It's a girl

"Ms. P?"

"Eduardo?"

"Yes!"

"Is there a baby?"

"YES!"

And oh my goodness what a brand new baby, just an hour old when my students called with their news. But a baby is a baby, and I can't help but share their excitement as I write down the name and the weight and the date. Of course, in this birth story, "We came to the hospital at two in the morning" is followed by, "Eduardo's not going to school tomorrow," and "I had to get the epidural" and "I pushed for an hour" is interrupted by, "So, Ms. P, what are we going to do about those classes?" (For six weeks I'll be her homebound teacher.) "Well," I tell the new mom, "how about we think about that later?"

You are a seventeen year old high school sophomore who just had a baby, I think but don't say. These are uncharted waters. At least take a weekend to get your bearings before you dive in. You'll need all your wits about you, at the very very least. But welcome, baby. And congratulations mom and dad. Thanks for calling. And best wishes to you all.

Now that's a gift bag

I won't speak for my partner here, though I bet I could, but just to demonstrate a fairly obvious truth, that the volume of my posts is in direct proportion to what I should right this minute be doing, I'm going to share one more thing before I collapse on my pile of nearly-done work:

This week I'm attending a conference of ESL types. If you consider who we work with and why, I don't think it's surprising that these gatherings tend to be full of good progressive folks. But this year, they've outdone themselves. The theme? The Hammer of Justice. That's right, hammer. I don't know how you'd feel, but I cannot wait to get mine!

She's only 25

Top five headlines on Huffingtonpost at this writing:

Blackwater Out of Control and Indifferent To Civilian Toll: Report

Majority Opposes Bush's $190 Billion War Fund Request

Thompson: Iraq had WMD Before US Invaded

Bad for Business: GOP Hemorrhaging Core Business Base

Britney Spears Loses Custody of Her Kids

Whaddaya suppose got the most hits?

End of an era

A divorce, a handful of plane tickets, a 3-day tourist visa. That's all it took to get this family, or all of it but the mother, out of Iztapalapa, a section of Mexico City variously described as "crime-ridden", "crime-infested," or "crime-plagued," depending on which website you click to, but that was six years ago. Talk about long, strange trips. If they had only but known, I wonder if they would have stayed.

When I see him, for the first time in years, I wonder if the dad's front teeth have always been like that, rotted and broken, and I doubt it; I would have remembered. But the decay seems too fitting of a symbol for the fall they seem to have taken, and I remind myself that it's probably mostly in my head. I know little of the specifics about what came before, just talk of fights and gangs, but if it wasn't worth sacrifice they wouldn't have come. I remember their arrival too clearly; they were one of my first families. Dad in a pressed dress shirt. Two middle school boys supernaturally diligent. A high school girl shy and eager. Well, we took care of all that.


Or, really, circumstances did. Leave kids on their own to raise themselves while dad works two jobs to support them, and they will. Raise themselves, that is. And not in the most constructive way, though they were never in any real trouble. Leave a sensitive soul to deal with a divorce on his own, his mother a half a continent away, and he'll struggle. Leave a well-intentioned teacher to figure out what she's doing on the fly, and well, there are likely to be casualties. At any rate, we all seem to have taken the hard road around.

They all dropped out, and I don't feel good about it, even if that's what the statistics say they will do. Today, son number two is trying again in Oregon with a girlfriend's family. Rumor has it one in his position can get a driver's license there, so the plan was just to pretend to try, but now Dad says he seems to be doing it for real. Son number one has gotten himself deported, thanks to an ill-advised California bus ride, and dad and daughter are here to pick up a transcript though he's already nineteen. He thinks he wants to go to school now, and who knows, maybe he will. The daughter, now 21, got close to graduation before a boyfriend intervened and whisked her off to Georgia. They're still together, though, so maybe there's that.

So today I hand over a sealed envelope bound for Mexico, and print off some information about the GED and talk encouragingly about community college, and send more best wishes to Oregon, though I told him in person the day before he left, and shake hands with these people and accept their thanks with a bit of guilt for maybe the last time. None of us, I'm certain, are where we thought we'd be six years ago. We are all quite obviously older and more tired. We have all undoubtedly learned a lot. But maybe, it could be, in the end, it will turn out to have been worthwhile.

