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Bayern are no threat to Dortmund, insists Mueller

BERLIN (AFP) – Bayern Munich forward Thomas Mueller said on Sunday that Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund have nothing to fear from the defending champions after his team's shock 3-2 defeat at strugglers Cologne.

Despite their goalless draw with Schalke on Friday, Dortmund are 12 points clear at the top of the table, 15 ahead of Bayern.

The defending champions did themselves no favours as they threw away a 2-0 half-time lead to suffer a 3-2 defeat at relegation-threatened Cologne on Saturday, with striker Milivoje Novakovic scoring two second-half goals.

Bayern were left shell-shocked by the defeat, while coach Louis van Gaal sat stunned on the Munich bench long after the final whistle.

"It is hard to express how disappointed we are. Dortmund have absolutely nothing to fear from us at all," Mueller told German daily Bild.

"They can lose any games they want to and we also just throw points away. It was like we came out for the second half having taken sleeping tablets.

"We have just ruined out entire season. If we keep wasting our chances like that, we might as well talk about the relegation battle as much as the title hunt."

With Bayern's rivals Bayer Leverkusen also losing, 1-0 at Nuremberg, and Mainz drawing 1-1 with Werder Bremen after conceding a late equaliser, Dortmund's domination of the German league shows no sign of abating.

"Dortmund must be killing themselves laughing," said Bayern's chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.

"They draw and pick up just a point and still move further away from us. On that performance, we will not achieve our goals. That was almost negligent."

Bayern host Hoffenheim next Saturday, while Dortmund visit mid-table Kaiserslautern.

Sunday's match between St Pauli and Hamburg in the north German derby was called off due to heavy rain, while Freiburg went sixth in the table after their goalless draw at home to Eintracht Frankfurt.

On Saturday, second-from-bottom Stuttgart came from 2-0 down to steal a 3-2 win at bottom side Moenchengladbach in dramatic fashion after Timo Gebhart netted an 87th-minute penalty.

Veteran Michael Ballack was left fuming after being substituted in the second half of Leverkusen's 1-0 defeat at Nuremberg, 24 hours after being left out of the Germany squad for next week's friendly against Italy.

Hanover are fourth and stayed in the fight for a European place for next season with a 1-0 win at Steve McClaren's Wolfsburg.

Ten-man Hoffenheim were given a fright at home as they beat Kaiserslautern 3-2 having held a 2-0 lead to go seventh.

Bremen's ex-Chelsea striker Claudio Pizarro equalised in injury time to seal a 1-1 draw with Mainz which kept his team out of the bottom three.

On Friday, Germany goalkeeper Manuel Neuer produced an outstanding performance to earn Schalke 04 a point after a goalless draw at Dortmund with ten clear saves on a busy night.

With Germany set to face Italy in a friendly at Dortmund on Wednesday, Neuer boosted his chances of facing the Italians in the battle with Leverkusen's goalkeeper Rene Adler for Germany's number one shirt.

New Hampshire beats Albany (NY) in overtime, 62-59

DURHAM, N.H. – Chandler Rhoads scored 15 points to lead New Hampshire over Albany (N.Y.) 62-59 in overtime on Wednesday night.

With 1:01 remaining in regulation and the Wildcats (10-13, 4-7 America East Conference) trailing 49-47, Rhoads stepped to the free-throw line with a chance to tie the score. Rhoads knocked down both attempts and both teams missed a pair of free throws down the stretch to force the overtime period.

Another free throw from Rhoads gave New Hampshire a 60-56 lead with 13 seconds left in OT and the Wildcats held on for the victory.

The Great Danes (11-14, 4-6) shot 28.1 percent in the second half (9 of 32), but were able to force the extra frame thanks to a 25-percent effort (7 of 28) by New Hampshire after intermission.

Tim Ambrose scored 15 points and Luke Devlin added 14 rebounds for Albany.

Scott Morris had 14 points and Dane Diliegro 12 for the Wildcats.

W.Va. country music singer Doc Williams dies

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Country music singer Doc Williams became a big star in small places through the power of radio.

In the years before World War II, his Wheeling, W.Va.-based radio show built him a following in Maine, Vermont and the Canadian provinces — places where he later toured, and where some fans still tap in time to songs from his band, the Border Riders.

Williams died Monday at his Wheeling home at age 96.

"I don't know if the state of West Virginia had a better ambassador than Doc Williams," Country Music Hall of Famer Bill Anderson told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "You thought of Doc Williams, you thought of Wheeling, you thought of the Jamboree," Anderson said, referring to Jamboree USA, one of radio station WWVA's most popular programs.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914 as Andrew John Smik, he quit school in the 10th grade to help support his family. He worked alongside his father in the coal mines but left to to play music, where he used the stage name Williams. His grandmother bought him his first professional guitar in 1933 and he started performing at square dances in small Pennsylvania towns.

After forming the Border Riders, Williams started broadcasting a daily show on WWVA in 1937. He and his wife Chickie became the Jamboree USA headline act that could be heard on AM radio all the way to Canada.

"That station came in clear as a bell," said Williams' daughter, Barbara Smik. "In those days radio was a very, very powerful medium."

Smik, who took over her father's business dealings a few decades ago and wrote a book about him, said she still gets calls from fans in Canada.

"I hear from these children now of many parents that have already passed on, the World War II generation, that took them to Mom and Dad's concerts," Smik said.

She said they took their act to northern Maine and beyond.

"That's how they made their living," Smik said. "They reached out to people with entertainment and goodwill. Dad would book his show into these little communities, and that's what he enjoyed doing, especially Canada. The Canadians remained amazingly loyal."

