Jackson Free Press

The first month of the NFL season is in the books and it has been a strange four weeks so far. At the quarter turn mark several of last year's playoff teams have started slowly or darn right awful. It is widely know that each year, nearly half the playoff teams from the year before fail to make the playoffs. Here is a quick look at last year's playoff teams.

This week in the [JFP we went streaking][1] (figuratively not literally, no one wants to see that) in the look back portion of our weekly look at college football in Mississippi. Looking forward this is an interesting week.

We've heard about a number of debate parties in Jackson and beyond. You're on your own to figure out the drinking games. Here are the ones we know about; feel free to add your own!

1. Hal & Mal's Red Room, downtown Jackson, tends to be a progressive crowd that likes to imbide.

2. Koinonia Coffeehouse, JSU parkway, also leans progressive but of more of the coffee-drinking type.

3. The @MadisonCoMSGOP is hosting a debate watch party in Ridgeland. Details here: twitpic.com/b0esqh -- decidedly not progressive. We don't know if they're drinking or not, but suspect there will be a flash or two at least.

4. If you're on the Coast, the @HCRepublican is hosting a debate watching party at their HQ in Gulfport. More info here: us4.campaign -- Republicans, duh. See flash guess above.

5. Pi(e) Lounge at Sal & Mookies (Fondren) is inviting people to come there and watch. Probably a mixed group, politics wise, but we wouldn't expect many birthers. The cocktails will flow freely.

6. The 29th Annual Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Symposium starts tonight at the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy at Jackson State with a keynote address by Dr. Mary Coleman at 6:30 p.m. in the Dollye M.E. Robinson College of Liberal Arts and will be followed by a debate watch tonight and will continue throughout the day tomorrow. We're guessing that the punchbowl won't be spiked. Go ready to think and be sick and tired of being sick of tired in honor of the great Mrs. Hamer.

7. Watch the debate at the Top Notch Sports Bar at 109 Culley Drive. We don't know their politics--football?--but clearly you can get a beer. It's a sports bar, fool.

Meantime, join our open discussion about the debate here. Follow us on Twitter @jxnfreepress and @jfppolitics for even more. (Where were you when Twitter broke? We expect it'll be tonight.)

Take some time and remember our fellow Mississippians who are in danger every day in their own homes.

According to NewsMax (ugh) our esteemed former lobbyist/former governor/current lobbyist Haley Barbour was on Fox News this weekend complaining that President Obama isn't paying enough attention to the debt.

What's wrong with the American Economy? Income inequality, due, in part, to an over-emphasis on shareholder value as our prevailing metric for corporate success.

Sitting at 0-3 and heading into the fourth week of the NFL season, hopes for the a playoff berth is dwindling for the New Orleans Saints. The chances of making the playoff are slim for teams starting at 0-3 but only one team since the AFL-NFL merger has started 0-4 and reached the postseason. The San Diego Chargers started the season 0-4 before winning going 11-1 in their final 12 games to win the AFC West. That San Diego team even won a playoff game in the Wildcard round before losing in the division round.

One of college basketball's great appeals has been the rise of mid-major programs. College basketball teams from non-power conferences have gained a foothold in the NCAA Tournament by building senior led programs and years upon years of upsets in the big dance. College football has its own version of the mid-major in Boise State and until this year TCU. BYU has been a national power on and off. The Cougars are now an independent and Boise State will join the Big East next year.

Due to lack of water pressure, the city of Jackson has issued what they are calling a "precautionary" boil-water notice Friday, Sept. 28 for the following areas:

Lucedale Street, Canton Club Court, Canton Park Drive, Riviera Drive, Kinder Drive, N Canton Club Circle, Barkwood Court, Beechcrest Street, Beechcrest Drive, Sedgwick Drive, E Sedgwick Ct, W Sedgwick Ct, Dover Place, Pickford Lane, Vista Court, Chelsea Court, River Road, Foxboro Drive, Deer Trail, Cypress Trail, River Glen Street and River Cove

The notice does not mean that the water is unclean, but that the city is urging citizens in the affected areas to boil all water for at least 1 minute before drinking or cooking with it.

