Predictions - II

Follow-ups to the previous predictions:

1 - Not only will the Phillies win the division, tho I now think it might be by only 2-3 games, I also predict they'll finish with the best record in the National League.

2 - I had forgotten until I was reminded yesterday that Glenn Beck is a Mormon. Taking that into account, I'll make Mitt Romney the clear frontrunner for the R nomination in 2012, family pets strapped to roofs of cars, notwithstanding. Assuming the state primaries are in the same order as last time, he'll win Iowa in a squeaker over Huckabee at #2 and Palin at #3, win NH easily and then his biggest test will be South Carolina. That state will decide the nomination.

This is going to go over like a lead rug, as my sister Laurie once said (when she was about 12, I think, in other words, about 15 years ago), but I finally reached the conclusion that where men are thought to only think about one thing - sex - and I don't think that's at all fair - we care about a lot more than that, but generally you can break it down, as my wife does, to Food, Football, F*king and Farting. Where was I? Oh yeah, the main thing women want is to be desired.

I was hesitant to post that simplistic conclusion, until I read an email from a group called All Pro Dad. I joined their email list a year or so ago and I like a lot of what they say, even though there seems to be a fairly religious tone to many of their suggestions on how to be a better Dad, which is their general raison d'etre.

Their email today was entitled: "Are you Meeting your Wife's Deepest Need?

"In the book Captivating, author Stasi Eldredge writes about a woman's deepest need: "Little girls want to know, Am I lovely? The twirling skirts, the dress up, the longing to be pretty and to be seen-that is what that's all about. They are seeking an answer to their question. When I was a girl of maybe five years old, I remember standing on top of the coffee table in my grandparents' living room and singing my heart out. I wanted to capture attention-especially my father's attention. I wanted to be captivating. We all did. But for most of us, the answer to our question when we were young was 'No, there is nothing captivating about you. Get off the coffee table!'"

"Nearly all a woman does in her adult life is fueled by her longing to be delighted in, her longing to be beautiful, to be irreplaceable, to have her question answered, 'Yes! You are lovely.' And down in the depths of our hearts, our question remains. Unanswered. 'Am I lovely? Do you see me? Do you want to see me? Are you captivated by what you find in me?' We live haunted by that question."

Truth be told, most of our wives want to know that they are lovely... that they captivate their husbands."

Notice it doesn't say that's all she wants, just that she wants to know it.

So...staying away from the political arguments herein, let me state for the record: Cheryl - I STILL think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and have ever since I first laid eyes on you.

Old Folks Fight!

I was really upset about what Alan Simpson said this week to the leader of the OWLs, the Old Women League, or whatever they're called. I didn't mind what he said about social security now being a milk cow with 310 million tits. I cared more about how disrespectful he was to the woman. No one should talk to someone else like that, especially in his position.

Hear me know, believe me later. (These can be deleted, right? Actually, I'm hoping you'll forget, unless I'm right, then I'll remind you!)

I've been meaning to make some predictions on here for awhile, and I'll get to some more later, but here's one:

Michael Bloomberg with run for President as an Independant, with Chuck Hagel as his running mate. And they will be a huge factor in the race. If they siphon off enough angry, disappointed Ds, frustrated with how moderate Obama has turned out to be, and moderate Rs who have become afraid of the far right wing of their party, they could win.

OK, here's another, the Phils, who are currently 2 1/2 games behind the Braves, will win the division by 4-5 games. And as I write this the Phils just today got finished being swept in a 4 game series vs the lowly Astros, scoring 7 runs in the 4 games.

And as for who will be the R nominee in 2012, I'm still working on that.

Yet another important problem solved - what else ya need help with?

There is a lot of talk these days about expanding the NFL season from 16 to 18 games. My suggestion is that they expand to 20 games, but only allow any individual player to play in 15 of them. Wouldn't that make for great talk and strategy and controversy as to when to sit out certain players, in particular the Quarterbacks? They'd need to expand the rosters considerably, but that would please the players union, who is generally against the expanded schedule.

