Are my eyes really blue?

...I don't know if that was the guy. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Now we'll never know. And it looks like almost seven years on, all we've got for our trouble is a bill for $6 million for the guy who didn't do it, and a suicide out of the next most likely suspect.

Pathetic.

Short version: 1.9% growth.

Looking deeper at the numbers, the Q2 growth number was primarily fueled not by the much-debated stimulus checks or productivity increased, but by a non-trivial jump in exports...owing to the weakness of the dollar. Not really the sort of thing you can build long-term sustainable growth on, but it's all there is - as the man says, "The impact of the foreign sector on the economy in the last three quarters has been extraordinary.... without the improvement in the trade balance, the economy clearly would be in a recession."

Looking at Abramowitz:

• 1.9% GDP growth in Q2.
• Eight-year incumbent of one party...
• ...whose aggregate approval rating is still floating around 30%.

As I said earlier...

Since 1950, every incumbent party that couldn't deliver at least 2.6% GDP growth in the Q2 of the election year gets beaten, and since 1960, the party of every incumbent whose approval rating is below 45% has lost.

So that's the baseline. Remember this going forward, because it will inform a lot of what happens next.

...or maybe not. Anyway, it's got to be said, so here I go:

I take back what I said about Brett Favre being the NFL's answer to John McCain. Say what you like about McCain, but he's never gone on the sort of delusional Norma Desmond tear that the Almighty Gunslinger of Kiln, Mississippi has embarked on. After two bloody seasons of teasing the whole will-he-won't-he retirement angle, and finally retiring in April, now he's sent the papers in to UN-retire, and looks to be in the verge of actual re-instatement.

There's no nice way to say this, and it's a goddamn shame that it's come to this, but here it is: Brett Favre is not bigger than the Green Bay Packers. No matter how much man-love is slobbered on him by the Maddens and Sports Illustrateds of the world, the fact of the matter is this: the Packers are an NFL institution, older than the league itself. They are the team of Curly Lambeau and Don Hutson and Bart Starr and Paul Hornung and Vince Lombardi. They existed for over seventy years before Favre came along, and they will be there when everyone who remembers that Favre was actually an Atlanta Falcon at the outset is dead and gone.

For Brett Favre to carry on with this charade says much, much more about him than it does about the Packers. They took his retirement in good faith, they drafted yet another quarterback (if I were Aaron Rodgers, I'd have put the first pet cat in orbit by now), they prepared to move on. And yet, despite the fact that he put together one competitive season in the last three, despite the fact that his signature pass from the 2008 season was an interception that gave the Giants a berth in the Super Bowl (what is it with the Giants backing into Super Bowls since 1990? Honestly), despite the fact that he's already played SEVENTEEN BLOODY YEARS IN THE LEAGUE, Old Number Four sure seems to think that the crown jewel of NFL tradition should slam on the brakes, stop time, and put the entire course of franchise history on hold until he's managed to milk every last second in the spotlight for all it's worth. Even if it means another non-winning season, even if it means a first-round draft pick holds a clipboard for a fourth year (Rodgers has thrown a whopping 59 career passes, and last season was the first year he broke 20 pass attempts in the pros), no matter what - Favre has to come back, and the sports media cannot resist another round of the Hallelujah Chorus.

Look, he had a hell of a run. He's a first-ballot Hall of Famer, no questions asked. But eventually everybody has to go. Joe Montana wound up a Chief, Joe Namath a Ram, Johnny F-ing Unitas a Charger. And in every case, it didn't take 17 years - because the sad, cruel fact of sports is that sooner or later, everybody has to hang it up. And the only reason it hasn't happened for Brett Lorenzo Favre is because Peter King and ESPN and the entire hellish host of the Sabbath Gasbags won't get off his jock long enough to deal with reality.

Anybody who's been on The Daily Show a dozen times, hosted Saturday Night Live and made an appearance in a Frat Pack movie is on thin F-ing ice to talk about anyone else's "celebrity".

Is this really the way we're going to run this thing? Let me tell you something: I don't want to live in a country where Paris Hilton's comedy parody response ad has a better articulation of energy policy than the network news.

I roll out a phrase from days of yore because I actually did have a sudden realization at some point in the last 48 hours or so. I have mentioned before that at age 36, I have more or less got everything I ever wanted out of life...albeit with the caveat that some stuff I got I didn't realize I wanted, and some stuff I thought I wanted it turns out I didn't, and that I had some of it and have since lost it again.

