3 Up, 3 Down

3 Up

FRIDAY NIGHTS: The boys of fall are awakening to the season’s first official postgame aches and moms and dads to throats worn raw by a night of hollering. High school football season opened for much of the region and state last night, a surefire sign that sweetest of the seasons, fall, is just around the bend. Cool nights, mountain rides beneath a canopy of autumn leaves and the clash of high school titans every Friday – it all sounds like heaven to us.

AUGUSTA IN LUCK ON SOL’S: Augusta County schools got a jolt of good news to start the year. All of the district’s 21 schools hit the pass mark on the state’s Standards of Learning test, and more than half of their students hit that standard at the advanced level. Nice work.

THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW JOURNAL: At least Joe Biden is friendly. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stepped in it when he told a Las Vegas Review-Journal salesman that he hopes the paper – a critic of the senator’s – goes “out of business.” The Review-Journal responded with a powerful editorial: “We won’t allow you to bully us. And if you try it with anyone else, count on going through us first. That’s a promise, not a threat.” Amen.

3 Down

VAN JONES: At least Joe Biden doesn’t spout conspiracy theories about President Bush and 9/11 (not yet anyway) or call Republicans dirty names (well ...). Hired by President Barack Obama to generate green jobs, Jones soon will need one (it won’t matter the color). Van’s turned apologies into a daily ritual, offering one Wednesday for having publicly called Republicans a word too nasty for a family newspaper and another Thursday for signing a petition saying Bush might have allowed the terrorist attacks. Team Obama responded by running from Jones like he was a tax cut.

THE FINGER: Well, obviously to show how deeply concerned one is about health care reform, the logical thing to do is bite off the tip of an old guy’s pinky. That’s what happened this week in California, where a pro-reform character and a 65-year-old Obamacare opponent tussled in the street. Word is, the old guy threw the first punch. OK. One guy still has all of his digits, if not all of his marbles.

SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE: On Thursday, Biden declares with a straight face and crossed fingers that the stimulus “is doing more, faster and more efficiently and more effectively” (snicker) “than most people affected.” Hahaha. Really? On Friday, the unemployment rate was pegged at 9.7 percent, the highest rate in 26 years. Seriously, Joe. You don’t believe yourself, do you?