The first Sunday in November 2006
Bye week can be tough for anyone, but when your Philadelphia Eagles team is 4-4, dropping three games in a row, games that they should have won, but lost after failing to play like professionals, well, at that point, bye week is a welcome respite. If you're smart and you have an honest man at the helm, you use the bye to drill like hell with one consideration only -- beating the snot out of the next team on the schedule, in this case the Washington Redskins, the Beltway Bullies if you will.

The squad needs to watch game tape, recognize the strategies the Washington power elite will throw at them, and then develop a plausible response scheme. It's possible , no matter what a few weak-kneed national Democrats have asserted. I mean, watch the match up of Dallas and Washington earlier today -- a cruel, but literary twist for President Bush. The Skins won off a dirty Cowboys face mask, and a 15-yard penalty issued by the black and white striped officials of justice. With no time left on the clock, and due to the technicality that the game can't end on defensive penalty, Washington kicked a 47-yard-field goal, just barely, through the uprights.

Texas and the Republican Party faced a similar disaster earlier this year when Tom DeLay, "The Hammer," left the seat for his staunchly Republican district open to Democratic molestation in Tuesday's election. And only because he maybe screwed around with a few minor campaign finance laws and then didn't withdraw from the ballot at the proper time. A good team pays attention to the rules. False starts on third down will kill a drive.

The Republicans will probably ask themselves how they fucked up this badly -- oh, that whole war thing.

"Well, I wasnt' for it!" they'll scream like Al Gore, when pressed about Clinton's philandering.

This could turn into a serious shift to the left. It takes a while for these things to gain momentum, but the power always shifts.

Time for one more greyhound and then sleep, sleep and dreams of a divided executive and legislature. And if not divided then at least fractured.