I told you I'd be quiet if we lost Wolves 0 - 3 Reading!

…and it’s super Reading, super Reading FC…Oh Yes, the boys did it again, we took top of the table Wolves apart in their own back yard! Now they can take a comprehensive 3-0 victory back to the Mad stad for the first time this season. Such an emphatic win will send a clear message to the rest of the league that Reading are the team to beat. Though I'm not sure that will help our cause.

Other than a 15 minute period towards the end of the first half Reading dominated throughout, great movement, and a total team effort. It's hard to single anyone out, but after Wolves front line have been scoring so freely this season, and as the brilliant Bikey put away his fourth of the season, I have to give a special nod to our back four: Liam Rosenior, Andre Bikey, Ivar Ingimarsson and Chris Armstrong.

Here's what Coppell had this to say...

"Their three-pronged attack which has been very effective gave us a little bit more freedom to go forward and score more goals.

"We had to try and have a go at Wolves. If you sit back they can maul you. It was a very conscious point of ours to 'have a go' as much as possible. But you don't just win games by running around - you have to try to be composed in possession when you can. It was a solid performance all around....psychologically I think a good performance was important. If you come to places like this, play a team who are playing ever so well, and don't perform, then it's a reflection on what you are about. So it was important that we played and I felt as if we were always trying to play. It wasn't just a backs to the wall rear-guard...it was important that we had a go at them."

'Have a go' Yes Sir Stevie! Let's be doing that a bit more often.

It's so good to see my team, a team that are more than capable of walking this league, start to perform to their ability. Tonight's result was a major step for us, and it'll help shake off the remnants of that horribly depressing relegation last season. Results like this, will get our players enjoying their football again, and if that happens, Reading will be back in the premiership next summer.

The victory is all the sweeter when you start reading what the Wolves fans are saying about it. Here are a couple of reactions from Wolves fans on the BBC's 606 boards.

superFlameWolf (U10874375) says...
"well went to the game expecting a good performance but afraid the same problems occurred, and we was totally outclassed by a superior team. it could of been like 6 or 7 if we are all honest."

while Buddhawolf (U8757790) concludes...
"...My view is that Reading will prove to be head and shoulders above this league and we will be left with a clutch of other clubs to fight for second spot. We got done by a sharper side and a more tactically astute manager."

and jackiegallagher (U13171373) reckons...
"We will not play another team with the quality of Reading with the exception of Birmingham maybe. Let's not get carried away here, we are still a good side.
Half that Reading team could hold their own in the Premier league, so to lose to them is no disgrace.
Let's keep things in perspective here boys."

We have another important game at the Mad stad on Saturday, we play Burnley the team just below us in the league. Our boys love playing at home, and if they keep up their level of performance, and play like they have for the last couple of games, they'll be too much for the team placed fourth. Now that would really send a message to the league.

C'mon URZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Big game tonight, Reading travel to Wolves

OK, so it's 10am, which means the lucky few Reading fans are well into their 2-3 hour journey to the midlands to watch the Reading vs Wolves match, for those that don't know Wolves are based in Birmingham.

Wolves are storming the Championship this season and are undefeated so far, they've only dropped two points since the opening day. At home they have an even more imposing record, their defense have only let in 2 goals in 4 matches, while their front line have scored 13.

Now my lot - After a slow start, especially away from home, the team seem to finally be shaking off the cloud that's hung over their heads since being relegated from the Premiership last season. They're improving with each game away from home, but are still looking to register their first win. At home we don't have any such problems having scored a stunning 10 goals over the last two games while not having a single goal scored against us.

There's not doubt this is gonna be one of the hardest games we'll play this season, whether Wolves can keep up their impressive run or not, they'll still be right near the top come the end of the season.

For impartial football fans the two teams couldn't be playing each other at a better time, Wolves are in cracking form scoring goals for fun, and as I've pointed out above their defense is tighter than a gnats chuff at home. And Reading are coming off another stunning win at the weekend having totally dominated Swansea, our forwards seem to be free scoring too at the moment, Doyle having recovered his form, Noel Hunt settling in well and Steve Hunt playing sublime football at the moment.