And I don't care how cold and snowy it gets in February - anything that fills in the slowest of sports months makes it worthwhile.

If a sociopath married a sociologist, would they have a pathologist for a kid...or maybe a pathological liar?

I'm sure there are smarter people than me - sociologist-types - who figured this out long before I did, but it doesn't seem to be just coincidence that Middle America and the South are more resistant to change on so many things compared to the Northeast and Far West. Just by thinking about who lives there and why, and their historic motivations for the way they live helps me understand it.

And please forgive the stereotypes, but I'm a big believer that stereotypes are usually rooted in some measure of truth, even though they sometimes hurt. It's the roots of those alleged truths and how they came to be that should be examined more carefully than the stereotype itself.

The South, as illustrated clearly in Gone With the Wind, has been and I think, continues to be, so set in its historical ways, wanting to preserve the past and the tradition of their heritage. Middle Americans are tied to their land and generally move more slowly, something of which I've heard they are quite proud.

The Northeast is fast-paced, forced to consider different ways of doing things, if only because of the challenges of fitting so many people in increasingly small places. Well, I guess the places stay the same size, but there are more people to fit in them!

And the Far West is where people went a few hundred years ago, and even into the past few decades wanting to seek greener pastures, as it were. They wanted to change their lives, either by economic necessity or just to try something different.

And that's all it is...heart, will, technique. And tone-setting...and football playing... and this paddle game

Football coaches all speak the same language:

Defensive co-ordinator Sean McDermott said, when asked about linebacker Akeem Jordan. "He's a football player, as you guys have seen."

About another linebacker Ernie Sims, McDermott said: "Coach Reid said it best yesterday when he said he's a tone-setter. That's what he is for us."

And finally about his third LB, Stewart Bradley, he said, "You don't have to be that big to do some damage, it's all about heart, will and technique, pretty much."

Pretty much? Well, what else? C'mon, man, we need to know!

Ah, I just needed to keep reading this same article, this time on rookie, Te'o-Nesheim: "I love his motor." said McDermott.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/eagles/20100824_For_Eagles__it_s_beginning_to_look_a_lot_like_a_defense.html#ixzz0xY5xPyt1

Move along...nothing to see here

Something tells me way more people will read the post below this one than will read this one...unless I can find another pic to link with it of a beautiful woman in a bikini.

No, but it does show your insecurites

News Item:
LAS VEGAS -- A 22-year-old Mexico woman has won the Miss Universe pageant after donning a flowing red gown and telling an audience it's important to teach kids family values.

Jimena Navarrete of Guadalajara was first to answer an interview question Monday night and the last of 83 contestants standing in the headline-grabbing pageant on the Las Vegas Strip.

Her one-strap gown flowed behind her like a sheet as she walked. Earlier, she smiled in a violet bikini as she confidently strutted across the stage.

She's Miss Universe, but don't you just know when she looks in the mirror, there is still something she sees about herself that she wishes she could change?

After the show, as she changed into a different look for her first interviews with the press, she asked one of her aides, "Do these pants make me look fat?"

I say Yes to both

John Stewart to Rod BlaGOYevich: "You're either the victim of a terrible persecution or you're a sociopath".

I thought this was maybe Job Stewart's lowest moment as an interviewer. He seemed obsessed with RB testifying next time around and trying to prove RB was wrong about something he said last time on the show, as if anything the man says is to be believed.

Lovin' me some JoeBuh...well, except for the "literally" part

Vice-President Joe Biden earlier today: "Mr. Boehner and his party ran the economy and the middle class literally into the ground," Biden said at one point. "I'm still waiting for what it is that they are for... I know what they are against. What I don't know, other than a tax cut for the top two percent of the taxpayers in America, I don't know what they are for."

