Oakland Raiders Wanted Falcons QB Matt Schaub Now Uncertain About #1 Pick - ProFootballWeekly.com

From ProFootballWeekly.com

Raiders upset they couldn’t land Schaub, still unsure how to spend No. 1 pick

Oakland

Of all the rumors coming out of Oakland in the weeks leading up to the draft, two things are certain: The Raiders remain undecided as to which direction they will go with the first overall pick, and they were very disappointed in their inability to acquire Falcons QB Matt Schaub, who was traded to the Texans in March.

Schaub had worked with new Raiders offensive coordinator Gregg Knapp in Atlanta, and they had high hopes for building around him right away. One factor that could play a major role in which direction they go with the first pick is the potential trade of WR Randy Moss, which could net them a veteran quarterback or at least put them on the lookout for one, as well as have them suddenly leaning toward Georgia Tech WR Calvin Johnson.

Without a Moss trade, however, the decision would come down between Russell, who has the big arm that owner Al Davis covets, and Notre Dame QB Brady Quinn, who is viewed as more NFL-ready than Russell and has a better work ethic. Quinn’s dedication and experience in a pro-style system should bode well in the eyes of new head coach Lane Kiffin, who tutored Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart at USC, but according to insiders, Russell had a slight edge as of this writing.

Drew Bledsoe Retires From Pro Football

Bledsoe retires, ends 14-year career
By Michael Smith
ESPN.com

Rather than spend a 15th season standing on a sideline as a backup, quarterback Drew Bledsoe has decided to walk away from pro football.

Bledsoe, 35, retires fifth in NFL history in pass attempts (6,717) and completions (3,839), seventh in passing yards (44,611), and 13th in touchdown passes (251).

The No. 1 overall selection in 1993 by the New England Patriots out of Washington State, Bledsoe spent his first nine seasons with the Patriots, the next three with the Buffalo Bills, and his last two with the Dallas Cowboys.

"I feel so fortunate, so honored, to have played this game that I love for so long, with so many great players, and in front of so many wonderful fans," Bledsoe said in a statement released through his representatives at Athletes First. "I fulfilled a childhood dream the first time I stepped on an NFL field, and the league did not let me down one time. I retire with a smile on my face, in good health, and ready to spend autumns at my kids' games instead of my own. I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life."

A four-time Pro Bowler, Bledsoe backed up Tony Romo for the Cowboys' final 11½ games last season and had no interest in continuing his career in that role. Cincinnati and Seattle are said to have had interest in Bledsoe as a backup to Carson Palmer and Matt Hasselbeck, respectively.

"This is something I've been thinking about for quite a while," Bledsoe said last night from his home in Bend, Oregon. "I felt like this was the way I was going to go late in the season. I wanted to spend some time with it and not make a rash decision."

Being benched at halftime of Dallas' sixth game -- the third time Bledsoe lost his starting job though the first time he'd been outright replaced during the season -- did not rob Bledsoe of his confidence. He says he isn't leaving the game because he feels he's finished. As a matter of fact he says he feels as good as he did a decade ago.

Elias Says
Drew Bledsoe averaged 34.6 passes per game in his career, the highest average for any player in NFL history. Next-highest (minimum: 100 games): Dan Marino (34.5), Brett Favre (34.1).
• Read more Elias Says.

"The reason for the decision is not because I don't want to play anymore," he said. "The reason is there's a lot of other stuff I'm excited about doing. The positives of retiring outweighed the positives of returning and my desire to still play."

Bledsoe, who led New England to an appearance in Super Bowl XXXI and earned his lone championship ring with the Patriots in 2001, listed among his proudest accomplishments the respectable manner in which he carried himself on and off the field and the fact that he never literally had to be carried off the playing field.

"Looking back, I wish some things had gone differently," Bledsoe said, "but throughout 14 years in a very high-profile position in some high-profile places that I represented myself and my family well in terms of how I conducted myself on the field and off."

Though he took plenty of hits and sacks, Bledsoe, a prototypical pocket passer, almost always got up. He started all 16 games nine times.

"Nobody ever had to come and get me off the field," he said. "Even in New England [in '01 after Mo Lewis of the Jets leveled him with a hit that sheered a blood vessel] I went back out there and they had to tell me to stay out. I never once stayed down."

Bledsoe was unable to regain his starting job from Tom Brady -- he did, however, get a relief win in the AFC title game -- and the following offseason the Patriots dealt him to Buffalo. Three years later his run with the Bills ended when the team decided to hand the starting job over to first-round pick J.P. Losman.

His signing with the Cowboys prior to 2005 reunited him with Bill Parcells, the coach who drafted him in New England. With Dallas headed toward a disappointing 3-3 start, Parcells benched Bledsoe in favor of Tony Romo at halftime of a nationally-televised game against the Giants. The Cowboys released Bledsoe in March.