In a weird way I feel that my lot may by playing Wolves at the right time. Wolves' record has to be broken at some point, and so has Reading's inability to win away from home. There's no question we have a quality team, and as a result they'll go into most games this season as favorites to win, but that brings it's own pressure as expectations are high. Tonight however is probably the first game we've gone into where we can't be considered favorites, and I'm hoping that'll work to our advantage.

Having said all that on paper it's gonna be one of the toughest tests Wolves will face this season too, and there's nothing like beating a team that was in the Prem last season, and prove you're Premiership quality yourselves. Whoever wins I'm sure it'll be a hard fought game, if you read nothing more about this game on this blog it'll be a pretty good indicator that we lost, if we win I'll be crowing for a couple of days.

Staying with football, I discovered this great blog, written by a professional footballer who plys his trade in the lower leagues of English football. His name is Gavin Strachan, and at 29 years old he's reaching the end of his career.

People's perception of professional footballers is that they're over paid prima donas, ala billion dollar Beckham, and it's true many of them are, but many, many more are not. Gordon's one of them, and his blog offers us a look at the flip side of the same coin. Gordon's career didn't bend like Beckham's, he hasn't been able to earn enough during his career not to worry about money when he retires, so he's worrying about money when he retires. He's married with kids and so the pressure is on, he's playing out his last couple of years, and going to night school at the same time studying for a media degree, in the hope that it'll help him find work when it all comes to its inevitable end.

I can't think of seeing anything like this in the past, I mean maybe the odd article, but nothing as deep. It's all pretty abnormal when you think about it, I mean it's strange that a young man should have to face the end of his career at the point in life when most others are just beginning. All credit to the BBC for giving space to Gordon to write about his woes, although the mere fact that he's writing this blog will almost certainly end up impacting his life in some way, hopefully in a positive way. Perhaps he'll discover opportunities that may have otherwise evaded him, but good luck to him if he does.

This great insight into the not so glamorous side of professional football is called Gordon Strachan's Blog and is updated weekly.

House Republicans dump the bail out, and DOW falls nearly 800 points..

This just gets better and better, now all the finger pointing begins. The MSM are desperately trying to put a positive spin on McShit's roll in all this, and make sure the Democrats get their share. Of course McRubbish is holding one person to blame for all of it -- that man Barack Obama.

The media pundits are all over the place, basically no one has a clue...

I was watching MSNBC and Chris Mathews was the first to put a mavericky spin on McCrap's political posturing late last week. Claiming that this proved it was difficult being a maverick, according to Mathews he had opposed Bush for the last 7 years, and this was the first time McCrap had tried to lead, but had sadly failed...

Then on came Chuck Todd who wasted no time pointing out that nearly a hundred Dems also voted against the bill, a bill that was first proposed by the incredibly unpopular Republican administration....well duh!

Frankly, it's gonna be difficult for the Republicans to blame Democrats for this, and all because a few of them had their feelings hurt by something Nancy said. Barney Frank claimed that if it would help get Republicans actually doing something for the country, he'd personally go and visit each one who had their feelings hurt, and be really, really nice to them.

Great economist minds like Markos from the Daily Kos informed us what a terrible deal this was for middle-class Americans, but even the great man himself didn't have a clue what should be done, he just felt this wasn't the answer.

I did hear Ali Velshi, one of the few voices on CNN I respect, tell us that for every day Congressional Republicans posture 10,000 Americans will lose their jobs, and houses down the line. Taking them out of the 'could help the economy by spending' column and into the 'further strain on our economy' column.

Ali's firmly behind the plan, and tells us there isn't time to wait while Americans learn about economics to try and understand what's happening. Instead we needed to trust the few true leaders who have come out steadfastly behind it, and back them while they act NOW.

Then Glen Beck chatting with his fellow neo-con Wolf Blitzer told us that he was against the bail-out, but warned other Americans that were against that they needed to understand why they were, adding that he understood why some were for it....confused?

