FOOTBALL PREDICTIONS

Indianapolis at Baltimore -- Billick get closer to the Super Bowl. 27-24
Philadelphia at New Orleans -- Classy till the end, Philly loses
Seattle at Chicago --Grossman plays the whole game. Bears win 30-10
New England at San Diego -- Win or Lose, Todd Sauerbrun is going to party his ass off in San Diego. Pats Lose: 35-21

BUSHWHACKED

GEORGE BUSH has always been a gambler but this is his most audacious bet yet. Most Americans now believe that America has lost the war in Iraq. Only last month the Baker-Hamilton group, a bipartisan group of wise men (and one wise woman) told Congress that the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating”. It recommended a managed withdrawal, dangling the prospect of the bulk of America's combat troops pulling out in early 2008. This week Mr Bush rejected that advice. He intends to defy world opinion, American opinion, congressional opinion, much military opinion and even the advice of many members of his own Republican Party by reinforcing rather than reducing America's effort in Iraq. Some will call this reckless. Some will say the president is in denial. We don't admire Mr Bush, but on this we think he is right.

It's not just about “surge”
Mr Bush is investing much hope in a plan, known as “the surge”, to secure the mixed Sunni-Shia neighbourhoods of Baghdad by injecting “more than 20,000” additional American troops on top of the 130,000 or so already in the country. His hope is that by creating an island of calm in the capital, the Americans will be able to arrest the slide into civil war and give Iraq's politicians the breathing room they need in order to settle their differences in an atmosphere of reduced violence. It is not just a military plan, says Mr Bush: it includes a dose of new economic help focused on job creation and another political push designed to help Sunnis, Shias and Kurds agree on how to share oil revenues and governmental power under the new constitution they voted for in October 2005.

It is by no means certain that the surge will succeed. The Americans have tried before to impose order on Baghdad, only for violence to flare again as soon as the troops move on (see article). Those who say this is too little, too late, may be proved right. Sectarian hatreds have deepened since that referendum of 2005, as the wildly differing reactions of Shias and Sunnis to the hanging of Saddam Hussein demonstrated. Even with Iraqi helpers, American soldiers may not be welcomed in Baghdad's neighbourhoods now that Iraqis have turned for protection to their local militias. According to one survey last September, 61% of Iraqis approve of attacking coalition forces. It may be that by barging into Baghdad's neighbourhoods, and staying there this time, the Americans will merely stoke resistance and take (and inflict) more casualties.

In short, the surge may fail. But the surge is not the most significant part of Mr Bush's speech of January 10th. If this particular plan fails, a new one will be formulated. Far more significant is the strategic message that in spite of the Baker-Hamilton report, and notwithstanding the growing pressure from public opinion and a Democrat-controlled Congress, this president will not in his remaining two years concede defeat and abandon Iraq to its fate. And this, whether it is motivated by obstinacy, denial or a sober calculation of the strategic stakes in Iraq, is a good thing.

How so? Advocates of quitting say that after losing more than 3,000 soldiers and spending more than $300 billion America has already failed and should therefore depart. But only half of this proposition is correct. It is true that America has failed. It has failed to deliver Iraq smoothly from dictatorship to democracy. Even if the situation were eventually to improve, the country that suffered so much under Saddam will remain scarred for generations by the mistakes America made after the invasion of 2003, and the loss of life they caused.

It does not, however, follow that America should go now. For as even the Baker-Hamilton report said, a premature departure would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence and further deterioration. Without the Americans to protect the elected government and keep outside powers at bay, the prospect is for full-scale civil war and the violent intervention of Iraq's neighbours. From afar it may look as if Iraq could not fall any lower. But it easily could.

One objection to the argument that conditions would get even worse if America left is that conditions have got worse anyway. Certainly, the United States should not keep an army in Iraq just to glower at Iran and protect Iraq's perpetually squabbling politicians. Those Iraqis who welcomed the invasion—and most did—expected the Americans to depart swiftly. The longer they stay, the more they are resented and the greater the motivation of Iraqis to attack them. The point is to use America's necessarily temporary presence to create the conditions in which it becomes safer for it to depart.

Easy to say. America has built an Iraqi army, but its loyalties are divided. It has organised elections, but the politicians refuse to make the necessary compromises across sectarian lines. The Baker-Hamilton group reckoned that announcing an early departure would concentrate Iraqi political minds. But this risked turning the Americans in Iraq into lame ducks, devoid of influence as they packed to leave. The merit of surging is that this should strengthen America's still considerable influence and help it to force the Shias and Kurds to share their power (and oil) with the Sunni minority. The compliance of Iraq's leaders is crucial. If they still refuse to share power, civil war will continue and it will be time for America to give up.

Redefining success
After everything that has gone so wrong, it would be foolish to argue that Mr Bush's plan is certain of success. Even if it does succeed, this would not be “victory” in any normal sense. Iraq is likely to be violent and unstable for years to come. Contrary to what Mr Bush said this week, the dream of turning it into a democratic model for other Arabs has died.

