Convicting the Victim

(HT: Alli)

At least there was enough intelligence from the bench to allow a retrial in this case: a mother convicted of vehicular homicide because someone else ran down and killed her 4 year old with their car.

People looking at this case will say "but, Pat, she was jaywalking with her 4 year old." I guess that's the conclusion you'd reach if you only read the AJC, the Wall Street Journal, or watched CNN. There's more to this story, and yes, city planning is just as culpable if not moreso.

This is what people are talking about when they say roads are not safe for pedestrians.

She was jaywalking. Correct. And, Lord knows, I ain't no fan of jaywalking moms with kids on busy roads. But I "jaywalked" every time I went to a friend's house growing up on St. Simons Island, because their house was on the other side of the road from the bike path. I grew up in a small town, but people still got hit crossing Frederica Road, to be sure. Two lanes are easier to cross than 5, after all, but when resurfacing came through Island City, they installed a half dozen new pedestrian crossings. Why would they do that? Why would a place like Glynn County consider pedestrian crossings important enough to spend money on them?

The answer is simple: St. Simons prioritizes pedestrian and bicycle safety as part of its design as a tourist destination. Cobb County prioritizes cars to move people quickly from one exurb to the next. Such decisions have real world, sometimes life-and-death consequences.

She was jaywalking because she was traveling by foot in a car dominated area.

That's because her bus stop lets her out on the other side of Austell Road from her apartment complex, where the closest crosswalk is 3/10ths of a mile away. That's more than half a mile round trip, on foot, with three kids carrying full shopping bags, at night, after already waiting an hour for the bus. Not everybody owns a car. Not everybody can park that car in a garage or a driveway and watch the kids pile out into the house.

Half a mile in the dark with kids next to a busy highway or cross five lanes (75 feet?) of highway? What's your choice, tired mother of three? There aren't any good ones available.

And that's before you add in the driver, allegedly inebriated because in a car-centric world, the bars are located in "commercially zoned" areas and linked to "residential areas" by roads with no pedestrian or bicycle infrastructure.

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Shame, Shame

Doug Gillett is at SB Nation Atlanta, doing his part to make the college football offseason roll by a little quicker by trying to find out which of the many rivals could count as the Georgia Bulldogs' biggest.

Last week, he asked which rival is the most fun to beat. One guess as to which team got the most votes.

This week, he's asking which rival brings the most shame in a loss. I know that I'm in a minority. Our Atlanta-centric fan-base will answer this question resoundingly with "Georgia Tech."

Look, I completely understand that answer. But for me, that team is Auburn.

When it comes to the Bees, I understand they're going to catch the Dawgs every once in a great while. They'll just be up for the game, the Dawgs won't and the story will write itself in a close loss. The braying of their more obnoxious fans is more comical than anything else, and I feel no shame listening to them prance about the internets because they've won one football game this decade.

Auburn, on the other hand, is a more evenly matched foe for the Dawgs. Their fans have tasted the sweet nectar of championships, no matter how they were acheived. When they beat Georgia, they just kind of pat Dawg fans on the back and act as if their victory was always assured, has been in the past, and always will be.

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Bipartisan Government Spending

I guess it is OK to make a case for government investment in infrastructure if the cities you help are in Georgia.

Those of us who have lived in New Orleans for the past many years know how easily that line of thinking gets turned on its head.

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Unique Homeownership Opportunity

Located near the interection of Real Estate Oversupply Avenue and Spend At Least an Hour on Your Commute to Atlanta Highway, this incredible deal puts you in a mass produced cookie-cutter home just minutes away from not one, but TWO scenic Exurban Traffic-Choked Strip Malls. Fall asleep at night to the constant noise of jumbo jets approaching one of the world's busiest airports as you contemplate the multiple car notes you have to pay just so you and your spouse can get the kids to soccer practice on any number of winding non-grid surface streets. The area is zoned specifically to discourage foot and bicycle traffic, so you won't even be tempted to use alternative modes of transportation or interact with your pesky neighbors to form "community."

And with such a desireable place at such a reasonable price, you can afford the gasoline you'll need to use in order to live in a place like this!

What isn't to like?


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Will Build Train for Water

High speed rail from Atlanta to Chattanooga (and later to Nashville). In exchange, Atlanta gets water from the Tennessee River. Sounds win, win to me.

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Zombie Alert in Georgia

New Orleans has Treme shut down whole city blocks for filming. In Georgia, they shut down whole state highways in metro Atlanta to film their local drama The Walking Dead.

