In a related item, George Will's column today urges Obama to go ahead and run. This is the second notable voice from the right to make an argument for Obama that I've noticed. (The Chicago Tribune said the same thing two weeks ago.) Of course, none of these voices would be caught dead urging anybody to actually VOTE for Obama, in a primary or in November 08.

I'm beginning to sense a pattern. What it seems to be saying is that the right believes Obama CAN win the Democratic primary. But they also believe there is no way that a black man named Barack HUSSEIN Obama can win the presidency itself. (Limbaugh regularly describes the Senator using all three names.)

I think, despite the polls cited in your post, that the right is still desperately afraid of Hillary Clinton. They view her with the same fear and loathing that Democrats reserved for Karl Rove. They believe nothing is beyond her evil ken. They know the playbook on Obama, however. (They tried out a few pages on Harold Ford, it seems.)

Bush has no problems sleeping because he is comfy in the bosom of the Lord.

He has made it abundantly clear that he believes he is doing God's work, fulfilling God's special plan for him. If God's plan includes wrecking the global reputation of the US of A, the bloody deaths of thousands of US troops and perhaps a hundred-fold more (but ultimately countless) Iraqis, the shredding of the Constitution, the destruction of the American middle-class, the trampling of the poor and so much more, well, "tough tostados, amigo" as the Decider-in-Chief might say.

This is why religious zealots are so dangerous. No amount of evidence, of reason, of appeals to common sense and logic and generally accepted morality, has any traction with them, because all of that is blotted out by the blinding light of the Allmighty.

It is no wonder that Bush sleeps soundly. It is the rest of the world that lives his nightmares for him.

I'm glad to see that the Journal has finally just dropped the pretense of responsible journalism and now just prints the President's message verbatim.

I am heartened, however, that what this might mean is that the number of dithering fools who will come out and speak publicly in support of this dolt is dwindling to the point where he has to write his own letter to the editor. Is it possible that even the likes of George Will and David Brooks can no longer keep their lunch down and prop up this puppet? One can only hope.

Revenue sharing for Division 1A can work. In fact, there's already a form of revenue sharing for the BCS conferences, and for those conferences that have a TV deal all their own. It CAN, but it WON'T. It won't because the NCAA doesn't want it to work and won't ever want it to work. As far as the people running the NCAA are concerned, it WORKS just fine right now for them, thank-you-very-much.

It should also be noted that the overall revenue pot for sharing could be sweetened even more if the NFL (and maybe the AFL and CFL, too) were made to pony up a percentage of league revenue for the right to use the schools as their minor league farm system.

The reason we should care about how much the programs are throwing at these coaches is that the vast majority of these institutions are to one degree or another taxpayer supported. Most colleges are state institutions, with faculty salaries set by legislatures or some other governmental board. If you bust your tail to pay even in-state tuition at a Big 10 school (for example), and your kid is being taught by TAs because the school can't afford to hire enough tenured faculty while at the same time it's tossing multi-millions at the football and basketball coach, you have all the right in the world to say STOP!

In the same vein, we should care when people charged with teaching our kids take such apparent pride in being such lying bastards. I care a lot more about an NFL coach lying to the press when it turns out that a public institution just forked over 32 million clams to hire the lying bastard as a role model for our kids.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised anymore, but the President has frequently said -- in response to questions about troop levels -- that he would provide whatever level the generals on the ground told him were needed. Now that Abizaid and Casey are telling Bush that the troop surge he wants isn't the answer, he cans them.

"I'll do whatever the Generals say we should do, as long as they keep telling me what I want to hear."

Among the great surprises on NYD was the teaming of Bradshaw and Long on color for the Sugar Bowl. I guess you either love or hate these two, but I get a kick out of their goofing on each other, and you realized during the game itself that they really do know quite a bit about the game. They would have been a welcome replacement for the analysts on the title game.