The WPS Championship match-up between the Sol and Sky Blue gets underway tomorrow at 3:30 PM ET on FSN.  Sky Blue will be the improbable champ.  Why?  Because they are just like the Belmont High School girls’ basketball team, circa 2006.  They’ve come through fire, as it were, and dug deep.  They are now relying on their bond as teammates and on leadership (STRONG leadership) from within their own ranks.  The chemistry and grit will carry them through – even against teams with more flash and individual talent.  It’s a proven fact.  Just look at thet banner in the gym the next time you visit Belmont High School!  ;>)

From a Left Wing has put up a nice post about the Jersey Girls, too!  And from The Examiner, a piece about the rivalry between the Breakers and Sky Blue … to be continued, my Sky Blue friends!  I may be rooting for you now, but …

Meanwhile, there are other things going on in the world – things I need to write about quickly, before my mouse battery dies.  (Hang in there buddy – you’ll be recharging momentarily!)  There’s Paul Krugman on the public option and the difficulties that Obama is currently presenting to his progressive supporters.  Barack … where are you?

But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

Indeed, no sooner were there reports that the administration might accept co-ops as an alternative to the public option than G.O.P. leaders announced that co-ops, too, were unacceptable.

So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back.

HollyCornblog had a visitor last night … a kinda cute porcupine, wouldn’t you say?  (ZoeyCornblog isn’t so sure …as she was the first to meet up with the little critter .. and ate some quills in the process.)

Hopefully, this won’t be a regular occurrence.

Don’t you think he’d make a nice avatar for HollyCornblog’s Fantasy Football team?

Here’s an article sent to me by Alison – about the proliferation of fake grassroots groups …with a focus on lobbying around the future of the internet.

“The fake grassroots groups are spending major resources to deceive the public and promote agendas of the corporations that sign their paychecks,” said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press. “We need transparency, accountability and honest debate. The crucial policy decisions being made right now about the future of the Internet must be based on independent research, reliable data and facts. The phone and cable companies must stop distorting the issues and hiding behind their astroturf groups, sock puppets and hired shills.”

So here’s to unmasking the shills and sock puppets!  Hope they’ll be adding health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to their watch list one day – or someone else picks up on this great idea for unmasking hypocrisy!

Phillies?  Red Sox?  Those bats are alive and kicking … keep it up, guys!

Finally – I loved this poem from TWA this morning.  Helps me to understand a transition I’ve been experiencing as I age.  It’s a strange feeling – and gives me perspective on my parents and grandparents that I never had before … ah life!

Straightpins

by Jo McDougall

Growing up in a small town,

we didn’t notice

the background figures of our lives,

gray men, gnarled women,

dropping from us silently

like straightpins to a dressmaker’s floor.

The old did not die

but simply vanished

like discs of snow on our tongues.

We knew nothing then of nothingness

or pain or loss—

our days filled with open fields,

football,

turtles and cows.

One day we noticed

Death has a musty breath,

that some we loved

died dreadfully,

that dying

sometimes takes time.

Now, standing in a supermarket line

or easing out of a parking lot,

we realize

we’ve become the hazy backgrounds

of younger lives.

How long has it been,

we ask no one in particular,

since we’ve seen a turtle

or a cow?