At least it isn't The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Though if they needed to shut down a highway for scenes, I'm wondering why they didn't use I-16 around Metter or US 441 around Irwinton. There would be far less traffic to divert either place.

But round McDonough? That's just zombnoxious.

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MOAR ROADS PLZ!

By passing a $0.01 sales tax referendum, voters in heavily conservative Cherokee County will get a lot of infrastructure improvements, mostly centered around widening their own roads.

Roads that will, of course, increase development opportunities, increasing residences, and increasing cars on the roads. Not to mention how badly it ties the exurban county to gasoline prices.

But whatever, it is their money and their time. If they want to spend that money on gasoline for their cars and they want to spend their time sitting in traffic, that's up to them.

Two things though:

I don't want to hear complaints from these folks when gasoline prices go up. Y'all chose where to live and how to live, and y'all chose those long commutes.

I think that tying these folks' vote into the regional transportation plan is folly. If they don't want to pay for their new roads, let them not have new roads and put the funds elsewhere. It is time we start letting the suburbs and exurbs pay their own damn way in this country.

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Fighting Back

I'm just going to leave this right here next to this.

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Streetcars & Cash Money

Owen Courreges at Uptown Messenger seems to think New Orleans is making unsound financial sense and living in the past by building new streetcars.

He uses Houston, TX as an example of how investing in light rail hasn't made a return on investment. Since folks who live in New Orleans seem almost contractually obligated to compare NOLA's decision making processes to those in Houston or Atlanta, I'll go with the devil I know and bring up the ATL. Here's part of my comment:

But when it comes to the capital costs of building and maintaining roads vs. streetcar lines, let us not kid ourselves – the fantasy land cost-benefit analyses come into play with roads.

Y’all may not be used to it in New Orleans, but I come from a place where no one ever saw a road project they didn’t like. In this land of massive concrete projects the pitiance of the gasoline tax doesn’t make a dent in the DOT budget – when a gasoline tax exists at all.

As far as streetcars are concerned, they will really provide the return on investment when gasoline runs up over $5 per gallon, and people are looking for alternatives.

Mass transit ridership increased 14% even in auto centric Atlanta the last time gas was over $4 a gallon. As prices continue to rise due to increased demand, you can expect more folks to ride transit, and buses to cost more.

You can also expect the politicians, fearing voter backlash over high gasoline prices, to gut road and transportation budgets as they fall over themselves lowering gas taxes so they can appear to be doing something about a problem they cannot control.

We can invest now and benefit, or we can invest later when it costs far more to do so.

You know what transportation budgets are often first to see the axe? Mass transit. You know what happens when you cut access to mass transit? Low ridership and less return on investment. The thing I don't understand is cutting back on transit precisely at the time it is needed most by American commuters.


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Sound Familiar?

Atlanta has a problem with their city streets.

In Atlanta, like other major cities, utility companies — cable, telecommunications, power and gas — pay franchise fees to be able to do regular work beneath the city’s streets. Developers and contractors are granted work permits. All are supposed to restore the streets to their original conditions, or close to it.

In one of the most egregious acts, Ward said auditors identified 26 random street cuts on 10 streets. Nobody in the Department of Public Works could verify when the cuts were made, or by whom. She said in another instance, she and her staff found 22 plates on streets near City Hall, and none of them had an identifiable marker on them to say to whom they belonged.

So, when a private utility company, private contractor, or ineffective city department incorrectly repairs a street - and doesn't report it - the city ends up having to clean up after them. Taxpayers subsidize private business and ineffective government yet again, and it works because - who do you call if no one knows who made the hole? It creates a zero accountability system for those doing the damage.

How about this: rasie the hell out of the franchise fees, require everyone tearing up a street to report it to Public Works, and then use the increased franchise fees to support Public Works' budget to fix the streets. Any street cuts get made, Public Works fixes the street. That way, any time there is a street torn up somewhere, everyone knows who is responsible for it. Accountability.

Bet that could work in some other Southern cities who have pothole and street problems...

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The Teacher's Fault?

Low performing schools are obviously the fault of public schoolteachers and their lousy unions because there are never political externalities that affect a public school's funding base.

< / narrative >

Public school reform will enter a new phase when local voters realize their local governments and states often make the decisions that pick which schools lose resources and gain risk and which schools gain resources while shedding risk. Often, it is a legislative committee that decides which public schools fail and which pulbic schools prosper.

