balanced, gee-golly filler (Bush is "more articulate" than you might have heard, declares Stothard; everyone at #10 knows the French are being schmucks). Beyond that, there isn't much to count as insight. There's a bit of wonky talk about how Blair's cabinet meets and functions. But, honestly, we lived through the Clintons here, and Blair's style is Clinton-lite: post-socialist left, rock and roll fading into Fleetwood Mac (the American version, though), some bull sessions in the London flat that has to make do as the British West Wing -- but all with positively no sex, no cigars, no fleshy interns in thongs.

And this brings us to thematics. I suppose if there is something to get out of the book, it's this: Blair combines the Clintonian techniques of managed-media, post-modern statesmanship with a good helping of Bush's Christianity, decisiveness, and conviction. Stothard nevers says as much, but it comes across as a good blend of qualities for a leader. But it's boring as hell.

Deja vous all over again?: An interesting piece in the Globe and Mail that points out how long it was after WWII before America began to "win the peace."

Six months before, the world had cheered as the statues of the dictator came crashing down. The Americans had seemed heroic. But now things were going very badly. The occupation was chaotic, the American soldiers were hated and they were facing threats from the surviving supporters of the dictator, whose whereabouts were uncertain....

That's how it looked in Germany in November, 1945. In our memories, history tends to become compressed: There was V-E Day, then the American soldiers were cheered by the people of Berlin, then the president announced that hundreds of millions would be spent on the Marshall Plan, then Germany became the prosperous and democratic place it is today.

That is not how things unfolded. The United States has always been good at removing dictators from power, but the tedious, dirty work we now call "nation building" has never come naturally, or quickly. The enormous success of European and Japanese reconstruction did not even begin to emerge until long years of pain and disorder had passed.

Mr. Saunders point is well taken, but it doesn't really excuse the Bush administration for some poor planning and mistken expectations. In 1945 we were faced with a Germany that was utterly decimated after half a decade of war. The U.S.itself was utterly exhausted, both militarily and on the homefront. It was a tough sell to the public, after all that had been sacrificed, to spend the money and time to rebuild our enemy's country in such a way. If I'm not mistaken, that kind of action, by an undisputed victor, was unprecedented. It's not surprising that it took several years to decide it was the thing to do. (I read somewhere recently, but can't remember where, a scathing review of the MP and how Europe would have recovered faster without it. Very interesting, wish I could find it.)

The Bush admin knew very well what would be required of it After Sadaam. Of course we would be expected to rebuild the economy, the infrastructure, everything. Christ, if we do get a handle on the terrorist radicals attacking us, and forcefully stop them, we'll be accused of squashing dissent (Ashcroft will take the fall). I don't think that's fair, necessarily, but they can't claim to be surprised. Bush and his crowd need to deal with the fact that nobody is on their side, not Europe (minus Blair), not the rest of the Middle East (to the extent their loyalty isn't U.S. taxpayer funded), and not the Democratic party at home. It's been my feeling that Bush could prevail in Iraq because those who oppose him must walk a very fine line in their criticism, lest they sacrifice any spoils, economic or political.

All is not lost yet, by any stretch. But we need some good news, soon. 2005 will be too late.

Props to the professor for the link.

Tough picks: Still early in the season, which makes picking NFL games more difficult. I think Buffalo will handle Jacksonville easily enough to cover 3 points. They looked great last week against the Pats and Jacksonville can't keep up in a shootout. For an upset, I can't stay away from my Steelers. The Chiefs are the darling of ESPN this week and I love nothing more than to be a contrarian. The give up 3.5 to Pittsburgh. Go Steelers.

Master criminal: How does this reflect on my home state?

The Falling Man: Radley linked me over to this article, which is simply chilling on different levels. I can't quite get my head around it just yet. A must read.

Why It's War: I agree with you, Flyer, that the metaphoric "war" is overused. And I agree with you, Razor, that September 11 was not an attack like Pearl Harbor, not the official act of a foreign nation resigned to the clash of armies and the invasion of countries. But the "crime" rubric is painfully inadequate. The first WTC bombing was treated as a crime, and plotters (and conspirators, like Ramzi Yusuf) were or would have been handled like traditional perps. That did us no good, as we know now. At the very least, the 1993 terrorists should have been treated like members of the mafia -- bit players in huge, loosely knit enterprise. But even the mafia comparison falls short.

What we need to accept is that this war, like the Cold War, will redefine the term. Again, we face an ideology, a mindset, more than we face an actual country. (Though if there were a Soviet Union in this war, it would be Saudi Arabia.) The fight against that ideology will be played out by proxy throughout the world, mostly in smaller non-democratic countries, like Syria, and in nominally democratic states weakened by geography, like Indonesia. This is not to say that we will invade them all, but we will prop up their leaders like we did throughout the world during the Cold War. (For what is Pervez Musharraf -- with his cheap electoral veneer and his promises of liberalization, when security permits -- if not a textbook banana republic dictator, angling for U.S. backing by promising not to go commie?) Well, our bastard is better than theirs, as we used to say.

It is in this way that Iraq might prove to be this generation's Vietnam, a place where we face the opposing ideology with a show of force that, though obviously not a death blow, is meant to indicate our willingness to fight. After all, why are we fighting in Iraq? Because we can. Why did we go to the Security Council? Because the history of Iraq's defiance of U.N. resolutions was good cover, nothing more. We're in Iraq because it was a convenient first step, a way to put our foot firmly into the Arab world with a modicum of legitimacy -- a legitimacy we would have sacrificed by aiming directly at the corrupt, Wahabbist-appeasing House of Saud, or at Hamas financier Iran. (Note that we're now on a clear path to build a legitimizing case against Iran on WMD grounds. Deja vu?) One of the reasons ol' Muammar down in Libya is so bent on clearing his debts with the U.S. and U.N. is that he knows that being a misbehaving Muslim country right now is slowly turning into a big game of Whack-a-Mole.

This is war, with all its attendant dirtiness, duplicity, and compromise -- and I'd argue it needs to be. The other option, treating terrorism as isolated criminal acts, is an aspirin for a headache caused by a malignant tumor. Nineteen dead hijackers and 3000 dead civilians later, who do you prosecute? Who's the criminal? (The Taliban, baby, in my book. Now presiding, Judge JDAM. God save this honorable court.)