Football season officially begins TONIGHT

Performers tonight include The Rolling Stones, Green Day, Maroon 5, and Kanye West.

While Green Day will perform live, or live-ish, from Gillette Stadium, both West and the Stones will appear on tape. West will appear with Maroon 5 today in Los Angeles and their performance will be edited into the show. The Stones were taped at a concert in Detroit last week.

"There will not be opportunities to make remarks," says NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy. "They are here to perform their songs. They have assured us they will perform as discussed." As for the NFL's political leanings, McCarthy says: "We're sitting on the 50-yard line."

In other sports news, former Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach has been in and out of the hospital for the past month.

Independent State Senator Bob Leeper may be switching back to the GOP. I guess this is in light of former Congressman Carroll Hubbard filing to run as a Democrat in the same district.

Mark Mulder did not hold up so well against Greg Maddux as the Cards lost last night. On Wednesday, Pujols joined the 100 RBI in first five seasons club. Prior to the game tonight, Pujols will be recognized as the St. Louis Cardinals nominee for the Roberto Clemente award. Happy Birthday to Jason Isringhausen.

Legendary comedian Sid Caesar turns 83 today.

Senator Bayh has condemned the federal response to the Wrath of Katrina.

On the Senate floor Bayh said the government had failed at one of its most basic functions, protecting the lives of its citizens.

"Many of us never thought we would live to see the day when tens of thousands of our fellow citizens would be left for nearly a week to fend for themselves without food, without water and stranded on rooftops."

Bayh called for an independent investigation of the federal storm relief effort.

In a move that I have long expected, John Orman has dropped out of the primary race against Sen. Lieberman.

"I will always welcome his ideas about how to improve our state and nation," Lieberman said through a spokesman.

A new basketball film, Home of the Giants is being shot currently.

Haley Joel Osment says his latest role as a high school journalist covering the basketball team is perfect for him at this point in his career.

Osment, 17, stars in Home of the Giants, which is set in high-school basketball-loving Indiana but is mostly being filmed across the Triad area of North Carolina this month and next.

The script by Indiana native Rusty Gorman, who will also direct, attracted him to the film, Osment said. "This one is perfect for this age for me," Osment said as he took a break between scenes Wednesday.[...]

In Home of the Giants, Osment plays Robert "Gar" Gartland, a high school journalist who covers the basketball team as it heads toward a state championship.[...]

Danielle Panabaker of TV's Summerland and Empire Falls, plays a new girl in town who studies journalism with Gar.

ESPN commentators Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas also will have scenes, said L. Charles Grimes, the Greensboro attorney who started SymPics International with his attorney wife, Elizabeth "Libby" Grimes, and their business partners.

Another review of Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, the latest album from Sir Paul McCartney to be released next week.

Louisiana native James Carville is not playing the blame game.

While calling the federal government response "overwhelming" in its inadequacy, James Carville also said he's not wading too far into the Hurricane Katrina "blame game."

His reasons are deeply personal.

Known as the "Ragin' Cajun" for his fiery political commentary, Carville is a proud Louisianan whose sister in Slidell, La., lost her home to floodwaters. She's staying with relatives.

"It's kind of hard to look at this thing right now and not say a lot," Carville conceded in a telephone interview, but "I'm trying to help raise money, get focused, you know what I mean? I'm not at the epicenter of the blame game or the take responsibility game or whatever we have going on."[...]

Carville said a natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina's magnitude along the Gulf Coast "was predicted again and again and again. So obviously you really need to strengthen your levee system, and I've been to Evansville before, I think people there can really relate to that."

"They need to reprofessionalize FEMA, they need to fund the Corps of Engineers, and I could go on and on," Carville said, but to get heavily involved with assigning blame for government response to Katrina "is not really where my head is right now."

But when asked about House Speaker Dennis Hastert's comments that New Orleans perhaps shouldn't be rebuilt given the city's geography, Carville said, "Frankly I think the speaker ought to get a brain scan ... he probably just lacked some blood (flow) or something."

Hastert later retracted the remarks.

While Carville hesitated to get involved in the Hurricane Katrina blame game, he held back nothing in blasting President Bush over the war in Iraq.

"It's got to be the least planned for, most strategic blunder this country has had since Vietnam," Carville said. "...When you go back and think about the lack of preparation, the absolute rush to invade the country (and) even to kick out
U.N. inspectors, even when they were reassessing the intelligence on whether they had weapons of mass destruction and then they get in there without any plan for what's going on, to not even supply your people, it's a failure that's just monumental."

Carville added, however, that "it's going to be very difficult for us to pull out in the short term."

He did note that the Pentagon is accelerating the recall from Iraq of 2,800 National Guard troops from Louisiana and Mississippi.

"You have 35 percent of manpower of Louisiana National Guard in Iraq, 50 percent of equipment and then you have horrific recruiting problems on top of that, and in addition you have a disproportionate number of National Guardsmen who tend to be policemen, firefighters, EMS workers, first responders," Carville said.

Disaster relief is "exactly why you have a National Guard," Carville said. "If the nation was under an imminent threat, of course you deploy your National Guard. You don't take your National Guard to fight a war of choice."

Carville said he's writing a book on what the Democratic Party's political strategy should be in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

"One of the things Katrina's done is, much like the '27 flood, really shown us what it means to be a country," Carville said. "This sort of era where we could have all the wars and all the tax cuts and we could underfund flood protection, emergency responders, etc. is all going to come crashing in.

"I think people are desperately looking for the Democratic Party to step up and say what it means to be patriotic, what it means to be Americans. This is a country that is dying to come together with a clear sense ... We can't fund three wars with three tax cuts. It can't be done. We can't have the appetite we have for energy and continue to be paying $3 a gallon for gas. Somebody's got to level with the country, and people are ready for that."

President Bush has asked for $51.8 billion more for the relief funds.

President Bush sent Congress a request for $51.8 billion in additional hurricane relief yesterday, raising Katrina's cost to the federal government to $62.3 billion so far, easily a record for domestic disaster relief.

Separately, Republican leaders moved to try to contain the political fallout from Katrina, forming a joint House-Senate review committee of senior lawmakers who will investigate the government's preparation and initial response to the catastrophe. Democrats called again for an independent probe similar to the investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Cornell Daily Sun reviews Back Home, the latest album from Slowhand Eric Clapton.

Clear Channel's stations will stream Paul's new album tonight through next Sunday.

Music icon Paul McCartney previews his 20th studio recording since The Beatles. All new tracks from "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" will be exclusively available through Clear Channel Radio's online program, "Sneak Peek." Over 550 Clear Channel Radio station Web sites will stream McCartney's entire new album with some holding listening parties -- all for free.