Why do people care about Brett Favre?

The New Yorker tries to dig into this maddening phenomenon.

My two cents?

It's like a bad habit. You know that it's bad for you. You know that nothing good is coming from it, but you just can't help yourself.

Case in point: More people watched his Monday Night Football game between his new team (the Minnesota Vikings) and the team that he was on seemingly forever (the Green Bay Packers) than any other cable program -- ever.

It was the highest rated show of the week, despite being on a cable network (albeit a cable network that is on every single basic cable package in the country).

Why? Two words: Brett Favre.

Why do we care so much about Favre? Maybe we'll never know -- but for as long as he puts on that helmet (for whichever team it is), we'll still be watching.

Bloomberg breaks record for most self-funding in political race

All I can say is: Wow.

Michael R. Bloomberg, the Wall Street mogul whose fortune catapulted him into New York’s City Hall, has set another staggering financial record: He has now spent more of his own money than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.

He's spent $85 million of his own money so far. And he could spend up to $140 million by the time all is said and done.

The man who covers Texas executions

An interesting, if somewhat macabre, story about Michael Graczyk, the Associated Press reporter based in Houston, TX who has covered "nearly every execution the state has carried out."

From the New York Times:

No reporter, warden, chaplain or guard has seen nearly as many executions as Mr. Graczyk, 59, Texas prison officials say. In fact, he has probably witnessed more than any other American. It could be emotionally and politically freighted work, but he takes it with a low-key, matter-of-fact lack of sentiment, refusing to hint at his own view of capital punishment.

Held by the Taliban: 7 Months, 10 Days in Captivity

New York Times reporter David Rohde was held by the Taliban for seven months and ten days before escaping. In a five part series, he recounted his tale.

Moments later, I felt a hand push me back toward the car, and I was forced to lie down on the back seat. Two gunmen got in and slammed the doors shut. The car lurched forward. Tahir and Asad were gone and, I thought, probably dead.

Take an hour or so and go read the first four parts (the fifth isn't up yet).

Strip hockey

From ESPN:

In an effort to inspire more team unity, Lightning players competed in a post-practice game of strip shootout, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

Players faced off in a series of shootouts, forced to lose a piece of equipment every time their attempt was thwarted.

Those wacky Canadians (I just assume a good percentage of the team is Canadian).

Scientists find "ribbon" surrounding solar system

A very interesting story about the outer edges of our solar system.

In a discovery that took astronomers by surprise, the first full-sky map of the solar system's edge—more than 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away—has revealed a bright "ribbon" of atoms called ENAs.

The solar system is surrounded by a protective "bubble" called the heliosphere.

Scientists have no idea why this is there -- it took them completely by surprise.

I have to say, astronomy is a very interesting science. If I was a lot smarter, maybe I would have went into it.

Inside the wacky world of the kickball world championships

From ESPN's Jemele Hill:

To say this ain't fifth-grade kickball is like saying Malcolm Gladwell is just a little bit smart. At your average rec league tournament, you do not see a team from New Mexico playing in green wigs as if they're straight out of a Dr. Seuss book or doing a team dance that's a cross between the Macarena and the stanky leg. You do not see men big enough to have played college football wearing bumblebee costumes (complete with antennae and wings) and feather boas. You do not hear the national anthem sung by a man who makes William Hung sound like Luther Vandross. You don't have a couple getting married in their kickball uniforms after their team -- which has a name that can't be mentioned here -- was eliminated from the tournament.

I played in a kickball tournament in New Mexico a few years back -- we made it out of our group, but lost in the first elimination game. In that game, we had a player ejected and a near-fight -- not joking. Kickball is serious business.

Some ignorant KC Chiefs fans on Facebook

Further down the line, a voice of reason:

Wow. There are some ignorant rednecks subscribed to this feed. Look, face the fact that our country has an increasing Spanish speaking population. If it bothers you unsubscribe and stop making Kansas and Missouri look as intolerant and backwoods as the rest of the country already views us.

On Rush Limbaugh and why he can't buy the Rams

Rush Limbaugh is out of a bid to be a minority (irony!) owner in of the St. Louis Rams.

And over at The Corner at the National Review, Kathryn Lopez unveils this gem:

Rush Limbaugh is not an acceptable sports investor because of his politics. How else to interpret the state of a sports world where Keith Olbermann can be on Sunday Night Football and Rush Limbaugh's hard-earned money can't be spent as a partial owner of a team in a sport he loves?

First of all, it isn't his politics. The Center for Responsive Politics looked into where the political money from the National Football League (NFL) went to.

And many of the owners that made political donations were, well, conservative. Dean Spanos, the owner of the San Diego Chargers (I'm typing this from the San Diego airport, actually) was a bundler for John McCain.

Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, has given $199,000 to Republicans and $1,500 to Democrats.

Robert McNair, the owner of the Houston Texans, has given lots of money to Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, James Inhofe and Rudy Giuliani.

In other words, you can be conservative and be an owner; in fact, if you look at the percentages of money given to Republicans versus Democrats for most teams (the Rams, ironically, are one of the exceptions to this rule), Republicans got more money from NFL people than Democrats did.

As for the Keith Olbermann comment (he's the new bogeyman of the Right), did Lopez forget that he already had his chance to be an NFL commenter?

Limbaugh had to resign after this gem on ESPN's NFL Countdown pre-game show:

"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," Limbaugh said. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

McNabb, according to the Philadelphia Eagles website, "is the Eagles all time leader in pass attempts, completions, yards and TDs."

The previous three seasons, the Eagles had been to the playoffs three times and the conference finals twice in a row. In 2003, the year where Limbaugh made his idiotic statements, McNabb again led the Eagles to the conference finals. The next year, they made the Super Bowl.

In other words, not only was Limbaugh's "analysis" of McNabb wrong, it was just plain race-baiting for no reason.

So why can't Limbaugh be "partial owner of a team in a sport he loves" as Lopez asked?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell put it best:

"I have said many times before that we are all held to a higher standard here," the commissioner continued. "I think divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about. I would not want to see those kind of comments from people who are in a responsible position within the NFL. No. Absolutely not."

In other words, Rush Limbaugh is not the sort of person the NFL wants to associate itself with. It's as simple as that.

Highlights from the USA - Honduras game

The United States of America vs Honduras game happened Saturday night, but odds are that you didn't see it. Why? It was on closed circuit TV only in the United States. Yeah, dumb.

But here are the highlights from the best game you never saw, unless you watched it on an internet stream.