The well-rounded, Romington Post edition

SPORTS SECTION

This was a huge weekend for sports, especially with NCAA selection sunday

The GW Colonials got screwed. In the three years I attended law school at GW we never even got a sniff of the big dance, but after making the tourney last year (only to be ousted by eventual final four team, GeorgiaTech) I thought this might be the year they make some noise. GW had a great regular season compiling the best record in all of college basketball. Yes, Gdub had a soft schedule but you would think that only two losses (and one without star center Pops) would earn them higher seed than the dreaded 8 v. 9 matchup against a solid team – and possible second round matchup with the hated Duke. So thanks to one lousy loss to Cheney’s gimmicky Temple team, GW drops from a probably #4 seed all the way into the 8-9 game and will have a killer time even making it into the sweet sixteen

Now to the other big local teams. You can easily make an argument that Maryland did not “deserve” to make the tournament, but they surely deserved it over some of the other teams that got in. Maryland had one of the most difficult schedules in the nation, they beat tournament teams in BC and Arkansas, and they finished .500 in the ACC, after having to play the stud teams Duke, BC, and UNC twice.

I would argue that Maryland clearly has a better resume than another local favorite, George Mason. Mason lost to Hofstra TWICE in the past two weeks and plays in the CAA. I will still root for Mason though, because they start five guys from Maryland including John Vaughan, from my alma mater - Laurel High School.

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The other big local sports news was the start of free agency and the annual domination of free agency by the Skins. Just a couple days in and the Skins have already signed Randle El, Brandon Lloyd, and Adam Archuletta. If the Skins had a legit quarterback, I would be totally on the bandwagon and predicting Super Bowl. Gibbs has handed over the offense to Al Saunders from Kansas City, and now with two highly paid coordinators on each side of the ball, Gibbs just needs to sit back and pray to the spaghetti monster (or whoever it is he prays to) and let the high priced coaches and players do all the work. Gibbs seemed over his head in his first year back in the league but now he can just pull a Bobby Bowden and let the assistants do all the work. Maybe Saunders will even have Randle El quarterback the team a few plays per game, every time I saw that guy throw in Pittsburgh it was a TD. While Randle El is getting all of the hype this week, I think the Lloyd signing is huge. Watch these videos and you can see that the guy may have the best hands in football

First one amazing catch and then a full highlight reel:





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Finally the Wizards spanked the best team in basketball again and Im hoping that the win over the Pistons gives the team plenty of momentum goin into the final 25 or so games.
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FRONT PAGE - POLITICS

As I predicted two weeks ago, the Dubai ports deal has worked to hurt Bush in the only area where he had any shred of credibility left - national security. Now the republicans have turned on Bush and shot down his deal. Bush is a lame duck, and his redonkulously bad policies are hurting him in every single area of government and public confidence.

The race is wide open for his Republican successor in 2008, and the early favorite has to be McCain. McCain is heralded by the press as a maverick, renegade, and a whole bunch of other stupid ass macho terms that have very little to do with the current Republican government in Washington. In actuality, McCain is not a moderate who has gone against Bush on many issues, but instead a by-the-books Republican who will toe the party line whenever it is to his advantage, but who plays well in the media.

For an expression of this non-renegade-ness Paul Krugman of the New York Times directs his readers to voteview which ranks McCain "as the Senate's third most conservative member." That is conservative as 80 muggs.

Now that we know he is conservative, here is Mcain last week at Southern Republican Leadership Conference completing his non-maverick status by kissing up to King Bush:

Senator John McCain of Arizona offered a full embrace of a president he has quarreled with over the years--Mr. Bush defeated him for the presidential nomination in an acrid campaign in 2000--as he urged Republicans to rally around Mr. Bush in a difficult time and to focus on the midterm elections ahead....

The session culminated with a straw poll of delegates.... McCain [requested] that his supporters cast write-in votes for President Bush, as a show of support for the president....

The extent of McCain's embrace of Mr. Bush was striking.... McCain went so far as to condemn the collapse of the port deal, saying that Congress had served Mr. Bush poorly by not permitting a 45-day review of security concerns, though he did not mention that the deal was sunk by fellow Republicans.

"The president deserved better," Mr. McCain said.

So McCain is a Bush-loving ultra-conservative Republican hack, some maverick. Oh well, at least if he wins we will have a President who I have at least one ounce of respect for.

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TRAVEL SECTION - CARS/GADGETS

Via fimoculous, this
is the slickest Ipod-car integration I have seen yet.

Also in car-gadget universe may not be long before we have google earth in the car...double true

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ARTS SECTION

COMEDY
So David Cross is in a war of words with Larry the Cable guy. Larry the Cable guy can write actual words?
Isnt that like getting in a war of words with that guy from Life Goes On.

MUSIC
Just got the new Drive-By Truckers album and it is very very good. More on this later.

BOOKS
I plan to start reading Freakonomics soon. In the meantime my new favorite author-blog gets into a online debate with the writers of Freaknomics.

In another article on Gladwell’s website, he examines yet another book I am interested in reading.

In "Everything Bad Is Good for You", Steven Johnson proposes that all of the television, movies, internet websites, and other crap that I talk about on this site actually make us smarter than those who simply study and read books all the time. It is actually a fascinating concept.

Gladwell on the Johnson book, and the smartening up of some of today’s pop culture:

To watch an episode of "Dallas" today is to be stunned by its glacial pace--by the arduous attempts to establish social relationships, by the excruciating simplicity of the plotline, by how obvious it was. A single episode of "The Sopranos," by contrast, might follow five narrative threads, involving a dozen characters who weave in and out of the plot. Modern television also requires the viewer to do a lot of what Johnson calls "filling in," as in a "Seinfeld" episode that subtly parodies the Kennedy assassination conspiracists, or a typical "Simpsons" episode, which may contain numerous allusions to politics or cinema or pop culture. The extraordinary amount of money now being made in the television aftermarket--DVD sales and syndication--means that the creators of television shows now have an incentive to make programming that can sustain two or three or four viewings. Even reality shows like "Survivor," Johnson argues, engage the viewer in a way that television rarely has in the past

Or you could forgo all of this complicated and interesting television and watch "According to Jim" with Evan.

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