Will Brett Favre Drive the Brad Childress Car Far?

Baby you can drive my car
Yes I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I’ll love you

 

“Speaking of whether I ever punched a coach — I never drove anyone from the airport, either.” John Madden, from the New York Times NFL blog The Fifth Down, on Brad Childress being Brett’s chauffeur.

 

It seems Snake Stabler had to drive himself after all, eh?

Isn’t the Brad and Brett bonding all a bit weird? The whole coach picking up the aging Hamlet like QB at the airport thing?

Didn’t it seem strange?

It seemed almost a type of gleeful groveling. I mean, did the head coach clean his house and give him a back rub later?

Does Brett get breakfast in bed served by Brad?

If Favre gets such favors what does one do for Adrian Peterson? Carrying him around like a Caesar of old one hopes for the team success rests on his healthy wheels. 

And what of Sage who blew up from the southwest? Has he been reduced to a foot stool?

Isn’t it hard to picture a smiling Bud Grant picking Fran Tarkenton up at the airport, grabbing his bags, and shuffling him, a month or so late, to training camp.

Poor Joe Kapp likely had to run from the airport to the field in full pads—and like it.

Bud Grant was laid back about training camp but surely so laid back that he was a chauffeur.

Though maybe he should have driven Tommy Kramer around from time to time.

And I wouldn’t joke too much with Fran Tarkenton, either. That old purple player sounds like he wants to challenge Favre to a duel. 

They are both southern men so why not? It’s tradition after all.

What about a grinning Tom Landry, the fedora would fit a well dressed driver, picking up Roger Staubach at the airport and driving him about Dallas?

A big Landry smile and  a “Welcome to Dallas Roger your gonna love it here! Lily is fixing your room up right now!”

That’s what the Cowboys have those cheerleaders for, right?

Jim McMahon would have loved to scream “Hey Ditka easy with those damn bags and don’t tell me you forgot my beer cooler again! Ditka you dupe!”

Be careful driving with Ditka at airports though because he once got a DUI leaving the airport after the team returned from a rare victory in San Francisco. The coach consumed most of the victory wine, sang songs of victory on the planes loud speaker, and later ,as he was being handcuffed beside the highway by the police, listened to his players beep, beep, beep, their horns as they drove on by.

One wonders if Ditka’s mentor, Papa Bear Halas, ever played chauffeur for his prized players?

“Halas get your old ass over here I’m in a hurry!”

And wouldn’t Terry Bradshaw have loved to give Chuck Noll an easy Cajun grin and say “Coach can you slow it down a little. Road rage isn’t good for your blood pressure and can we grab some take out quick? The airplane service sure sucks. Come on Chuck give us a chuckle. Put on your happy face!”  

Bill Walsh once dressed as a hotel porter to welcome his players to their super bowl week hotel so perhaps he would drive a quarterback about but who would he pick up first Joe Montana or Steve Young?

Maybe Dan Marino could get away with shouting the airport “Come on Shula you pick me up in this piece of junk and I don’t want your boy carrying my bags. You do it…he’s just clumsy. I bet you never picked up Unitas in a junker like this.”

How about Phil Simms shouting “Where in the hell is the Tuna? I told him nine and I mean nine not nine fifteen!”

Maybe it will all work out in Minnesota.

Maybe Favre will be like a lost Lancelot arriving from the mythical mist at the nick of time to save his King from doom and gloom and finally bring a Super Bowl banner to the land of the lakes at last.

Or maybe it’s all a purple haze in Brad’s brain. Maybe lately things don’t seem the same. Maybe Brad’s just acting funny and he don’t know why.

Favre will likely fail.

It’s all in time for Brad Childress now. Nothing less then an NFC Championship game appearance, and maybe even a Minnesota win there, will stop Viking owner Zygi Wilf from taking what’s left of his coach’s scalp.

But Favre worked best under a highly disciplined, big boss man coach, like Mike Holmgren, who controlled his turnover making recklessness.

Can a chauffeur by a coach like that?

And  the quarterback was, of course, much younger then. Now he seems older and perhaps slightly insane judging by all  his waxing and waning in the media spotlight.

Or maybe Favre just hates the Green Bay Packers that much.

Or loves attention, and the money, that much.

Or maybe he is Mississippi mad.