It is a characteristic of democracies to aim high and lose patience quickly when success is elusive. The people of the United States thought they were ridding the world of a dictator who was building an atomic bomb. They hoped to be greeted as liberators, not invaders. More than the cost in soldiers' lives and squandered dollars, it is the feeling that they are doing no good that has turned them against this war. Instead of a high-minded victory, they have witnessed a debacle.

And yet there is much that America can still try to do to mitigate the dimensions of the debacle. At one end of the spectrum of bad consequences is a failed state, fought over by neighbours, breeding terrorism in the oil-rich centre of the Middle East. Another possibility is partition, of the sort that resulted in massive death and displacement during the independence struggles of India and Israel. Yet another is an Iraq in thrall to a nuclear-arming Iran that is increasingly hostile to Western friends and interests in the Middle East.

For its own sake, as well as for the sake of Iraqis, the United States should reflect hard before accepting any of those possible futures. For the present, Iraq still has an elected government that claims to want what America wants: security for all of Iraq's people and a power-sharing agreement that prevents the place from spinning apart or falling under the control of any neighbour. The job of holding it together remains daunting, but the Americans in Iraq have many resources, from the power of the gun to the power of the purse. The one they are running shortest of is support back home. For all his flaws, the lonely Mr Bush is right to resume the charge.
ECONOMIST.com

ESSENTIAL SONGS OF JAMES BROWN

"Please, Please, Please" (1956)
James Brown was blowing the mike out from the first note of his first single. As raw as a begging suitor's scraped knees, this descendant of the Orioles' "Baby Please Don't Go" set the pattern for JB's early records: wailing, sweating and growling over slow-rolling rhythm & blues. He's howled it at almost every show for fifty years.

"Think" (1960)
A cover of a 1957 hit by the "5" Royales that cranked up the tempo, mangled the lyrics, shoved Nat Kendrick's relentless drumming right up front, threw in a lacerating sax solo by bandleader J.C. Davis and effectively announced that the old order could pack it in, because R&B had a new boss.

"Lost Someone (Live at the Apollo version)" (recorded 1962, released 1963)
Live at the Apollo was recorded in Harlem during the Cuban missile crisis, at the James Brown revue's twenty-fourth show of the week. It made him a star, and its core is this astonishing eleven-minute meltdown: a sliver of a ballad that Brown turns into an epic of sexual despair.

"Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (1965)
And, all of a sudden, there was funk: 126 seconds of clipped, spare, unfiltered blammo; a nine-piece horn section whose only job is to smack you in the face every few seconds; and a brand-new beat. It was rammed onto tape in under an hour en route to yet another show.

"Cold Sweat" (1967)
Barely even a song ­ just insanely syncopated rhythms ricocheting all over the place, some curlicues and slashes from tenor saxophonist Maceo Parker, a monolithic drum break by Clyde Stubblefield and James Brown singing so hard his voice turns into a percussion instrument. Half the R&B bands in America spent the next four years trying to catch up to this two-part single.

"Say It Loud ­ I'm Black and I'm Proud" (1968)
In 1968, the hyperproductive Brown released seven albums and fourteen singles, but the biggest cultural impact came from this stomping civil-rights anthem. (Those kids chanting the chorus? Mostly white and Asian.)

"Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing" (recorded 1970, released 1972)
He'd cut an earlier, odder version of "Talkin' Loud" in 1970 with an acid-rock band, but this swaggering jam was the hit ­ you can hear Brown yelling to engineer Ron Lenhoff to keep recording while he rewrites the song mid-take. This lineup, featuring teenage bass wizard Bootsy Collins, lasted only a year, producing a string of hits including "Sex Machine" and "Super Bad."

"Doing It to Death" (1973)
Officially released as "Doing It to Death," by Fred Wesley and the JB's, this Number One R&B hit is universally remembered as "Gonna Have a Funky Good Time," by James Brown, who still opens his shows with it. Trombonist and bandleader Wesley gets the first solo, followed by returning prodigal saxophonist Maceo Parker.

"The Payback" (recorded 1973, released 1974)
Brown's son Teddy was killed in a 1973 car accident; a grieving JB, with the IRS breathing down his neck, rebounded with his darkest, angriest single, a hoarse threat of revenge that sold a million copies and played off his new nickname, "the Godfather of Soul." Jimmy Nolen's sinister guitar riff has powered everything from En Vogue's "My Lovin' " to Massive Attack's "Protection."

24

Bombers Strike, and America Is in Turmoil. It’s Just Another Day for Jack Bauer. It’s morning again on “24,” and Day 6 is looking bleak. Among other things, teams of suicide bombers are blowing up buses and subway cars all across the United States.

Every new season of this Fox thriller is another twist of a kaleidoscope: the same pieces — terrorists; counterterrorists (and, almost inevitably, a mole); an innocent suburban family; and the president, his aides and his family — are tumbled together to form new patterns around the central figure of the special agent Jack Bauer.

And that makes the four-hour, two-part premiere on Sunday and Monday both comfortingly familiar and strangely gripping. Jack (Kiefer Sutherland), who last season was headed for a Chinese prison, is set free — at a very high cost — so he can once again come to his country’s rescue. Only this time, Jack is not asked to avert a looming terrorist attack; major cities are already under attack. The best he can do is try to prevent the disaster from getting even worse.

