Still, that never stops bettors from taking chances on prop bets before the season starts. Prop bets are often a good value proposition. If you can find the undervalued players across the league and bet on them, you stand a good chance of striking gold. Of course, you also have to hope that they stay healthy to reach these ceilings. But as long as they do, savvy bettors can hit on sleeper picks and underdogs....

During the Tuesday, August 16, episode, the Real Housewives of New York alum, 51, gushed over the 50-year-old Real Housewives of New Jersey star’s authenticity following backlash over her hair. “Okay, we need to talk about Teresa’s wedding, Teresa Giudice. So her hair is a big topic,” she said, teasing that the reality star’s long locks were “its own being getting married.” The New Jersey native’s tresses were partially piled on top of her head while the rest flowed down her back in soft waves....

The Real Housewives of New York City alum, 51, made the comment during Tuesday’s episode of her Just B With Bethenny Frankel podcast while discussing actor/fellow podcast host Michael Rapaport’s remark that people who aren’t Jewish shouldn’t use the word Jew. She also talked about her Jewish background. “I grew up with a stepfather who was Catholic, so I also went to church. I’ve had a sort of mutt upbringing of religion and thus ended up not being religious at all but being spiritual and cultural....

Now, with Texas again facing cold winter months and hoping its infrastructure can hold up, O’Rourke has embarked on a 12-day, 2,100 mile ‘Keeping the Lights On’ road trip in his pickup truck that will see him hit 20 Texas cities and towns. With the time and energy O’Rourke is devoting to amplifying the power grid failure that led to hundreds of Texans dying in the winter of 2021, it’s clear the campaign sees it as a winning issue....

O’Rourke, a former congressman who ran unsuccessfully against now-Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in 2018, raised $2 million within 24 hours of announcing his campaign for governor on Monday, according to his campaign team. The former Representative for Texas’ 16th district is the most prominent Democrat to enter the race so far and if nominated, will most likely face Abbott—who seeks a third term. O’Rourke’s campaign told The Texas Tribune on Wednesday that the fundraising haul was a record “for any Democratic gubernatorial candidate for the first 24 hours,” and the most raised in the “first 24 hours of any campaign in 2021....

So it’s especially galling that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is seizing this global crisis to accelerate her privatization agenda for public education. Her directives for federal relief funding aren’t just ideological—they abandon our national commitment to provide for communities in dire need, right when they need that support the most. DeVos made her intentions plain last month, when she directed public schools to share with private and religious schools more of the funding available to them through the CARES Act....

Even as working people push for changes that will allow them to simply take care of their families, small government ideologues continually push the old, tired trope that paying working people family-sustaining wages—known as prevailing wages—will harm the economy and squeeze small businesses out of big opportunities. This is simply not true. As a small contractor and an IBEW electrician, we know from experience that paying prevailing wages is a net positive—for contractors, working families, the economy, and local communities....

With bookmakers and bettors all over the bounce-back (or zig-zag) theory – which says the team that lost the previous game should give its best effort the next time out – two of the favorites opened at bigger numbers in their respective Game 2s. The betting market, evidently, is losing faith in the Indiana Pacers. Atlanta Hawks at Indiana Pacers (-7.5, 187), 7 p.m., TNT In a move against the bounce-back theory, the Pacers opened at a shorter price for Game 2 than the closing line for Saturday’s series opener (-8), although the number was bet up Tuesday morning to -7....

The Tigers have won 27 straight games against ACC competition after their 47-21 victory over Syracuse on Saturday, leaving the hapless Orange 1-5 on the season. That win included, Clemson has beaten those opponents by an average of 32.6 points per game. Even so, one bettor probably could have found a more lucrative wager than the one he made on the Tigers: $8,600 to win $8.60 for an outright win over Syracuse....

Waitresses and janitors and security guards were around, of course, but they somehow didn’t get consulted about the president’s new tax bill either. No lobbyist in a nice suit with a Blackberry roamed the corridors, representing their interests. So it wasn’t until after President Bush signed the bill in front of a 98 percent white audience at the White House (if you don’t believe me, look at the wide angle picture of the signing ceremony in The New York Times), that someone read the fine print and found out that working people mostly got the shaft....