Or a combination of all three.

Either way I see a slowed by age and injuries old quarterback, who missed most of camp, struggling with a new team and his own fading talent.

That dome turf is a hard, hard bounce.

And next year at this time a bruised, but retired, Favre will be sitting on his porch in Mississippi sticking pins in his Packer voodoo doll.

Favre will be working his best Cajun ju ju to jinx the Cheese-heads.

And if his mojo is really magical maybe Jay Cutler will go down next year and maybe the Chicago Bears will finally call him.

Maybe the Bears will bring him back from the swamps like the NFL’s Freddy Kruger for one more sequel.

One more shot ought to do it.

And Brad?

He’ll be driving himself somewhere.

Maybe Utah or Idaho to coach tight ends or quarterbacks after what is known as the Favre fiasco comes crashing down round him like the Hindenburg.

Brett will need a different driver to catch the plane back to Mississippi come cold January.

Maybe Bud Grant’s available.

 

Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah
Beep beep’m beep beep yeah

The NFL Sunday Ticket Tango: Greed Is Good

“Greed is good.” Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street; still a motto in many parts of the land.

 

In these tough economic times, one would think businesses based on customers’ leisure time habits would cater their products to retain their customer base.

Not so with the NFL and its long time partner DIRECTV.  The NFL Sunday Ticket is around a salty $270 bucks. To get the high definition DIRECTV, it’s another $10 a month on your bill.

But the big kick in the butt is some grotesque feature called Super Fan, which must be bought for another Benjamin to be able to view NFL games in high definition.

If one doesn’t fall for Super Fan, and has HD definition DIRECTV and the Sunday ticket, my understanding is that your regular satellite channels carrying NFL games will be as scrambled as Lindsay Lohan’s brains after morning mojito No. 5.

Doesn’t the NFL and DIRECTV make enough money from fans?

The NFL is talking tough economic times all the while pushing $10,000 personal seat licenses and $10 beers. Roger Goodell rolled back his raise; fear not—me thinks he is getting by—and Washington Redskin Danny Snyder had 15 low level staffers thrown in the muddy Potomac, but I suspect those are just NFL flares fired to warn the Players Association the next contract won’t be a piece of ice cream cake.

On Goodell’s part anyway, Danny Snyder might just get his kicks by acting like a poor Potomac version of bullying Napoleon on a bad day. No scratch that Napoleon was much better at strategy and picking personnel then Snyder will ever be.

And Bonaparte won some big ball games a few times.

But back to DIRECTV and the NFL Gods. Why the extra costs at a time when most customers are cutting costs? Why add to the burden when many NFL fans are trying to lighten their economic load?

The NFL made more then many third world countries last year. The NFL is more stable than Honduras. The owners are billionaires, the players millionaires, and most of their play pens were paid for by tax payers, so why turn the screws on fans with vile inventions like the hideous Super Fan?

The NFL and DIRECTV recently signed a lucrative extension until the year 2014. Unless the Mayans are right and the world ends in fire, ice and space rock spice on the Winter Solstice of 2012, they both will make a bundle of bucks on that deal.

How much is enough?

After 2014, if the NFL doesn’t leverage its NFL Network into a pay-per-view package with a $99 Super Bowl Pay-Per-View Special by then, DIRECTV will continue with its coverage.

But by 2014, the Oakland Raiders and Washington Redskins will likely have had seven new head coaches a piece and the Bengals will still be getting arrested. Al Davis will be confined in a cage like mad Ezra Pound, the Rams will be back in La La Land, and Michael Jackson’s funeral games, hopefully, will have finally ended. Jimmy Buffett will be singing fins, fins, fins brought to you via Viagra from a walker at halftime of Fish games. Jessica and Jerry will have both dumped Tony and TO will still be unhappy somewhere. Brett Favre will be considering a come back. Tom Brady will have bad knees and a worse divorce. Peyton Manning will be winding up his career unhappily in Carolina and on cheap Burger King commercials chasing that creepy King around a french fried filled football field.

And of course all NFL quarterbacks will be protected in the pocket by armed Blackwater guards in expensive shades and carrying orders to kneecap any defender that gets within five yards of the perfumed Princes of the pocket.

Things change, but fans are the constant that keeps the massive economic wheels of the NFL spinning along.