But what occurred to me was that there actually *was* a point when I had gotten everything I ever wanted in life (to that point), and it was summer of 1989. I had:

* A car
* A kick-ass summer job (law firm, if you must know, beats the hell out of the produce cooler)
* A crew of friends, of the sort that would take ten years to start replicating elsewhere
* A girl that was crazy about me. More than one, actually, but it's a long story, and it ends with one of them 1200 miles away and the other regenerating and not in a good way
* A GPA that AP classes had finally driven above 4. (I don't know if it was still like this when Technically Cool was there, but in my day - in addition to wearing an onion on our belts and spending nickels with bees on them - the GPA of the entire senior class was publicly posted like it was the AP football poll, on a very regular basis. Despite my best efforts, I never managed to get above #7.)
* Back-to-back state championships in Scholars' Bowl (one unofficial, one decidedly NOT), an MVP trophy from the Auburn invitational, and the knowledge that the captain's chair was waiting for me in September.
* Prescription aviator shades. (Seriously. Coupled with the shorts, which I'm not proud of - we were still in the Daisy Dukes back then - I looked like a poor, poor, homeless man's Grow Your Own Hunter S. Thompson Sea Monkey.)

And most of all:

* The knowledge that in a little over a year, somebody was going to pay for me to leave home and go to COLLEGE, where the sky would be the limit and I could finally do what I'd been waiting twelve years for.

See, back then, the future was nothing if not the perfect storm of possibilities. Anything at all...there was no limit to what could potentially be around the corner.

Now, almost twenty years on, most of the blanks have been filled in. Some of them are pretty damn good, some of them I wish I could go back and fill out differently, and sadly, some of them got crossed out for me. And I wonder if the fact that there aren't that many big blanks left to fill in tends to make one anxious about what finally will go in them.

Also, believe me when I say that a period of extreme introspection and being kind of antsy is a very very bad time for your financial institution to unexpectedly screw with you. Three-ring-binder-jockeys will quickly get pulled off their phone script.

"Senator Edwards, I knew Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was a friend of mine. Bill Clinton got off with my cousin's roommate's sister's BFF in the back of an El Camino back in '73. Senator, you're no Bill Clinton."

/bentsen

(Ladies and gentlemen, start your blogs. We just looooooove to jone.)

Come on, with a subject line like that, how can you not click through?

1) It has to be sufficiently extreme to mock the views it spoofs.

2) It has to be funny.

I think this is over the top enough, and it's butt funny, so enjoy:

Read this and then contemplate the meaning of the phrase "Frathouse America."

I half expect the Attorney General to go up there and say "Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did. But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!"

I know I've written before about that first autumn at Vanderbilt, but I stumbled across my entire "Old Vanderbilt" playlist a couple of days ago and was swept right back in again. One memory clearer than any others: on the morning we left to drive up, I walked out into the back yard with a Mason jar, out to the patch of yard where once lay the sandpile I played in as a preschooler, and scooped a jarful of earth to seal up and take with me. It would be over a decade before I could open it again...

It was, in fact, 30 years ago today that the letter was sent to the house informing my parents that I was eligible for "special educational services." Ultimately it was the first step down the long and winding road that ends up with me here tapping away on this laptop in this house in this state.

In years past, I might have been prouder of this. Or angrier about it. As it stands now, I think James said it best: "If I hadn't seen such riches, I could live with being poor." The ride may not always be smooth, but the view is spectacular.

A slightly bigger deal is that this is very nearly the first thing I can think of where I can say something happened 30 years ago. This is me, circling the drain...

Michael Phelps is what happens when a fish makes love to a jet engine.

Seriously, this is the most utter and complete ass-whipping since Hannibal rolled into Cannae. Well done young man.

Maybe I'm late to the game here, but seriously, I saw purple spots in front of my eyes when I saw this line attributed to John McCain:

"My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression."

Now, this could be a misquote. This could be something invented out of whole cloth by some Mumia-worshipper from International ANSWER, or maybe one of those sad-sack Nader 2008 hipsters. It's possible he never said anything like this.

But.

If John McCain actually said this - actually said that this ridiculous brushfire dustup is the first serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War - then he shouldn't be running for President, he should be in a fucking home. As memory serves me right, we have had Iraq invading Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia, we've had the collapse of the Balkans and an attempt at genocide, and let's see, what else? Oh yeah, THREE THOUSAND DEAD ON AMERICAN SOIL.

