Foul Ups

Today we revisit recent posts with new information and assess a plot twist for Big Love.

As Good As News was dead wrong in not picking Justine Henin to win the US Open singles (original post - Scouting Report - September 3). The problem may have started in the semis, where Venus Williams was holding her own in the second set, despite spraying some forehands long. Suddenly, Venus was asking the chair umpire for help from the trainer, which is allowed, but not until the next changeover. Bang, Venus loses three points and her service game in no time. By the time the trainer can get on court to take Venus's pulse the match is out of control. Henin wins in straight sets, shows up for the final rested and confident and handles Kuznetsova with ease. The Kuznetsova pick assumed that an exhausted Williams or Henin would struggle into the final, but Henin looked like she could have handled Kuznetsova even if Henin had been worn down by Venus.

As Good As News gets partial credit for spotting mixed doubles champ Victoria Azarenka as a talent to watch. Perhaps we can still redeem ourselves completely if we get lucky with the courageous pick of Roger Federer as men's singles champ.

The Golden Gate Bridge authority should be collecting royalties from Ghirardelli Chocolates( original post - Golden Gate Could be Golden - August 26). Take a look at the ad on the back cover of the Times Magazine. Great photo of the bridge at night, how about a small contribution to keep that bridge beautiful, not to mention safe.

A Fugitive Political Fund Raiser Leaves A Shadowy Money Trail - Mystery campaign contributor Norman Hsu may not be so rich, he filed for bankruptcy in Hong Kong in 1998. He is in custody. Bits and pieces of information are emerging. Hsu was clearly using a shell company to shuffle money around, in one month in 2003 taking $600,000 from various sources, including $200,000 from two individuals, and then transferring $600,000 to other individuals who contributed money to the Clinton campaigns through Hsu. This looks like a mechanism to help the sources for these funds circumvent limits on campaign contributions. Hsu's lawyer denies "Hsu provided money for others to make contributions", but the statement was narrowly worded. Reimbursing for prior contributions is equally illegal, and defense counsel's statement includes only Hsu, not his companies.

A $100,000 political contributor who's using a shell game to avoid detection usually wants something in return, access at the very least. Someone was almost certainly paying for the full attention of Senator Clinton, although if everything was presented through Hsu and his straw man donors Hillary may well not have known about the shenanigans to avoid contribution limits. How Hsu evaded campaign finance laws will be interesting - but, because she is not an idiot, we will find Hillary did not know anything about violations of campaign finance law. Watch for a deeper issue - who were the fat cats that funded the contributions Hsu managed? What issues mattered to these fat cats? What positions did Hillary take on these issues and how active was she? In other words, what did Hsu's backers get for their money.

Boys Cast Out By Polygamists Find New Help - The arithmetic of polygamy creates a problem. If a man is supposed to have four wives, and if the birthrate is 50/50 male/female, then what do the three males who are shut out of the marriage market do? Not something we think about every day in New Jersey, but the numbers don't lie - it's a serious problem. In the fundamentalist LDS sect run by Warren S. Jeffs the unlucky extra males are selected, ejected and shunned as teens, usually on the basis of a pretext that makes the kids believe they are doomed to eternal damnation. Ejection also creates some immediate problems, like loss of family, food, clothing and shelter. The families, even many of the male teen victims, remain true believers in Mr. Jeffs' vision. To the non-believer the power of faith and 24/7/365 conditioning is amazing. With this kind of hold on his sect, it's surprising Jeff's doesn't turn the extra males into a militia of suicide bombers. No wife for you in this life, but if you take out an IRS agent or a Federal Marshall you'll find forty virgins when you get to heaven. Fortunately Mr. Jeffs is about to stand trial on charges of sexual exploitation, but watch for the bachelor militia angle in the season finale of Big Love.