This just in

Do you suppose it's some kind of party favor for the re-release of Sicko? For the third time since my tour through the medical fun house began about seven months ago, I've gotten a new insurance ID card in the mail. It's still platinum, and the numbers and co-pays on the front still look the same, but I'm growing ever more suspicious of that magnetic stripe on the back. I wonder what, exactly, it says about me. Perhaps next week, when I go to make claim number fifty-one for the year at the second opinion appointment I've had scheduled since the summer--thank baby Jesus we don't have that evil socialized medicine that would force me to wait--I'll find out.

Frank Rich: Is Hillary Clinton the New Old Al Gore?

My big fear, and not just because I don't intend to cast my primary vote for Hillary. Of course, there still is an answer lurking out there-- the New Al Gore.

By FRANK RICH

Published: September 30, 2007

THE Democrats can't lose the White House in 2008, can they?

Some 13 months before Election Day, the race's dynamic seems immutable. Americans can't wait to evict the unpopular president and end his disastrous war. As the campaign's poll-tested phrasemaking constantly reminds us, voters crave change above all else. That means nearly any Democrat might do, even if the nominee isn't the first woman, black or Hispanic to lead a major party's ticket.

The Republican field of aging white guys, meanwhile, gets flakier by the day. The front-runner has taken to cooing to his third wife over a cellphone in the middle of campaign speeches. His hottest challenger, the new "new Reagan," may have learned his lines for "Law & Order," but clearly needs cue cards on the stump. In Florida, even the most rudimentary details of red-hot local issues (drilling in the Everglades, Terri Schiavo) eluded him. The party's fund-raising is anemic. Its snubs of Hispanic and African-American voters kissed off essential swing states in the Sun Belt and moderate swing voters farther north.

So nothing can go wrong for the Democrats. Can it?

Of course it can, and not just because of the party's perennial penchant for cutting off its nose to spite its face. (Witness the Democratic National Committee's zeal in shutting down primary campaigning in Florida because the state moved up the primary's date.) The biggest indicator of potential trouble ahead is that the already-codified Beltway narrative for the race so favors the Democrats. Given the track record of Washington's conventional wisdom, that's not good news. These are the same political pros who predicted that scandal would force an early end to the Clinton presidency and that "Mission Accomplished" augured victory in Iraq and long-lasting Republican rule.

The Beltway's narrative has it not only that the Democrats are shoo-ins, but also that the likely standard-bearer, Hillary Clinton, is running what Zagat shorthand might describe as a "flawless campaign" that is "tightly disciplined" and "doesn't make mistakes." This scenario was made official last weekend, when Senator Clinton appeared on all five major Sunday morning talk shows — a publicity coup, as it unfortunately happens, that is known as a "full Ginsburg" because it was first achieved by William Ginsburg, Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, in 1998.

Mrs. Clinton was in complete control. Forsaking TV studios for a perfectly lighted set at her home in Chappaqua, she came off like a sitting head of state. The punditocracy raved. We are repeatedly told that with Barack Obama still trailing by double digits in most polls, the only way Mrs. Clinton could lose her tight hold on the nomination and, presumably, the White House would be if she were bruised in Iowa (where both John Edwards and Senator Obama remain competitive) or derailed by unforeseeable events like a scandal or a domestic terror attack.

If you buy into the Washington logic that a flawless campaign is one that doesn't make gaffes, never goes off-message and never makes news, then this analysis makes sense. The Clinton machine runs as smoothly and efficiently as a Rolls. And like a fine car, it is just as likely to lull its driver into complacent coasting and its passengers to sleep. What I saw on television last Sunday was the incipient second coming of the can't-miss 2000 campaign of Al Gore.

That Mr. Gore, some may recall, was not the firebrand who emerged from defeat, speaking up early against the Iraq war and leading the international charge on global warming. It was instead the cautious Gore whose public persona changed from debate to debate and whose answers were often long-winded and equivocal (even about the Kansas Board of Education's decision to ban the teaching of evolution). Incredibly, he minimized both his environmental passions and his own administration's achievements throughout the campaign.

He, too, had initially been deemed a winner, the potential recipient of a landslide rather than a narrow popular-vote majority. The signs were nearly as good for Democrats then as they are now. The impeachment crusade had backfired on the Republicans in the 1998 midterms; the economy was booming; Mr. Gore's opponent was seen as a lightweight who couldn't match him in articulateness or his mastery of policy, let alone his eight years of Clinton White House experience.