Either he's gone utterly galactically stupid, or just doesn't give a shit. Either should be instantly disqualifying, but let's not forget, the most important thing in choosing a President is who you'd rather have a beer with.

That Usain Bolt is faster 'n Walt Flanagan's DOG!!

* I was speculating on what is the opposite of a Druid. Whatever the urban version is, that's me. My powers are derived form public transit, pedestrian accessibility, major-league sports facilities, and a Starbucks on the back side of the same building as another Starbucks.

* My powers are also derived from whopping huge great quantities of FOG. I now get irritable whenever the temp creeps above 73 degrees outside.

* Aside from replacing a black shell that I spilled bleach on (and promptly corroded right through), I have not bought a new piece of outerwear in almost four years. This is a downright stunning figure, as from roughly 1990 to 2004, I was on more than one new jacket per year. Ridiculous things, too, like a Vandy pullover Starter jacket (as seen in 02-02-02) and a custom black-and-white varsity letter jacket (with no letter) and a black duster (it was on blowout clearance at an online store catering to Highlander fans) and most ridiculous of all, the last one in December 2004, something that looks like a jean jacket only made out of some sort of water-repellent brown suede. I am now trying to see if I can store some of this crap and get my apparel needs simplified to the point where I don't look an ass.

* The oxblood Docs may not have been the best choice in attempting to reach the above-cited goal.

* Really not looking forward to this weekend. Some company you just can't deal with.

* A quick check of the climate patterns reveals that relative to every place else I have ever lived, being in Silicon Valley basically amounts to "six months of October in DC, six months of March in Alabama." No wonder "performance outerwear" is near the top of the list of Stuff White People Like - around here, one fleece and one rain shell basically covers your entire jacket needs. When a plain 3-season leather jacket is routinely too heavy to be worn, it's time to clean out my closet...

* It is the height of irony to realize you have no backup of your Retrospect server.

* Irony is not funny.

* My Friend Vince Sez that he disavows all responsibility for the fire last week and that neither he nor his travel BBQ firebox were anywhere within the legally provable vicinity of Cupertino Hexachromatic Produce Holdings, Inc. As far as you know.

Finis.

Toby Keith praises Obama

Very interesting to see how this shakes out, given that the forthcoming election has already brought about what many suspect is the end of Big 'n Rich (at least according to the Nashville version of the Great Mentioner).

I would be remiss, however, if I didn't tell Toby Keith to STFU and caterwaul about Fords some more, as his opinion is no more interesting than John Rich or Lee Greenwood's.

The narrowing of the race stems from mid-July, right around the time Steve Schmidt's influence as the new showrunner for Team McCain began to take hold. That's when the whole "Celebrity" theme first emerged, to be clubbed over and over without reticence, and the constant exposure of the new memes (and some whipped up out of whole cloth by media whores* ) is taking points off the front-runner.

But the problem for McCain is that the numbers remain pegged at 45%. Looking at how the percentages have changed, it doesn't appear that the Rove Schmidt offense has accomplished much beyond coaxing some wavering Rs back into the fold. And if you're running the show for the R's, you know that number's never going to climb by much. The economy's in the shitter, Iraq's going nowhere, Osama Bin Laden's still alive, and the incumbent Republican President is more popular than herpes but less than the clap. By rights, if you're running the Rs, you're trying to make sure the most padded part of your ass is what gets kicked and hope nobody holds it against you next time out.

And yet.

For Schmidt, it's back to the Rove offense, because at this point there's nothing else to run. If the GOP is going to win, it won't be on issues or on the record of the last eight years, it'll be because enough people got turned off to Obama to skip out on voting - and the GOP base got whipped into enough of a frenzy to come out in droves. Basically, Obama has to be made radioactive, which is why you're seeing all the "celebrity" stuff. Obama is for movie stars and shallow college girls. Real Americans wouldn't vote for that. Plus, there are enough other people down South who can pump out the racist stuff; no need for the campaign to do it.

And yet.

Basically, for this to work, Bob Barr has to be a non-entity, Ralph Nader's army of retards** needs to be bigger than ever, the Obama ground forces need to completely flop on their registration and get-out-the-vote operation, and the political press needs to roll over and play dead. Right now, the only piece of the puzzle in place is the press (and maybe Barr).