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The Other 99%

There were a lot of pathologies present in the way America, and especially cities in the South, concentrated poverty and minorities in public housing projects. Coupled with the criminal mismanagement of public education resources, these pathologies created conditions responsible for replicating generations of at-risk populations.

While some folks can be lulled into the false choice that any change to a bad situation is good change, we must never forget that "solutions" may simply create or replicate progress-resistant pathologies in different ways. And guess which Southern American cities get to go first?

New Orleans and Atlanta are providing the opening scenes of a new era of American decline, with fewer and fewer economic opportunities and more and more ways to fall through the cracks.

This becomes very important to me. I realize that every year, as I become more secure in my job, as I gain experience and encounter my yearly merit raises, my economic position slips further and further down the class ladder. At the same time, there is a group of politicians in this country that blame my personal economic decline and tax burden on the most at-risk members of our society.

While the emotional reaction is immediate when you see an outwardly looking, able-bodied someone using public assistance to purchase junk food in the grocery store, and argue with the clerk about it, the reverse emotion is true when you talk to folks who do menial service work for private contractors 50 hours a week and still can't make ends meet without SNAP benefits. Help out with a city-assisted evacuation sometime, and the few dozen people who are obviously taking advantage of the situation - and complaining about it - will boil your blood. Perspective comes when you see the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people who need the assistance, whose elderly, infirm, or children would be at the mercy of leaky levees yet again if the storm comes too close. There is always a disconnect between what people say on television and radio and what actually happens in front of your face. Yes, there may be wasted tax dollars spent on the social safety net for these people, but that simply cannot be so much it is destroying our nation's fiscal health.

On the other hand, according to that group of politicians, it is the tax burden on the richest people and the corporations that is holding our economy back. So we cut and cut the taxes of the top 1%, we provide endless tax loopholes and subsidies so those corporations will provide jobs and that 1% will spend their money around. We've been following this general fiscal plan since about 1980, and all our nation has done is find fiscal decline.

The explanations seem to make sense. Lower taxes allow people to spend more on goods, and people at the top have the most buying power. But does that spending go to regular goods that create the most jobs, or to the luxury goods that require already well-paid specialists? Are they investing in real businesses that build the economy or the legalized gambling in the stock markets? The idea that corporations will move their jobs to the places where they incrue the lowest costs (and make the most profit) seems to make sense until you realize that - where are they going to go?

Then there is the deeply soothing narrative that, if we increase taxes on companies, and eliminate their subsidies and loopholes, they will "pass the cost on to the consumer." This also makes sense in the "common sensism" of soundbyte news and talk radio. But in a free market economy, isn't that up to the consumer to decide?

I don't buy a lot of stuff. I try not to buy a lot of gasoline. I don't fly commercial. I don't live in a suburb. But my tax dollars are used to subsidize or provide loopholes for companies that buy crap goods from cheap manufacturers in China; my tax dollars go to subsidize the oil companies and their billions and billions of profits; my tax dollars go to subsidize the airline industry at the expense of rail and mass transit; my tax dollars go to subsidize infrastructure and schools in other parts of the state or country while our levees leak, our roads are cratered, and our schools are being privatized because 'they don't work' for lack of resources. I'm not chosing to consume goods I'm already paying for.

Pennies come out of my tax dollars and go to the social safety net. But quarters go to subsidize the lifestyles of the top 1%. And by saying this, I know that makes me a "class warrior" to some - usually those who would have me focus my attention on the pathologies present among the most disenfranchised, at-risk populations because they can provide the easiest scapegoat.

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No Excuses

"This is why you don't put your face on the cover of Time magazine with a broom." - A former New Orleans teacher, upon being shown these links.

Y'all remember the test score investigation in Atlanta? The one where they're planning on hanging Beverly Hall out to dry? The one where the state investigators and the APS are fighting over which teachers they get to intimidate into testifying or staying silent?

Kinda makes you wonder what they're going to do with Michelle Rhee.

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Crimes Against Testing

Well, this pretty much encapulates every wrong priority about public education these days. Let us count the ways:

1. The Atlanta Public Schools are accused of withholding teacher contracts in order to intimidate teachers not to testify against possible APS wrongdoing under state investigation. This is not the first time state investigators have raised concerns that the APS is conducting a campaign of witness intimidation.

2. In the "PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONZ ARE TEH EBIL SOCIALIZMS" narrative, the APS here represents "the taxpayer" and the teachers being intimidated represent the leeches on society. Georgia is a right to work state, with a teachers' association, but with no rights to collectively bargain.

