Centerfield

I'm looking forward to the distraction of the opening of the NFL season. Being an eternal optimist, I have high hopes (again) for the Vikings. Culpepper will undoubtedly have another brilliant year. The main question is whether all of the money spent on high profile free agents for the defense will pay off.

Whatever success the Vikings may have will be limited to being, at best, ultimate defeat in the NFC Championship Game at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field. The same goes for any other team in the NFC.

Oh, yeah. I'll be there screaming and drunk in section 126.

Maybe this should be on its own thread - Bush yesterday suspended the Davis-Bacon act for areas affected by Katrina. D-B mandates federal contractors pay prevailing wages.

What idiot came up with this idea? (never mind I think I know who...)
The last thing you want in an affected area is a surfeit of low wage earners. Paying prevailing wage would help increase economic activity in the area, help area residents recover financially - especially in the face of the new bankruptcy law, and generate income and other payroll taxes. The other thing is that by paying below market wages in a non-union work situation the contractors or their subcontractors will farm out work (to illegals and residents) such that there will be a lot of low wage under the table cash-only work that will not generate the income tax revenues that local areas need.
For those of you who haven't done construction - cash only is rampant in non-union work sites.

The other thing is that by paying below market wages in a non-union work situation...

How does de-regulating wages result in "below market?"

I don't know that I disagree with your overall point. I'd have to think about it, but that one minor point jumped out at me.

It's the first anniversary of Ratergate.

Rather, Rathergate.

Lysdexic fingers....

Seems to me that there's going to be way too much re-building to do to expect only union workers to do it all. it also seems unlikely that many skilled union construction workers will be unable to find work under these circumstances.

I've got my doubts about the Eagles. I expect their defense will still be pretty good even after losing Simon. But the offense seems very thin at the skill positions behind McNabb, Westbrook, and Owens. I expect Owens to be smart enough to shut up and produce if he wants to get paid. Although he might face triple teams given the lack of other receivers. Westbrook is of the body type(5'8", 203) that usually is able to contribute best as a complementary player, not an every down guy. But I'm sure McNabb will find a way to put some points up on the board, apparently he doesn't get the dry heaves until January.

I like Carolina and Dallas in the NFC. In the AFC I like the usual suspects NE, Indy, and Pitt, although they won't go 15-1 again. I'm not sold on the Ravens, and we'll see how good SD is playing a division winner's schedule. I'm rooting for the Bungals to sneak into the playoffs, Cincinati sports fans have had zero to cheer about for several decades.

I think you'll see production from a couple yet unknown young guys at tight end and wide receiver. I agree about Westbrook, at least as a pure running back. I just think the NFC is a little weak, which is really why I have a lot of confidence in the Eagles. The AFC is just plain tough. The fifth best team in the AFC would be in the top two in the NFC.

Maybe at WR. A good quarterback and a good system can make a moderately talented hard-working wide receiever very effective. It's what the Patriots do, for the most part. A good TE who can block, catch passes, and consistently get open is a much rrarer bird. You actually have to find a guy with the size and talent. I think of the best tight ends as being an awful lot like NBA power forwards, boxing out smaller guys to catch passes like getting rebounds.

Agreed on th NFC, but I really liked Carolinas 2004 super bowl team as a squad with its better days ahead of it, and then they had extensive early bad luck with injuries last year. The could be back for real. Dallas is really mostly a guess, but they have a lot of young talent, and a solid defense and running attack. Most casual observers are totally off Bledsoe's bandwagon, and they may be right, but experience tells me that if you have a solid running game and give him time, he can hurt you. He did it every year in NE until we lost Curtis Martin and the WRs declined. He did it the first year in Buffalo, and then they lost the surrounding talent and changed to an offense ill-suited to his game. I actually predicted he'd be in Dallas this year BEFORE last season started, as soon as I read some comments by Buffalo's coach. Parcells is smart enough to design the offense to ask Bledsoe to do only the things he does well, so if he fails now, he's washed up just like Brunell.

The Eagles TE is a Rutgers product, so I tend to look at him with a favorable eye. But I do think he's good for real. Dallas will definitely be better, but that's not saying too much. I'd be more willing to buy into Carolina being a threat.

Going out on a limb with a quick prediction. Hurricane casualties in New Orleans will be a full order of magnitude less than the 10,000 to 20,000 numbers that have been bandied about.

One thing you have to remember about Dallas is that they made the playoffs the year before last on an easy schedule, then got a tougher schedule last year, leading to a far worse record. I wa thinking theoretically that now they'll be back to a pretty easy one, with a bunch of young veterans on board. But nw I've check their sked, and it looks like the NFC East is playing the AFC West, and Dallas does not seem to have caught too many pushovers outside their division. So maybe not.

Big NFL question this year: What effect will the Cardinals/49'ers game in Mexico City have on illegal migration across our border?

The US Court of Appeals for the fourth circuit, relying on the Supreme Court's (in my view, highly questionable) ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, today holds that Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen and alleged al Qaeda combatant who was captured in the US, can be kept in indefinite military detention by the Government. The court's ruling - written by Judge Luttig, whose name is often floated as a potential Supreme Court candidate - can be found here.

Because I felt compelled to agree with Justices Scalia and Stevens in Hamdi, I am likewise required to reject today's ruling in Padilla; I offer brief remarks in dissent at Volokh.

This year, so far I'm having trouble figuring out who to root for in the NFL. I'd be for the 'skins, but they're impossible. Last time I paid attention,the Texans still weren't ready.

I may have to cave and go for the Pats.

Prevailing construction wages , in this case because LA is a right to work state is a mere $9 dollars an hour. That's according to the labor department from wht news reports I've heard. If you want a comparison, a non-union basic laborer with only a tape measure and a hammer in his/her toolbelt in California can make up to $15.00/hour or even more.

Davis-Bacon mandates a minimum amount of money paid to workers with the wage tied to what is considered prevailing wage for the locale.
By taking Davis-Bacon off it allows contractors to pay their workers LESS than prevailing wage.

To me that's a slap in the face of what really is the working poor. They're already going to be struggling financially to get back on their feet. Low paying jobs will only insure they stay the working poor. They won't be able to afford health insurance and they'll be back to counting pennies at the end of the month to see if they have any food money.

BTW few out of state contractors are going to go down to a state where they will get paid 20% to 50% of what they normally make. I can only hope that there will be enough of a labor shortage that wages will be higher but I'm not holding my breath here.

I like the way the Cal Bears manhandled Washington Huskies. That was a good game to listen to.

from the war room at salon.com - yet another in the comedy of errors....

"We reported on one last week: the one about all those firefighters FEMA requested from around the country and then assigned -- for day after day after day -- to an Atlanta hotel while people were dying in New Orleans. Today, Carlos Guerra brings us another.

In his column in the San Antonio Express-News, Guerra says that Mexico responded to Katrina by sending 195 people trained in disaster medicine. They arrived Thursday with 47 vehicles, three huge field kitchens and portable emergency water treatment equipment -- enough to provide clean water and three meals a day for 7,000 people for 20 days. And the federal government has assigned them to . . . San Antonio, Tex. "

Maybe it had something to do with those 13,000 evacuees in San Antonio, marcus.