JOHN EDWARDS: The North Carolina senator is the favorite only in the minds of the voters; insiders say that he is far from a shoo-in. His best hope is for his supporters, especially fund-raisers, to band together to make it clear to Kerry that there is a price to be paid for not picking him. Advantages: He has proven himself a thoroughbred, virtually gaffe-free candidate who would bring freshness, youth and a skillful advocate’s abilities to his new client, Kerry, and would cross-examine President Bush and Vice President Cheney with a vengeance....

The administration will have no choice but to disenthrall itself from the flawed premises of its Russia policy: the conceptual misapprehension of the nature of the Cold War and its overemphasis on personalities. Many policymakers of Clinton’s generation hold the view that the United States has its own heavy responsibility for the Cold War, which they believe could have been avoided had the United States pursued a policy of reassurance rather than of confrontation toward the Soviet Union....

In the United States, the incidence of melanoma is rising faster than almost any other cancer, striking Americans at twice the rate today as it did two decades ago. This year alone more than 44,000 people are expected to be diagnosed, and 7,300 could die. “The increase is absolutely astounding,” says Dr. Martin Weinstock, chair of the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) skin-cancer advisory group. “This is a major public-health problem....

In a statement broadcast into Iran in mid-July, Bush promised unspecified U.S. “support” to “Iran’s people” as they “move toward a future defined by greater freedom.” And early this month, a top Bush aide said the current regime–both the elected government of reformist Mohammed Khatami and the unelected mullahs who dominate public life–was ineffectual. Speaking to an audience at the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs, National Security Council aide Zalmay Khalilzad did not call outright for a regime change in Iran, but didn’t argue when a questioner asserted that this was the policy’s aim....

Visitors could be forgiven for believing they had stumbled upon an antiwar rally. “State Britain” (through August 27), by the British artist Mark Wallinger, is a meticulous replica of the one-man peace camp created by Brian Haw that stood outside Britain’s Houses of Parliament from 2001 until last May, when police removed most of it on the ground that it violated a 2005 act banning unauthorized protests within a kilometer of Parliament Square....

The tradition has carried for six decades, with an updated list of the 100 best films ever, published every 10 years. In 2012, British Film Institute critics named Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 movie Vertigo the greatest. Other classics, including Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story and 2001: A Space Odyssey also appeared within the 2012 top 10. Ten years later, a relatively obscure entry has topped the list—and for the first time it was directed by a woman....

Asked about the president’s views on Pelosi’s visit, National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that Biden “respects the Speaker’s decision to travel to Taiwan.” “He respects her decision to go and he believes it is perfectly consistent with American policy going back decades,” Kirby said. Pelosi’s travel marks the first such trip by a Speaker of the House in 25 years. Reports of her trip first leaked to the public sphere via a Financial Times article that cited sources familiar with the matter....

The new administration will be tasked with leading our nation out of a public health crisis that has killed more than 242,000 Americans and devastated the economy. Yet Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are also consistently emphasizing the importance of healing, reunification and hope. Some might say hope is not realistic. Some might call hope, in these times of President Donald Trump refusing to concede and Republican politicians refusing to stand up to him, radical—a fantasy of our own making....

The world is watching as the three promising vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna/U.S. National Institute of Health and AstraZeneca/Oxford University are rolled-out in rich countries. Yet we’re bracing ourselves for yet another major failure in the global COVID response: U.S. vaccine stocks are already running dry and AstraZeneca has failed to make good on its contracts to supply the European Union. New variants of the virus, which are more contagious and possibly more deadly, have been found in the U....

Kate Bedingfield, who was deputy campaign manager for Biden’s election campaign, confirmed this lack of communication when asked by CNN. Host Dana Bash asked: “Has there been any communication at all between anybody in Trump world, anybody in the campaign, and anybody in yours?” “There has not,” Bedingfield replied, before expressing her hope the current president will “do the right thing.” “And obviously, we would hope that in this moment, this incredibly important moment for the country, that President Trump would choose to do the right thing, to do the thing that presidents have done since our country was founded....