Finally, even the Times does not understand it's own general approach to headline capitalization. The notion that any rule applies seems to be a massive oversimplification perpetrated by the naive here at As Good As News. In the polygamy story headline, "By" is capitalized in the hard copy, but not on line. Since a preposition should not be capitalized in the "rule" As Good As News derived by observation, this may be a simple correction. Maybe the e-crew took the opportunity to fix a mistake that slipped by the hard copy gang working on deadline. I think it's actually a sinister plot to drive me nuts.

Have You Looked in Vegas

The As Good As News scouting report on Victoria Azarenka predicted her singles loss to Kuznetsova, while noting that we would hear more from her. It did not take long. See the post of September 3 for a photo of the 2007 US Open mixed doubles champs, Max Mirnyi and Victoria Azarenka, who saved five consecutive break points in a second set tiebreaker to grab the championship.

Virus Is Seen as Prime Suspect in Death of Honeybees - A team of entomologists and geneticists identified Israeli acute paralysis virus as a primary, but not sole, cause of mysterious, mass bee hive die-offs in North America last winter. This mystery remains partially unsolved. Other suspected causes -poor nutrition, frequent transport of hives in "industrialized" beekeeping. Wait a minute - let's look at what is really happening here, the workers leave the hive and do not return. This whole die-off thing is really a mysterious disappearance, no one is reporting they found millions of little honeybee corpses in the back yard. In the bee hive you have the queen who is, well, the queen. You have the drones, males who sit around the hive, eat the free honey, watch the big screen plasma TV, take an occasional stab at making their contribution to reproduction and then die young. No real motive for these guys to disappear. Finally, you have the workers, undeveloped females who work constantly to keep the hive going, essentially spending their lives as slaves. The workers are leaving the hive and not coming back. Poor nutrition? Perhaps, but if the virus is not the whole story then we should look for a massive increase in the worker bee population of Las Vegas. Maybe paid vacation and some health benefits would get those worker bees back into the hives.

Survey Reveals Student Attitudes, Parental Goals and Teacher Mistrust - Nearly half of NYC middle and high school students say students who get good grades are not respected. Mayor Bloomberg views this as troubling and calls for a shift to a "culture of success." You may have this one backwards, Mayor B. Nerds are historically unpopular - in fact "nearly half" is a surprisingly low number - the regular kids probably didn't believe the survey was really anonymous. Sure this makes for some tough years in middle school and high school - but isn't that the incentive to get into a college where you can be normal? The fact that one-third of teachers mistrust the principal is more interesting. This may have something to do with the fact that NYC principals can now actually do something if they think a teacher is incompetent. Let's watch this number in future surveys. Will teacher trust go up or down and why - because the principals earn the trust of the good teachers or push out the mistrustful.

The Brothers Solomon - Mixed review of a new movie characterized as slapstick in the style of the early Steve Martin (insert arrow through skull thusly). Key to success - the inspired casting of Lee Majors (The Big Valley, Six Million Dollar Man) as the comatose dad.

With the Cinnamon Girl

Scouting -Yawn -Report - Posting late and bleary today as the grind of watching late night tennis is catching up with me. This would be really horrible if As Good As News was a real job. As the US Open reaches the singles semis As Good As News stands by its early predictions. Venus is still outplaying all women, but a rested Svetlana Kuznetsova will emerge from the unsung lower half of the draw to grab the title from the Henin-Williams survivor. Federer remains king, unless the succession of late, late night starts confuses him. Notice how he's starting to look grumpy in the photo from this morning's practice? Maybe he will show up for a Letterman appearance instead of the final, there is no other way this guy will lose. That's our story and we're sticking to it.

Before we move to the headlines - a first from As Good As News, a shameless plug- buy the July 2007 issue of the Comstock Review (a poetry journal) which includes work from Julie Hassett. I have been lucky enough to hear some of her poems. If you were ever married, raised a teenager, lived through the death of a loved one then you will be moved, cry, laugh out loud. $9 per copy, order from:

Peggy Sperber Flanders
Associate Managing Editor
The Comstock Review
4956 St. John Drive
Syracuse, NY 13215
http://www.comstockreview.org/

Clinton Donor Fails to Appear In Court Again - OK, Times headliners- what are your mysterious rules of capitalization. As Good As News thought the riddle was solved. Capitalize the initial letter of the first word in every headline and the initial letter of every other word except for articles, prepositions and conjunctions. This approach explained every headline I noticed for a few weeks, but the pesky "I" in "In" is now driving me nuts. What possible rule, consistently applied, would capitalize "In" but not "to" in the Clinton Donor headline?