Still they keep churning out ways to grind out more dollars. The obscenity that is the Personal Seat License, perhaps the single worse invention ever in sports, outrageous game day prices and parking, tax payer built palaces, $25 hats, $100 jerseys, $10 beers, so why do they have grab an extra Benjamin to watch games in HD?

At long last have they shame? Can the beast’s appetites never be abated? Must it feed, feed, feed and want more, more, more?  

Even Grendel was never this greedy. But that old boy had issues and could not beat the Vikings. The NFL is thriving, driving, and doesn’t live, insane and lonely, in a cave with its mean Monster Momma.

Don’t get me wrong; I love the Sunday Ticket. It’s one of the world’s greatest inventions, right up there with beer in a 30 pack, the Supermodel, the 46 Defense, the wheel, fire, free Internet porn, and the written word.

All things the Founding Fathers, but particularly the Buddy Ryan look alike Benjamin Franklin, loved or would have loved if he lived a bit longer.

The NFL and DIRECTV should give something back to the fans or at the very least not give something high, hard, and unwanted to the fans.

Throw the fans a bone baby, roll back the beast, pin back the price, and slay the Superfan.

NFL Wars: The League Duels Delaware On Gambling

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits. ~ Mark Twain

The NFL, like Clemenza in The Godfather, is going to the mattresses with Delaware over sports gambling.

Clemenza used a sawed-off shotgun but the NFL has more wicked weapons with its venal lobbyists and vicious lawyers.

Cranky Clemenza had his faults of course, but unlike the NFL he wasn’t a hypocrite; jihading dear old Delaware, the first state, on the same week the league jumped into the lottery ticket market.

Believe me Bubba, a football bet isn’t a great investment, then again what is these days, but trying your luck on a lottery ticket win is south of a slots spin. 

The lottery is not far from a fixed faro wheel in the old West, except a smiling Doctor Henry Holliday isn’t staring back at ye with a stacked pair of Smith and Wessons.

Still its your choice to roll the dice. Roll those bones with General Motors stock, a slot spin, or the Ravens plus four. Roll, its your right. America used a lottery to fund the revolution and to raise money for a broke Thomas Jefferson.

But today, as old bitter Bierce once said, the gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

So the big billion buck boys that back, and own, the NFL can play the Hedge Fund Wheel of Fortune with our banks and mortgages, but still shake a disgusted finger if the great unwashed wish to wager on a football game.

Play that 401K away, but no action on Sunday football showdowns.

The rub here be that the NFL feels the need to try to legislate morals to the fans that feed its flames. The folks that pay the way for the stars of today.

So if Delaware’s citizens, Governor, and government say they want sports betting, who is Roger Goodell to say no you can’t do that?

Is Roger our Big Brother? Is the NFL more powerful then Delaware?

In most civilized nations, gambling on sports, and elections for that matter, is legal and taxed. Does the NFL think we be such soft brains, so feeble-minded, that a sports betting parlor at a Dover race track would lead to mass fixing of NFL games?

The integrity of the game is at stake Goodell will say, but gambling on games is available in Las Vegas and on countless Caribbean based Internet accounts, and the game survives.

So why not legalize and tax it. Is a sports bet worse than an NFL lottery ticket? Worse than Keno and Powerball? Worse then the racetrack or the dog track?

Who has the money to bribe an NFL player anyway? Even the backups make millions, so what type of monetary offer do you make to a key player to throw a game?

Maybe a multimillion dollar divorce would shake a player’s financial base, but a person that can produce those type of blackmail pictures does not need to lay off bets at a racetrack in the Delaware countryside.

The folks that would gamble on sports at a racetrack are unlikely to be folks able to catch a Super Bowl quarterback in a compromising picture position with a playboy bunny, page boy Jose, or both.

That type of blackmail would affect the integrity of the game, not a racetrack football parlay by a run down Charles Bukowski type track fly. 

The NFL can’t be every player’s watch dog and it certainly shouldn’t be every citizen’s Big Brother. The NFL should not lean on Delaware with its lecherous lobbyists and leech like lawyers.

Lobbyists and lawyers that are paid by funds generated by sweet taxpayer-paid-for stadium deals.

The NFL does not need to get in to the habit of reforming its fans’ habits.

