Steelers 35, Cardinals 14

Update: Final score, Steelers 27, Cardinals 23. Well, I got the winning team right.

Let’s take a break from politics for a while and predict the Super Bowl.

I’m not rooting much for a team this year because I’m from Detroit and a Lions fan, so pity me.

But I guess I like the Cardinals a little bit more. My late parents spent their last 2 decades in Arizona, so I sort of followed the team. My father remembered going to a Lions game against the Cardinals, then the Chicago Cardinals, in 1934, when they played at the University of Detroit stadium. Pop said he wore a wide-brimmed hat to catch the rain, and every few minutes tilted it aside to dump the water.

But I’ve always liked the Steelers, too.

As to a prediction, this is another year with mismatched teams. Pittsburgh is the best team in the NFL, the Cardinals way down on the list. Troy Polamalu will intercept Warner, and that will decide it.

I hope it’s close just for fun, but it won’t be.

See, it was hard, but it’s possible for me to write a blog with no politics in it. I had to avoid saying … no, I won’t!

Put your prediction in the comments section.

“Curse of Plaxico Burress” defeats NY Giants in playoffs

Yesterday the Super Bowl champion and top-ranked New York Giants lost in the playoffs to the Philadelphia Eagles. During the game, one of the TV commentators noted that New York had to stick more to a running game because they didn’t have Plaxico Burress, their star receiver, who had “self-destructed.” So, because they couldn’t pass more, they lost.

Actually, it was the Giants who “destructed” Burress.

As you may recall, Burress accidentally shot himself in a New York  night club. He is being charged with illegal possession of a gun — even though the 2nd Amendment protects the right of any American to “keep and bear arms.”

Even though his injury was minor and he could have come back to play, the Giants suspended him for the rest of the year and criticized him. They should have backed him and attacked the government of New York state and city for their oppressions. Imagine how that would have fired up the Giants!

Since then, the Giants have lost four of five games, including the playoff.

I predicted the disaster at the time, calling it “the Cure of Plaxico Burress.”

The only way the Giants can rid themselves of the Curse is to start backing Plaxico. Sign him to a long contract, attack the government, and defend him in court.

The don’t want a Big Apple version of the Motor City’s Curse of Bobby Layne, under which, this year, the Lions finished 0-16.

The Curse of Plaxico Burress

There’s no such thing as real curses. But if people believe they’re real, then they can have an effect, especially in sports.

There’s the Curse of the Bambino, after the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth. It lasted from 1918 until 2004, when the Sox finally won the World Series again. (My conjecture is that the “curse” was “cancelled” when the Sox hired Bill James, the best baseball statistics guy, and people figured the team finally knew what it was doing.)

Then there’s the Curse of the Billy Goat against the Chicago Cubs, who haven’t won the World Series since 1908.

In pro football, there’s the Curse of Bobby Layne against the Detroit Lions. The legendary quarterback won three championships for the Lions in the 1950s, the last in 1958. When they traded him to the Pittsburgh Steelers, he said the Lions “would not win for 50 years.” Since then, they’ve won only a single playoff game, no championships. This year the Lions soon may be the first team to go 0-16.

Plaxico and the 2nd Amendment

Two weeks ago N.Y. Giants star receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the leg in a New York night club. The city’s evil government is charging him with the “crime” of illegal possession of a firearm. N.Y. City’s fascist Mayor Bloomberg insisted, according to Wikipedia:

that Burress be prosecuted to the fullest extent, saying that any punishment short of the minimum 3½ years for unlawful carrying of a handgun would be “a mockery of the law.”

The real mockery is Bloomberg himself, an elitist, insulated billionaire who has police guards protecting him; he also is so rich he can hire armed guards. He has no idea what life is really like in the city he misrules.

Giants now cursed

But worst of all was that the Giants’ management, which until now has been the class act of the NFL, suspended Burress without pay. Since then they’ve lost two games. Today they were pasted, 20-8, by Dallas, and couldn’t even score a touchdown. They no longer can be considered the league’s top team. Last February, they won the Super Bowl. Will the “Curse of Plaxico Burress”  prevent them from winning for 50 years?

What they should have done was keep him on the roster, even while awaiting his wound to heal. And they should have made an announcement something like:

We regret that our great player, Plaxico Burress, was injured. But it was an accident; no one else was hurt. We also will back him up 100% in the unjust prosecution of him for exercising his Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” to defend himself and his family. Mayor Bloomberg’s fascist outburst is to be deplored.

We also are bringing a $10 billion lawsuit against the mayor, the city of New York, and the state of New York for assaulting Mr.  Burress’ constitutional rights. This is America, not 1930s Nazi Germany, where Hitler’s 1938 gun-control law was a prelude to the worst barbarisms. Have we learned nothing from history?

We also would like to point to the research of gun scholar John Lott, who wrote:

While the massive size and strength of NFL players might make them seem like unlikely potential crime victims, their wealth and high public profile nonetheless make them particularly attractive targets for violent criminals. While “only” two players were murdered last year, that means a murder rate of 118 per 100,000 people, compared to 5.9 per 100,000 for the rest of the population. In other words, the rate for NFL players was 20 times higher than the average for the rest of the country. This is even higher than the most at risk segment of the population -– young black males between 18 and 24. It is even higher than the risk faced by police officers.

Last year, the Washington Redskins’ Sean Taylor was killed during a robbery at his house. The Denver Broncos’ defensive back Darrent Williams was killed outside a nightclub.

As Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Ronde Barber noted, “We are targets, we need to be aware of that everywhere we go.” Yet, the news coverage doesn’t engender much sympathy for Plaxico Burress.

So, what do many NFL players do when they realize that their physical strength does not give them enough protection from violent crime? The same thing that many other would-be victims do — they get guns. Well over 50 percent of NFL players are estimated to own guns, somewhat higher than the 45 percent of American adults who own guns.

I rooted for the underdog Giants in the last Super Bowl. No more.

Now they’re going to suffer the Curse of Plaxico Burress.

Free Barry Bonds! — indict Bush

The noose of fascist tyranny continues tightening around Americans’ necks. The Federal Fascists just slipped 15 more felony counts over the neck of Barry Bonds, the baseball slugger. The Chron reports:

Barry Bonds was charged in a new indictment Tuesday with 15 felony counts alleging he lied to a grand jury when he denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs and that he hampered the federal government’s doping investigation.

The career home run leader originally was indicted in November by a federal grand jury on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice.

What business it of these federal goons what Bonds took to enhance his performance? That’s a matter for baseball, which allowed such substances at the time Bonds allegedly took them.

And it’s typically hypocritical that the indictment comes from the odious Bush regime. In the mid-1990s, Bush himself was a co-owner of the Texas Rangers when players there were injecting steroids like a diabetic injects insulin. In his book, “Juiced,” admitted steroid juicer Jose Canseco, a member of Bush’s team, describes Bush as “most certainly knowing” about the steroid abuse.

If Bonds deserves indictment, so does Bush.