Mrs. Clinton wouldn't repeat Mr. Gore's foolhardy mistake of running away from her popular husband and his record, even if she could. But almost every answer she gave last Sunday was a rambling and often tedious Gore-like filibuster. Like the former vice president, she often came across as a pontificator and an automaton — in contrast to the personable and humorous person she is known to be off-camera. And she seemed especially evasive when dealing with questions requiring human reflection instead of wonkery.

Reiterating that Mrs. Clinton had more firsthand White House experience than any other candidate, George Stephanopoulous asked her to name "something that you don't know that only a president can know." That's hardly a tough or trick question, but rather than concede she isn't all-knowing or depart from her script, the senator deflected it with another mini-speech.

Then there was that laugh. The Clinton campaign's method for heeding the perennial complaints that its candidate comes across as too calculating and controlled is to periodically toss in a smidgen of what it deems personality. But these touches of intimacy seem even more calculating: the "Let's chat" campaign rollout, the ostensibly freewheeling but tightly controlled Web "conversations," the supposed vox populi referendum to choose a campaign song (which yielded a plain-vanilla Celine Dion clunker).

Now Mrs. Clinton is erupting in a laugh with all the spontaneity of an alarm clock buzzer. Mocking this tic last week, "The Daily Show" imagined a robotic voice inside the candidate's head saying, "Humorous remark detected — prepare for laughter display." However sincere, this humanizing touch seems as clumsily stage-managed as the Gores' dramatic convention kiss.

None of this would matter if the only issue were Mrs. Clinton's ability as a performer. Not every president can be Reagan or J.F.K. or, for that matter, Bill Clinton. But in her case, as in Mr. Gore's in 2000, the performance too often dovetails with the biggest question about her as a leader: Is she so eager to be all things to all people, so reluctant to offend anyone, that we never will learn what she really thinks or how she will really act as president?

So far her post-first-lady record suggests a follower rather than a leader. She still can't offer a credible explanation of why she gave President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq (or why she voted against the Levin amendment that would have put on some diplomatic brakes). That's because her votes had more to do with hedging her political bets than with principle. Nor has she explained why it took her two years of the war going south to start speaking up against it. She was similarly tardy with her new health care plan, waiting to see what heat Mr. Edwards and Senator Obama took with theirs. She has lagged behind the Democratic curve on issues ranging from the profound (calling for an unequivocal ban on torture) to the trivial (formulating a response to the MoveOn.org Petraeus ad).

As was proved again in Wednesday night's debate, her opponents have not yet figured out how to seriously challenge her. Now the story line of her inevitable triumph is gathering force. At the same time, her campaign works relentlessly to shut down legitimate journalistic vetting of her record. In the latest example, Politico.com reported last week on the murky backstage machinations by the Clinton camp before the magazine GQ killed an article by Joshua Green, whose 2006 Atlantic Monthly profile judged Mrs. Clinton a practitioner of "systematic caution" with "no big ideas." The donors' list and first lady archives at the Clinton presidential library remain far from transparent.

Senator Clinton may well be the Democrats' most accomplished would-be president. But we won't know for certain until she's tested by events she can't control. Had Bill Bradley roughed up Mr. Gore in 2000, it might have jolted him into running a smarter race against George W. Bush.

In this context it's worth noting that Mr. Bush's desperate lame-duck campaign to brand himself as a reincarnation of Harry Truman is not 100 percent ludicrous. A tiny part of the analogy could yet pan out. In 1948, Washington's commentators and pollsters were convinced that Americans, tired of 15 years of Democratic rule, would vote in a Republican. Like today's G.O.P., the Democrats back then were saddled with both an unloved incumbent president and open divisions in the party's ranks on both its left and right flanks. Surely, the thinking went, the beleaguered Democrats couldn't possibly vanquish a presidential candidate from New York known for his experience, competence, uncontroversial stands and above-the-fray demeanor.

You don't want to push historical analogies too far, but it's hard not to add that the campaign slogan of that sure winner, Thomas Dewey, had a certain 2008 ring to it: "It's time for a change."

Dave rules Paris

At least I haven't done this in a while, but this was too good to resist.

Football fix

Most fall Saturdays find me roaming the sidelines of Coe College football games, photographing the action. I so look forward to returning there this week after two less -than satisfactory Hawkeye Saturdays.