Bledsoe, however, says he harbors no ill will toward Parcells, Belichick, the Bills, anyone.

"I'm not leaving the game with any hard feelings," he said. "I had a great career and I enjoyed all of it, with the exception of losing. I enjoyed the time I had with all the teams I played for. I played with a ton of great players and a ton of great people.

"[Last season] was hard. Very hard. Nobody said life was fair but that was a tough pill to swallow. I'm happy for Tony who's a good guy and a good player. It was sad for him the way the season ended. It's just that I felt like that team had a chance to do some things and I wanted to be on the field with those guys. It didn't work out. But there's no bitterness toward anyone over anything that happened."

A Bledsoe comeback later in '07 or in '08? Not happening, he says. Money certainly is not a source of motivation -- from 1993 through 2003 Bledsoe received more than $62 million in compensation, most in the league. Bledsoe is leaving the game not because the right opportunity isn't available but to take the opportunity to spend more time with his wife, Maura, and their four children while pursuing business endeavors and continuing his charitable work through his foundation, Parenting with Dignity.

"That's why I waited this long to make an announcement," he said. "I wanted to be very sure. I needed to get some emotional separation from last season to make sure I wasn't making a decision I would regret. I wanted to make sure it was the right thing and it is. I would say this is a definite."

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut dies - NYTimes News Service

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut dies

By Dinitia Smith
New York Times News Service
Published April 11, 2007, 10:49 PM CDT

NEW YORK -- Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.

Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and '70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

Like Mark Twain, Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?

He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. "Mark Twain," Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, "Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage," "finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died."

Not all Vonnegut's themes were metaphysical. With a blend of vernacular writing, science fiction, jokes and philosophy, he also wrote about the banalities of consumer culture, for example, or the destruction of the environment.

His novels -- 14 in all -- were alternate universes, filled with topsy-turvy images and populated by races of his own creation, like the Tralfamadorians and the Mercurian Harmoniums. He invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism (based on the books of a black British Episcopalian from Tobago "filled with bittersweet lies," a narrator says).

The defining moment of Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. "The firebombing of Dresden," Vonnegut wrote, "was a work of art." It was, he added, "a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany."

His experience in Dresden was the basis of "Slaughterhouse-Five," which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, "so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age."

To Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," summed up his philosophy: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'"

Vonnegut eschewed traditional structure and punctuation. His books were a mixture of fiction and autobiography, prone to one-sentence paragraphs, exclamation points and italics. Graham Greene called him "one of the most able of living American writers." Some critics said he had invented a new literary type, infusing the science-fiction form with humor and moral relevance and elevating it to serious literature.

He was also accused of repeating himself, of recycling themes and characters. Some readers found his work incoherent. His harshest critics called him no more than a comic book philosopher, a purveyor of empty aphorisms.

With his curly hair askew, deep pouches under his eyes and rumpled clothes, he often looked like an out-of-work philosophy professor, typically chain smoking, his conversation punctuated with coughs and wheezes. But he also maintained a certain celebrity, as a regular on panels and at literary parties in Manhattan and on the East End of Long Island, where he lived near his friend and fellow war veteran Joseph Heller, another darkly comic literary hero of the age.

Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922, a fourth-generation German-American and the youngest of three children. His father, Kurt Sr., was an architect. His mother, Edith, came from a wealthy brewery family. Vonnegut's brother, Bernard, who died in 1997, was a physicist and an expert on thunderstorms.

During the Depression, the elder Vonnegut went for long stretches without work, and Edith Vonnegut suffered from episodes of mental illness. "When my mother went off her rocker late at night, the hatred and contempt she sprayed on my father, as gentle and innocent a man as ever lived, was without limit and pure, untainted by ideas or information," Vonnegut wrote. She committed suicide, an act that haunted her son for the rest of his life.

He had, he said, a lifelong difficulty with women. He remembered an aunt once telling him, "'All Vonnegut men are scared to death of women.' "

"My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside," he wrote.

Vonnegut went east to attend Cornell University, but he enlisted in the Army before he could get a degree. The Army initially sent him to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon) in Pittsburgh and the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering.

In 1944, he was shipped to Europe with the 106th Infantry Division and shortly saw combat in the Battle of the Bulge. With his unit nearly destroyed, he wandered behind enemy lines for several days until he was captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp near Dresden, the architectural jewel of Germany.

Assigned by his captors to make vitamin supplements, he was working with other prisoners in an underground meat locker when British and U.S. warplanes started carpet bombing the city, creating a firestorm above him. The work detail saved his life.

Afterward, he and his fellow prisoners were assigned to remove the dead.

"The corpses, most of them in ordinary cellars, were so numerous and represented such a health hazard that they were cremated on huge funeral pyres, or by flamethrowers whose nozzles were thrust into the cellars, without being counted or identified," he wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death."

