Out on business, and everyone goes crazy!

And, judging by the headlines and comments, the following occurred while I was away. Clyde Simms lost his job, Ben Olsen and Jeff Carroll will be out for the season, Pat Carroll is a goal-scoring machine, and the stadium deal was decided to be a taxpayer ripoff that would sell the children of DC into bondage so that we could play soccer on a field built by the labor camps of third graders. Ah, fun. Let's pull out the deconstruction toolkit and get to work.

DEPARTMENT OF OVERSTATED HEADLINES - "SIMMS JOB IN JEOPARDY": If the Times is like most papers (and who knows on that count) then John Haydon does not write his own headlines. Which gets him off the hook for the overblown headline about Clyde Simms losing his starting role. I mean, John's main source for the article is... Clyde Simms. I doubt he's really saying "Please Coach Soehn, I should be benched!" I mean, is he?

But the soft-spoken Simms knows the defensive-midfield role isn't his to lose. Another player at his position is draftee Dan Stratford, an Englishman who attended West Virginia who has looked good in preseason training.

"He is a very smart player and can play this position very well, so I definitely have competition for this spot," Simms said.

So, Clyde Simms says some nice things about Stratford, and we get this? Nah, he's just being the soft-spoken "Gonna show up to play every day, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains..." kinda guy.

TYPICALLY IN AN ARGUMENT, YOU MARSHALL FACTS, CREATE A CHAIN OF LOGIC, THEN REACH AN OPINION: Look, your point may be correct. But if you say things like "Betting on such a risky source of public funds to finance another massive, debt-incurring project like a $230 million soccer stadium might be good for sports, but it’s dangerous for the city," well, you need to demonstrate those facts. See, I can say anything, and it sound ominous. For instance "Letting college kids write newspaper editorials might be educational, but it threatens our American Way of Life (TM) and could lead to global warming." You gotta prove these things, not just state them as fact.

MORE PLEASE: Yes, good.

I HATE ALARMISM: But the UnitedMania gang may have been write to sound diverse alarums about Ben Olsen.

Okay, I hope to be back to work now. Let's hope so.