If that wasn't enough, he went onto say how sick he was of all the politicking, then promptly started politicking asking where Obama and McCrap had been, conveniently remembering that McCrap had at least tried...aaahhh. Still, apparently that wasn't the point for him, he was just upset with all of them....what a load of bollocks you lying Republican turd!

I know who I'm blaming for all of this and it's those frauds in the MSM, they've irresponsibly set out with an anti bail-out theme, before understanding what the fuck it meant.

They're absolutely against it, at the same time as absolutely demanding something be done!

I have no doubt that regular Americans will lose because of what happened today, somehow we always do.

You know, in such dangerous, challenging times, this nation is screaming out for leadership, but sadly America doesn't have any. What Americans look for in a president is the facade of leadership, Americans want Ken and Barbi, not the ugly truth. You only have to look at the Republican Vice Presidential candidate to see that our standards have reached an all time low.

We want leaders to be people we'd enjoy having a beer with, leaders that don't make us feel insecure by being smarter than us. We want our leaders to be tough, but we know that talking tough is easy, being tough is another thing altogether. Americans never vote for the best presidential candidate.

Whatever happens, this latest debacle should act as a stark wake up call to all of us. Our leadership standards can't be allowed to continue to fall. There's a smart, principled young man running for election this November, Americans need to take a chance for once, and elect him our president.

This problem wasn’t caused by an ethnic minority, this problem was caused by a Republican majority!

As I’ve already mentioned Eric Cantor’s outrageous comments made to Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday, offered a disturbing insight to the extreme thinking of the modern Republican party, but they also highlighted a worrying misperception about the current banking debacle.

Cantor’s comments were aimed at blaming ethnic borrowing as the cause of the banking meltdown, which he did via Jimmy Carter’s equal opportunities bill. The reason he made the outrageous comments is because he knows the public believe that all the troubled mortgage loans were made to greedy, and/or foolish people who couldn‘t afford them. Cantor wants to ensure that ethnic borrowers take the brunt of the blame, because ethnic equals Barack Obama.

The reason that this scandalous plan is doomed is because it’s untrue, and the rest of America didn’t wake up wearing brown shirts this morning. But, it’s frightening that Republicans feel they can ‘sell’ a widely respected 30 year old equal opportunities bill, as the cause of our country’s banking meltdown. Cantor's distortions were not made by mistake they were made to appeal to the party base, which indicates just how extreme the 21st Century Republican party has become.

Also, I have to address this terrible misperception about borrowers, regardless of race, are to blame for all this shit. There’s no doubt that the Republican administrations of the last 30 years or so have encouraged speculation in the housing market, and backed up by Banks offering special mortgages for second, and third houses, they lured increasing numbers of middle-class Americans in. Although I’m sure that speculators will account for some of the failed loans, and greedy and foolish borrowers will account for a few more, but there's no doubt that the vast majority were just regular working people trying to get on.

Let’s be clear the cause of the mass defaults was not consumer greed, but banker greed, and political incompetence.

The banks, desperate to make interest, pushed ever more credit into the market, then due to no fault of the borrowers there was a worldwide economic downturn, the economy slowed, and people began losing their jobs. These people weren’t greedy or foolish, they're normal people that had been working for years, and only became homeowners because loans were cheap, and were finally able to afford it!.

Like everyone else, their homes were based in the communities where they worked, so when a company shut down, and lots of people lost their jobs, people would start moving out of the community looking for new work. It was a double edged sword, because as there was no work in their community, no one was moving in, and so house prices fall. Maybe close to the end, as a last resort they borrow against the little equity they had just to keep up the payments, but without work and unable to sell their house, and no income coming in they finally stop making the mortgage payments.

Suddenly, that regular, decent, honest, hard working family of four that used to live next door are out on their asses, homeless...horrific.

The system just created a few more statistics.

How dare people look to blame their neighbors just because their timing was off. The same could’ve happened, could happen, to any of us. Don’t believe the main stream media with their own corporate interests.

The downturn happened because the Republican administration, backed by those same Congressional Republicans who are crowing about ethnic minorities today, ran riot over regulations governing finance, and all for the sake of creating a market bubble that would inevitably burst.