Last week I'm sitting in a Buffalo Wild Wings in OshKosh, Wisconsin watching the big Iowa-Wisconsin game when, shortly before halftime, the big screens and audio are switched to UFC. UFC! In Wisconsin! I still don't believe it. Wisconsin ultimately prevails in a close game (cuz that's how they roll, apparently).

Meanwhile, I missed my first Coe game of the year, a 17-0 victory at Buena Vista in Storm Lake, Iowa. This is Coe's bye week, so I was free to take in another week of Iowa football. Homecoming even. My 10th year reunion. Shrugs.

I was a fanatic as a student, when tickets were reasonably priced and I didn't know any better. Nowadays, it seems more trouble than it's worth. Still, since Mediacom and the Big Ten Network remain at an impasse, we ventured to the local movie theater that has begun showing the games -- for free -- on the big screen. Talk about the great unwashed!

Down 21-7 at half to Indiana (with Iowa's points the product of a hail mary), we knew there were better ways to spend a beautiful fall Saturday. So we went shopping. Iowa wound up losing 38-20 and we got a gift for my nephew's upcoming wedding.

I need a football fix and expect to get it in tomorrow's Packer-Viking game. From the quiet comfort of my living room, I hope to see Sir Brett Favre take sole possession of the NFL touchdown passing record as the Packers go the 4-0 to start the season.

I still won't have the Big Ten Network, but that's ok. Coe is back in action this week. It's Homecoming!

a triple dog dare

So the citizenship test has been revamped, and as far as I can tell they've just exchanged one set of poorly worded questions for another. The argument, though, is that these are more meaningful poorly worded questions, and, to be fair, some of them aren't even awkward: instead of "How many stripes are on the flag?" they get "Why does the flag have 13 stripes?" Fair enough.

Would-be citizens are only asked 10 of 100 potential questions, and they only have to answer 6 correctly. A mere gentleman's (or woman's) D. The NY Times picked out 10, and since they did not choose number ninety-nine "When do we celebrate Independence Day? or number seventy, "Who was our first president?" there was much protesting by the supposed Eastern elite in their comments section that the questions were far too hard and certainly impossible for a mere immigrant to learn (both questions and answers are provided for study, so I'd say how hard could that be, except a couple of the provided answers look wrong to me).

Now, I teach this stuff, so I have no perspective. I just know it. But do you? Would you take this one legitimate opportunity for anonymous commenting to either see if your citizenship is up to snuff or to put some Americans to shame? C'mon, somebody. Play along! It's the least you could do. And no cheating. I'll post the answers later.

1. How many amendments does the Constitution have?

2. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful? (theoretically. stop shaking your head in despair and just answer.)

3. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?

4. There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them. (finds this to be a really stupidly worded question.)

5. What are two rights only for United States citizens?

6. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers. (finds this to be a really random question that is supposed to be some big concept but is really just trivia. gets it right anyway)

7. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?

8. Who was President during World War I?

9. Name one U.S. territory. (points out that the answer to number 7 was not really a territory in this sense of the word)

10. Why does the flag have 13 stripes?

a pause

"Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we’ve learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work."

Isn't that perfect? Of course, the reality it describes is both as infuriating and horrifying as ever, but what a great description, courtesy of this week's Krugman--once again free, don't forget--and, you know, it's Saturday. The weight of the world will still be there forty-eight hours from now; that's a certainty. In the meantime, that slog of a work week has finally ended, it's 80 degrees and sunny, I have nowhere to be except wherever I wanna, the guarantee of the new Bruce Springsteen and! the E Street Band! album in my possession on Tuesday, and the Packers are 3-0. I'm content. But, I must admit, not entirely oblivious. Some dilemmas are just so nagging that I can't ignore them, even in the middle of an otherwise relaxed day. Like, who do we know who would possibly have paid for Direct TV's Sunday Ticket? Or, what football-centric place that is not too bar-like for a ten-year-old is likely to have enough TVs for Green Bay at Minnesota? It's one thing to take a weekend break from the rest of the world, but to entirely tune out? That's just not me.

Oh, baby

"So I might not really have my baby on Sunday?" her whispery voice asking for a different answer this time.

"No," I explain, again, with a shake of my head. "A due date is just a guess."

