So, let's see what going on right about now:
Around the World:
- More turmoil in the Middle East - in what seems to be coming closer and closer to an out and out war, Turkey is now banning Syria from it's air space.
- In Scotland, progress is being made towards the referendum on independence, as Scottish leader Alex Salmond meets with British Prime Minister David Cameron. It looks like the three centuries old union with England is on the verge of being dissolved, now.
- 22 people that were leaving their mosques were slaughtered in a village (Dogo Dawa) in Nigeria.
- There was a peace deal with Muslim rebels in the Philippines that will perhaps be a step towards setting up an autonomous region.
- Cambodia's former king, Norodom Sihanouk, died in Beijing. He was 89 years old.
RIP, Arlen Specter
He was a longtime moderate Republican senator of three decades, and often was outspoken.
Specter was best known for maintaining an independent streak within the party that hardly tolerated deviation. He had fights, often quite public, with prominent leaders within the GOP. He was best known as a Republican for all of those years, yet it should be noted that he started off his political career as a Democrat and, at the very end, he ended it by rejoining them.
Here is an article about various reactions from prominent politicians on the death of Specter:
http://news.yahoo.com/reaction-death-ex-sen-arlen-specter-pa-191825835.html
Politics
Bill Clinton is now going to go in big time in these final weeks of the election campaign, rallying in support of incumbent President Barack Obama.
Right now, following Obama's disastrous performance in the first debate, and with the second debate looming (on Tuesday), Barack Obama has quickly went from seeming like he was about to wrap up the election, to seemingly being in a tight race, with his entire Presidency, and legacy, on the line.
The last time he was in such an unsure place was just before the Democratic Convention, and guess who made a remarkable speech that defined the prior four years and created a defining narrative, better than President Obama had managed to do during that entire four years, and really helped the President out by giving him a decent bounce in the polls? That's right: Bill Clinton. Of course.
Clinton will continue to pound the case for four more years of Obama as President, and he could very well help, like he did at the Democratic National Convention a few weeks ago.
"He's got a way of communicating complex ideas in plain ways that no one else has," says Greg Haas, who ran Clinton's campaign in Ohio in 1992, "...He's in a class by himself."
Well, now that Obama finds himself in trouble again, he is turning to this old, not exactly political ally, but fellow Democrat nonetheless ex-President. Clinton will be on the campaign trail, making the case to give Obama four more years in office.
I wonder if Obama will try to find out if Clinton could legally replace him in the next debate? He certainly had a very strong ability to communicate effectively, and perhaps he can at least give Obama some tutorials to prepare him for the next debate on Tuesday.
Obama himself has mused on this very idea, joking that he should appoint the former President "secretary of explaining stuff."
Clinton's specialty is politics, and perhaps it will do him good to get back to a more active and prominent role. He just seems to thrive under those conditions, and he very well may wind up helping Obama yet again. It likely won't hurt Obama's chances, in any case.
http://news.yahoo.com/bill-clintons-back-campaign-game-big-time-143643283--election.html
Sports
The big game yesterday was the showdown in San Fran. My favorite team, the New York Giants (4-2), had knocked off the San Fransisco 49ers (4-2)in the NFC Championship Game last season, but many people felt that they had gotten lucky, that it was some kind of a fluke. The 49ers were talking revenge for most of the week, and the general consensus was that the 49ers, who had beaten the Jets (on the road), and the Bills in the previous two weekends by a combined 79-3, were going to rattle the Giants and exact a measure of revenge, en route to further establishing themselves as the best team in the league, and the favorites to at least represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.
The general consensus is that the 49ers are the most physically punishing team in the league, and nobody but nobody can come into their house and run successfully against them. I even had a coworker who believed that Coach Harbaugh just might have deliberately had his team lose to the Vikings in order to avoid the pressures of an undefeated season, citing how the new England Patriots caved to the pressure a few years ago. Lose on purpose to avoid that pressure. In week 3. Right.
But indeed, many seemed to think that the 49ers were just that good, that they already belonged in the conversation as the greatest teams in NFL history.
Yes, they are good. Undeniably so. But that good? You can tell before mid-season? Really?
But the Giants came in and tore the 49ers apart, at least on this Sunday. What about the conventional wisdom that you don't even bother trying to run on the 49ers? The Giants ran the ball, and stuffed it down the 49ers throats. The secondary is supposed to be liability on an otherwise solid defense, but they picked Smith off three times. The Giants dominated, through and through, and the end result was a 26-3 spanking that shocked the NFL.
But why? The Giants are the defending champions, after all. Sure, they have been inconsistent so far this season, and have had their share of problems. But today, at least, the Giants reminded us why they won the Super Bowl last years, and twice in the last five seasons, as they responded like champions.
Otherwise, this was a strange weekend in football, with tons of upsets. The Giants game might not qualify as a huge upset, but nobody expected the Giants to win the way that they won it. But the Packers (3-3) finally began to look like the Packers of the previous three or so seasons, playing their most solid game of the season last night to hand the previously undefeated Texans (5-1) their first loss - in Houston! - by scoring a whopping six touchdowns against Houston's vaunted defense, en route to a 42-24 thrashing. So, the two most recent Super Bowl champions, respectively, took down the two teams that, arguably, had looked like the two most dominant teams in the league up to this point. Some people already had made predictions of a Super Bowl match up between San Fransisco and Houston. But the Packers and Giants, maybe, have something to say about that. And they each have recent Super Bowl experience, something that, for now, those two other teams are lacking.
Atlanta, the only other team still retaining an undefeated record entering this weekend, managed to remain undefeated, but only by surviving a real squeaker against Oakland at home. The Cardinals (4-2), who until last weekend remained undefeated, now have lost two in a row, and look more and more like the same old Cardinals that we have always known. But another team in the NFC West might just be for real: the Seattle Seahawks. They held off the Patriots (3-3) yesterday, who look far from the powerhouse team we all expected them to be. Another traditional AFC powerhouse, the Pittsburgh Steelers (2-3), also continue to struggle, as they lost to Tennessee on the road, and have yet to win on the road this season. Finally, let's congratulate the Cleveland Browns (1-5), who had been the league's last remaining winless team, on winning their first game yesterday! That first win can be the trickiest, as pressure mounts when it begins to take such a long time. Now, the Browns have that monkey off their back, they can probably focus on trying to make some of the improvements that they had been focusing on winning some games, as their new owner aims to build a winner in the city by the lake.
In baseball, Detroit managed to take the first two games against the Yankees in the Bronx, and the series now shifts to Detroit. The Yankees will be without their star, Derek Jeter, for the rest of these playoffs. It looks pretty grim at the moment for the Bronx Bombers. I don't particularly like them, but feel badly about Jeter. You have to like Detroit's chances of getting back to the World Series, and I'll be pulling for them if they do. In the National League, the resilient defending champions, the St. Louis Cardinals, managed to best the San Fransisco Giants in the first game of that series. Both teams are recent World Series champs (combined, they won the last two series), so it should be an interesting series.
Otherwise, in tennis, Roger Federer managed to reach his 300th overall week atop the rankings on the men's side - easily a record. I don't know whether he has a shot at hanging onto the top spot until the end of this year, which would tie him with Sampras's record of six years overall atop the rankings (although Sampras did manage to achieve that feat in six consecutive years). I know that I have really expressed amazement on this blog at times regarding Federer, but this guy just continues to amaze me! He just holds himself with such a measure of dignity and class, which is a refreshing change in sports. His list of accomplishments are really unbelievable and daunting, surely, to competitors and opponents. Congrats, as always, to the Fed!
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