How lucky we are to be Tweeners.  And how sad for those who don't realize it.  And how catastrophic if we listen to them.

First a short digression.  I'm ticked off at the SEC.  Seems they have two teams in the top five who will not loose until they meet.  Conference officiclas have admitted that Florida and Alabama have essentialy been given wins by blown officiating calls and nobody else in the conference seems to care.  Why should they?  So long as one of them plays in the title game the REST of the SEC stands to get a nice little paycheck.  Guess it's worth it to get robbed of a win.

Now, on to the list.

Title game: Texas vs Alabama.  And Texas wins.

#3.  Florida

#4.  Oregon (toldja)

#5.  TCU (go Horney Toads!)

best of the rest: Boise State, Cincinnati.  

The Exorcist.  Lee J Cobb, Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow and a young sensation Linda Blair.  Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells scores topped the charts in 1973 and can send a chill up the spince of those of us as a certain age.  Now, an admission: I didn't see it when it came out.  Enjoyed the SNL spoofs, knew what it was about but I never got to the theater.  Saw if in late October 1979.  Was living in a mobile home in Ada Ohio.  Roommate was out of town.  Thunderstorms rolling across northern Ohio, and I picked THAT night to watch THIS movie alone.  Sheer terror.  And it's #1 on the list and it stays there. 

For those who have come along this little journey with me - thanks.  I intend to do it again next year.  Might do it for Christmas and Velentines Day as well (albeit a shorter list.)

Hope you all have safe, happy Halloween's tomorrow.  Be back in November.

Mood:  quizzical

JAMES TARANTO: While the President Golfs: Afghanistan, once a necessary war, is downgraded to someone else’s mess. “Hang on a second. It has now been 51 weeks since Obama was elected president, and more than nine months since he took office, and he’s just now getting around to asking the ‘questions . . . that have never been asked’? But that’s not really fair to Obama. After all, he has a busy schedule, what with golf games and pitching the International Olympic Committee and date nights and Democratic fund-raisers and health care and the U.N. Security Council and Sunday morning talk shows and saving the planet from global warming and celebrating the dog’s birthday and defending himself against Fox News and all.”

From Nancy Pelosi:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to deflect criticism of the proposal. “It’s not really a public option,” she said. “It’s a consumer option.”

This is nearly as good as titling card check legislation the Employee Free Choice Act, and while it's not quite as disingenuous, it's basically meaningless—an attempt to make the policy sound less objectionable that actually does a worse job of describing it. As long as we're renaming policy ideas to make them sound nicer, why not just call it the "The Democratic Plan for Happy Puppies and Rainbows, Plus Free Ice Cream on Tuesdays"?

from Glenn Reynolds: 

Every Road A Toll Road. “Despite the privacy issues, DC officials insist that tolling is necessary for making up for the shortfall in gasoline tax revenues. The proposed mileage tax would solve this problem by increasing motorist taxation levels by a factor of ten. The additional revenue would be diverted to spending on buses and rail service. . . . ‘Vehicles would be fitted with a GPS transponder device similar to an E-ZPass, perhaps as part of the registration process,’ Orr and Rivlin explained. ‘This device would record the type of vehicle, the distance traveled, and the time and location of travel.’”

So they tell you to drive less. You comply. Then it’s a “revenue crisis” because they’re bringing in less in gas taxes. So they respond by raising taxes, and making you install a device that lets them track wherever you drive. Yeah, that’ll fly. How about, I don’t know, tar and feathers instead?

from the comments: “The more incompetent they become, the more power they demand.” Indeed.

so a few quick takes ...

From the Brothers Judd and Mark Steyn: 

George W Bush: Remember him? Of course, you do. He's the guy who's to blame for everything, and still will be midway through Obama's second term. It turns out he's in exile abroad. Presumably he jumped bail and snuck across the border on the roof of a box car. But, anyway, he was giving a speech in Saskatoon. That's a town in Saskatchewan. And Saskatchewan's a province in Canada apparently. And in the course of his glittering night playing the Saskatoon circuit, he was asked about media criticism of him, and he told the … Saskatoonistanies? Saskatchewannabees? Whatever. He told them the attacks never bothered him, although his dad used to get upset: "He'd read the editorial pages, he'd watch the nightly news, and I didn't. I mean, why watch the nightly news when you are the nightly news?"