Williams' rendition of "The Cat Came Back" sold more than 1 million records on a Toronto record label.

Anderson recalled attending one of Williams' shows in Roscoe, N.Y., in the mid-1970s. Anderson was looking to add a musician to his own band and had heard that one of Williams' band members was interested in moving to Nashville, Tenn.

"I bought a ticket. Doc did not know I was there," Anderson said. "I sat in the back of the auditorium and was thoroughly entertained. I was afraid I made Doc mad when I hired him, but he was very nice and he was glad to see the young boy get a chance to come to Nashville. Doc was a gentleman, he really was."

Williams never followed the route to the Grand Ole Opry.

"Doc wasn't a major recording artist. He didn't have national hits," Anderson said. "He just confined himself to that area of the northeast and Canada. He just had a great way of communicating with the people. He didn't necessaarily try to go beyond that. He found his niche and he played to that."

Despite opportunities to go elsewhere, Williams considered Wheeling and West Virginia his home, Smik said.

Chickie Williams died in November 2007 at age 88. In 2008 the state renamed a section of road in Wheeling the "Doc and Chickie Williams Highway; Country Music Royal Couple."

The husband and wife were inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

Kepner Funeral Homes of Wheeling was in charge of arrangements, which were incomplete Tuesday.

___

Doc Williams website:

Democracy uprising in Egypt: Vindication for Bush 'freedom agenda'?

Washington – Does US foreign policy under President George W. Bush have anything to do with the pro-democracy protests now rocking the Egyptian regime and forcing accommodation elsewhere in the Arab world?

Events of the past weeks in the "greater Middle East" are, naturally, prompting scrutiny of US policy under President Obama and of the long US relationship with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. But they've also intensified a never-quite-ended boxing match about the "freedom agenda" of Mr. Bush, with some analysts arguing vindication for his attempt to speed democracy to the region and others suggesting the former president's policies did more harm than good to pro-democracy forces there.

In one corner are those who say Bush was right: It is about freedom and democracy. They argue that the US would be better off in the region today if the Obama administration had pursued Bush's vision of regime change in the name of the peoples rights and freedoms, instead of taking a pragmatic tilt to accommodate dictatorial regimes such as Iran in 2009 and other Arab countries more recently.

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In the other are those who cite the Iraq war, which Bush pursued at least partly to create a beacon of democracy in the region, as perhaps the single most significant setback for pro-democracy advocates in the region in the past decade.

The debate over the Bush freedom agenda may have found its best opposing arguments so far from two Washington thinkers.

Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser in the Bush White House, says the former president believed fervently that Arabs have the same yearning for liberty as other people and that dictatorships are never truly stable. Recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen seem to come as a surprise to the current administration, which cast aside the "freedom agenda" as "too ideological," says Mr. Abrams, now a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Writing Sunday in the Washington Post, Mr. Abrams quoted Bush as saying in a 2003 speech, As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export. He himself added: "[T]he revolt in Tunisia, the gigantic wave of demonstrations in Egypt and the more recent marches in Yemen all make clear that Bush had it right and that the Obama administrations abandonment of this mind-set is nothing short of a tragedy.

An opposing view comes from Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He argues that above all the US must refrain from imposing an outcome in the region no matter how democratic and freedom-oriented its own vision might be. When the Bush administration used the Iraq war as a vehicle to spread democratic change in the Middle East," he writes, "anger with the United States and deep suspicion of US intentions put the genuine democracy advocates in the region on the defensive.

The Iraq war, waged partly in the name of democracy, is what raised the passionate opposition of Arab publics and tarnished the name of democratization, Mr. Telhami, a specialist in Arab public opinion, wrote in an op-ed in Mondays Politico. He agrees with Abrams that the wave of transformative events across the region might have occurred sooner but he argues that didn't happen because of the diversion of the Iraq war.

Telhamis point is that outside efforts to impose democracy especially by force will only set back its forward march. He includes Iran in his analysis, writing, one wonders whether the Iranian people might succeed [in toppling the clerical regime] if the regime were robbed of its ability to point fingers at the West.

The showdown in Egypt is raising many pressing questions in Washington: When should the US throw in the towel on a longtime ally who is also a dictator? Does Egypt, after decades of suppression of political opposition, have the makings of a functioning interim government that could keep order until fair elections could be held? What impact would a change of government in Egypt have on Israel and the Arab-Israeli peace process?

But the debate over the appropriate US role in promoting democracy in various corners of the world is central to the priorities of American foreign policy and evidently it is far from over.

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Boehner spokesman blasts K Street call to arms to stop GOP spending cuts

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, Ohio Republican, is blasting an effort by hundreds of lobbyists to strategize with top congressional Democrats on how to stop spending cuts pushed by Republicans.

“Washington Democrats and their special interest allies are plotting to keep the ineffective ‘stimulus’ spending spree going. They’re hatching backroom schemes to fight the will of the American people, who want us to end the Washington spending binge, the government takeovers, and bailouts and help the private sector create jobs,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.

The move is part of a massive push by Republicans to seize on the political moment created by ABC News in .

ABC reported that Iowa Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin called a meeting with hundreds of K Street lobbyists in late January to mobilize opposition to spending cuts pushed by Republicans.

The meeting served as a “call to arms” of those opposing GOP spending cuts, ABC reported, with Harkin rallying the 400 lobbyists who attended to mobilize against the cuts.

A spokeswoman for Harkin said the meeting was about protecting “modest-income and middle-class working America, children and communities” and noted .

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