And the big fear, if I'm running the campaign, is that this is the rope-a-dope. That Obama's gone on vacation, phoned it in for two weeks, spent all that time on the beach watching Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt - and next week, he's going to have a captive audience, the very forum that made his name four years ago, and a switch from "primary" to "general election," which means the odometer resets on that whole arsenal of donors who kicked in $50 million just last month. By Labor Day, he'll have his convention bump, a fresh start, and the promise of as much as $150 million down the stretch to sell the dream. If I'm Steve Schmidt, the thing that makes me bolt upright in bed at 3 AM is the thought that this was the best shot, and all it got was a statistical tie - and in six weeks, it'll be back to a 150-EV loss.

Needless to say, that's not much of a future. So if I'm running the GOP campaign, I'm going for a "shoot the hostage" play: on Thursday morning, as everyone gets ready for Obama's big speech, I'm rolling out Joe Lieberman as the VP nominee for the GOP.

This does a couple of things. For one, it ensures that Obama has to share the headlines for the rest of the week, possibly kneecapping the post-convention bounce. For another, it provokes wave after wave of orgasmic rapture in the DC punditocracy; the idea that the brave political maverick has reached across the aisle for his VP - and not for just anybody but another maverick, the one who was the Dems' VP only eight years ago - well, the magical unity pony will be in the barn, and if there's one thing the press cannot help but salivate over, it's the magical unity pony.

Now I know what you're saying: "You're crazy! The Republicans won't take a northeastern Jewish liberal as their VP!" And I say: that's where you're wrong. Who was the first Democrat off the blocks to bemoan the perfidy of Bill Clinton during impeachment? Who was the first to cast aspersion on Hollywood and the video-game industry for their lack of morality? Who put up a matador defense down the stretch in 2000? And more to the point, who's the most gung-ho advocate of subduing the Middle East by force? If McCain's going to win this thing, it's not going to be on any "culture of life," it's not going to be on anything economic, it's going to be on the big-stick approach to international affairs and nothing else. And Lieberman, as the only Likud Senator, is a reliable advocate for the big stick.

Besides, remember all the crocodile tears about how conservatives would rather vote for Hillary than McCain? They'll get over it. They always get over it, because the constant refrain at the end of the day is always "the other guys are worse." The people who constantly complain about having to vote for the lesser of two evils? I'll give you a hint: they're never Republicans.

So that's the move: McCain-Lieberman. It also pays off in one other way: it forces the Democrats to basically drop the penny as far as Lieberman caucusing with them. Making him a full-on Republican dumps the Senate back to 50-50, and irrespective of how much business the Senate is transacting for the rest of the year (not much) or what kind of provisions are already in place to handle a reversion to a split house (hint: not worth the paper they're written on, if push comes to shove), it creates a cauldron of merry mayhem at a time when the Ds can ill-afford to have a flaming shitbag on their back stoop. Think "the Democrats are clinging to power when they don't have a majority" and "Why is Obama not voting on the reorganization of the Senate?" and remember that the Congress has an approval rating below herpes right now.

I'm not saying it's a perfect plan, or even a good one. What I am saying is that this is the kind of year where the GOP stands to take it right in the ass, and the only way to prevent a complete disaster is to do something to radically change the game. In this case, Trek fans***, my choice is simple: torpedo the damned freighter.

* Not gender-specific, but a shout-out to an old blog called Media Whores Online which did a good job pummeling the press for the way it bent over backwards to try to prevent conservatives saying mean things about them. Besides, specifically calling Cokie Roberts a dumb whore would, I think, be an unfair slander against the good name of whores. Whores built San Francisco and don't you forget it.

** I'm not kidding. If you vote for Nader in 2008, you are a mental defective. This is not opinion, or rage, or abuse, it is a fact, and it is indisputable.

*** Not much of a Trek fan myself, but I needed something other than a Keanu Reeves movie that would let me employ the "shoot the hostage" angle. Look, it's 1 in the morning and I'm trying to rage myself to sleep, whaddya want from me? Besides, you just read 1300 words of this drivel, so who's the donkey now, wise guy?

I am deeply, deeply. truly sorry for using a load-bearing pun during the lunch hour.

Also, I am apparently six years old.

The WineRack may be the world's top intersection of devious and genius.

"A Vice-President cannot help you, he can only hurt you."

-Richard Nixon

This was a Fize.

(more past the link, or beneath the jump)

...I'm still not convinced, but I'm willing to go wait-and-see. It just reminds me too much of '88.