3. The narratives say that the main thing wrong with public education is the existence of all the "bad teachers," who the unions and labor laws protect against being laid-off without cause. Systems, as narrated representatives of "the taxpayer" should be able to hire and fire at will. The narrative trusts the systems to make the right decisions and not to abuse these powers. Until they don't.

4. Also representing "the taxpayer" are the state investigators, who might seem concerned that teachers - as witnesses to a crime - are being intimidated into silence by the APS. But make no mistake, the investigators are not interested in the well-being of these teachers, they are interested in the well-being of high-stakes standardized testing.

5. But don't worry, this news does not violate any tenet of the "bad teacher" narrative, as the state investigators are looking for "bad teachers" to take a plea deal and roll on the "bad APS."

That means representatives of "the taxpayers" are fighting other representatives of "the taxpayers" and using the employment of public sector employees as part of their interagency competition. This serves as proof that, in the new educational-industrial paradigm, the only time it is NOT OK to hold teachers' contracts or get rid of teachers without cause is when the teachers might be witnesses to crimes against testing.

Because you'll notice that the high-level state investigations only started in response to a scandal involving the testing. I cannot, however, recall any serious investigations into why so many public schools in Georgia are unable to get the resources and support necessary to adequately educate their students.

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$400 Million Dollars

We've been hearing about it for years, but the voices demanding a new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons continue to rise in volume, and look more and more serious. The whole pricetag would be north of $700M, of which $400M would be on the taxpayers. And (unlike Dallas) the plans for the new Bird's Nest would be an uncovered stadium with less seating capacity.

Meanwhile, real conservative Kyle Wingfield of the AJC goes over all the other things Atlanta could do with that stadium money.

Hell, he even includes streetcars, mass transit, and trains on his list.

Of course, if Atlanta does build a new Falcons' stadium, they might get rid of the Georgia Dome, even though they say they want to keep it. The reason to keep it is pretty solid: the Georgia Dome hosts the Chick Fil-A Kickoff Classic, the Peach Bowl, the Georgia State Panthers regular season and OH YES THE SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME. But how long do you think two NFL sized football stadiums will last a few parking lots away from one another?

Maybe the SEC could just buy the facility outright, which wouldn't be a bad idea, actually. Atlanta is, primarily, a college football town. The move could make economic sense for both the conference and the city. But such manuvering might not pan out, and who knows what will happen in 6 years?

This tells me one thing: New Orleans needs to have a 5-year bid to host the SEC Championship Game ready to roll before 2017. That's one of the only games on the planet more valuable than the Sugar Bowl. If there were ever an opportunity to get that game out of Atlanta, this would be it.

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Infrastructure and Spending

Jeffrey at the Yellow Blog rightly points out that the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the cumulative state of American infrastrucutre an "approaching basic" grade. And like the post says:

Failing infrastructure cannot support a thriving economy.

This is one of those fundamental things that Americans don't like to acknowledge. Everyone is wondering why the economy is having such a hard time turning around; then they're wondering why air travel is such a hassle, rail travel doesn't work, gasoline prices change and keep investors skittish, and the streets we drive are cratered with potholes. At the same time our economy bleeds money to traffic, and icy weather shuts down Southern economies unprepared to deal with snow. And that's before we start talking energy grids, levees, and the way we fund all of these projects.

Why is it so difficult to make the connections between the sluggish economy and the state of disrepair? Without working roads, you can't move your goods to market, and people can't get to the market to buy your goods. This should be a simple concept to grasp. But politics and ideologies have taken center stage, ahead of national, regional and local needs. You know all the talk of leaving debt to our children and grandchildren? We ain't leaving them a whole lot of usable stuff, either.

Now, there are a lot of folks out there who think we can grow our way into prosperity, and think spending money on infrastructure is solely the realm of pork-barrell politics. But without the infrastructure to support "growth," we'll never get out of the trough we're in (and have been in for more than a decade). Investments must be made, and we can't let those who equate the idea of sustainable development with Marxism dominate the investment options we have to examine.

Yes, too many past infrastructure projects have been politicized as pork, and used to trade political favors. That needs to stop. Lest we forget, this country has spend billions on "infrastructure" in the past decades, even as everything has fallen apart. Maybe it is time to think about the National Infrastructure Bank, because what we've currently got isn't working.

