NFC South Week 2 By Rafael Garcia Sr. Contributing Writer Football Reporters Online Southeast Region

                                    NFC South Week 2
 
By Rafael Garcia
Sr. Contributing Writer Football Reporters Online
Southeast Region
 
 Atlanta 28 Carolina 20
This was another one of those divisional games that would set the tone for the rest of the season. Panther quarterback Jake Delhomme had to regain his confidence and the Falcons were trying to start 2-0 for just the seventh time in team history. Falcon QB Matt Ryan got his team off to a good start and took his team into the locker room with a 21-13 lead at the half. He showed that he is maturing with each game and is starting to take control of the offense as opposed to managing it. He finished 21-27 for 220 yards three touchdowns and one pick. At one point he was so in the zone he completed 13 consecutive passes. It was also the first time in his young career that he threw for three scores in the first half. The Panthers were determined to stop running back Michael Turner but he still managed to get 105 yards on 28 carries. Meanwhile Delhomme got his groove back as he went 25-41 for 308 yards and one touchdown. His big mistake came with just over two minutes left in the game. Chris Houston intercepted his pass that was intended for Steve Smith and then with one last chance his hail mary was knocked away with time running out. So now the Falcons take their show to New England and a chance to put the Pats at 1-2. It will be a homecoming of sorts for Ryan who played his college ball at Boston College.
 
New Orleans 48 Philadelphia 22
Well so much for containing Saints quarterback Drew Brees. After throwing for six touchdowns last week Brees came back with another three. It resulted in another 40-point game for the Saints and another big win. He finished 25-34 for 311 yards with a pick. Brees showed that at this point he is the most prolific passer in the game right now. It was as if he could do whatever he wanted when he wanted to. He hit receivers across the middle and hit them long. The game was close enough in the first half as the Saints held a 17-13 lead. In the third quarter things opened up for the Saints when Ellis Hobbs fumbled the kickoff and Chris Reis recovered it at the Eagle 22. Two plays later it was 24-13 New Orleans. Scott Shanie picked off Philly quarterback Kevin Kolb on the next possession and that led to another score. Now it was 31 -13 just like that and the air was taken out of the Eagles. The questions about backup Kolb were answered for at least one Sunday as he went 31-51 for 391 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions. With McNabb out again head coach Andy Reid will once again turn to Kolb to start next week. So the Saints take their highflying act to Buffalo next week and they do not look like they will be slowed down. Brees is hitting receivers on short passes and they are turning them into big gains. He is hitting his long passes with receivers in stride. The running game is working as well. Now the defense needs to step it up as they have shown that they can give up the big play too. If the “D” can pick it up this Saints team could go deep into the playoffs this year.
 
Buffalo 33 Tampa Bay 20
When the two teams took the field Sunday they looked evenly matched. By the end of the first quarter the Bucs appeared to be overmatched in this one. They allowed Bills running back Fred Jackson to scorch them for 163 yards on 28 carries as their front seven were consistently shoved back by the Bills offensive line. They let them get into a rhythm that produced 220 yards passing and 218 rushing. A balance they cannot allow if they wish to compete with the rest of the NFC South. Yet there was some good production by some in a losing effort. Quarterback Byron Leftwich wasn’t too bad in going 26-50 for 296 yards and three touchdowns. He did make mistakes as well throwing an interception to Donte Whitner who ran it back 76 yards for the score. He was forced to play catch up all day after his team fell behind 17-0 after just one quarter. The running game, that was so successful thus far, produced little to nothing. Cadillac Williams was held to nine yards and the team as a whole managed just 57 in a game dictated by the passing game. The defense gave up 438 yards of offense to Buffalo as Trent Edwards went down field more often than usual. With the game still in hand the Bucs let Terrell Owens get open for a 43-yard touchdown that sealed the win for Buffalo. Now the Bucs fall to 0-2 and find themselves in hole early in the year. Their defense must make their adjustments and Williams must get the running game in gear. Leftwich needs to look down the field a little more and not rely on the short pass as much.  Being in the same division as New Orleans and Atlanta does not give them a lot time to fix things. Next week they have the huge task of trying to stop the New York Giants run machine. A 0-3 hole looks likely if they cannot right this ship during the week.