The NFL is here to entertain us, not rule us through its big dollar dogs in DC.

Fans should not be afraid of the NFL. The NFL should be afraid of its fans.

The fans have to send the NFL a message it can’t refuse.

Don’t dog Delaware.

The Ten Worst Run NFL Franchises

In the NFL the owners ask a lot of the fans. The personal seat licenses extortion, ten buck beers, seven buck hot dogs, six buck sodas, full priced exhibition game tickets, twenty five buck Made in China team caps, seventy five dollar made in Indonesia game jerseys, thirty dollar parking, and tax payer funded stadiums to name just a few perks.

They ask for all that and more. Each year, every year, Gang greed wants more.. More, more, more. But fans of certain franchises always get less, less, less.

Some teams seemed doom. Whether cursed by the ghost of Bobby Layne, just destined to be team ruled by pettiness due to some rogue DNA rolling around the owners brain, or just plain incompetence and bad luck some teams always seem to be on the losing end.

So while the NFL and its billionaire boys club prepare to go the mattresses with tiny Delaware and its dreams of a state sponsored sports betting, while the always hypocritical NFL rolls out lottery ticket games, lets look at the franchises that give their fans the worst bang for their buck.

 

1. Detroit Lions

Its been almost fifty years since Bobby Layne blew Motown in a huff and the Lions have been mostly lusterless ever since.

Beside George Plimpton, Barry Sanders, and the brief bright light of Billy Sims there has not been much to excite Lion fans since.

Its beating a dead cat but what have the Fords been worst at football or Ford Motors? Both seem dead in the water and Motown might be an American ghost town soon.

The Los Angles Lions? It has a ring to it. The Hollywood Lions?

 

2. Cincinnati Bengals

The Bengals broke into a pair of Super Bowls in the eighties but its been a two decade dead spell since. A dead spell broken by a string of spectacular arrests and failed teams.

Owner Mike Brown is considered to be one of the cheapest owners east of the Bidwells, and the Bengals always suffer from a short scouting staff and an inability to develop quality players or sign key free agents.

Superman used to have an enemy known as Bizarro who was an evil opposite version of Superman formed by a laboratory experiment gone horribly wrong. That is the Bengals in comparsion to their division rival Pittsburgh Steelers.

What direction would the Bengals have taken if they had hired assistant coach Bill Walsh all those years ago? Would Ken Anderson be wearing a few Super Bowl rings right now?

Owner Paul Browns mania prevented the Bill Walsh hiring and  Walsh always wondered why. So do the Bungle faithful.

 

3. Cleveland Browns

The city and franchise have not been the same since Marty Schnottenheimer decided to play prevent defense against John Elway on what become known as “The Drive”.

The there was the sad sequel “The Fumble” then  the tragey “The Modell Move” and since then team returned its been mostly flat line football.

The recycled New York Jet Wonder Child wants to can the franchise quarterback from South Bend before he has a chance to prove he’s another bad Brown. Its a big bet by a magic man who should little magic on Broadway.

The team lacks direction and talent and its Super Bowl less streak will continue well into the twenty teens and beyond.

But the 1940’s and the Jim Brown era were quite a run. And quite a long time ago. Best thing for Browns fans to do now is to block arch betrayers Art Modell’s Hall of Fame hopes.

The Hall of fame isn’t for rats is it?

 

4. Arizona Cardinals

A Super Bowl appearance doesn’t erase the curse of the Bidwells. Long known as one of the worst owners in any professional sports the fanatically frugal Bidwells won’t let the Cardinals success stand long.

Like the Phoenix their city is named for expect this bird to rise from the ashes only once very five hundred years or so.

The Bidwell’s would bring down any franchise in any sport in any country.

 

5. Kansas City Chiefs

While his Daddy HL Hunt was digging oil and talking John Birch blues and his brother Bunker was cornering the silver market Lamar Hunt was given the Chiefs to play with

And they played well in the 1970’s. But its been a long sad, slow decline since the days of Lennie Dawson, Willie Lanier, Buck Buchanan, and Hank Stram.

Under the mismanagement of Herman Edwards and Carl Peterson the Chiefs ended up a very boring team, very losing team, with little talent and less reason to spark any hope in the hearts of Chief fans.

