Saturday, August 30, 2008

Sarah Palin is a Female Version of Clarence Thomas

McCain is going to try and lure women with Sarah Palin, but Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are as similar as Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall. I think the biggest impact that this will have is that conservative women will be more energized. Those women who are extreme liberal won't compromise their social causes for her and she may ultimately be too conservative for the moderate wing. It does give McCain some much needed buzz, especially after Obama's speech. I wonder if the Republican convention will be as watched as the Democrats'.

Monday, August 25, 2008

I Am So Frustrated By John McCain's Apparent Success

Since the DNC is starting today, I thought I would vent about John McCain.

He's doing well in the polls but for the life of me, I can't seem to figure out why. But let me vent about a few things.

1) Military experience - I've been thinking about John McCain's military experience. In what way does it make him suitable to be the President? Of course, he was a POW, and that's horrible. But his highest rank in the Navy was Captain. He could run a ship, but he never made it to Rear Admiral or Admiral (the highest ranks). Point is, the most distinguishing feature of his military career is that he was captured by the enemy!

2) As Paul Krugman points out in today's NY Times, all the "bad things" about John Kerry, also apply to John McCain! "Sugar daddy wife?" Check. Military service record available for distortion? Check.

3) Hillary Clinton supporters who are backing John McCain have to determine why exactly they are voting for Hillary Clinton, and why exactly they have decided to follow McCain instead of Obama. They clearly are not voting based on political platform, as Obama and Clinton are much more similar than Clinton and McCain. So if you're voting for another reason, what is it? Disrespect? Anger? Sadness? Are these reasons to vote for a candidate? Doesn't anger lead to hate, and hate lead to suffering?

4) I wonder if calling Barack Obama "arrogant" is code for calling him "uppity." What has he done to be arrogant? Went to Harvard and Columbia? The same things that make him "elitist" or "arrogant" are things that nearly every parent would wish their child would accomplish. Not to mention the last 3 Presidents went to Yale and the one before that was a movie star! By the way, apparently being a "huge celebrity" is not good if you're Obama, but fine if your name rhymes with Reagan.

5) Experience - a completely imagined qualification for President. Maybe the only relevant experience would be that of being some sort of executive or head of an organization. As Bill Clinton said recently, "You could argue nobody has the experience to be President." It's probably true. Some can handle the job better than others but how can we predict this? Our current President was a CEO and a governor and basically horrible. He has the most "experience" anybody could want and has been a failure. So why is experience important?

6) Finally, I guess the credit has to go to the Republican machine, which continues to perpetuate the myth that the media is "liberal" (see all of talk radio, Fox News and corporate ownership as counter-examples), and that somehow John McCain, whose economic policies will clearly benefit the rich, is better for lower income voters. It's making me really angry. Like "Hulk Smash" angry. Thanks for letting me vent.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

NFL Team Previews

iTunes has some free NFL Team previews done by NFL films. The preview of the Jets recaps the 2007 season, and they've done an amazing job of not focusing on any of the negativity, despite the season having been horrible. All the losses, QB controversy, are glossed over (the team always fought hard, had to overcome tough, close losses, etc). The preview is incredibly optimistic, and must have been made before the Brett Favre acquisition. It makes me want to see the Miami Dolphins preview!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Blogman Wonders...

If you wake up at 5am and drink a coke, it's kind of gross. But on the other hand, if you stay up until 5am and have a coke, that's much less gross. Ditto for sandwiches. Why is that?

Friday, August 15, 2008

Mike and the Mad Dog - It's Over?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaandgoodafternooneverybody!

As suddenly as Brett Favre became a Jet, the Mike and the Mad Dog program broke up after nearly 20 years. A show that has been a part of my afternoons for a while, and then when I couldn't listen in the afternoons, has been a podcast that I've been downloading regularly. This show, one of the first duo sports talk shows in the country, set the model for what is now an industry. For the most part, it's better than any other show that has come since. There have been times that either Mike or Mad Dog have been a little much either alone or together, but they somehow made the discussion fun and interesting. Whatever comes next won't be nearly as good.

Check out Mad Dog's teary goodbye.

