Gmail: Behind the Scenes (Final Cut)

Bucs Season Looks Uphill From Here

I miss Mike Alstott! And I miss Warren Sapp, John Lynch and Simeon Rice.
Whatever happened to the days of the dominant defense at Raymond James?

The Bucs season is shaping up much like every every one in the past - with weak prospects. The defense last season left us wanting and the inability to find a solid quarterback made offensive development difficult at best.
So far, this season isn't looking to much different.

Signing Jeff Garcia after his strong 2006 season with the Eagles had eyebrows raised across the country. Garcia looked great in the preseason, but one week to regular season and coach Jon Gruden still could not commit to him as his starting QB. There are currently two other QB's fighting for that spot. Gruden is still flirting with the idea of putting the ball in the slippery hands of Chris Simms (spleen). He should some play time this weekend. Bruce Gradkowski, last years surprise rookie performer has been solid throughout the preseason. Frankly, any of these guys will do, but Gruden needs to make up his mind already. The team has got to have time to adjust to the leadership of their quarterback and going into the first game without a settled starter is never a good sign.

Receivers are unreliable based on the past performances. Word on the street is that the Bucs are shopping WR Michael Clayton. So that leaves Joey Galloway.

Galloway has been consistent over the past three seasons with the Bucs - last year he gained more than a thousand yards, averaging 17 per reception. For a team without a quarterback, that's not bad. But Galloway is 35-years old and not getting any younger. The question will be if he has what it takes to lead this offense.

The Bucs lost their long-time offensive anchor in full-back Mike Alstott when he announced his retirement on Aug. 9. And just this week Gruden cut problem child Michael Pittman. As a running team, the Bucs might be in trouble. But, who knows, maybe there is a surprise up Gruden's sleeve. Somehow they are currently ranked 3rd in the league in preseason rushing yards. Rookie Rb Ken Darby out of Alabama can take credit for that, and there is also the powerhouse Cadillac Williams. Though Williams charged out of the gate strong with a huge first season in 2005, he did not quite meet expectations last year rushing for less than 800 yards. The Bucs need him to step up this year.

Defense is a scary place to be for the Bucs. After winning the 2003 Superbowl, key players like Warren Sapp left, Tony Dungy's defense was dismantled and Jon Gruden has been trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again ever since.

There has been a lot of chatter about LB Jeremiah Trotter working out with the Bucs this past week after being released from the Eagles last Tuesday. But Trot was allegedly released from Philadelphia due to his weight and lack of mobility. Though his experience and leadership might be just what the Bucs defense needs, he may have a hard time adjusting to the high-speed cover-2 defense in Tampa.

Ronde Barber is always a influential presence on the field, but he's getting old over at Corner.
Julian Jenkins is solid, but his isn't the dominating force of Simeon Rice. And, Jermain Phillips may have come up with 2 picks last season back at strong safety, but the Bucs haven't been able to recover from the loss of leader-safety John Lynch.

There is still work to do on the defense, and the shape up of the D-Line will make or break this teams season.

Larry Craig is NOT GAY!

So the story on this has shifted in the media from the facts to the sound bytes, and the one that is sticking is:

"I should not have kept this arrest to myself, and should have told my family and friends about it. I wasn't eager to share this failure, but I should have done so anyway because I'm not gay."

Story in brief, in case you missed the first two minutes of coverage and are at a loss on why this guy is so emphatically defending his sexual orientation, is that Craig was arrested on June 11 after an incident in a Minneapolis airport restroom.

Apparently Craig was rolled into a sting operation that was being conducted by the police to catch men using this particular bathroom to commit "lewd acts." Edward Morrissey gives a great synopsis of the arresting officer's statements on Captain's Quarters.

So, why is this such a big deal?

• First, everyone knows that if you tap your right foot in a men's room, you are looking for sexual favors... right? The story itself is vague enough to make the details irrelevant and still allow room for the media to paint this highly conservative Senator as a creep. After all, there is no need to bog down a great headline with the details of the story. Key words: sex scandal. They always make great press.
  