And I agree with her that it would be nice to know, a definite plus for the schedule. I tell her the story of a desperately needed haircut that I didn't get because my baby had other ideas. It's just the way it goes. It will work out. It will be fine. I hope. I choose to believe.

"So nobody really knows?" she tries again, and her eyes are intently questioning.

Surely she really understands that, and it's just that the idea of any-time-now is unnerving. I can't blame her for looking for some certainty when she's had so little of it, when the future remains a question mark though she's days away from motherhood. When she's only seventeen.

I can't say that I've ever been in this position, to have a student who's days away from delivery, not to mention the baby's father in the desk to my right. But here we are, and I tell you, they're trying so hard. The way they help each other makes me think of an old married couple, though with less bickering and more Algebra. Maybe it's the way she shuffles around and he carries her bag. It's definitely not high school romance, and it gives me a glimmer of hope, though the real test has not quite yet graced them with her squalling, sleep-depriving presence. Please, for all their sakes, let this somehow work out okay.

Let their fledgling maturity win out over their panic. ("No, she does not need to sleep in the car until the baby comes. You will have plenty of time to get to the hospital. Plenty. She will be able to walk to the car. And she needs to sleep well this week because she may never sleep again.") Let the grown-ups in their lives, me included, do what they can to help this new mom and dad become instant grown-ups, too. And let none of the other teenagers in this classroom get the impression that this is a good idea, or a life-choice to be making, or a possibility to be even for one second entertaining, especially the thirteen-year-old with the eighteen-year-old boyfriend who sits next to her in Civics, please baby Jesus, amen.

Noooooooooooooooooooooo

At HP our products are designed, manufactured and serviced, to meet our high standards.

We apologize for the possible delay in delivery of your service; however, we are diligently working on expediting your order.

Do they just not understand that a house without functioning wireless internet capability is no longer really a home?

Are we where yet?

Just because a joke is old and tired doesn't mean it won't be repeated; in fact, around here, it almost guarantees that it will. Just ask my daughter about "bags of ice", with bag pronounced--and this is key--with the most Minnesotan of accents. While the story falls apart upon explaining, my daughter's exasperated rejoinder--"at least I know I'm in the right car!"-- the last time she heard the punch line assured me that our good-natured torture is effective and that this gag will probably never die. What else are parents for?

On the other hand, I can't say there's much entertainment value in pointing out that we're really in trouble if, as the highway sign indicates, our north-bound vehicle is about to pass El Paso. But what else is there to do, I beg of you, along interstate 55? While Iowa has the scenic rolling hills that will kill me when I finally bike them, and Missouri, of course, is replete with billboards and fireworks stands, Illinois is torture for travelers who long to be distracted, and apparently it was ever thus.

Sure, I'm grasping at straws, or perhaps a dried out corn stalk, but if you had crossed the length of the state twice in 24 hours, so would you. On that stretch of road, where global overpopulation seems like it must be a myth, so sparse are the sights and the towns, it was striking to see the number of places named for somewhere else. It's hardly an Illinois phenomenon. States are full of cities founded by the unoriginal or the homesick. But, driving and driving and driving, I couldn't help but picture, long before that highway, long before even that corn, people stopping for good at some seemingly random somewhere and remembering where they had come from or where they'd rather be, or, maybe, just trying to conjure some sort of view. So El Paso shares an exit with Mackninaw--talk about extremes--and is not too far from Ottawa and Atlanta or Toronto. Was Illinois once really full of fleeing Canadians? Who knew.

My favorite Illinois place-name of all, however, didn't make it onto a highway sign, though it did make the map, and if I can someday stand to pull back onto that interstate, I may have to make a special trip just to see it and pay tribute to its most reality-based citizens: Cornland, Illinois. It may be redundant, but it's certainly true.

It's my schedule and I'm sticking to it

To consciously procrastinate is one thing: it's a strategery, an art. A way to balance what I like with must be done with what I cannot possibly think about until some later, just-in-the-nick-of time. But to be constantly running like George Jetson and Astro--never getting anywhere, never catching up? This just sucks.

It's not like I don't know what the problem is, here on my non-animated treadmill. By decree of the all-powerful bus companies, my school's schedule has moved later. Being such a model of workday virtue (or knowing that traffic would just swallow the difference), I arrive at the same time I always have, and really, it's nice not to rush, though the work and ever-expanding bureaucracy fill every extra minute. But apparently arriving home at my once-accustomed early hour was the fulcrum on which my whole weekday world balanced, and now, six weeks in, I'm still off-kilter. I get home too late, and the evening is short and busy with kid stuff and nothing is done before the wee hours and now, and now, and now the new TV season is here! Survivor has already started without me, and the red light on the DVR reminds me that I've added three more shows even tonight.