RESIDENTS WILL BE NOTIFIED IMMEDIATELY WHEN THE ADVISORY IS LIFTED. For more information, call 601-960-2723 during business hours or 601-960-1778 or 601-960-1875 after 3:00PM and on weekends.

Vickie Stanford called me today. Her 15-year-old son Brennan needs a kidney, and there are no signs of match anywhere in sight.

The JFP featured Brennan as a Person of the Day in April. You can read the story here: POD: Brennan Stanford

Vickie said today that the Tulane University pediatric kidney transplant program shut down recently. Brennan, whose blood type is O positive, is now on the waiting lists for a kidney at University of Mississippi Medical Center, which just recently reopened its pediatric transplant unit, and at Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans.

There is no nationwide, or even statewide, kidney donation program. Each hospital that does transplants has its own waiting list and its own donor supplies. Vickie said that UMMC told her that they may receive one kidney a year that is a match for Brennan, who can only accept a kidney from someone with Type O blood.

Vickie hopes to get Brennan on the list at the University of Alabama-Birmingham soon.

Brennan is currently in good health, and doctors have told Vickie that now is the best time to give him a transplant, if she can find a donor. He currently takes 9 hours of dialysis every night, and Vickie said he cannot do that forever.

Brennan, whose father donated a kidney to him before his second birthday, has no other family with his O positive blood type. If Brennan is going to receive the kidney he needs to survive, he will most likely need a volunteer donor.

Further information about donating a kidney can be found in the JFP's Person of the Day story on Brennan. Brennan's health insurance will pay for all medical expenses related to a donation.

For more information on donating or to find out if you are a match, please call Silvia at UMMC at 601-984-5065, or Becky Guillera at Ochsner Hospital at 504-842-3925.

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2012/sep/28/8655/

So if you're a presidential candidate pitching the idea that the government is too big and the private sector needs to be convinced to hire more people -- what data are you using to reach that conclusion?

The nation is rejoicing the return of the regular officials after the NFL and the NFLRA came to agreement on a new labor deal last night. NFL fans no longer have to see the replacement officials on the field or their TV screen this week. Thank goodness, the regular officials have returned. Now, NO team in the NFL will receive a terrible call, or a bad penalty, or an atrocious ball spot for the rest of the season.

Time once again for your Thursday, College football look back and look forward. [New to the JFP print edition is a look back at last week’s action][1], so this week will be more of a detailed look forward. There are several prospects for our weekly big winner. Mississippi State is 4-0 for the first time since 1999, Ole Miss is 3-1 and beating teams they should beat on their schedule, and Millsaps is a perfect 3-0 coming off a bye week.

OK, as if dinosaur (and Missouri Senate candidate) Todd Akin hadn't been offensive enough to women already, here's a fun one from the campaign trail today. The Kansas City Start reported that Akin said he is going to win the race because, in part, Sen. Claire McCaskill wasn't "ladylike" in their recent debate as she was against Republican Jim Talent in 2006. More:

“I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent,” Akin said. “She had a confidence and was much more ladylike (in 2006), but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that’s because she feels threatened.”

Um, Akin, maybe she came out swinging because the majority of women in America right now wouldn't mind taking a swing at you after your disgusting comments about "legitimate rape" and your support of giving women no reproductive rights whatsoever that you don't approve.

Sir, you are no gentleman. You are a caveman. Ladylike enough for you?

On the "Sh*t Politicians Say" front, the JFP is collecting crazy things politicians have said (recently or further in the past) about women for our big Women in Politics issue next week. Please share your, er, favorites below. Direct quotes please, and a link would be great.

This afternoon I received a press release that Mississippi College has come to the conclusion on Thursday (Sept 27) to ask the NCAA permission to rejoin Division II athletics. The Choctaws currently are classified as a Division III institution in sports.

The NFL announced Thursday that the referee lockout that never should have happened in the first place is over. And only three weeks too late.

The final play from scrimmage in Monday night's game between Seattle and Green Bay has been replayed, reviewed and evaluated by every media outlet in America at least four dozen times in the last 60 hours. That clearly was the straw that broke the owners' backs.

We all saw it coming. With the NFL, who answers to the individual team owners, and the referees nowhere near an agreement, it became clear that this lockout would not end pretty. As replacement refs made mistakes and showed their lack of ability to keep up with the professional game's speed and complexity, we all knew the fatal mistake was coming.

