I've been reading around quite a bit, just not seeing too much worth blogging about. I feel like we're in the calm before the storm politically speaking.
Yes, Kerry is apologizing to the Left for his vote on Iraq to position himself as a complete dove ... Warner bowed out. My reaction is the same in both cases, who cares? Warner probably figures he's a lock for Warner's Senate seat when he retires and is taking the easy way out. Kerry has to stay busy or go home to his insufferable wife. Hell, I'd always be running for something, if only away, after I got the dough were I married to her, too.
The Dems are showing new polls and screaming landslide, but that's a lot of whistling in the dark for now. Fact is, this election season has just begun.
There'll be from 1 - 3 major developments between now and election day. Those might just determine who wins what. While the Repubs are starting to turn up the fire, the idiots now have to get the Foley hearings out of the way before anything serious can begin. I don't think it was a smart idea to feed the daily news cycle with Foley the way they are doing. On the other hand, they didn't have much choice and there's nothing like hearings to wear out a topic.
The New York Times reports on Jamie Bliss, the young man I posted on yesterday. I hadn't thought about it but I guess it resonates with me as I stopped playing ball at his age due to a compression fracture of my cervical spine from football camp.
WEST CALDWELL, N.J., Oct. 12 — Three shirts seemed to matter most to Jamie Bliss, a junior at James Caldwell High School.
One was the “Hustler of the Week” T-shirt he won last week for working hardest at football practice. It sported a picture of a little guy beating up a bigger guy, and he told his mother he was proud of it, his coach said.
Another was his blue and white football jersey, No. 81, which he wore as a wide receiver, playing so hard that he was described in a local newspaper as a “top newcomer.”
And then there was his baseball jersey. He will be wearing it when he is buried on Monday.
Jamie, 16, died on Wednesday after collapsing during football practice. After catching a pass, he was tackled from behind — “a simple little tackle,” said Ken Trimmer, the head football coach. Jamie made no complaints and was heading back to the huddle when he fell to the ground.
As about 75 team members and coaches watched, the team doctor performed chest compressions, as did police officers who were also emergency medical technicians. The school’s defibrillator was not able to save him, nor were doctors at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair.
The police said that they received a 911 call at 4:20, and that Jamie was pronounced dead about 40 minutes after arriving at the hospital.
Results from an autopsy performed Thursday morning will not be available for weeks, said Charles Tubbs, chief of the West Caldwell police.
Grieving relatives and friends in this Essex County suburb declined to talk about Jamie on Thursday.
“There is no rehearsal for this,” said Kevin Barnes, the principal at the high school, where the flag flew at half-staff.
He said Jamie was gifted both academically and athletically, and recalled him as popular in several circles, with his “shy, sheepish smile.”
Mr. Trimmer said that like all student athletes in the state, Jamie was required to undergo a physical, which school officials checked for completeness before they allowed him to play. The teenager was 6-foot-3 and weighed 180 pounds, and he played football, basketball and baseball. “He was in great shape,” Mr. Trimmer said.
Deaths from football injuries are rare among high school players, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. In 2005, two students died of brain or spinal cord injuries directly attributable to football; another eight died of “systemic failures as a result of exertion” or of a complication that followed a nonfatal football injury, according to the center.
The Rev. John J. Laferrera, who is to officiate at Jamie’s funeral on Monday at St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church in Caldwell, remembered him as a faithful team player on the church’s Catholic Youth Organization basketball team.
“He was the type of kid, if you were a coach on a team, you would want that type of boy,” Father Laferrera said. “If you were a religious education teacher, you would want that kind of a kid in your class. He was just a good boy.”
Mr. Trimmer concurred. “He was the type of kid that every parent would love to have,” he said. “He was as close to perfect as I could find, an academically outstanding student.”
At the hospital, Mr. Trimmer said, Jamie’s parents, Frederick and Joan Bliss, were concerned about how his teammates were faring, and they were careful to make sure their son’s organs could be donated.
“He’ll live on in spirit and be able to save someone’s life,” Mr. Trimmer said Thursday.
At the family’s Tudor-style home, where Jamie grew up with two older brothers, friends stopped to visit on Thursday, and left visibly shaken.
Dr. Barnes said school officials had deferred to the family about whether to reschedule the game Friday against Madison High School.
He said they told him: “Of course Jamie would want you guys to play. You should play.”
His teammates will be wearing his number on their helmets, Mr. Trimmer said.
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