According to Mike, he'll never have another radio partner and will be at WFAN the rest of his career. Unfortunately, individually neither Mike nor Mad Dog will be as good as the team show. If I was 1050 ESPN radio, I'd see if I could lure Mad Dog into the afternoon - imagine, Mike vs Mad Dog!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Google Reader

Why has it taken me so long to adopt an RSS reader? I just started using Google Reader recently and I love it. It really saves me a lot of time while web browsing.

I think the main reason that I've been slow to adopt the RSS reader is that I only recently started reading a bunch of blog-style websites on a regular basis. In addition, a bunch of comics news websites, like Newsarama and CBR, weren't providing RSS feeds. But now, Google Reader makes things much easier, and there's no need to visit a million different websites, I can just open Reader and let it update for me. I'm not sure if Google Reader is the best RSS feed reader out there but since I use GMail, it seems like an easy one to pick up.

Brett Favre in New York

There have been many accomplished athletes who switch teams late in their careers, and many who have switched teams into New York City. But Brett Favre's arrival with the Jets has an even larger carnival-like atmosphere than I could have ever imagined.

Why is this happening? Certainly it's big news any time a team acquires a HOF-caliber player. But even most HOF-caliber acquisitions don't get press conferences at City Hall and "Broadway" signs. And it's been a week since his acquisition but ESPN is still doing daily training camp updates from Jets camp.

First, I think since the Brett Favre retirement saga was big news in the national media to begin with, the resolution has now led to increased focus on Favre. Second, since the Jets were such a surprise team from this trade, and in general the timing was surprising and last minute, there is a bigger reaction. Finally, although the Olympics are going on, there aren't many other stories in pro sports.

I'm not sure how successful this trade will make the Jets, but I am sure it has raised the expectations significantly for the team. That's not always a good thing. Lately, I've been noticing that NY sports fans (but especially Mets and Jets fans) seem to get really upset when the high expectations they have for their teams are not met. Chad Pennington was easily and frequently cheered and then booed. What will be his reception the first game he comes back as a Dolphin? Mets fans, in particular, are boo crazy and there is significant overlap from Mets to Jets.

The Jets season may start off bumpy. If there's ever a game Miami can steal, it will be week 1, with the Jets on the road, new QB and the general problems teams run into on week 1. Then the Jets go on to face the Pats and Chargers. Of course, Chad Pennington loved to feast on the Chargers (he beat them in their last 3 match-ups, including a 44-13 whipping while the Jets struggled and the Chargers were 6-1). Then Arizona, the team everyone always thinks will be better. So it could easily be a 2-2 or 1-3 start. Not so favorable. Fortunately the BYE week then comes up and the schedule is pretty good overall.

Another interesting comment I've heard - the Patriots have the easiest schedule in the league and the Jets one of the hardest. Well, sure that's true if you look by opponent's record. But their only opponents that differ are the Jets face the Bengals and Titans, whereas the Pats face the Steelers and Colts. So what accounts for the disparity? Easy - if you calculate the Jets' opponents records, you need to factor in the 16-0 Patriots twice. Whereas when you factor the Pats' opponents records, you put in the 4-12 Jets twice. But actually the schedule is only different in those two games. So yes, technically the Jets' schedule is harder because they play the Patriots, but the Patriots don't have to play against themselves.

Interesting to watch for: at what point will Brett Favre say "we" and "us" instead of "this team" and "these guys"? The latter phrases sound much more like an outsider looking in.

Team Handball

I have been browsing the NBCOlympics.com website and stumbled upon women's team handball. What an interesting game. It's like some mix of basketball and soccer. But while the rules say they need to dribble while moving the ball, from what I can tell, there's not a whole lot of dribbling. Kind of interesting to be watching a game for the first time and trying to figure out how it works. I suspect this will wear off fairly quickly.

Kudos to NBC for their online Olympics coverage. I would have never seen this had it not been online and they have a ton of different events that you can watch live. That means curling fans can get excited when they have this sort of thing in the 2010 winter games.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Favre is a Jet. Whatthahuh?

Let's hope this move is more like Joe Montana with the Chiefs and Wade Boggs with the Yankees than Patrick Ewing with the Sonics and Michael Jordan with the Wizards.

Poor Chad Pennington. He'll benefit from being in another place that has a good offensive line. The only reason he's leaving is that Brett Favre couldn't make up his mind about retirement.