Its cold in Missouri at football games in winter time and Kansas City desperately needs to do something positive for its besieged, and worse bored, fan base.

 

6. San Francisco 49ers

Shopping mall Godfather Eddie Debartolo liked to try to bribe corruptible Southern Governors and to bet big on his team but at least he wanted very badly to win.

And win the big one. Never again will we see an owner willing to stockpile his team with so much high priced talent.

The salary cap won’t allow an owner to import the entire  starting defensive line of the San Diego Chargers as back ups or stash Steve Young on the roster after slipping a fellow owner a million in cash as Eddie D once did..

But at least Eddie D wanted to win the York’s don’t seem to care. The lack of Fast Eddie D has laid this once proud franchise low.

 

7. Oakland Raiders

I like Al Davis. He’s done more for football then any modern era owner but the old pirate needs a first mate who can pick talent, pay coaches contracts, and negotiate trades.

Al has lost his magical mojo.

Mehopes he gets his mojo back but the pirate king is aging and the players he picks aren’t playing at a high level anymore.

John Madden phone home? Help Mad Al find his mojo.

 

8. Dallas Cowboys

Like Lamar Hunt old Dallas Cowboy owner was the scion of a Big Oil Dallas Daddy.

But Clint, unlike Hunt, was a wild one who loved his booze, pills, powders, cheerleaders, and Cowboys.

But unlike Jerry Jones Clint hired Tom Landry, Gil Brandt, and Tex Schramm to run the football end of things while he funded the fun times until his bubble burst.

Jerry Jones thinks he is Tom Landry, Tex Schramm, Gil Brandt, and Clint Murchison Jr. ruled into one all knowing football being.

The Cowboys have not been the same since Jimmy Johnson left. When was the last time the Cowboys won a playoff game?

Jones seems like he has more fun running a free wheeling circus rather then a football team so Cowboy fans ought to enjoy Jessica Simpson new reality TV show which will feature their starting quarterback in a starring role.

Would Roger Staubach do that? What would have Tom Landry said about that?

Who knows? But the circus is in town and fans better pluck up the big bucks to see the show.

The last time fans in Dallas town were being held up like this was when Clyde Barrow was running about West Dallas with a wild woman, bootleg booze, and a trunk full of stolen guns.

Anyone want to buy any naming rights for the ball park?

 

9. Washington Redskins

Even in his eighties Old Redskin billionaire owner Jack Kent Cooke liked his wild, wind shield riding, drug toting, brown eyed South American ladies and he loved his Redskins.

He left his Redskins in the able hands of Joe Gibbs and Bobby Beathard. To current owner Daniel Snyder the Redskins are but a big toy to boost his ego and build his bank account by fleecing the Redskin faithful.

Failed coaches and free agent flops come and go quicker in DC then corrupt lobbyists these days and under Danny it doesn’t seem like it going to get better.

But for the fans it will definitely get costlier.

Why pay more for a product so much poorer then it was two decades ago?

Well it is Washington.

 

10. Chicago Bears

Sure they signed Jay Cutler but its a shameful stain on the teams old name that all its passing records are held by Sid Luckman who retired sixty years ago before passing rules were liberalized.

The Bears owners have a history of cheapness and it all began with the Papa Bear George Halas.

Bronko Nagurski left the Bears in the thirties because pro wrestling paid better then the Papa Bear did. Mike Ditka, the player, once said that Halas threw nickels around like man hole covers. The great Dick Butkus’ career was riddled with bad knees and worst contract disputes.

QB George Blanda was  signed by the Bears for six hundred dollars, a fee Halas hounded Blanda to refund when he made the team, and after long running money feud with Halas Blanda left the Bears for a Hall of fame career elsewhere. Blanda later said Halas was even to cheap to buy him a kicking tee.

The great Bear team of 1985 was dismantled by Halas grandson, Mike McCaskey, who refused to bring in a capable back up QB or USFL stars while releasing such stars as Wilbur Marshall, Willie Gault, and Otis Wilson over contract disputes. 

With Cutler the Bears finally have a capable QB but it might have came four years after their defense peaked.

Don’t expect a Bear to change its coat.

NFL Declares War on Poker

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.—Ambrose Bierce

 

Mark Twain once wrote that nothing needs reforming more then other people’s habits.