When the war ended, Vonnegut returned to the United States and married his high school sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox. They settled in Chicago in 1945. The couple had three children: Mark, Edith and Nanette. In 1958, Vonnegut's sister, Alice, and her husband died within a day of each other, she of cancer and he in a train crash. The Vonneguts adopted their children, Tiger, Jim and Steven.

In Chicago, Vonnegut worked as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. He also studied for a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago, writing a thesis on "The Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales." It was rejected unanimously by the faculty. (The university finally awarded him a degree almost a quarter of a century later, allowing him to use his novel "Cat's Cradle" as his thesis.)

In 1947, he moved to Schenectady, N.Y., and took a job in public relations for General Electric Co. Three years later he sold his first short story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect," to Collier's magazine and decided to move his family to Cape Cod, Mass., where he wrote fiction for magazines like Argosy and The Saturday Evening Post. To bolster his income, he taught emotionally disturbed children, worked at an advertising agency and at one point started an auto dealership.

His first novel was "Player Piano," published in 1952. A satire on corporate life -- the meetings, the pep talks, the cultivation of bosses -- it also carries echoes of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." It concerns an engineer, Paul Proteus, who is employed by the Ilium Works, a company similar to General Electric. Proteus becomes the leader of a band of revolutionaries who destroy machines that they think are taking over the world.

"Player Piano" was followed in 1959 by "The Sirens of Titan," a science fiction novel featuring the Church of God of the Utterly Indifferent. In 1961, he published "Mother Night," involving an American writer awaiting trial in Israel on charges of war crimes in Nazi Germany. Like Vonnegut's other early novels, they were published as paperback originals. And like "Slaughterhouse-Five," in 1972, and a number of other Vonnegut novels, "Mother Night" was adapted for film, in 1996, starring Nick Nolte.

In 1963, Vonnegut published "Cat's Cradle." Though it initially sold only about 500 copies, it is widely read today in high school English classes. The novel, which takes its title from an Eskimo game in which children try to snare the sun with string, is an autobiographical work about a family named Hoenikker. The narrator, an adherent of the religion Bokononism, is writing a book about the bombing of Hiroshima and comes to witness the destruction of the world by something called Ice-Nine, which, on contact, causes water to freeze at room temperature.

Vonnegut shed the label of science fiction writer with "Slaughterhouse-Five." It tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an infantry scout (as Vonnegut was), who discovers the horror of war. "You know -- we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves," an English colonel says in the book. "We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. My God, my God -- I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.'"

As Vonnegut was, Billy is captured and assigned to manufacture vitamin supplements in an underground meat locker, where the prisoners take refuge from Allied bombing.

In "Slaughterhouse-Five," Vonnegut introduced the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, his fictional alter ego. The novel also featured a signature Vonnegut phrase.

"Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round," Vonnegut wrote at the end of the book, "was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.

"Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes."

One of many Zen-like words and phrases that run through Vonnegut's books, "so it goes" became a catchphrase for opponents of the Vietnam war.

"Slaughterhouse-Five" reached No.1 on best-seller lists, making Vonnegut a cult hero. Some schools and libraries have banned it because of its sexual content, rough language and scenes of violence.

After the book was published, Vonnegut went into severe depression and vowed never to write another novel. Suicide was always a temptation, he wrote. In 1984, he tried to take his life with sleeping pills and alcohol.

"The child of a suicide will naturally think of death, the big one, as a logical solution to any problem," he wrote. His son Mark also suffered a breakdown, in the 1970s, from which he recovered, writing about it in a book, "Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity."

Forsaking novels, Vonnegut decided to become a playwright. His first effort, "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," opened Off Broadway in 1970 to mixed reviews. Around this time he separated from his wife, Jane, and moved to New York. (She remarried and died in 1986.)

In 1979, Vonnegut married the photographer Jill Krementz. They have a daughter, Lily. They survive him, as do all his other children.

Vonnegut returned to novels with "Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday" (1973), calling it a "tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." This time his alter ego is Philboyd Sludge, who is writing a book about Dwayne Hoover, a wealthy auto dealer. Hoover has a breakdown after reading a novel written by Kilgore Trout, who reappears in this book, and begins to believe that everyone around him is a robot.

In 1997, Vonnegut published "Timequake," a tale of the millennium in which a wrinkle in space-time compels the world to relive the 1990s. The book, based on an earlier failed novel of his, was, in his own words, "a stew" of plot summaries and autobiographical writings. Once again, Kilgore Trout is a character. "If I'd wasted my time creating characters," Vonnegut said in defense of his "recycling," "I would never have gotten around to calling attention to things that really matter."