Meanwhile, the Medium Lobster breaks it down much better than I ever could. I still think Galactus, Eater of Worlds would have been a good call. Obama/Galactus? Tell me you wouldn't pull THAT lever.

* Family's always trying, isn't it?

* The more I see and hear of him, the more I am convinced that Joe Biden is going to be the Charles Barkley to Obama's MJ: don't dare get between him and a microphone, and you're going to be cringing waiting for him to drop a clanger, but the potential entertainment value is through the roof. It ought to be an interesting week.

* I still despise him and think he's a jackass, but Kobe Bryant gets a pass this week. What he did overnight Saturday was incredible to watch - as was Dwayne Wade's effort. Seriously, when you can bring Dwayne Wade off the bench, you should be unloading whoop ass by the case. But anybody who thought a bunch of NBA stars couldn't come together, play as a team, subvert 12 egos for one goal - well, these guys looked like a million damn dollars and a bunch of them are talking about wanting to come back in 2012. Lock and load and find some cover.

* There was zippy fog in the city yesterday. My plan had been to use the effects of the fog to offset the effects of the company, and yet? No fog. I am bitter and I want a refund. That lunkhead Austrian robot from the future has a LOT to answer for this year.

* "John McCain was a POW!" is the new "Did you know Jerome Bettis is from Detroit?"

* Whatever you may have thought of Margaret Thatcher in the past, this may be the saddest thing I've ever read:

Thatcher's condition has deteriorated so much that she forgets that her husband, Denis Thatcher, died in 2003, her daughter said in a memoir that is to be published next month and was serialized over the weekend in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

"I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again," Carol Thatcher wrote. "Every time it finally sank in that she had lost her husband of more than 50 years, she'd look at me sadly and say 'Oh' as I struggled to compose myself. 'Were we all there?' she'd ask softly."

* I didn't post that much about the Olympics this year. Every time they come round, I tend to think about where I was four years ago and what was happening with my life. And while I'm remembering 2004 (housesitting, early days at the last job, still disoriented from the move), I'm thinking just as much of 1988, when the Olympics didn't start until school was back in and I was starting my junior year...and having the kind of start to the year that normally gets listed in history books as "The Gathering Storm" or something like that.

* Leona Lewis is all right but no Robert Plant. But Jimmy Page is still the Death Star. Every hair-metal swill ever made collapses prostrate in fear before the opening chords of "Whole Lotta Love."

* Coffee makes everything better. However, the girl behind the counter looks at you funny if you reply to "Room for cream?" with "No, but room for whiskey would be great."

* My Buddy Vince Says [redacted for NDA]

Finis.

So I've had occasion to do a lot of reflecting lately. Figuring out how you're going to cope with your job, your family and your future will do that to you. And I've noticed that I'm starting to remember a lot of things I had forgotten about, and vividly at that.

One of those things is Led Zeppelin.

Yes, I have always known that Led Zep is at the pinnacle of rock, and they were all over our car stereos twenty years ago as we first abused our new licenses, and I bought Mothership as soon as it hit iTunes, and "Good Times Bad Times" was sort of the unofficial anthem of the Vanderbilt team that ran riot through the top 25 right up until they shat the bed in the NCAA tournament. But flipping through some of those tracks tonight, I am really remembering for the first time in a long, long, long time just how awesome the music is. And I close my eyes and there I am, pushing a Monte Carlo with 125,000 miles on it, glass tops in the trunk, marveling at how General Motors can built a 5-liter V-8 that only turns over 160 horsepower (I get damn near that with better torque out of a 5-cylinder now), wind whipping through a full head of hair because I'm still only 16 and I have redneck fringe, jacket sleeves jammed up past my elbows and two aces in the band of my hat in the front seat (two down, two to go, four aces means state championship), constantly glancing down at that blue sparkly thing on my hand that means I'm going to be a senior shortly, and Black Dog cranked to the stars, Hey hey mama say the way you move, gonna make you sweat gonna make you groove, and I'm just utterly rockin' out and it's great to be alive, and what's with that horn honking, and--

--and whoops, that's not a Monte Carlo burning down I-65, that's a Rabbit stopped at a green light at the corner of Stevens Creek and DeAnza, and the people behind me are pissed.

Whoops.

Imagine you support a football team that is really a good team, near and dear, that just hasn't managed to get over the hump. And then, all of a sudden, they're in the Super Bowl. You're thrilled beyond belief, you're so close to the championship you can scream...but they're playing the games at the rate of one play per day. No tickets, no TV, no radio, no internet, and all you know about what's happening is what the players mention as they come back to the bench.

