The Kerry, or should I say the Bush, debate performance is now showing up in almost all the polls. You cannot rationalize that inept display. The President is supposed to KNOW things and Bush appeared not to know. I'm still a Bush guy but reality is reality. One more debate like the last one and it's all over.

Sports in the Big City can be a one of the best feel good things ever. Both of our baseball teams are in the post season playoffs and tickets are being sold for $500 per seat. The USC-Cal college football game has sold out (92,000) and tickets are going for $1,500 per. It has been twenty years since we last had a truly big football game around here so this is like deja vu all over again for football fans.

High School football is getting big again (it's never been anything but big in Texas) as FOX is televising games nationally. But this brings us to recruiting teen and pre-teen kids to play at certain schools. The big money for football can best be seen in the salaries high school athletic directors are commanding at private schools. I personally know of one guy who was lured from a college for a salary of 80K per plus bennies. This is for a high school. The serious downside in all this is that the public schools within the city of Los Angeles cannot compete because they do not have the facilities. It's no accident that the power house private schools of mostly white kids are blowing away the city schools which are composed of mostly black kids. One look at the million dollar facilities at the private schools tells plenty. This last weekend the best public high school in the area, the near legendary Long Beach Poly (twenty five grads in the NFL), got totally destroyed by an Orange County school composed of 90% whites including the backs and wide receivers. LA City schools are composed of thugs, drug dealers, and the less able players because the really good ones are in private schools. There is big money in high school football. This is a good thing and a bad thing. I don't know what this tells us about our society, if anything.

The wave of beheadings and other executions in Iran is being reported in the Weekly Standard, and no other publication that I know of (National Review??). You could do yourselves a favor to drop by activistchat a few times per week to stay informed.

Look for a huge black market..... The Vioxx ban ain't good news for people in pain. Vioxx was the only drug available when I was in literal agony before my hip repolacement. The warning labels were very clear about the dangers of using the drug continuously beyond six months. Vioxx is being banned because people who use it for a YEAR AND A HALF end up having problems. If you need pain relief for a year and a half you either need surgery or other drugs. The real problem is that pain relieving drugs are not legal so that people in pain go nuts. Vioxx will be missed by those on pain. Really missed. But the black market will fill the void as surely as there's cocaine in Beverly Hills.