By the way, where are Hsu, Norman? The Chinese garment industry multi-millionaire, peerless Democratic fund raiser, FOB and FOHillary too, and trustee of the New School is on the lam again. Why did he come back to the US from the safety of China after skipping out on his initial conviction? How did he remain unnoticed through years of fame following his return? Why didn't someone put cuffs on him once they realized his identity a few weeks ago? This guy's story is more confusing than the capitalization in his headline.

What Do Young Jobseekers Want (Something Other Than the Job) - For over 65% of young job seekers it's more important to be in the right location than the best possible job. The right location is safe, clean and green - and conducive to a lifestyle the respondent considers desirable. A couple of the top ten cities are places As Good As News would visit only on business, and since we are retired that will not be happening soon, but in general we get the idea. Based on informal observation of my immediate family at least 50% of college students seem to be emphasizing location over job description at this time. The story is oblivious to a critical concern - the Neil Young factor. Especially for grad students and post collegiate workers, taking a job based on the location of your significant other has to be the number one priority for many job seekers. As Good As News is coming to you from the NY area because, today and thirty years ago, I want to live with the cinnamon girl, so I can be happy for the rest of my life.

Department of Just Right - The NY Times story is a rave review of the A.P.C. clothing line with store in SoHo. Post here is about the story title. As Good As News loves the Department of Just Right, sounds like it should be a hip boutique for witches and warlocks in Diagon Alley or maybe the cabinet ministry in charge of law enforecement in Monaco .

Scouting Report

Here's a first hand view of two young players from Saturday's matches at the US Open-and an As Good As News forecast

-Donald Young - Southpaw junior wunderkind who recently won his first tournament as a pro on the Challenger circuit and his first match on the main tour. Quick, good feel for when to approach the net but lost many points to Feliciano Lopez because he couldn't stick the volleys when he had the chance. Serve needs work. Ground strokes good on both sides but not really a weapon on either. A little temperamental, started to run through his volleys and hit long when he lost control of the match, but Donald was trying to do too much, he never really quit. Donald is 5 feet, 9 inches and will never have a big serve but there is room for improvement. With work Young might be another Sebastian Grosjean. Despite his junior success, he does not look like a player who will be winning majors. Most important- he needs a nickname. Ringing cries of "C'Mon Donald - You Can Do It" were less than inspirational.

-Victoria Azarenka - This 18 year old from Minsk, Belarus pushed Martina Hingis off the court with big ground strokes on both sides. She started out trying to play strategically, hitting an occasional drop shot, mixing in ground strokes up the line. Azarenka was more or less holding her own, then she stopped thinking and started hitting every shot deep and cross court. Hingis, maybe the best strategist on the women's tour, must have known what was coming but she could do nothing about it. Azarenka is listed at 5 feet 11 inches but her legs seemed to be at least 5 feet long. She was in great shape, she was willing to think her way throught the match (until she realized she was better off just slugging) and we may hear a lot more from her. She plays mixed doubles with Max Mirnyi, a sought after partner, so someone thinks she can play.

-Unfortunately for Azarenka her next opponent is Svetlana Kuznetsova, the 2004 champ, who seems to be forgotten in the celebrity poor bottom half of the draw. Kuznetsova is playing well, she seems like a good bet to reach the finals ready and rested against an exhausted top bracket survivor. Right now Venus Williams is playing the best tennis of any woman on the planet, but she may have to face Serena in a sister's match that has been a psychodramatic disaster for Venus in years past. Even if Venus survives she may be too drained to handle Kuznetsova. On the men's side - Roger Federer - what more need be said?