What to do? Why justify, of course. And procrastinate. A student even asked me the time and channel for Heroes: it's good to have something to discuss with these young people today. Lord knows I can't listen to their music. But Weeds? No, I'm not explaining that one to 'em. But it's only 25 minutes. Not even a half-hour. And so funny. Mental health is important. And it's not even midnight yet.

Not to sway your vote or anything, but when this guy was on Countdown, Keith volunteered to put the asterisk on the ball himself.

My virtual cube

An office job hasn't paid my bills in a good long while, not even in this century. Considering the work habits that resurfaced today, a singular occasion when my school hosted neither students nor in-service meetings, that's probably for the best. Give me a deadline and I will meet it, a goal and I will reach it, and a chunk of twelve and a half unsupervised work hours and I will fill it-- with a quantity of work that probably could have been done in three.

As I recall, that's pretty much how it's done. Not that I was there to work today, though I could've, should've done so much more than the grading and copying and test-writing I completed. I was there to conference with parents, which I did, and teachers too, but sit in a silent classroom long enough, and there's nothing to do but fight off sleep or seek out human contact: just ask any student.

For once the band hallway was mostly quiet and mostly empty; one would think I'd have no one to talk to. One should probably check the Sent messages folder in my Outlook. Sure I got a "your mailbox is over its size limit" warning, but at least I never accidentally hit Reply All. I also learned that my colleague of five years lived in the same Iowa town that I once did, though 20 years prior, publicly dissed the Cardinals, discussed the relative merits of Brett Favre's ass, and made a hockey date for November. I could probably even call it work-related; team-building is eternally one of our building goals.

During a normal day, during my lunch or my plan, I've been known to lock my door and hide, if only for a few minutes; a school is All People All the Time, and sometimes I just reach my limit. In the rest of my life, I'm happy to spend time alone, but despite that I can no longer fathom work without other people, or a job that only depends on a desk or PC. The human connection is what keeps me going, is a huge part of why I enjoy my days and why I do what I do. But beyond that, let's be serious. How could I ever cope in some solo, desk-bound job if the network went down?

Either you will or you won't

Get it, that is. I realize this quip might as well be written upside down and backwards in Sanskrit for those who load this page most often, but trust me, it's really clever, and oh, it made me laugh:

Courtesy of the Jeff Gordon who is my favorite local sportswriter and not the NASCAR driver, "If La Russa heads to Seattle to manage next season, as rumor mill suggests, will he bat the designated hitter eighth?"

#4 is 2nd to 0

As Brett Favre aw-shucks his way around his ascension to the winningest quarterback in NFL history and nears NFL records for touchdowns and interceptions, John Clayton put things in perspective for me.

The brains among ESPN’s considerable bluster pointed out that Favre has a 13-year generation gap with seven of his offensive starters. I knew the Packers were young, but think about it.

Favre was 27 a decade ago when he led Green Bay to Super Bowl glory over the New England Patriots. Seven of his current offensive mates would have been 14, the same age as my son. Imagine a younger Brett Favre trying to win anything with even the best players from that high school freshman team that got throttled Monday by a cross-town rival 61-0.

It’s a twisted perspective, I know, and while Zach caught a pass Monday, it wasn’t a Brett Favre bullet. Still, there’s no pro athlete I’ve ever – or will ever – admire more. Not Magic Johnson. Not Orel Hershiser. Not even Edgar Bennett.

Over the course of Favre’s 17-year career, I can count on one hand the games I haven’t seen (including his very first appearance in place of the injured “Majik Man”) on television, if not in person (including the nightmarish T.J. Rubley appearance in Minnesota). As his career winds down, I’ll applaud each start that extends the streak, cringe at each interception, cherish every touchdown pass, and savor each win.

And seven years from whenever he decides to call it quits, I intend to be in Canton for his Hall of Fame induction. I hope Zach is with me.

R.I.P., TimesSelect

Now that the New York Times has thrown in the towel on its subscription-only access to online columns, I (and you, dear reader(s)) no longer have to rely on the selectivity of others for your Dowd, Krugman or Rich fix. We celebrate the occasion with my favorite source for cut-and-paste blogging: Maureen Dowd.