Naomi Sims, first black supermodel, died of breast cancer at 61; opened doors

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Wow, what a year for the passing of people who formed our modern culture. From Michael Jackson and Farrah Faucett to Naomi Sims, the World's first black supermodel. She passed away of complications due to breast cancer last month at just 61 years old.

By being the first black supermodel, Naomi Sims ironically opened up modeling and the fashion industry for a wider range of women regardless of race. Today fashion and modeling are so much a part of our mainstream culture that BARE Magazine has achieved much success as a college-run fashion magazine at UC Berkeley.



Naomi Sims is the focus of this blog and of a renewed push for breast cancer fundraising and awareness.

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 but thanks to a then-new drug called Femara, she's still doing very well. On October 1st, she turns 75 years old.

Michelle Malkin sends crazy right-wingnuts to attack Zennie

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As I predicted conservative blogger Michelle Malkin played right on cue and sent her band of readers, some of them (not all of them) crazy right-wingnuts, to my first blog post to write all kinds of really ridiculous stuff. 

And I've received some really nutty emails as well.  At least some of them got my name - Zennie Abraham - right, even as they've made every other mistake in the book and issued insults and lies too.  One person wrote that I worked for Elihu Harris and I'm currently his economic advisor and he's the Mayor of Oakland.  Wow, that' was so ten years ago. 

Really. 

I love Michelle, awesome blogger business person, I just happen to hold that she's too conservative to see the light of reality, that's all.

As I said, it seems ok if it's a white Republican POTUS and the kids are worshiping a carboard cutout, but if it's a President Obama song and the kids were celebrating Black History Month, as was the case in New Jersey, she's got a real problem.

Michelle,  great you are, but what do you have against Black History Month? 

Baucus' Finance Committee delays "public option" vote

The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Max Baucus of Montana, has delayed the vote on the "public option" until next week. Possibly in part because the Congressional Budget Office has notified Congress that tethering a public option to Medicare reimbursement rates would save the government $110 billion as reported earlier here. That more savings than even the original "public option" proposals by leveraging a system that's already in place.

Or maybe it was partly a reaction to the reprehensible, fear-mongering mailer from Humana to senior citizens on Medicare. Whatever the causes, as the bills stand now, people can not opt out but are stuck with what their employer offers, an obvious nod to big insurance companies which threatens portability while protecting their profits. There are lots of ways to improve the bill, and fiscally responsible ways to reform health care and health care payment systems in the USA.

You now have more time to get those emails sent and be heard.

Senate Finance Committee
Democrats	Republicans
MAX BAUCUS, MT JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, WV KENT CONRAD, ND JEFF BINGAMAN, NM JOHN F. KERRY, MA BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, AR RON WYDEN, OR CHARLES E. SCHUMER, NY DEBBIE STABENOW, MI MARIA CANTWELL, WA BILL NELSON, FL ROBERT MENENDEZ, NJ THOMAS CARPER, DE	CHUCK GRASSLEY, IA ORRIN G. HATCH, UT OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, ME JON KYL, AZ JIM BUNNING, KY MIKE CRAPO, ID PAT ROBERTS, KS JOHN ENSIGN, NV MIKE ENZI, WY JOHN CORNYN, TX

It's clear there's no "perfect" system, and there's big money riding on keeping things "as is," but despite the money-hungry spin from fast-talking pundits playing free and loose with the facts, despite the 6-to-1 ratio of health care lobbyists to members of congress, and despite the rampant misinformation campaigns, one thing has become obvious to even the most casual observers:

There is lots of room for improvement in the current scheme.