And the NFL wants to reform your online habits.

The NFL, always a bright beacon of morals in a blighted land, has decided to self-righteously step into the public morals debate. The NFL does not want a bill allowing online gambling, that is a current bill legalizing poker, to pass.

The NFL behemoth is so against people playing online poker that they have hired a high priced Washington Lobbyist, opened a DC office, and set up a PAC Donation committee to help its noble cause.

So that’s where ticket increase money goes. That’s why the stadium beers are nine bucks and the exhibition games are full priced flops. Perhaps that explains the PSL’s. The league needs just craves some spare change to pay some politicos for favors.

Nah, the PSL’s are pure greed. Nothing more nothing less.

But give it to Roger Goodell, a senator’s son, who knows the Beltway better then the ball field. And he does not want folks wagering on the internet on his football games.

The NFL has thrown its vast wealth and political power into the anti-poker fray.

The old battle cry, of course, is to maintain the integrity of the game. Online Poker will be the straw that breaks the NFL camel’s back. Corruption will take hold across our fair land and shame our national game.

But the battle to set the public morals has made some mighty strange bedfellows for the NFL.

Fearing that the evils of online gaming are sapping its failing strength in a fading economy, the NFL has found a strong moral ally in North American and Native American tribal casinos.

Both casino organizations throw a lot of money, and junkets, at the politicos trying desperately block online gaming.

Online poker is, of course, a severe threat to the core values of America.

A sleeper cell buried on the internet.

And everyone knows the boys in Vegas and Atlantic City have always been men highly concerned with the moral makeup of American society…

The last gambling threat to so shake the foundations of the NFL were likely the frogmen who took Baltimore Colts/LA Rams owner Robert Irsay for his last swim or maybe the bookies that took San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie Debartolo’s weekly massive 49er bets.

The politicians agree. The integrity of the scared game itself is at stake. It’s time for a stand.

It’s time for Johnny Unitas to go for six and the cover and skip the easy three and the win.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, a friend of the casino boys in Vegas, fights immoral online poker with one hand, and with the other, lobbies hard for a tax payer built Vegas Mob Museum.

The long awaited Vegas Mob Museum!

No poker on the computer in your basement, boys, but for $15, we will show the kids where Bugsy Siegal’s brains were scattered in Vegas. Frank Costello says keep your mind off the showgirls, kids.

How about the real story of Tony “the Ant” Spilotro and the Stardust and Circus Circus? Child, did you ever hear of a man monikered Mad Sam DeStefano?

Look kids: This is where the bomb lifted Lefty Rothenstein out of his car. This is the very seat that saved him.  Want to sit on it for a $5 picture?

Put in $5, press the play button, and hear the sad song of Sonny Liston.

Charming, eh?

Maybe.

I’d go to it. It certainly is no worse, morally, then online poker. But neither should be monitored or made by the government.

The old ale soaked scribe at the bar once scribbled that the government that governs best governs least.

Another odd NFL poker ban pal is the Christian Coalition.

The congressman most concerned about the effect of poker and football betting on the morals of America is the honorable Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, via Massachusetts.

Congressman Goodlatte, a member of the Christian Coalition, loves his cyber security task force, perhaps because they give him a secret Dick Tracey badge or watch. The congressman is a powerful member of the Agriculture Committee.

Oddly enough, he can combine his pair of politico power toys.

See, Senator Goodlatte also loves the slaughter of horses, but he denounces online poker as a threat to the very soul of America.

I guess he missed Gable and Monroe in The Misfits.

Goodlatte, after securing lots of donations from casino owners and their ilk, raged against internet gambling.

The same folks that sent Senator Bob piles of cash also have a vested interest in some racetracks and thoroughbred operations around the nation.

Some of those folks like selling their used up race horses to slaughter. Some of these same folks also do not want gaming competition for their casinos. Some of those same folks still have some skim and swag to spend to set their agenda.

So Senator Bob also became a key player in supporting horse slaughterhouses around the United States. He actually personally blocked a law banning slaughtering horses, while still leading the fight against internet poker.

And what would the the restless ghost of Colonel Mosby think of a carpet-bagging Yankee promoting horse killing and poker slaying in his home state of Old Virginia?