Instead of looking at ways to reduce our oil consumption and look at new technologies, they kept their big oil masters happy by throwing billions and billions into a pointless war for control of oil. Instead of renegotiating foreign trade agreements that were costing millions of American jobs, those caring Congressional Republicans kept schtum so they could keep collecting backhanders from lobbyists representing our foreign trading partners.

Make no mistake, this is down to a lack of regulations governing greedy, and ever more desperate banks and bankers. It was fuelled by two insanely expensive wars, in treasure and lives, and was fanned by the atrocious management of our foreign trade agreements.

This problem wasn’t caused by an ethnic minority, this problem was caused by a Republican majority.

If any good at all has come out of this, it’s that over the last fifteen years as the Republican party has lurched ever further right, they have become more and more marginalized. They are in genuine danger of becoming extinct in the North East, an incredible but very real possibility.

The moderates that used to abound in their party are gone, there’s no room for them any more, Republican’s hold seats in rural areas, they are becoming a provincial party of provincial thinkers with provincial fears, and they try to sell that as small town thinking...small town! Is that good?

I’m not convinced the country is changing it’s political shape at all, it’s always been seen as center right, and sadly that’s pretty much where Barack Obama and the modern Democratic party finds itself. However, as the Republicans controlled government they’ve become ever more extreme, and attempted to drag the rest of the country along with them, center right policies are now called liberal, and liberal policies are now socialist.

The Republicans are not what they say they are on the bottle anymore, and fortunately, at last the people seem to be seeing past the name tag.

Evangelical Churches break law as they endorse McDreadful from pulpit today, and Blitzer stands by as ethnic minorities are blamed for banking crash

So today pastors at Evangelical churches across the nation will be endorsing McCain from their pulpits. This contravenes the rules governing their IRS tax exempt status, which prohibits pastors engaging in partisan political support, lets hope the great IRS hold these renegade churches accountable and remove their tax exemption status. But, my problem is not so much with the fact they are breaking the law, but that I’ve always thought churches aimed to bring communities together not divide them, partisan politicking will only outcast those whose opinions differ from the rest of the flock.

I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that this little nugget of a morally and ethically challenged PR stunt for McCrappy has been coordinated by a group of extreme conservative churchy people called Churches Against Black People or something.

How can a pastor whose purpose surely is to spread the love of Jesus, bring his flock together, and breach any divides in his community take such a partisan political stance? Surely the mere suggestion of endorsing one political party over another effectively segregates those members of the church and community who may support the other side.

Is it that you have to be a Republican to enter an Evangelical church, or live in an Evangelical community?

It seems to me that the US church is turning the clock back to Medieval times when they held all the political power, maybe because they can no longer sell you a relic to ensure your spot in heavan the next best thing is to vote for one.

Staying with Republicans it seems they have a longing for the good old days themselves. On the neo-con Wolf Blitzer’s morning show today he had Democrat Barney Frank the Banking Committee Chairman ,and Eric Cantor the lead negotiator for the House Republicans, you know the guys who are so desperate to keep their seats this November that they will say anything or do anything and politicize any position to win.

I was stunned to learn that the Republicans have found who it is they’re blaming for this meltdown, it’s not fellow neo-con George Bush and apparently it has nothing to do with any of the Republicans that held Congressional power in Washington for 6 of the last 8 years. No, they blame Jimmy Carter, and what’s worse a particular piece of Carter legislation, let me try and explain…

During a split screen interview with (the amazing) Barney Frank and Eric Cantor, Cantor explained that the current financial meltdown had not been caused by corporate greed, or lack of regulations governing procedure, but by a Jimmy Carter bill that in Cantor’s words ‘forced banks to lend to bad credit risks’.

Now, if Jimmy Carter really wrote a piece of legislation as idiotic as that, forcing banks to lend money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back, then it would surely have had a negative effect on our economy. Although, as a bad credit risk myself, during my many attempts to borrow money from banks I had no intention of repaying, at no time did anyone inform me that the banks were breaking the law by declining my business. So, Cantor's claim left me a tad confused, and more than a little suspicious, could it be that Eric Cantor was adopting that age old Republican technique of over simplifying, or in other words lying about the issue? Good old Barney put me right.