Alan (Not Atlas) Shrugged
By MAUREEN DOWD
It’s a lost art, slinking away.

Now the fashion is slinking back.

Nobody wants to simply admit they made a mistake and disappear for awhile. Nobody even wants to use the weasel words: “Mistakes were made.” No, far better to pop right back up and get in the face of those who were savoring your absence.

We should think of a name for this appalling modern phenomenon. Kissingering, perhaps.

In Las Vegas, there’s the loathsome O.J., a proper candidate for shunning and stun-gunning, barging back into the picture.

And on Capitol Hill, Larry Craig shocked mortified Republicans by bounding into their weekly lunch. You’d think the conservative 62-year-old Idaho senator would have some shame, going from fervently opposing gay rights to provocatively tapping his toe in a Minneapolis airport toilet. (The toilet stall, now known as the Larry Craig bathroom, has become a hot local tourist attraction.)

But no.

As though Republicans don’t have enough problems, Mr. Craig said he is ready to go back to work while the legal hotshots he hired appeal his case. He even cast a couple votes, one against D.C. voting rights. (This creep gets to decide about my representation?)

Even if President Bush is “the cockiest guy” around, as the former Mexican President Vicente Fox writes in a new memoir critical of W.’s “grade-school-level” Spanish and his grade-school-level Iraq policy, he can’t be feeling good about the barbs being hurled his way by former supporters and enablers.

Rummy’s back in the news, giving interviews about a planned memoir and foundation designed to encourage “reasoned and civil debate” about global challenges and to spur more young people to go into government.

It’s rich. Maybe more young people would go into government if they didn’t have to work for devious bullies like Rummy who make huge life-and-death mistakes and then don’t apologize.

In The Washington Post, he blamed the press and Congress for creating an inhospitable atmosphere that drives good people away from public service. Maybe that’s why he and his evil twin, Dick Cheney, did their best to undermine the constitutional system of checks and balances so they could get more fine young people to serve.

Does the man blamed for creating civil disorder in Iraq even know what the word “civil” means? Wasn’t he the prickly Pentagon chief who got furious with anyone who didn’t agree with him on “global challenges”?

He shoved Gen. Eric Shinseki into retirement — and failed to show up at his retirement party — after the good general correctly told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops to invade and control Iraq. And he snubbed the German defense minister when Germany joined the Coalition of the Unwilling.

Interviewed by GQ’s Lisa DePaulo on his ranch in Taos, N.M., with another mule named Gus nearby, the “75-year-old package of waning testosterone,” as the writer called him, was asked if he misses W. Offering a wry smile, he replied, “Um, no.”

He now treats the son with the same contempt he treated the father with, which is why it’s so odd that the son hired his dad’s nemesis in the first place.

He actually had the gall to imply to Ms. DePaulo that he was out of the loop on Iraq and dragged out a copy of a memo he had written outlining all the things that could go wrong.

In fact, he was the one, right after 9/11, who began pushing to go after Saddam. He and Cheney were orchestrating the invasion from the start, guiding the dauphin with warnings about how weak he would seem if he let Saddam mock him.

The ultimate bureaucratic infighter wrote the memo as part of his Socratic strategy, asking a lot of questions when he was already pushing to go into Iraq. He never did any contingency planning in case those things went wrong; the memo was there simply so that someday he could pull it out for a reporter.

In the same issue of GQ, Colin Powell tried to build up the objections he made to the president, too, in an interview with Walter Isaacson. But nobody’s buying.

Even though he rubber-stamped W.’s tax cuts, Alan Greenspan is now upbraiding the president and vice president for profligate spending and putting politics ahead of sound economics.

He also says in his new memoir that “the Iraq war is largely about oil,” telling Bob Woodward that he had privately told W. and Cheney that ousting Saddam was “essential” to keeping world oil supplies safe.

Irrational exuberance, indeed.

Free at last

Times Select, that hateful NYTimes pay-per-read firewall, is dead! As of midnight tonight, anyway, and along with it, I expect, is the Dowd Effect: the increase past a handful of hits a day whenever Lonnie posts a column here procured from his subscribing friend. OH WELL. Not a popularity contest we're running here, but if you do read, you should probably prepare for all Krugman all the time.