Relentless Cubs and other non-sequiturs

All in handy bullet format!

• Someone break up the Cubs, who have now won 16 of their last 20 games and have pulled ever closer to my beloved Brewers in the NL "Comedy" Central race. No one else is close right now and it looks like a two team race. It's been interesting to watch this develop - the Brewers jumped out to a huge early lead and have continued to play well, but something is happening on the North Side. Lou Piniella has won elsewhere and maybe he's the difference. We'll see.
• As the Democrats continue to push for ignominious surrender in Iraq, Thomas Sowell, the longtime economist and syndicated columnist, asks the relevant question - what then? This is a question that the Left has consistently refused to answer, preferring to bang their fists on the table and to excoriate George W. Bush. But this the right question. See more at www.realclearpolitics.com
• Tim Brewster has to be wondering what to do now - just as he was attempting to build a groundwork for the new season, word comes that star cornerback Dominic Jones has been charged with criminal sexual assault in the April incident that already has a cloud hanging over three other Gophers. This is bad stuff and if Jones indeed did was has been alleged, he deserves an extended tour of the Minnesota penal system. There's a larger message here about how we tolerate bad behavior among athletes, but that's another post.
• Do you remember when Pele came to the U.S.? I do - I was about 12 at the time and the hype was pretty difficult to avoid. But the hype didn't change things - as great a player as Pele was, his arrival in America rivaled the Bay City Rollers, Comet Kohoutek and the swine flu among overhyped 70s events. Now, 30 years on, the latest soccer phenom arrives in America to show us what we're missing in our studied avoidance of the world's game. David Beckham even got a name-check in a semi-popular film from a few years back, Bend it Like Beckham. He's married to one of those Spice Girls. And he has tattoos! The full package, I guess. Will any of this matter? Check back after the football season is underway; if people are still talking about Beckham and not about Peyton Manning, then we'll know something is up. But don't count on it.
• Have been a little light on posting lately. I'll try to be a bit more diligent about it in the coming days. Blogging is a discipline just like any other. The blank screen, like the blank page, is something that can be overcome.