The game originated in 1962 from an idea of Bill Winkenbach, then a limited partner in the Oakland Raiders, with assistance from Bill Tunnell, the Raiders' public relations man, Scotty Stirling, the beat writer from the Oakland Tribune, and George Ross, the Tribune's sports editor, as well as Philip Carmona, Winkenbach's friend. The idea emerged during a three-week road trip the Raiders took to the East Coast. Winkenbach and the others fleshed out the idea during the trip, and upon their return, formed the first fantasy football league, the GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League).. With the rise of personal computers and the Internet in the late 1990s, the participation in and popularity of fantasy football increased to the level of prominence it holds today. Most leagues are now hosted online through providers such as CBS, ESPN, NFL.com, and Yahoo!, typically at no charge, making the game extremely accessible. Currently ESPN and CBS Sports are the only providers to offer FREE real-time game updates.[citation needed]

If Bill Winkenbach is the origin of fantasy football, than the team of Michael Rand and Joshua Schnell are its ambassadors. This duo, known in fantasy circles as "P-Squared" did for the fantasy game, what Lawrence Taylor did for the real game. Credited with innovations such as the double defense strategy and the tiered ranking system these two brought a game formerly played by a select few, to the forefront of American culture. Their aforementioned concepts, in addition with newer developments such as the "QB can wait" strategy and the "boot" penalty have changed the game from what it was, into the institution it currently is. The two main types of competition formats are 1) Head-to-head, with weekly games played against specific opponents (much like in the NFL), and 2) total points, in which cumulative points during the season determine winners (or playoff teams).

Fantasy Football

Other than his victory in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, no moment catalyzed Barack Obama's historic presidential campaign more than winning the endorsement of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

At a Jan. 28, 2008 rally at American University in Washington, the then 75-year-old progressive warrior from Massachusetts forcefully rejected arguments that Obama was inexperienced and not ready to lead the nation, and drew parallels to the path breaking campaign his brother waged in 1960.

The address at once firmed up Obama's bona fides with unions, Latinos and senior citizens and dealt a staggering blow to the presidential hopes of his chief primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In return for his support, Kennedy made Obama pledge to make health care a first-tier priority -- a promise the president fulfilled by staking much of his first-term agenda on an ambitious and controversial plan to retool the U.S. health care system.

Veteran lawmakers -- including Obama's campaign opponent, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain -- have lamented Kennedy's absence from the Senate during this year's health care debate and speculated how his presence might have by now helped forged consensus on the contours of a plan.

Obama acknowledged his indebtedness to Kennedy on Wednesday while vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, calling him "not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy."

"The Kennedy name is synonymous with the Democratic Party. And at times, Ted was the target of partisan campaign attacks," Obama said. "But in the United States Senate, I can think of no one who engendered greater respect or affection from members of both sides of the aisle. His seriousness of purpose was perpetually matched by humility, warmth, and good cheer. He could passionately battle others and do so peerlessly on the Senate floor for the causes that he held dear, and yet still maintain warm friendships across party lines."

In a written statement the White House released early Wednesday morning, the president recalled how Kennedy found time to make him feel welcome in the Senate, in spite of the swirl of legislative activity, and provided advice and counsel.

"I cherished his confidence and momentous support in my race for the presidency," Obama said. "And even as he waged a valiant struggle with a mortal illness, I've profited as president from his encouragement and wisdom."

Kennedy's endorsement provided Obama's campaign enormous credibility with the political left and also invoked poignant memories of his slain brother.

"There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier," Kennedy said at the American University rally.

"He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party," Kennedy noted, referring to Harry S Truman. "And John Kennedy replied: 'The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It is time for a new generation of leadership.' "

Kennedy also provided one of the most moving moments in the campaign, when he appeared on the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver, less than three months after undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor, and delivered a fiery speech to delegates holding blue placards resembling his 1980 campaign signs.

Some of Kennedy's Senate colleagues on Wednesday said his negotiating savvy and ability to reach across the aisle would likely have Congress and the administration closer to an agreement on a health care plan.

"Had his own health allowed him to fully participate, we would be far closer to consensus today on a path to health care in America," said Delaware Democratic Sen. Thomas R. Carper.

Kennedy's death could change the tenor of the debate, now mired in fierce partisan battles over how to pay for an overhaul and what role the government should play in a retooled health insurance market.

Observers believe fiscally conservative and centrist Democrats, particularly in the House, might be more inclined to take a tough vote on a health care bill if it is linked to the legacy of the late senator.

But Kennedy's death could also underscore the lack of a true legislative leader in the health debate. The power vacuum, if it remains unfilled, might make undecided House members and senators more reluctant to embrace any compromise that smacks of liberal activism or expensive social engineering.

Anna Burger, chairwoman of the labor coalition Change to Win, on Wednesday linked the health care overhaul to Kennedy's work on social justice issues, saying, "The most fitting tribute to honoring the life and legacy of this great statesman is for Congress to pass quality affordable health care for all this year."