Even in its sixth season, “24” remains remarkably compelling. The ratings have steadily increased since the series began in 2001. The first four episodes suggest that this season could be one of the best thus far. The countdown clock — each episode takes place over one hour of a 24-hour period that ends at the conclusion of the season — is just a gimmick. And it’s not just that the action zigzags between at least three separate but interconnected story lines or that the characters are richly imagined. (Actually, many are cartoonish.)

“24” prolongs suspense with detours and surprise twists, and not just in the plot. The series also thrives on ideological red herrings — it leans Tom Clancy right, then suddenly will feint left and then back again.

Torture, presented with gusto and almost no moral compunction, is an increasingly popular way of gathering intelligence on “24.” If anything, the new season seems even more intent on hammering home the message that torture is necessary in the war against terror, and that despite what some experts claim, torture works.

At one point, Jack plunges a knife into a suspect’s shoulder, then relents, convinced that the man will not talk. A more ruthless associate disagrees and plunges the knife into the captive’s knee, ripping upward until the man screams out the location of his leader.

But “24” also jukes to the far side of political correctness and even left-wing paranoia. In two different seasons, the villains seeking to harm the United States are not Middle Eastern terrorists but conspirators directed by wealthy, privileged white Americans: in the second season, oil business tycoons tried to set off a Middle East war, and last year, Russian rebels turned out to be working in cahoots with a cabal of far-right government officials. By those standards, the current crop of Muslim terrorists intent on nuclear Armageddon could yet turn out to be a front for French-Canadian separatists.

Then again, the meddlesome naïveté of civil rights purists is also a leitmotif on “24.” In Season 4, a lawyer for Amnesty Global is dispatched by a terrorist mastermind to free a suspect before he can be interrogated, and the government lets the terrorist walk away. (Jack quit the Counter Terrorist Unit so he could break the suspect’s fingers as a private citizen and leave his bosses plausible deniability.)

This season, the president’s sister, Sandra (Regina King), is a lawyer for an Islamic American solidarity group so passionately intent on protecting her client’s constitutional rights that she shreds the personnel files to prevent the F.B.I. from seizing them — on principle.

Family ties have a way of knotting up on “24.” Jack’s daughter is not around this season, but his estranged father, Phillip Bauer (James Cromwell), makes his first appearance later in the series. Morris (Carlo Rota), the ex-husband of Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub), is back at C.T.U. as an analyst, while the boss of the unit, Bill Buchanan (James Morrison), turns out to be married to the national security adviser, Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson), whose name sounds like that of Karen Hughes, a former counselor to President Bush who is now the under secretary of state for public diplomacy.

The televisions at C.T.U. headquarters and the White House are tuned to Fox News. When a rival cable network is shown, the report is brief and labeled CNB.

For obvious reasons, the series is a favorite of the Bush administration and many Republicans. Last season, Senator John McCain made a cameo appearance (despite his objections to torture), and in June the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, held a panel discussion titled, “ ‘24’ and America’s Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does It Matter?” The guests included Ms. Rajskub, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security.

That kind of partisan favor is not surprising. Officials in the Clinton administration rubbed elbows with the cast of “The West Wing”; his former press secretary Dee Dee Myers worked as a consultant to the series.

Oval Office deliberation is one of the more colorful elements of “24,” more compelling than even the high-tech satellite snooping and interoffice sniping at C.T.U. headquarters.

It’s like a video game version of a John F. Kennedy School of Government model of presidential decision-making: presidents on “24” are confronted with split-second choices and horrifying moral dilemmas, like choosing to sacrifice the life of a visiting head of state to save American lives. The Cuban missile crisis lasted 13 days; on “24,” the life-or-death consequences of a decision become clear within three commercial breaks.

Last season proved a high point in White House intrigue and indecision. President Charles Logan (Greg Itzin) was irresistible as a caviling, craven commander in chief who manipulates his pill-addled first lady, Martha (Jean Smart).

The newly elected president, Wayne Palmer (D. B. Woodside), the brother of the assassinated president, David Palmer, is more resolute, but he too wavers between hawkish aides who want to put Muslim Americans in detention camps and those who fret about violating the Constitution. The debate can stiffen into a 10th-grade civics lesson.

When the F.B.I. director points out that in wartime, other presidents had suspended many protections, President Palmer snaps, “And Roosevelt interned over 200,000 Japanese-Americans in what most historians consider a shameful mistake.” The wording makes it sound as if the scriptwriters couldn’t agree on whether it was truly shameful, and threw in “most historians” as a palliative.

One thing never changes: the president and his aides keep making the critical blunder of not trusting Jack’s instincts.

This time, however, even Jack is hobbled by self-doubt. He returns to the field altered by his ordeal in China and uncertain whether he can handle the task. On his way to track down a terrorist, Jack suddenly stops, his shoulders slumped, his voice shaken. “I don’t know how to do this anymore,” he says.

His not very sympathetic companion gruffly replies, “You’ll remember.”