Momentum and Damage Multiplyers

September 11th is four days away, the US has had its largest port rendered useless and it's emergency infrastructure stretched thin by bad leadership and lack of planning.

My 6th grade teacher had a joke with a vital lesson embedded in it. He'd say "Never hit a man when he is down, kick him." It works with dogs as well as men. It's wired into our brains. Establish that it is you who are the Alpha Male and you control the momentum. I think this is why people like a winner.

I've been a Packer Fan since the mid 70's when only Wisconsin and about half the Upers (the other half of the Upers were Lions fans) supported them. Then the Pack establishes itself as an Alpha and suddenly they have fans all over the nation (world?).

When people root for a winning team, I think they are acknowledging the Alpha's dominance and are submitting to it's leadership.

Ah, but I digress.

The point I wanted to make about football is how a game can turn on one event. You never know when or what it'll be, but suddenly one teams offense just dies or their defence folds. Good teams, the winners, the Alphas will maximize any event to turn the momentum in their favor.

I'm sure OBL knows all about momentum. He's just seen NO hit by a reverse Neutron Bomb where the city is destroyed and the people are left alive. In time, our emergency infrastructure will recover and be stronger than it was, right? It will take lessons that were painfully learned (I hope) and rewrite (write?) emergency procedures and plans.

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT FROM MONDAY NIGHT EXISTANCE
MARS: It's 3 IEDs and 4 patrols in Falluja with 2 snipers in Mosul that seem to be showing promise, there's the detonation, and, oh, a miss and another miss.
FATE: The insurgents just seem to be having a rough time with bad timing and coalition body armour, but wait, there's a flag on the play.
MARS: What's she signalling?
FATE: Hurricane. Mother Nature just called Hurricane on New Orleans. That calls for loss of city with no loss of play.
MARS: Look at the insurgents, they seem excited.
FATE: These are the same people who danced in the street when the World Trade Center fell. Of course they are excited.
MARS: No look at the substitutions, Osama just took the field.
FATE: The field is really confused right now. The insurgents are a man short and the States are argueing amongst themselves over the loss of New Orleans.
MARS: The insurgents aren't a man short. Look at the sidelines. They're taking advantage of the disarray Mother Nature caused and are trying the sleeper play.
FATE: Adnan el Shukrijumah? I thought he was in Mexico. Look at him, no one is covering him.
MARS: How can they cover him, if they don't notice him? We could be looking at a really big play in the making...

I just hope we've hit Al Quieda hard enough, I hope we've knocked it down and kicked it hard enough that they can't take advantage of the loss of New Orleans. I figure that if the 4th anniversary of 911 passes uneventfully, we've got special forces leaving boot prints on turbans somewhere that we don't hear about.

And yes, I hope we don't stop kicking till we stove Al Quieda's ribs in and crush it's heart.