Us Americans, so haughty. If we can't peddle our wares in our own country, there's surely a foreign market that would celebrate us with open arms, yes?

laynegt nailed it - if he's dreaming of waltzing on over to Spain or Italy or Greece or Lithuania with thoughts of playing time and experience-building, he's missing the reality of it all. It'll more likely be:

a) He gets picked up by a Euro power who keeps him on the practice squad, rarely if ever using him in games;

b) A league with a lower grade of competition than the NCAA picks him up and lets him run ragged over hapless yokels, with Jennings then realizing that he's made a huge mistake and would rather be boinking coeds in Tucson than eating perogies every night and being coached in a language he doesn't understand.

The answer is to develop a minor-league system for basketball similar to those of hockey and baseball. Expand the draft, expand the D-league structure, and develop players before calling them up. The quality of the game increases, competition becomes more meaningful, and the schools can go back to being schools.

i don't know if the 49ers, or any other team, ever let anyone play on a freshly-broken ankle. completely confused as to why the author seemed to be going to great lengths to absolve the people she's written about.

i'm sure you've seen this already, but this essay [http://www.nyclu.org/files/criminalizing_the_classroom_report.pdf] (.pdf) posted at the nyclu website describes the police-state atmosphere of nyc's public schools, started by rudy and re-upped by bloomberg without the slightest hint of irony.

america sure loves her affable rich-guy overlords.

i'm not yet to the point where i'm ready to withdraw my support of obama, but this would certainly get the ball rolling.

he has, at least, stood up against john tanner: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post_group/ObamaHQ/CJjC

glenn, i'm in complete agreement with you on all of this. it's certainly not lost on me that the loudest and proudest of the right wing are about as unmoored from reality as someone who supposedly functions in the real world on a barely part-time basis could ever be.

my concern is that you're giving far too much time to their noxious screeches. it's clear that their ideology is bankrupt, delusional, ignorant, conveniently altered when proven wrong, et cetera et cetera. pointing it out simply won't make a difference to them or those unfamiliar with them. time and attention is what they crave, and the only thing that really seems to keep them going is the knowledge that they've offended a much smarter person with their non-logic. that's plainly enough.

you made the point that in order to reach true change in this era of rot and ignorance, one must engage with those who are positively wrong-minded on each point of wrongness. i believe deeper, more meaningful change will come when these idiots are forced to prove their hateful, warmongering, racist b.s. to the general public, who will undoubtedly find it too absurd to give merit. the polls you constantly cite seem to back this up (the desire to end the war, reform healthcare, investigate executive deceit and wrongdoing, etc.). you're much more rooted in reality than any of these nuts flooding your inbox - there's no need to engage them on their level.

Someone watched Frontline last night? Leave it to PBS and Glenn Greenwald to de-scummify the administration even a slight bit.