Barney Frank waited for the slimy looking Cantor to finish mangling history, then displaying a keen knowledge of the specific legislation Cantor had been referring to, he put him firmly in his place.

Frank explained that the Carter legislation had nothing at all to do with forcing banks into bad loans, but that the cad Cantor had been distorting an equal opportunities bill that Carter had forced through Congress to put a stop to the racist practice of denying loans to people based solely on their risky zip code address, or in other words the color of their skin.

Carter’s legislation outlawed the practice and forced banks to put all applicants through the same process, and approve or deny based on their individual credit worthiness and nothing else.

Cantor’s words are shocking, blaming the ethnic minorities for our current plight is as scandalous and outrageous as it is dangerous, and offers a frightening insight into the ever more extreme right wing thinking of 21st Century Republicans. I was surprised even that Republican stooge Blitzer should draw the line somewhere.

'Horse Shit...Horse Shit' - McCrappyLiar's mumblings during presidential debate exposed

Thanks to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire I can bring the three readers of Pants this incredible excerpt from last night's presidential debate. You'll have to skip to around the 4.30 mark, but turn up the volume and listen carefully when you do

You'll have seen most of it already but if you skip forward to 4.30 on the tape you'll clearly hear McCrap mumble, under his breath and on national television, the words Horse Shit, TWICE!

This all happened as Barack Obama informed the US public how McRubbish had refused to meet with the president of (NATO ally) Spain.....unbelievable!

So now Johnny McShittyLiar is trying to blame BO for injecting politics on thursday...unbelievable!

On Tuesday McShitty's little Alaskan helper told Katie Couric that if a financial aid package for Wall Street wasn't agreed by friday, then this coming Monday the nation would slip into a depression as bad as that of the late 1920s. Later that afternoon after lying to Dave Letterman and freeing up some time up to talk to Katie Couric's bigger audience, McLiar confirmed his little Alaskan helper's prophecy, saying that unless a bail-out plan was immediately agreed, then we'd all be eating grass by Monday.

Yet, today there's no agreement, apparently our representatives had been close at one point, that's until McCrap got involved. He fucked it all up by trying to hijack the event, and claim credit for something he hadn't been involved in, and what's more he wasn't even sure if he wanted the credit anyway. It became a big pickle and he was right smack in the middle of it.

So, per the prophecy of the brilliant economist Palin, and as we have no agreement in place and it is the weekend, I guess we'll all be eating grass on Monday. I've got some salt put away just in case. Btw what's with the stock market making triple digit gains during the two days since the collapse of the bailout talks?

Apart from the imminent collapse of the nation's economy, it was refreshing to see McLiar for once staying true to his word and remaining in Washington until a deal was....oh! he's not?....oh, ok then, well forget that...As it turns out McShittyLiar has stayed true to character and not his word, as I'm informed he's now planning on coming to the debate, which according to his campaign was what he had intended all along....yeah, right!

Did you notice during the mayhem that was this week, McCrapLiar admitting that he hadn't even read Secretary Paulson's three page proposal? But, somehow he was miraculously able to make suggestions as to what he felt was missing.

The whole thing, I mean the whole thing is a farce. This campaign continues to insult the American people‘s logic, this man and his crew of crooked cronies are playing politics with people's lives, we're living in dangerous times, yet McBombit seems to take it all as a joke. He says one thing today and a different thing tomorrow, it's almost impossible to keep up with the lies, turnarounds, and endless bullshit emanating from his campaign, on election day they must be hoping that American people forget which candidate is which.

It’s unbelievably insulting, no politician in history has lied so openly and so often as McCain has during this campaign, and we have four weeks to go.

The people of this country need to show that self-serving politicians like McRubbish cannot get away with it. The man possesses none of the character traits required by a president of this country, or any country for that matter! He is impetuous and erratic, he's a walking time bomb, and there's not a single American that can say they weren’t warned!

Finally, if you needed any more motivation to ensure that he does not become our President, take a look at the woman who as his VP would be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Btw hang on for Jack's barely disguised anger at the end.