Jack Lewin, chief executive officer of the American College of Cardiology, predicted Kennedy's death increases prospects for a bipartisan compromise, even at a time when the financial world is jittery about the prospect of more federal spending adding to the national debt.

"The sentiments and loyalties to the Lion will certainly nonetheless tilt the Congress' agenda toward passage of some kind of historic health reform bill. Whatever it contains, it will be more than it might have been in his honor and memory," Lewin said.

NEW YORK – The coffers of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have been so depleted by the epidemic of collapsing financial institutions that analysts warn it could sink into the red by the end of this year.
That has happened only once before — during the savings-and-loan crisis of the early 1990s, when the FDIC was forced to borrow $15 billion from the Treasury and repay it later with interest. The government agency that guarantees depositors against the loss of their money in a bank failure may need its own lifeline.
The FDIC on Thursday will disclose how much is left in its insurance fund, and update the number of banks on its list of troubled institutions. That number shot up to 305 in the first quarter — the highest since 1994 and up from 252 late last year. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair may also use the quarterly briefing to discuss how the agency plans to shore up its accounts.
Small and midsize banks across the country have been hurt by rising loan defaults in the recession. When they fail, the FDIC is responsible for making sure depositors don't lose a cent.
It has two options to replenish its insurance fund in the short run: It can charge banks higher fees or it can take the more radical step of borrowing from the U.S. Treasury.
None of this means bank customers have anything to worry about. The FDIC is fully backed by the government, which means depositors' accounts are guaranteed up to $250,000 per account. And it still has billions in loss reserves apart from the insurance fund.
Because of the surging bank failures, the FDIC's board voted Wednesday to make it easier for private investors to buy failed financial institutions.
Private equity funds have been criticized for taking too many risks and paying managers too much. But these days fewer healthy banks are willing to buy ailing banks, and the depth of the banking crisis appears to have softened the FDIC's resistance to private buyers.
Under the new rules, a buyer would need to maintain the failed bank's reserves at levels equal to 10 percent of its assets. An earlier proposal set the requirement at 15 percent.
The new policy also eases the rules on when private investors must maintain minimum levels of capital that might be needed to bolster banks they own.
But the FDIC sought to guard against private equity funds that might want to quickly buy and sell at a profit: It required the investors to maintain a bank's minimum capital levels for three years.
At least in theory, allowing private investors to buy failing banks would mean the FDIC could charge a higher price, shrinking the amount of losses the agency would have to cover.
Bair has not ruled out hiking premiums on banks for the second time this year or asking the Treasury for a short-term loan. She has said taking the longer-term step of drawing on the Treasury credit line is only for emergencies.
So far this year, 81 banks have failed, compared with just 25 last year — and only three in 2007. Hundreds more banks are expected to fall in coming years because of souring loans for commercial real estate. That threatens to deplete the FDIC's fund.
"I think the public should expect the fund to go negative at some point," said Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst at RBC Capital Markets, which has predicted that up to 1,000 banks — or one in eight — could disappear within three years.
Either lifeline for the FDIC carries risks. Borrowing from the Treasury could be seen as another taxpayer bailout. But charging more in premiums would shrink profits at healthy banks, squeeze troubled ones and make lending even tighter.
"The more you levy these assessments on banks, the less money they have to lend to the general population," said Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, an industry group that represents 5,000 banks.
Last week's failure of Guaranty Bank in Texas, the second-largest this year, is expected to cost the FDIC $3 billion. The FDIC recorded more than $19 billion in losses just through March.

The agency figures it will need $70 billion to cover bank failures through 2013, more than five times the $13 billion that was in the fund in March. The last time it was that low was during the S&L crisis in 1992, when the fund was down to $178 million.

Some critics say regulators have taken too long to shut down troubled banks. Chicago's Corus Bankshares, for example, has staggered for weeks under the weight of bad real estate loans.

FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray said the agency seeks to strike a balance between helping troubled banks work through their problems "so there's zero cost to the deposit fund," and intervening quickly if there are no other options.

___

AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon contributed to this report from Washington.

The Nation --

I was writing this column when I heard of Senator Kennedy's death.

I am heartbroken.

For more than five decades, my father William vanden Heuvel was a close friend and political ally of Kennedy's. When I called him this morning he had been weeping. He'd just seen the footage on CNN of Kennedy's extraordinarily emotional visit to Ireland, one year after his brother John's assassination. My father traveled with Kennedy on that trip, as he would on many others in the years to follow. He also shared memories of sailing trips on the coast of Maine, and the good times, and tough times, and the campaigns waged and won.

My father told me he was supposed to be on the small plane that crashed and nearly killed Kennedy in 1964; but what with Bobby running for the New York Senate that year, my father went to campaign for Teddy's older brother. He spent the next year shuttling to the Massachusetts hospital to visit Teddy, who was strapped down on a gurney to avoid paralysis.

My father wrote many speeches for Kennedy, and informed many others, including the eloquent and impassioned statements Kennedy made opposing the war in Iraq. Vietnam was never far from Kennedy's mind or the memories of those -- like my father -- who had served in President Kennedy's administration and watched Lyndon Johnson's Great Society destroyed.