Though it was a bestseller, it also met with mixed reviews. "Having a novelist's free hand to write what you will does not mean you are entitled to a free ride," R.Z. Sheppard wrote in Time. But the novelist Valerie Sayers, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote: "The real pleasure lies in Vonnegut's transforming his continuing interest in the highly suspicious relationship between fact and fiction into the neatest trick yet played on a publishing world consumed with the furor over novel versus memoir."

Vonnegut said in the prologue to "Timequake" that it would be his last novel. And so it was.

His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, "A Man Without a Country." It, too, was a best seller. It concludes with a poem written by Vonnegut called "Requiem," which has these closing lines: When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, "It is done." People did not like it here.

Faulty Reasoning - British Prime Minister Tony Blair Blames Crime Rate On Black Culture

There's a rising tide of faulty reasoning on a great many matters. For example, it's logical that the combination of racial discrimination and poverty would cause an increase in crime. But forgetting this -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair gives in to a kind of racism by just lock-stock-and-barrel blaming the crime problem on Black Culture.

See the pattern:

1) Deny the Black's in an area access and jobs.

2) Segregate them

3) Watch as the crime rate increases.

4) Then blame the group of Blacks for the problem due to the culture formed by item 1.

5) Which causes public policy to continue item 1.

6) Which continues the cycle.

Nuts.

Senator Barack Obama on David Letterman - Video

Senator Barack Obama made perhaps the most important visit of this young presidential run. He went on the David Letterman show.

Now, while this may not seem like a big deal -- it is. There's no where to run or hide and you just have to be yourself. Barack Obama was just that, and it won over Letterman who basically said he'd vote for him -- more than once.

OK, he said I'd vote for the suit, I like the suit, but it came off as a coded statement for -- "I like you and I'll vote for you." And the audience clapped.

Senator Obama did well at balancing the serious with the humorous, and yet came off as Presidential. That's a hard "go" but he did it.

Everyone should be proud and excited!

MSNBC Drops Don Imus

After a rowdy and racist comment, which came at the expense of the Rutgers Women's Basketball team, and calling them "Rough Hos'" and "Nappy Headed Hos" and much exhange between bloggers , media annoucers on television and radio, and a sharp exchange between Al Sharpton and Don Imus on Sharpton's show, "Today's Show" host Al Roker calling for his head, then three key sponsors -- Staples, Proctor & Gamble, and Bigelow Teas backing out, MSNBC has elected to drop the simulcast of Imus' radio show.

Here's the report from MSNBC:

MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 1 minute ago
NEW YORK - MSNBC said Wednesday it will drop its simulcast of the “Imus in the Morning” radio program, responding to growing outrage over the radio host’s racial slur against the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

In a statement, NBC News announced "this decision comes as a result of an ongoing review process, which initially included the announcement of a suspension. It also takes into account many conversations with our own employees. What matters to us most is that the men and women of NBC Universal have confidence in the values we have set for this company. This is the only decision that makes that possible."

The network statement went on to say, "Once again, we apologize to the women of the Rutgers basketball team and to our viewers. We deeply regret the pain this incident has caused."

(MSNBC TV is wholly owned by NBC Universal. MSNBC.com is a joint venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft).

The network’s decision came after a growing list of sponsors — including American Express Co., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., and General Motors Corp. — said they were pulling ads from Imus’ show for the indefinite future.

But it did not end calls for Imus to be fired from the radio portion of his program. The show originates from WFAN-AM in New York City and is syndicated nationally by Westwood One, both of which are managed by CBS Corp. For its part, CBS has not announced plans to discontinue the show.

Before the announcement was made, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) had appeared on the MSNBC program "Hardball," where host David Gregory asked the senator and presidential candidate if he thought Imus should be fired.

Controversy continues to swirl around radio host Don Imus after his controversial remarks on-air.

"I don't think MSNBC should be carrying the kinds of hateful remarks that Imus uttered the other day," Obama said.

He went on to note that he and his wife have "two daughters who are African-American, gorgeous, tall, and I hope, at some point, are interested enough in sports that they get athletic scholarships. ... I don't want them to be getting a bunch of information that, somehow, they're less than anybody else. And I don't think MSNBC should want to promote that kind of language."

Obama went on to say that he would not be a guest on Imus' show in the future.

Team wants to question Imus about remarks
On his April 4 show, Imus and his producer had referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

The 10 members of the Rutgers team spoke publicly for the first time Tuesday about the on-air comments, made the day after the team lost the NCAA championship game to Tennessee.

Some of them wiped away tears as their coach, C. Vivian Stringer, criticized Imus for “racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable, abominable and unconscionable.” The women, eight of whom are black, called his comments insensitive and hurtful.

Randy Moss - Too Much Made Of His Minicamp No Show

The Oakland Tribune's Jerry McDonald reports that Randy Moss did not arrive for the team's minicamp, to which I say "so what?"
It doesn't mean he's being traded, as much as some in the media may want that to happen.