...that while it truly didn't matter what anyone said about W, because he had such a firmly established core being, it matters utterly what the critics say about {Obama's} clothes, because there is no emperor.

and from

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama, Berlin, Rhetoric & Reality.

PRESIDENT Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympic Games for Chicago, apparently can’t find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can’t be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will surely represent America ably in Berlin.

Still, it seemed an odd decision to me — until I went back and got the speech that candidate Obama delivered on July 24, 2008, to a crowd of 200,000 in the Tiergarten in Berlin. As I reread the text, it struck me that there would be an embarrassing contrast between what Obama said in Berlin 15 months ago and many policies he has been pursuing as president. . . . Last year, Obama told Berliners that we and they are “heirs to a struggle for freedom.” This year, his administration has been busy trying to appease dictatorial and authoritarian regimes. So maybe he was wise to skip a return appearance in Berlin. Let Clinton gloss over the embarrassing contrast between his rhetoric then and his policies now.

And from Glenn Reynolds: HITTING THE PANIC BUTTON. “It is important that the nation is suddenly awakening to the possibility that the president has no real plan for anything whatsoever, and never did. He literally seems to be making it up as he goes along, and his strategy is to do nothing at all but procrastinate.” Oh, I think he’s got plans.

Number Three comes from another master but one of a different sort.  This is one of his two greatest and his fans can argue long into the night about which of the two is in bast the best.  But for THIS list there is no arguement.  Sad that the stage production hasn't lived up to it's predisessor.  For #3 I give you Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.

Creepy od house?  Mel Brooks presents THE stylized castle of Baron Von Frankenstein.  Werewolf?  There wolf.  There castle.  Why are we talking like this?

Hot chick?  Teri "What knockers" Garr.  Half a point fro Madeline Kahn.

Bonus points for peasants  with torches and pitchforks, Gene Hackman, and Puttin; on the Ritz.

 I once sat through this thing four times in a row at a drive-in in Dayton.  It's a hoot.  And a GREAT Halloween movie.

Last week of HS football .... for most teams.

West Jeff plays 8-1 Liberty Union.  Both teams in the mix for the playoffs.  WJ can make it with a loss but would need help.  A win MIGHT give them a home game.  LU needs the win to make it.  Should be a GREAT game.  Too bad it falls on Halloween weekend.  Six common opponents but two were miserable teams.  LU ran it up on them, WJ didn't.  Taking those 2 games out of the "equation" and WJ is 10 points better.  Leave them in and it's LU by 2.  I'll take WJ by 7. 

A West Jeff loss means we'll need losses from Badin and Academy.  A win and we're looking at the #2 seed!  IMHO vs Academy - our rival from the 80's.  Otherwise I'm thinking 8th seed and we'll have to go to Coldwater.  I'd MUCH rather play them at a neutral site.  

Ohio State has a bye.  They play the New Mexico State Aggies.  Thirty points?

NFL Survivor.  We've used seven teams: NO, WRS, PHI, SF, NYG, PIT, IND.  This week we'll take the Packers, who are playing solid football, over the Bucs, who will soon be switching QB's.

When asked what power the Constitution gives to Congress to enact legislation requiring that we all purchase health insurance, Hoyer claimed that it came from the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause.

Article One, section eight says that Congress can “lay and collect taxes… to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”

But what defines the “general welfare”?

Since I've been watching and writing about horror movies lately I've been watching some, shall we say, odd contributions.  I actually sat through "Amazon Wrestling Women vs the Aztec Mummy" this morning.  Not NEARLY as bad as it sounds.  Especially if you have ANY kind of appreciation for amazon wrestling women.

But I digress.

Stumbled across this little homage today and thought I'd link to it.  A nice appreciation for the B-movie.