• Second, Craig's conduct upon arrest was pompous and obnoxious. Apparently, the Senator passed the arresting officer a business card to prove that he was in fact a Senator. Of course, no one wants to face the fact that this is standard procedure for our leaders in this country and that one of the perks of public office is the VIP treatment. Public officials receive special treatment every day. But Craig is being chastised for expecting to receive what Kat Williams would refer to as a "hook up."
  

• Finally, we should be looking at Craig's advisers on this one and questioning their judgment. After all, this botched political strategy most likely killed Craig's career. Craig did not go public after his arrest. Instead he went to court on the matter over the summer, plead guilty and prayed the whole thing would go away. Unfortunately for him, it didn't. It came out from under Craig's rug three months later with a neon sign attached to the front of it that flashes with the word "SCANDAL."

So why is the media focusing attention on the sex and Craig's sexual orientation? The American public might like sensationalism, but they are trained for it. We might enjoy stories about sex, but we are conditioned for that too. But story does have legs of its own, and they are being ignored.

If coverage of this story emphasized the fact that Craig was allegedly abusing his position to escape arrest, and that he shunned his duty as a civil servant by not being forthright about his arrest, Craig's constituents would have been equally harsh on the Senator and the image of political leadership in America would not have been tarnished with yet another sex scandal.

Instead, this has become a media assault on the purity of the Republican party which bears the public label of the "party of conservative moral values."

Wisc. Attorney Finds Goat's Head in Office

A Milwaukee attorney may have been expecting Victoria's Secret gift set from a client Victoria's Secret when a pink bag was found outside of her office. Instead, attorney Robin Shellow found a bloody goat's head.

There was a note in the goat's mouth which reportedly contained a name, but not the name of a suspect.

So far, Milwaukee police have been unable to trace where it came from. They have checked area meat-packing plants but found none that processed goats.

The culprit is either a practitioner of Santeria or an enormous fan of CSI. This story is somewhat reminiscent of that episode of CSI:Miami when they discovered a goat's head in the closet of a dead woman (CSI:Miami, Curse of the Coffin, 2006). Based on Shellow's somewhat tongue-in-cheek response, she might actually agree.

"August 27th was a full moon and also a lunar eclipse. It is my understanding there haven't been any of our elected officials' sons or daughters charged with slashing tires or voter fraud, and since I haven't invented any new criminal defenses for any clients in the last few months, I assume the individual was trying to get my attention."

Shellow may be best known recently for representing one of the men convicted of slashing the tires of Republican campaign workers in Milwaukee during the 2004 presidential race.

Check out video on the story here.

Taking the Side of Bush

President Bush was in New Orleans to remember the one of the nations largest natural disasters in history which occurred when Hurricane Katrina struck two years ago today.

The president arrived in the region on Tuesday, meeting Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin at the city's famous Dooky Chase restaurant.

He praised the efforts of the people of New Orleans in their efforts to rehabilitate the city.

Mr Bush observed a moment of silence at the Dr Martin Luther King Charter School for Math and Science, the first school to reopen in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward, one of the areas most affected by the flooding.

"Hurricane Katrina broke the levees, it broke a lot of hearts, it destroyed buildings, but it didn't affect the spirit of this community," he said in a speech after the ceremony.

Mr Bush listed federal government moves to get the ravaged city back on its feet, including the $114bn (£57bn) allocated for the relief and rebuilding efforts.

Props to him for not giving into the frustrations expressed by many about the tediousness of the reconstruction effort, or the blame game being played by Nagin and Blanco.

Nagin refused to share the stage with the President.

Holocaust denials hot, but are they legit?

There are always interesting and thought provoking emails coming across my screen. I received one today that begged an investigation into its validity. I was fascinated by what I found, and reassured when I put the issue into logical focus.

It read:

In Memoriam: Recently this week, the UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it "offended" the Moslem population which claims it never occurred. This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it. It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be "a myth," it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide. Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world. Please don't just delete this email, send it to the people you know and ask them to continue the memorial chain. It will only take you a minute to pass it along - Thanks! >

Anti-Semite Rationale
Now it is not an unnatural idea to grasp, but Palestinians and Arabs, in turn are generally anti-Semetic groups. They hate the Jews. So, is it logical that they would resent the global attention given to The Holocaust. It's a natural progression to understand that they would deny any harm done to Jews throughout the world. And with this in mind, it then makes sense that they would draw resentment over the fact that genocides around the globe - Armenia, Durfur and Rwanda as examples - are drawing such limited response or concern from the global community in general and the Western world in specific.