What would you do? I'll tell you what you'd do: you'd be a nervous wreck for, like, two months.

But that's the thing about sports: you derive an immense amount of joy just from being happy for the guys who are actually out there winning the championship.

I'm cutting down from my original 5000-word post to get to this, so here goes:

"A Vice-President cannot help you, he can only hurt you."
-Richard Nixon

If it really is Sarah Palin, I'm not sure what to think. It's an interesting pick, to call out America's Hottest Governor (TM-Wonkette) as your running mate. But I'm not sure what it really accomplishes, for several reasons:

1) She's from Alaska, which has a smaller population than San Francisco. Sure, it's three electoral votes in the bag that might have been drifting toward Obama, but if you're trying to shore up a state, shouldn't the pick have been from Virginia or Ohio or Florida?

2) You're basically taking the "age and experience" meme and piling it in a heap and setting it on fire. Sarah Palin has been governor of one of America's least-populous states for two years, before which she was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. ~8000). There's very little to suggest she's done other than a fine job, but it makes Barack Obama look like a wizened statesman by comparison, and undercuts perhaps the most effective line of attack against Obama.

3) Alaska is not like other states. Zippy income tax; in fact, every citizen gets a check from the government for his or her share of the state's oil revenue. I don't know how many otherwise-undecided votes energy policy drives in this election, but if you want to suggest something other than a "drill more, drill harder" approach to energy policy, Alaska may not be the place to look for it.

4) Alaska is very much like a Southern state, in that its politics tends to be insular, nepotistic, and generally corrupt. (See also Stevens, Murkowski.) Palin has gotten her fingers burned on the fringes of this earlier in the year, but not in a terribly serious way, and she certainly doesn't appear on the surface to be up to her neck in dirty dealings - but because of the nature of the state's politics, she's potentially vulnerable to as much guilt-by-association as Biden's Delaware connections provide for him. This is a chance worth taking in the Rove offense, if you're trying to depress turnout generally and say "well, I'm corrupt, you're corrupt, they're all corrupt, don't bother showing up", but that's a hell of a three-rail bank shot to be taking with only nine weeks to go 'til Election Day.

5) Nobody other than hardcore political junkies could pick her out of a lineup with Tina Fey and three elves. Again, not necessarily a problem, but you really don't want the first reaction from the rest of the country to be "Who?"

6) At this point, you're probably thinking "Look here, donkey, they must know something you don't because they wouldn't be picking her otherwise." Well, two things: first, there's no such thing is something they know that I don't, because I really am just that good (tip: remember Brian Schwitzer of Montana, who is a FIGJAM of the first order but who is going to be a big deal in a few years). But more importantly, what they think they know may not in fact be valid information.

See, Team McCain is inexplicably convinced that with Hillary Clinton out of the race, the people who voted for her are all ripe for the plucking by the GOP, and they'll torpedo Obama at the waterline and sail on to victory. But that argument falls apart for two reasons:

* Half those people just saw the Clintons endorsing the hell out of Obama publicly for four days. They are over their first flush of anger and ready to go back to a candidate much closer to their actual beliefs. They are probably not on the table.

* The rest of the folks who would vote for Clinton over McCain, but not Obama over McCain, are concentrated in states that McCain's going to win in a walk anyway. It doesn't matter if every white woman in every Wal-Mart in all of West Virginia pulls the lever for McCain, it's still only got 5 electoral votes. There's aren't enough women sufficiently disaffected to vote for McCain in enough states already in play to make a material difference. (I had a professor who once ran for statewide office on the idea that there were enough women in the "works at Wal-Mart" demographic to get her the nomination. She finished third.)

In the grand scheme of things, it's a head-scratcher of a pick. You could be reaching for the novelty of a "first" on the GOP side, but all it does is point out that the Democrats did it twenty-four years ago, and that they did it out of a sense of desperation. It could be a sop to the party regulars, getting a solid conservative on the ticket, but it's questionable how well it will play in parts of the country where they were already averse to a black man and now have to consider a woman on the ticket if they go the other way. It could just be an attempt to get youth and vitality on the ticket, and Bobby Jindal's not available because of the hurricane.

Ah well. What's done is done. Congratulations to Sarah, and congrats as well to Alaska and Hawaii. Less than fifty years after statehood, they've both got a name on the big ticket, and it's good to remember that "United States" isn't dependent on "contiguous landmass."