We've got to concentrate on finding a fairer way to distribute the costs while controlling the expenses. The good news is: the benefit of any and every improvement will flow to you, and me, and our community - no matter if you think of community as the neighborhood, the city, the country, or the planet. And now you have just a little more time to make that point with the members of the committee.

Do it now...

...then Digg this post!

Ellen DeGeneres tweets makes UC Berkeley place to be - but for a sexy strip down?

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Yesterday's giant UC Berkeley student, worker, and teacher walkout protesting the planned tuition increase and the privatization of Cal was aided on Wednesday by the tweets of the always interesting Ellen DeGeneres of The Ellen Show, who's Twitter account has over 3 million followers (I'm one of them)

(Hey, it's Follow Friday! Follow me on Twitter!)

Ellen DeGeneres started with this:

Are you in Berkeley, California? Are you near Berkeley? Can you get to Berkeley by tomorrow? Then keep following my Tweets. 6:41 PM Sep 22nd from web

Then...

Tweet to UC Berkeley: Students, faculty, honored guests, keep studying my Tweets. There's gonna be a test today.11:30 AM Sep 23rd from web

And then...

People of Berkeley: Go to Sather Gate NOW. First 10 to whisper MUFFIN to Aaron get a Samsung Jack phone & are in the running 4 a huge prize.

Finally...

Followers in Berkeley, Californian the games over for today. Thanks for playing and keep watching my TWEETS.6:46 PM Sep 23rd from web

And today...

You saw my tweets to the UC Berkeley students yesterday -- today find out what I made them do! They had to bare it all. http://su.pr/2N2oUP

The person who stripped down in the ASUC Store got a prize.

Video:



Ok. Once again, Ellen's shown the power of Twitter, but in the process managed to give the impression that students were just hanging out with nothing better to do. In the video that appeared on the show there's no mention of the issue that was to take place the next day.

Plus, there's no tweet from Ellen expressing support for the protesters or the students - many of whom are followers of Ellen on Twitter - who are being squeezed by the cost to get an education.

What did Nicholette get for being in the buff in the ASUC? A $1,000 and a trip to see The Ellen Show. Man, for all that Ellen could have made a bigger statement by paying for her semester at Berkeley!

Samsung may not have wanted to get involved in a political statement as the sponsor of this tweet stunt, but given that students need money to buy their products, Samsung missed the boat here. Moreover, Ellen DeGeneres has enough juice to have talked them into something more productive than was done Wednesday.

Like what? Well she could have driven followers to the UC Student Walkout website for them to "get educated" on the issue and how it impacts students.

Tom Hayes: The profit motive is great, but...

There was a time when the concept of community was strictly geographic - in practical terms, what happened to people who directly affected your chance of survival was what mattered. Money and technology have profound ramifications for how we see communities and how they function.

We're all utterly interconnected.

Here's an overview, with excerpts, of the recent article, "Communities of Interest" describing the debate over health care insurance reform from a moral and community perspective at the Actualizers blogsite:

In the richest, most technologically advanced nation in the world, the United States of America, we are debating the merit of extending health care coverage to tens of millions of our closest friends and neighbors by making it affordable. Tens of millions of American citizens have no health care insurance.

Yet, rather than examine the successes in other countries and adopting their best practices, big business interests in this debate are spending millions of dollars every day (collected from health care premiums) to influence the men and women in Congress, who are sorely outnumbered by the lobbyists. It's a travesty - a sham - that makes a mockery of the alleged reliance on free markets to insure efficiency and improvement of goods and services.

One way or another, we pay.  One way, with only some of us insured, we not only pay for the costs of treating the uninsured, including potentially their bankruptcies, we also pay 8-digit salaries and bonuses to CEOs and lobbyists who profit from rising costs that have outstripped inflation for three decades.  Those costs do get spread across the area where the insurers do business, of course.

There's certainly no "perfect" system, and there's big money riding on keeping things "as is,"  but one thing has become obvious to even the most casual observer:

There's lots of room for improvement in the current scheme, for finding a fairer way to distribute the costs while controlling the expenses, and the benefit of improvement will flow to you, and me, and our community - no matter if you think of community as the neighborhood, the city, the country, or the planet.