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Atlanta Schools on Probation

Speaking of Southern Schools, and the problems that they face, Atlanta's squabbling School Board has landed their whole system on probation. One thing they have to do is get a professional mediator to run their meetings and communications.

For those of you in New Orleans who may be wondering "probation from what," it is probation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). That's the organization that accredits a school system. In other places, accreditation is a very big deal. In Jefferson Parish, accreditation is a very big deal. For the Archdiocese of New Orleans, accreditation is a very big deal.

For New Orleans Public Schools? Not so much.

So while I congratulate the Recovery School District for getting one (1) of their schools accredited (Eisenhower), I dare you to ask anyone at the other 87 RSD schools what their plan is.

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New Seasons

NFL Playoffs begin next week. Saints are in. Falcons are in. Patriots and Ravens await at the end of any road to the Superbowl. Playoffs rarely get better than this.

A host of college teams have yet to play. Even with TCU's epic Rose Bowl win, Auburn & Oregon are still on tap to light up a scoreboard down in the desert. The Bayou Bengals and the Aggies are still on stage in Dallas, and there is a game still to be played in the Superdome.

But football season ended in sackcloth and ashes for my beloved Georgia Bulldawgs. As DADvocate mentioned in an earlier comment, both of the previously elite SEC programs that each of us hold dear have finished this season with more losses than wins.

And if you had told me any time since 1997 that Georgia AND Tennessee would have losing seasons AT THE SAME TIME, I'd have told you how much oceanfront real estate I could sell you in Oconee County, Georgia.

At least DADv gets to enter the new season knowing his team was legitimately robbed of a winning effort by a rule loophole. His team was overmatched in Nashville and still had enough in the tank to notch a win, barring the official buffoonery. His team has a solid coach that got more effort out of that group of players all year long than could reasonably be expected, considering recent events at the flagship university of the Volunteer state. Those players wanted to win that game.

Contrast that to the Georgia Bulldawgs, who obviously had something else on their minds, as they have seemed to so often in recent history. In the past, I have called the 2009 and 2010 seasons of UGA football "rebuilding years," meaning 2010 is the rebuilding year we should have undergone in 2009. But that doesn't seem to be the case. "Rebuilding" at least suggests that there is a blueprint, or a plan of some type; perhaps the laying of a foundation for later success. I'm not sure if our current architects actually have such a plan, or are just winging it as they go along.

This is a significant change from all my earlier opinions, save one. Though he WILL be coach of the Georgia Bulldawgs in 2011, I wonder if Mark Richt WANTS to be coach of the Georgia Bulldawgs in 2011. The new season will answer that question, finally.

And it will do so rather swiftly. Georgia's next opponent is Boise State, in Atlanta, for the Chick-fil-a College Football Kickoff Game.

Not only will we know the answer, swiftly, so will the rest of the college football watching public.

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It Can't Just Be About Football

Last night, the New Orleans Saints played the Atlanta Falcons in Monday night football. These are two teams in the playoffs, with legitimate chances to make the Super Bowl this year. They have quarterbacks who are or who have the chance to be legends in their respective cities and the league. Both have highlight reel making defenses, and both feature intriguing styles of play. The teams are divisional and sectional rivals, one with an intense, traditionally passionate fanbase and the other with an intense, passionate fanbase for college football that is switching gears to root for the local NFL franchise.

After last night's game, the Saints and Falcons have played twice, are 1 - 1 against each other for 2010, and post a combined score of 41-41. They have a chance to meet again in the NFC Championship game in several weeks. Rivalries, especially in the pros, don't often see better years than this one. (Especially a rivalry where one team owns a 8-2 regular season record over the other since 2006.)

In short, there is an awful lot of compelling topics surrounding this rivalry. But because the game involves the team from New Orleans, you just know it is going to be about more than the sport.

And of course, this year's "Finishing what Katrina Started" head-slapper comes from Falcons fans.

This is a terrible reflection on the many, many fine Falcons fans I know, who were Dirty Birds long, long, long before Matty Ice & Co started posting back-to-back winning seasons and Super Bowl aspirations. Some of my best memories are of watching the small television in the Burntstone Brewhouse as the Falcons defeated Minnesota and then played in their first Super Bowl; or watching the valiant NFC Championship game effort against Philadelphia from the Gnat's Landing porch on St. Simons Island. But, like all sports teams, some fans take it beyond the ribbing of good natured rivals and into the realm of the very, very personal.

