U.S. 76, Serbia-Montenegro 60: Do you believe in miracles !?! For the second straight game, our motley collection of the well-fed and the underachieving overcame a hostile crowd, and stunned defending World Champion (and 4 1/2 point favorite) S&M on its home court. Tim Duncan's 16 points led the way for the scrappy Americans. Team U.S.A. jumped out to a quick lead against the over-confident Serbs, who apparently thought all they had to do to overawe the competition was have Bodiroga and Radocevic show up. Fat chance. Bring on Turkey !!

Now that's what I call a "baby bounce": 32k new jobs !! I think the conventional wisdom has been that Bush will go into the election with a growing economy, albeit one with tepid growth. The employment figures over the last three months indicate that another recession/jobless "recovery" is on the horizon (if we're not already there), so that assumption will have to be revised. Expect to see more bogus ads of the "Swiftboat" variety from the Bush camp if the economy continues its Triple Salchow into the toilet.

Why Dennis Prager should not be allowed near children....

It was one year ago tonight that my sister added a new generation to my family. Happy Birthday, Charlie !!

I'm with the President on this issue....

U.S. 80, Germany 77: One day after getting blown-out by Italy, the lightly-regarded Americans came back to upset another former member of the Axis Powers on a last-second half-court shot by Allen Iverson. Relying on such elaborate trickery as "passing to the open player", shooting "high-percentage shots", and "moving without the ball", the over-confident Germans, who almost qualified for the Olympics, were unable to put the U.S. away, and finally succumbed to the scrappy Dream Teamers. Making the victory even sweeter is the fact that all but one of the players on Team U.S.A. play in our own domestic professional league, the "N.B.A.", which may finally earn the credibility it deserves to put it on a par with established leagues in Europe, Asia and South America. Iverson, in particular, was impressive behind the three-point arc, leading some to favorably compare him to Italian star Gianluca Basile.

Italy 95, U.S. 78: You had to figure that Giacomo Galanda would give Tim Duncan a hard time today. Olympic basketball is really the only time an American can feel comfortable rooting against the U.S.

Excellent (as always) Krugman column, on TV coverage of last week's convention, and how the success of Fox News has come to color the political coverage of other networks, including CNN. Kerry's so-called "Baby Bounce" fits in with this type of "journalism"; take an outlying poll (Gallup) that shows Kerry losing ground, ignore the half-dozen other surveys that show the reverse (including, more importantly, the state-by-state polls that show Kerry pulling out to a sizeable Electoral College lead), remove the election from its context as a sharply divided battle between two implacable adversaries (did anyone seriously believe Kerry was going to leave the convention with a twenty-point lead?), and you have what Eric Alterman has called a successful case of "working the ref" by the GOP. Media whores, indeed....

You ever read an obituary in which the most surprising aspect of the story was that the deceased had still been alive just a few days ago. Well, who knew that it took until last week for the last Tammany Hall puppetmaster, Carmine de Sapio, to join the Church Triumphant.