Goodlatte, in these trying economic times, is a man with serious issues on his brain and in his billfold. I mean, in this terrifying economic tempest, it’s good to know a stern man of morals in Washington is bravely fighting to stop poker and start horse slaughterhouses.

Someday, likely outside a seedy second rate casino with a run down sleazy track, someone might build a bird shit-stained statue of the moral law maker.

Then sacrifice a healthly horse under it.

Still, the good senator has formed an odd alliance with the NFL, the Christian Coalition, Casino Owners, Donald Trump, Donald Trump’s hair, and the gambling tribes of North America.

Who would have thought the linear descendants of Francis Lightfoot Lee, Cotton Mather, Elmer Layden, George Halas,Tecumseh, Neamathla, PT Barnum, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, and a dead, dyed, rotting raccoon (the closest thing I could think of for Trump’s hair) would join hands to battle online poker?

Granted, greed unites, politics have no relation to morals and, of course, the covetous are always in want, but that’s still a strange brew to be passing the peace pipe and moaning about the loose morals of online gaming, or of anything for that matter.

Other politicos, with, apparently, not much else on their plate, have also stepped into the fray.

Iowa republican Jim Leach called online gaming “a double-whammy for society. It is so seductively habit-forming that individuals can in short order lose their homes and jobs and, indeed, their families and futures. And the effects on individuals redound into society.”

At first I though Senator Leach meant crack cocaine or the stock market. Somehow I did not know internet poker or a football bet threatened the very fabric of the republic.

Currently, banks must regulate credit card transactions to assure that the money is not being used for online gambling.

Banks can’t even regulate the billions of bailout bucks they have ravenously gobbled up, and now they are the online gaming morals cops?

And really, don’t banks have enough to worry about besides bets on poker or football? 

Sure, sweet Sir J. Allen Stanford, that crooked Texas banker man, stuck a lot of banks in Antigua. Offshore banks that handle a lot of poker and gambling action.

But is that gambling action worse then Wall Street speculation? Surely, Sir J. Allen Stanford dealt with some shady characters with Slavic accents, but perhaps Sir J. Allen will learn the meaning, at long last, of buy the ticket, take the ride.

Why not say good-bye to all that nonsense and legalize it and tax it.

States are desperate for revenue. What’s the difference between betting on a horse or a numbers drawing and wagering on football or poker, except that your odds are better?

Sports gambling is accepted throughout Europe, Asia, and exotic Canada.

Why must Americans cling to Puritan morals and make it illegal? Why must we protect the cash flow of a cartel of special interests groups, Vegas, Atlantic City, tribal casinos, the NFL, and corrupt politicians?

Why not legalize it and tax it?

And why outrage over poker, which is the quiescent American pastime?

And why does Roger Goodell care if I play online poker? Why must the NFL interfere with our lives? Why is it using fan generated money against its fan base?

Presidents as diverse as US Grant, Warren Harding, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama enjoyed poker.

At the funeral of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, jokes were made about his fondness for his monthly poker games and gambling with the other Supremos and select DC insiders.

The states run various lotteries, rip off tickets, race tracks, casinos, slot parlors, dice games, and keno.

All are worse bets then wagering on sports or playing poker.

Betting lines of NFL games are published in papers nationwide.  Betting on NFL games is mentioned on most NFL pregame shows and on countless Web sites.

Poker and football betting are two of the most popular American pastimes. Well, they were anyway, when folks still had jobs.

Each year the Super Bowl is the most highly wagered on event nationwide.

Why not make it all legal?

And again, why doesn’t the NFL and Goodell mind their own damn business about people’s private poker habits?

Why doesn’t a revenue starved state take a wild leap and legalize sports betting?

Delaware: I’m talking to you.

What’s Goodell gonna do to Delaware, anyway? Take away its NFL Sunday Ticket? Invade and vandalize it with his Visigoth-like Cincinnati Bengals?

Or will the NFL just be outraged?

Folks are very good at outrage these days. But can’t they find something else to be outraged about than poker?

And can’t Roger Goodell find something better to do with his time and the fan’s money?

But most of all, Mister Goodell, why don’t you mind your own damn business?

Hypocrisy: Prejudice with a halo.—Bierce, still lost in Old Mexico.

 

 

 

 

 

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