As Cliff so rightly states, Katrina is off limits when trash talking. This is sports, people. Sports. I know it is important. I know it can be emotional. I know it is sometimes used as a metaphor for larger issues.

But "Hating America's Team After Hurricane Katrina" qualifies as Katrina-based smack talk. Expounding that point ("Yes, We're Still the Bad Guys In This Story") also qualifies as Katrina-based smack talk.

You'll notice that both posts have been deleted. Maybe someone at SB Nation figured out this was off-limits troll baiting (and after years of following SB Nation college football sites, I can believe that). Maybe some folks just want to hide their opinions, as if they didn't think New Orleanians had access to the internet. These are the kinds of things that get written or said when you don't think anyone who disagrees with you will read what you wrote or hear what you said.

Saints fans believe "it's OK to tack on the suffering of thousands and the devastation of decades to enhance the luster of your football title, but if someone else derides you for it, claim ownership of the tragedy and whine like hell," Godfrey writes. "This logic is ludicrous and almost insulting, but it's the brush Saints Nation has decided to paint their team with.

"If the Atlanta Falcons somehow capture a world title this season, my first order of business will be to take to the Internet and post a sobbing YouTube monologue that declares, 'I NEVER THOUGHT WE'D BOUNCE BACK FROM GENERAL SHERMAN. TONIGHT THIS CITY ROSE UP. WE'RE HEALED!'

"That's what I've learned from the New Orleans Saints - that any professional sports championship can be made to count even more if you've got a great, largely unrelated local tragedy to position it against."

That is disgusting. It is a shame some folks out there in "real America" are still not over the fact that New Orleans was flooded in a tragedy made worse by an ineffective government. It is a shame the city hasn't fully recovered, even five years later. I guarantee there are more folks in New Orleans unhappy with that fact than folks in in Atlanta.

It is a shame that some folks can't accept that tragedy happens in this country and that you're going to hear about it as long as the graves are still fresh, and the wounds are still visible. (We're still dealing with legislation for the September 11 Rescue Heroes, after all.) As a matter of fact, as far as defining American tragedies are concerned, most Americans haven't really heard word fucking one about New Orleans, Katrina, the Federal Flood and what passes for recovery. Posts like these, if they weren't hastily deleted, are simply evidence of that fact.

And these authors think they can play the "media victim" because occasionally a news organization will investigate some small part of what happened (and still happens) in New Orleans when doing background research for a sports story. When you're reporting on a team from New Orleans, and you talk to people who live in New Orleans, and you travel to New Orleans to watch and write about football games, you may run into a few stories about the storm, the flood and the recovery. They're kind of a big fucking deal down in New Orleans.

But, there is a disgusting cultural undercurrent in this country that likes to blame the victim. There is a ridiculous cultural undercurrent in this country that must draw lines in the sand and list everything in terms of "good guys vs. bad guys," even in sports. I can understand how Atlanta would be sensitive to the "bad guy" brush, after their former franchise quarterback was convicted of morally repugnant felonious behavior and spent time in prison.

It is a shame that it is spoiling a fine rivalry, during the best year of the rivalry.

Update: Of course, Jeffrey wrote about this yesterday.

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Quick Saints Quote

The Black & Gold show up as #5 on Don Bank's NFL Power Rankings for Sports Illustrated, but here's the rub:

Tell me again how much the Saints offense missed Reggie Bush, who returned to the lineup last week in Dallas after missing eight games with a fractured fibula. He never really got a handle on the ball all day against the Cowboys, and nearly gave the game away. He's known for instant impact, but none of it was of the positive variety in his long-awaited return. If and when I figure out my all-overrated team, Bush will be my starting running back.

I should mention that every time I watch a Saints game on the TV's at Carrollton Station, there is undoubtedly someone in the crowd yelling "RUN FORWARD" every time Reggie gets the ball. Now, I know that haters are gonna hate, but it will take a long, sustained level of football excellence (that we suspect he's capable of) to overcome Bush's disappointing NFL career so far. But, how long will it be before defenses stop biting on the fact that Bush is in the game, if they haven't already? If you ask me, that's the primary benefit of him being on the field.

Also an interesting tidbit - New Orleans and Atlanta are tied for winningest NFC teams over the last 46 regular season games. Though earlier this year I noticed that, since 2006, the Dirty Birds have gone 2 - 7 against the Bless You Boys, with only one win (earlier this year) coming in the Louisiana Superdome. We'll see how the record shakes out this season, as these rivals have a chance to meet up two more times.

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