Muslim Rationale
Muslims in general can't be labeled as universal Holocaust deniers. And we must remember most Muslims are not anti-Semetic. Radio Islam did a piece on this very issue and concluded: "For purposes of their own, powerful special interest groups desperately seek to keep substantive discussion of the Holocaust story taboo. One of the ways they do this is by purposely mis-characterizing revisionist scholars as 'deniers.' But the truth can't be suppressed forever: There is a very real and growing controversy about what actually happened to Europe's Jews during World War II. Let this issue be settled as all great historical controversies are resolved: through free inquiry and open debate in our journals, newspapers and classrooms."

They did not embrace the statements of the deniers, and they agreed that this is a topic which needs to be examined through open-minded and academic means.

So the removal of The Holocaust from United Kingdom curriculi cannot be directly attributed to the Mulim community.

Radical Islamic Rationale
Radical Islamic leadership, however, have embraced this idea of Holocaust denial. In April of 2000, a senior member of Hamas issued the following statement in Stockholm:

This conference bears a clear Zionist goal, aimed at forging history by hiding the truth about the so-called Holocaust, which is an alleged and invented story with no basis. . . . The invention of these grand illusions of an alleged crime that never occurred, ignoring the millions of dead European victims of Nazism during the war, clearly reveals the racist Zionist face, which believes in the superiority of the Jewish race over the rest of the nations.

Not only does this attempt to focus on an alleged story ignore the suffering of our people and disregard the massacres committed by the Zionists against them, such as Dir Yasin, Kafr Qasem, Tanturah, Jerusalem, Hebron and Sabra and Shatila...

The Zionist entity is using psychological and ideological terrorism through the Stockholm conference and the alleged Nazi Holocaust...

We call the free scholars of the world and its vital forces to expose the crimes of global Zionism against our people, our nation, and against all human civilization, and to refute them and not to fear the hostility of the Jews and their ideological terrorism or their influence through which they shut mouths and prevent objective, unbiased scholars from revealing the Zionist claims as lies. By these methods, the Jews in the world flout scientific methods of research whenever that research contradicts their racist interests.

From their perspective, this position makes absolute sense. By taking a hard-line stance, they draw attention to the issues that effect their people directly and also expose Western Zionism as self-serving.

Ahmedinajad and the Iranian Rationale
As for Mohamed Ahmendinajad, it is important to realize that the man may be the president of Iran, but according to the constitution of Iran he is powerless for all intents and purposes. He is a figure-head with less power than Prince Charles of Wales. While he is a public figure, and a representative of the government, his statements often differ from the official line of the Iranian government and he is often denounced for being too outlandish and a showman to the point of self-indulgence.

Though he never specifically denied the Holocaust, quotes I found from President Ahmedinajad implied that he feels the number of Jews reported to be killed as part of the Holocaust was inflated to gain sympathy throughout the world for the Jewish cause. For example but that it was unconfirmed and therefore untrue. He used the reaction of the press and the people to draw attention to a new agenda he is promoting: encouraging the European states to create a Zionist homeland in Europe rather than continuing to for the Arab nations to endure the Jews.

I could find no material in which Ahmedinajad's statements are were endorsed by the Iranian government. But there is no real benefit to Iran in denying The Holocaust. There will be no revision of Israeli territories, nor will there by any additional aid or clemency awarded to Iran as a result. A public denial of the Holocaust only positions Iran even more in conflict with the West and reinforced the image being painted of the country as backward, confrontational, ignorant and irrational.

But, in a Boston Globe article from December 2006, discussed the preparations being made for a Holocaust denial conference in Iran. It said "Last week, as he prepared for the conference [Khaled Mahameed, an Arab citizen of Israel] told the Globe that his message to Ahmadinejad would be: "Do not deny or even argue about the authenticity of the Holocaust. By doing this, you are not helping the Palestinian people. You are hurting their cause.'"

Perhaps this is a more official stance for the Iranian people.

UPDATE
As for the Jewish / Israeli Rationale, (neccessary to provide balance as I was informed by the person who sent the original email)
Ummm.... I think they were there.