The "profit motive" is great. It brings consumers choices for fair trade coffee, and tea parties, and "out-of-season" blueberries, and Blackberries™, and a veritable plethora of choices for our transportation, wardrobes, and more. It also brings the cost of MRIs down in Japan, by orders of magnitude when compared to what we pay in the USA - why is that? Because we've let the system of paying for health care mimic a competitive market, and fallen for the eristic rhetoric that preserves the profits of these gargantuan companies, sometimes operating as virtual monopolies. In practice it's not possible for a consumer to make a real, let alone well-informed choice, about health care costs or insurance.

The Congressional Budget Office has notified Congress that tethering a public option to Medicare reimbursement rates would save the government $110 billion! That's more than even a "public option" in which the government has to negotiate rates with doctors and other health care providers, which the GOP seems so opposed to. There are LOTS of ways to improve the bottom line -- but the bottom line is:
It's time to get the profit motive out of health care insurance.

Read more?

Michelle Malkin's silly, baseless, "Obama Dear Leader" witch hunt

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UPDATE: Malkin sends crazy right-wingnuts to attack Zennie

Michelle Malkin's being silly and I'm gonna have a lot of fun!

The idea that conservatives - or those who choose to follow what I call a "couch potato conservative" line as if they were Star Trek's "The Borg Collective" - have been mean, biased, misguided, and silly in the Age of Obama is proven every day in ways large and small.

Michelle Malkin, who brands herself a conservative blogger, has just shown a new way to present conservative silliness: picking on little school kids and teachers who make up songs about President Obama.

Man, this is about as bad as the birthers, and I've said a bunch about them...



Poor Michelle got herself in a fit because a teacher at B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington Township, NJ had her students make up a song about President Obama.

I mean, Michelle got really upset about the matter. Why? It's not like the town is Republican; it's over 50 percent Democrat and the way the GOP's going that 46 percent claiming to be for them is going to shrink for sure.

Plus, from what I've seen the kids didn't go off and complain. And Michelle's right about someone saying "Hey you're reacting because its kids of color so you're being a bit racist there" because she is being just that. Really. She is. So stating it was a good idea even if it doesn't soften the intellectual blow that's coming.

Why do I make that claim?

First, why in God's name would Malkin link to every conservative flack on the block about this matter, and uh, second, forget that in 2006 school kids were instructed to make up a song praising FEMA and its work in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and then sing it directly to Laura Bush!

I'm serious! Stop laughing. Check the link above.

So these kids - none of color by the way - were brainwashed to think the government did a great job in "restoring" Louisiana after Katrina when it point of fact almost 1/16th of America was socially and economically devistated and FEMA did nothing to provide meaningful relief in a timely fashion.

Yet, Michelle Malkin's whining about a harmless song about President Obama, who took over an American Economy wrecked by George W. Bush, including a Louisiana that's a shadow of its former self in the wake of Katrina.

And speaking, er, writing of President Bush, what about the "Jesus Camp" where kids were worshiping a cardboard cutout of good old Number 43? Ah, didn't see it? I've got it right here for ya:



Now I'd bet Michelle would say, "Aww, that's so cute!" Why? Because the kids are white and its George Bush? Yeah, right. And so there's the racial problem - she can ignore singing if its done by white school kids praising a white Republican President, but if the subject's America's first black President, she gets really mad.

Oh, brother.

Michelle, please. Come, on. Will ya? You've got no choice here; no cherry picking. Either accept them all, or denounce them all.

I told you I was going to have fun!

Susan Boyle | Susan Boyle's album "I Dreamed A Dream" releases November

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Wow, Susan Boyle has, as they say, "blown up" and doesn't show any signs of stopping with her first album "I Dreamed A Dream" to be released in November. And a new look, courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.