Illinois/Delaware vs Arizona/Alaska.

When's the last time there was no Southerner in any of the four spots on the national ticket? You have to go back to 1984, and even then, George H.W. Bush claimed a Houston hotel as his legal residence (and tried to sell himself hard as a Texan). Before that, you have to debate whether Maryland counts as the South or not (slave state, lots of Southern cultural influences, but never seceded). If it doesn't, you're looking at 1972 (Nixon/Agnew vs. McGovern/Eagleton/Shriver, and no, Eagleton's 3 days as VP candidate and being from the border state of Missouri doesn't count). But if it does, then you have to go all the way back to...1944, when FDR (New York) and Truman (from Missouri, but Kansas City which is far from the secessionist regions) squared off against Thomas Dewey (New York) and John Bricker (Ohio).

Obama's final list seems to have been Biden, Bayh, and Sebelius - Delaware, Indiana and Kansas.

McCain's final four were Romney (Utah/Massachusetts), Pawlenty (Minnesota), Lieberman (Connecticut) and Palin (Alaska).

Is it possible that for the first time, we might actually be approaching a repudiation of the Confederatist political culture?

* Yes, I know it's not actually "alright," but that's the way the Who spelled it on their album, and the Cal Band did a Who tribute show Saturday (and a damn fine job, although a Union Jack formation would have been a nice touch).

* It's also an apt title if you look at the relative youth that Cal has rolled out (and Vandy and Bama, albeit to a lesser extent). But the tradition lives at Cal: last year's backup becomes this year's star running back, and another star-in-waiting shows up as the backup. Keep an eye on Shane Vereen, if you can, and you probably can't. You sure can't on Jahvid Best, who moves like a streak of lightning and is so electrifying that he cannot go in the shower for fear of electrocuting his teammates.

* The boos that cascaded down from the east stands following Longshore's second INT should not have been directed at him - and to be honest, probably weren't. They should have been directed (and rightly so) at Jeff Tedford, who cannot seem to grasp that the Golden Bears are a football team and not Nate Longshore's personal group therapy exercise. Continuing to put Longshore in that position is bad for morale - for the fans, for the team and doubtless for Longshore himself. I am sure Nate is a fine gentleman and is doing his best, but that ship has sailed, for better or worse - this is Kevin Riley's offense now, and the sooner everyone comes to terms with it, the better.

* Man, but Bama sonned Clemson something awful. Freshman running back piled up almost 100 yards, the much-vaunted Julio Jones scores a TD in his debut, and John Parker Jimbo Billy Bo Bob Wilson passes Brodie Croyle for completions. (I still despise Dennis Franchione and Mike Price, because the tumult they caused the Crimson Tide wasted the career of somebody who should have been his generation's Namath or Sloan or Hollingsworth or Barker.) The ACC has reverted to the Almost College Conference for football purposes and will remain so until forcibly proven otherwise, because that was just ugly. (East Carolina? East F-ing Carolina?)

* Vanderbilt finally breaks the streak against the very team they last got a win against. I wouldn't say they clowned Miami of Ohio, but any SEC team should be favored against any MAC team, and at least the 'Dores didn't let the side down. Not sanguine about next week, though - I am sure that after the humiliation last year, Spurrier will have the Gamecocks loaded for bear and will be looking to administer the beatdown.

* Yes, Ess-Eee-See and all that, but I won't shed one single tear if Tennessee gets their ass handed to them on the West Coast by a team with an ursine mascot for the second consecutive year.

* Celtic lost the first Old Firm derby of the year, 4-2, although it's a relief that Venegoor of Hesselink was healthy enough to play as a sub after being stretchered off against Falkirk last week.

* And to cap everything off, the Redskins are limping to the starting line after two absolutely anemic performances down the stretch. The problem with preseason is that you look good playing third-string on third-string with guys that aren't even going to make the practice squad, and all those great runs by Marcus Mason or traffic catches by Billy McMullin or great passing from Colt Brennan are all meaningless come Thursday night, when Washington becomes the latest stop on the NFL's "Messiah Mannings" tour.

* Advice to anyone playing the Colts or Giants this year: come out in gold jerseys and black helmets with a "V" on the side. Mannings tend to freeze up and choke when they see it, and there's proof if you look it up.

* All my peeps on the Dirty Coast: stay dry and shoot first.