It came the only way it could. For the NFL and the referees to come to an agreement, it would take a game-changing call. A call that took a rightfully earned digit out of one team's win column and placed it in the opponent's. Thankfully, it didn't take until the playoffs for it to happen.

There is certainly an argument for the call Monday night. Under NFL rules, it two players have simultaneous possession, the tie goes to the offensive player. The play Monday was close. So close, I am not certain that the real NFL referees would not have called it the same way. Unfortunately for the replacement refs, and fortunately for all the rest of us, it looked like the Green Bay defender had the ball first, and had the superior control of the ball, but didn't get the credit.

That was all the fuel the media needed to create a 48-hour news storm that a Buddhist monk living in a cave on a deserted island couldn't ignore. Thankfully, neither could the NFL. It decided the league couldn't take another debacle like Monday night.

No longer could the owners pretend the replacement refs were a worthy option. No longer could they act like the men who have done such a fantastic job of almost never being in the spotlight were not a vital part of what makes the NFL the smoothest-running show in American sports. No longer could the owners deny the real referees what they have clearly earned.

So the NFL and owners did what they should have done a month ago, and settled with the referees. Thankfully, we can all go back to the NFL we love, starting tonight. The NFL where we watch the greatest football players in the world play the game as it was meant to be played: with referees enforcing the rules, interpreting them correctly and staying the hell out of the spotlight.

Thanks to the economic downturn, it's a buyer's market for a lot of products: houses are cheap, food is relatively inexpensive (although experts are predicting a bacon shortage of apocalyptic proportions) and now, at Jackson-area Walmart stores, you can even get a pretty good deal on a weapon that shoots bullets faster than I can gobble down bacon, which is pretty damn fast.

Over the weekend, Walmart ran an ad in the Clarion-Ledger advertising deals on shotguns, rifles and MSRs. It's possible that the world's largest corporation understands that global chaos could ensue when bacon reserves dry up.

Anarchy is generally good for the gun business.

According to the ad, one might procure one of these MSRs -- modern sporting rifle more commonly known as an assault rifle -- for as little as $597 and as much $1,097 for a .223-caliber Colt M4 Rifle. If you're smart, you don't go cheap because when the bacon-takers come -- and, believe me, they will come -- you want a reliable weapon to protect your family's salted meats.

At the same time, you don't want to spend too much just to be sure you can afford to stock up on enough ammo to fend off the imminent roving hoards of pork-looters. To that end, there's a mid-level machine gun, a Sig Sauer M400 SRP with Prismatic Scope can be had for just $897 and, according to the ad, is available only at Walmart.

Only at Walmart indeed.

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2012/sep/26/8601/

Update: I deferred to the expertise of the firearmphiles and removed a reference to automatic weapons. Again, the gun people win.

The website Remapping Debate has posted a story titled "Brother, Can you Spare $829 Billion?" On it, your can see just how much the top public corporations are hoarding ... er, holding.

So how much pump-priming could America’s largest corporations achieve if they were to dig into their cash and cash equivalents as well as their short-term investments? Remapping Debate examined the relevant quarterly Securities and Exchange Commission filings of the 100 largest corporations by revenue as ranked by the Fortune 500 in 2012 (looking only at publicly-held corporations, and excluding those in the financial sector). We looked at filing data for the period closest to June 30th in 2012, 2006, and 2000.

...each of three numbers calculated as a percentage of total assets for each of the three years: cash and cash equivalents (CCE) separately, short-term investments separately, and CCE and short-term investments combined (for 10 companies in 2000, comparable data were not available).

It turns out that more than 70 percent of the corporations listed in both 2012 and 2000 showed an increase over time in CCE and short-term investments combined as a percentage of total assets, including 15 corporations where the percentage point increase was 10 points or more.

Kind of makes me wonder how much faster the economy could recover if some of those companies would put some of their resources into hiring -- and creating additional consumers for their goods. Hmmm... What do you think?

Nobody tweets like Ward 4 Councilman Frank Bluntson

Early today, word came down from the top of the JFP tower all the way down to the basement where I am located, that we could set up a pick'em game. I have gone out and set up an account for a few fantasy games.