This is what I said about Boyle when I first heard her music and her story:



It was just April of this year that the World was shocked to attention by Boyle's amazing voice and the Internet turbo charged her into stardom, taking what in the past I estimate would have been two years to occur and shortening it to just a few months. The first YouTube videos of Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent were seen over 150 million times!

With all of her attention, it's hard to believe she didn't win that competition, and I still maintain Boyle should have quit BGT. But that all seems a distant memory now. 

Oakland City Council meeting parking video - city staff clowns around

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Yesterday I blogged on how the Oakland City Council got its ass chewed out by angry Oakland business owners and residents Tuesday night over the new parking enforcement process, especially the $55 tickets and the 8 PM daily end time. I promised a video; here is the first of a set of them:



It features Grand Lake Theater owner Alan Michaan explaining that he wants the Oakland City Council to "rescind (the parking plan) or (be) recall(ed)" and Chinatown Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Carl Chan explaining that his well-organized group (which will be more of the focus of my second video), has no such intentions.

The video at nine minutes long also features the angry rant of Oakland retailer Steve Salazar, who accuses the City of Oakland of "predatory parking ticket" practices. But I want you to notice the African American gentleman in the background as Steve is talking to the council.

For some reason that man decided to clown and show the inside of his coat. Why and who he is I do not know, as I didn't pay attention to him at the time. But I can tell you that he's an Oakland City staffer and his antics demonstrate how little the City's staff cares about the feelings of the City's people.

It's also a lesson in what not to do before the cameras. He was better off being still and just listening.

But I digress.

After Steve's rant I also talked to Oakland commercial real estate broker Barbara Kami, who explained that she wished the Oakland Businesses were as well organized as the Oakland Chinatown businesses, a direct slap at the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, which had only one staff representative there and no - I repeat zero - organized membership effort.

Given how active Alan Michaan has been in this effort, perhaps the Oakland Chamber of Commerce should give him a leadership role in the organization.

Barbara's right. The Oakland business community, which is being negatively impacted by the plan, was all but invisible, and we have to ask just what the Chamber's up to. But that's a question for another blog post. The other problem is that City of Oakland's staff in the city finance and administration offices has to identify $900,000 in money that in reality doesn't exist.

The motion presented Tuesday night by Councilmembers Pat Kernighan (District Two - Elmhurst / Glen View) , Jane Brunner (District One - North Oakland), and Jean Quan (District Four - Montclair), was for the roll back of parking enforcement hours from 8 PM to 6 PM and for the following actions to be implemented:

1) Add 250 metered stalls citywide to bring in $200,000
2) Create a new program to enforce against illegal use of handicap parking placards, to bring in $150,000
3) Open the Pacific Renaissance Garage for nighttime use to earn $80,000
4) Redirect a portion of revenue from parking garage augmentation to the general fund at $100,000
5) Sell ad space at the back of parking payment receipts at $30,000

I have to say the last idea is totally morbid. How would you like a parking payment receipt with an add for a massage on the back of it? I mean that could happen under this idea, you know?

Councilmember Desley Brooks (District 6 Central East Oakland) made an excellent point when she asked about the cost of implementing these mesures, which was not known, but one guess a City staffer offered was that the 250 metered stalls alone cost $8,000 each to purchase.

Each.

So, the City of Oakland would spend $2 million to collect just $200,000 from those meters.

That's just plain stupid.

Overall, the motion is - and I don't mean this personally - not a good idea. Folks, the bottom line is there's not $900,000 out there to get. And as much as I may think Oakland City Administrator Dan Lindheim's not at the level of a Robert Bobb, he at least had the guts to say so Tuesday night, but he hedged and said "maybe $200,000".

I'll go a step further than that, and say the Oakland City Council should just cut $900,000 in services to offset the revenue loss. What does gall me is this:

The Oakland City Council doesn't listen

The Oakland City Council doesn't listen to the market even as its talking to the group. Councilmember Brooks wants to have a parking needs study done to determine how we should address this problem of enforcement and parking need.