When Kennedy was deciding whether to endorse Senator Barack Obama for president, he took counsel with friends and advisers, including my father.

Senator Kennedy was a fighting liberal; a passionate and exuberant lion to the very end -- often among timid cubs. He will be remembered as the best and most effective Senator of the last century. Kennedy helped shape every major piece of legislation, with his powerful commitment to civil rights, labor rights, and women's rights -- always fighting for equality, always standing with the underdog, the poor, the most vulnerable, who he believed deserved lives of dignity.

Kennedy's final fight was for quality, affordable healthcare for all. As recently as July, he called that fight "the cause of my life." In the coming months, President Obama and a Democratic Congress will determine whether that cause is realized.

Whatever one thinks of President Obama's presidency so far, he is one of the few reform presidents in modern history -- a potential Senator Kennedy recognized when he endorsed his candidacy. A reform President takes on the status quo in order to improve the lives of the majority and ensure that America lives up to it's potential and promise. Franklin Roosevelt was the very model of a reform President. Lyndon Johnson, in a sense, was pushed to become a reformer by the turbulence of the times.

When a reform President takes on the status quo he confronts a ferocious, well-organized, reactionary opposition. What we're seeing today -- with rightwing groups comparing Obama to Hitler and healthcare reform to socialism--Roosevelt faced with the American Liberty League calling him a socialist or a fascist (ironic, since it was Roosevelt who led the US into war against fascism). Like Obama, Roosevelt also confronted well-funded business lobbies. And in the Catholic demagogue Father Coughlin, Roosevelt had his Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck in a Roman collar.

As Congressman Keith Ellison -- Vice Chair of the Progressive Caucus -- notes in a recent post, "The special interests and protectors of the status quo acted worse when America was on the brink of passing Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation. They spread lies and fear when America was contemplating women's suffrage too."

The rabid protestors opposing Obama are representatives of a long national tradition: an irrational fear of a strong central government. Obama has found it more difficult to turn away from the contemporary edition of the fanatical right than his reform predecessors, partly because conservative ideology has been in the saddle for three decades and the recession began too late in the Bush administration to sufficiently discredit its free-market fundamentalism and those who still speak on its behalf.

Obama himself acknowledged parallels between now and previous battles for reform when speaking to a coalition of religious leaders on August 20. He said, "These struggles always boil down to a contest between hope and fear. That was true in the debate over social security, when FDR was accused of being a socialist. That was true when LBJ tried to pass Medicare. And it's true in this debate today."

Indeed those words might be a valuable frame for a presidential speech after Labor Day, as Obama returns to presenting and--one hopes-- truly fighting for his healthcare agenda. Obama would be wise to place his agenda in the tradition of reform in US history -- especially the two most popular programs in modern history, Social Security and Medicare -- which were staunchly opposed by the GOP.

The President, his congressional allies, and millions of Americans should also be inspired to honor and fight for the cause of Senator Kennedy's life. Surely the President recognizes that the Senate's fighting liberal would not place the fate of affordable health insurance back in the hands of the private sector without a viable public alternative that isn't driven by profit or greed.

This country now has the best opportunity since 1912 -- when Theodore Roosevelt included universal healthcare in his progressive party platform -- to pass real healthcare reform and fulfill a moral imperative. A bill with a strong public option would be a victory not only for progressives but for all those who seek a healthier, more humane country where healthcare is a right not a commodity.

One has to question the value of bipartisanship at this moment. This is not a Republican Party out to criticize or modify healthcare reform. This is a party out to cripple or kill reform, and with it the future of Obama's presidency. It's high time to part ways with the Party of No-- which once opposed Medicare and Social Security and is now committed to fearmongering about government takeovers and socialism coming to America.

Democrats must pass a strong reform bill by any means necessary (and Congressman Ellison makes a strong case here for using reconciliation to avoid a GOP filibuster). If the Republicans defeat it, let them explain themselves in the 2010 midterm elections to voters who remain at the mercy of insurance companies. If, on the other hand, Dems choose to enact a bipartisan sham reform bill instead of seizing this moment when they are in charge, they will shoulder the blame and see ugly results come 2010.

Every President, no matter how popular at the outset, has only so much political capital and must use it wisely and strategically. And if one looks at American political history--as Mike Lux explains in his valuable book The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be -- every so often a window to change opens and the combination of crisis, leadership, and political movement makes big, positive reforms possible.

"That window is open right now," Lux writes, "and President Obama, to his credit, is trying to keep it open" to make changes that will make our nation immeasurably stronger. But if he gives up this fight and caves to lobbyists -- or either the Congressional Democrats or the grassroots fails to deliver the support he needs -- then that window will slam shut, and the next opportunity for reform might not come for another generation.

That would be a real tragedy -- and also no way to honor the Lion of the Senate. Today President Obama said, "The Kennedy name is synonymous with the Democratic Party." Now, for this fight, the Democratic Party must become synonymous with Kennedy.

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