It's over . . .

Well, Tyler's race was over a few stages ago. He bit the dust in stage six and pulled out when they hit the mountains in stage 13. A half a dozen other great riders also dropped out over the last few stages.

Lance kicked the tar out of everyone on L'Alpe D'Huez today, despite some crazy enthusiastic spectators. Now he knows what it's like to be Michael Jackson.

It looks like Lance has put things well out of reach. Barring a catastrophe, the rest of the Tour should be pretty boring.

Preppin' for the tour

Forget Lance, forget Jan, Nicole and I have decided to give our substantial endorsement to Tyler Hamilton this year. By some accounts he has a shot at the jaundice jersey.

I was on my way down to Florida last summer when I stopped into a friends house and watched Tyler pull out a crazy stage 16 victory that left me with a buzz for about a week. You can still check out the clip of him finishing that stage here. He's my man this year.

Finding their religion

Steve Waldman, who has written a really interesting book about the formation of AmeriCorps, writes an interesting article in Slate today about the religion gap - more specifically about Kerry's religion quandry. When I saw the article this morning, I told Nicole that "Waldman wrote my article." I've been thinking a lot lately about the "religion gap" in the election, but the urban church is a huge fishbone stuck in throat of that idea. This article touches on it a bit.

The religion gap, as defined by USA Today is tied more to periodicity of service attendance - the more you attend, the more conservative you vote. In the Slate article, Waldman rightly points out that such a measure, though many want it to, does not relegate wacky zealots or level-headed faithful to one side of the aisle.

Oh, but how we do grasp and grasp for ways to force a brother to take sides. Don't get me wrong, taking sides is an important art, but why does it always seem that the lines drawn in the national sand are always running the wrong direction.

The President's campaign is also in the news today with regards religion. Not a very clever move on the campaign's part.