Look, the people of Oakland have emailed, called, and talked to the City Council - they are the market. They're telling the Council they want free parking in commercial areas on certain days, affordable tickets, and enforcement hours that stop at 6 PM. That's it.

They're also telling the Council that they don't want the city's budget problems balanced on their backs. So I say, cut the budget. Oh, and what about Councilmember Jean Quan's little attempt to dig at Oakland Auditor Courtney Ruby's budget? That was a funny one.

Tuesday night, Councilmember Quan blurted out an idea where the City should take the $410,000 of whistle-blower money that was allocated to Ruby's office and has remained unused, and also said that since its a two-year allocation adding up to just over $800,000, it should be used.

I laughed, and Councilmember Brunner, who was in the Presidents chair leading the Council at the time, quickly changed the subject thus basically saving Quan from looking real, real bad.

Now, it's a rumor that Ruby's considering running for Mayor of Oakland, and we know Quan's had a series of exploratory meetings - just a way of getting her face out there - on what Oaklanders want from their mayor, so I think Quan's shooting across Ruby's bow here. It came off to many in the room as if she was picking on Ruby.

But messing with whistle-blower money or even thinking of it, was a bad move on Quan's part. The money's untouched as of this writing; in two weeks, we'll see what Oakland's City staff comes up with, and let's hope that they can avoid clowning before the cameras.

Humana Medicare misleading elderly members about Heath Care Reform

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According to Dawn Teo, a blogger over at the Huffington Post, Humana Medicare has deliberately sent misleading mailers about President Obama's health care reform proposal.

Humana's Michael Graves designed headquarters

The mailers falsely report that the reform plan will cut "important services and benefits" from Medicare. Teo explains that Health and Human Services's (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wrote Humana asking them to stop sending such false and misleading information.

Humana's political advocacy actions are outrageous. Read Teo's article and inform her if you've received such mailers from your heath insurance provider.

Mackenzie Phillips poll: what do you think of her "sharing?"

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Mackenzie Phillips, the child star of the 70s hit "One Day at A Time", appeared on Oprah Wednesday and will again on Friday of this week to share the news that she had a 10 year sexual relationship with her dad, John Phillips, lead singer of "The Mamas and The Papas."

The media blitz or "wave" started by her Oprah appearance is timed with the release of her book called "High on Arrival" in bookstores today.

What do you think of Mackenzie Phillips' actions? Take my poll, below:

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Mackenzie Phillips had sex with dad, John Phillips - talks to Oprah

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Mackenzie Phillips took "TMI" to a new level.

I saw the news and had to tune in, if only for 16 minutes, but to see Mackenzie Phillips just pour herself out to Oprah and say that she had sex and drugs (and well, rock and roll) with her father John Phillips was just, well, it made my skin crawl.

I didn't see the entire segment; Valerie Bertinelli made a surprise appearance on the show to share her concern for her friend. Real sad. Really is.

("Rape" is how it was described by one website but she had relations with him repeatedly until he, according to her statements on Oprah, wanted her to be the mother of the other kids.)

It seems like it's in this new "tell-all" pattern we're establishing where Megan Fox talked to Rolling Stone in a similar way:



And we have Michelle Wie blogging her talents and her bod:



But Mackenzie Phillips, who I watched religiously on "One Day at A Time" just took my breath away and made me wonder how much we should bear as public figures.

I mean, ok, Mac went through an abusive teenage phase to be sure, but to bring it out as she did?

Here's Celeb TV's video summary:



I go back and forth on this and admit to some confusion in the whole deal. See, part of me understands that she obviously from her tears on Oprah needed the release but yes it was timed to the release of her book, which has her account with her father in it.

She's certainly going to make money from bearing her soul and "sharing" but now anyone with kids who happened to hear this has some explaining to do I would think. Which brings me to this poll question: should MacKenzie Phillips have spilled the beans the way she did, so publicly?

How much is too much?

Here's the poll:

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