Here are some more excerpts:

"Let's just review a little history here: For eight years before we arrived, Mr. Boehner and his party ran this economy and the middle class into the ground. They took the $237 billion surplus they inherited from the Clinton Administration and left us with a $1.3 trillion deficit, and, in the process, quadrupled the national debt - all before we had turned on the lights in the West Wing. They gave free rein to the special interests to write their own rules at the expense of everybody else. And the sum total of it was the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression--a crisis that wreaked havoc on families and businesses across this country--a crisis from which we are still digging out. "

Random thoughts

Why does any team kick more than one or two field goals in any one exhibition game? Seems like once they have that down, they'd be better off trying their 4th down plays.
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Another thing I hardly ever see in Chester County anymore? Hitchhikers. I saw one this morning - an African-American in bright Islam-ish garb. I've picked up hitchhikers before, but it seems now like one of those things I have to think differently about now that I have kids and am the sole wage-earner in the family...at least for now.
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I got to meet someone I've wanted to meet for a very long time now over the weekend - Sean Johnson who married the daughter of some lifelong friends - the Marohns. He was the Political Director for Hillary Clinton's PA primary campaign. I wish I could say I'd thought this first, but we were talking all things political over the weekend and he made the observation, and I may be exaggerating it a tad - that maybe the best thing that could happen to Barack Obama's re-election chances would be for the R's to retake the House this November. They would provide a perfect foil/bad guy for the President to run against. It sure helped Bill Clinton. If only they could get Newt to lead them again, though John Boehner may be even more of a cartoon character than Newt.
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I guess I should really be separating these into individual posts...

Channeling my inner Ed Grimley

I wish the Daily Local were paying me something to do this blog, so I could claim to be part of the "Professional Left" Robert Gibbs was all grumped up about the other day. I could pretend he was talking about me, like he was reading this regularly. And then who knows, maybe we could become best friends, I must say, like i could call him at his house and say "Is Robert there?" I suppose it could get any better than that. Oh, this is making me half-mental!

So who's whinier: the White House or those of us on the political left?

From today's Huffington Post:

"Given the economic straits we are in, the stimulus was too small, and had too many tax cuts in it, but it is still the biggest jobs bill in American history, and the biggest investment in public goods (schools, teachers, roads, bridges, clean energy, firefighters, cops, broadband, etc.). The health care bill had big flaws, including the lack of a public option, but Obama succeeded at extending coverage to virtually everyone and reining in major insurance abuses (on pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps, etc.) when every other President before for a hundred years had failed.

The financial reform bill didn't break up the banks, but we won very significant victories in reining in the financial sector, and went the right direction on financial regulation instead of the wrong direction as we did in the last four presidents' tenures. The federal budgets Obama submitted have been the most progressive in many ways, at least since 1993, and maybe since the 1960s. We won a major victory on, and expansion of, the student loan program for college students. Tobacco is regulated by the FDA for the first time. The equal pay law got passed, S-CHIP got expanded, the hate crimes bill got signed, unneeded weapons systems got eliminated. And Obama has at least pushed for other big legislation on climate change, immigration reform, and more jobs programs, even if he didn't succeed at everything.

It hasn't all been perfect -- far from it -- but Obama deserves enormous credit for wading into these big fights, and for persevering on some of the toughest, like health care (where his chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel wanted him to back down and give up.) If I were in the Obama White House, I might be feeling a little irritable myself at the lack of credit I was getting.

But here's the thing, folks at the White House: your strategy for getting the credit you think you deserve sucks. It's not working, and bitching about the fact that people don't give you enough credit is not going to get them to give you more."

A true and false quiz where I'll give you the answers!

Dailykos researched these Republican Myths :

Tea Party'ers are not more likely to have racist tendencies than other conservatives.
(Except they are: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/09/tea-party-racism-2/ )

Democrats are scheming to hit 94 percent of small business owners with tax increases.
(Except they aren't: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/09/tea-party-racism-2/ )

Bloody violence is out of control along the Mexican border, and illegal immigrants are streaming into America at record levels.
(Except it's not and they're not: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-07-30-editorial30_ST_N.htm )

Obamacare will send Medicare spiraling out of control.
(Except it won't: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/bending-the-curve/ )

Voters say cutting the deficit is more important than creating jobs.
(Except they don't: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1479 )

Social Security is going broke, it adds to the deficit, and we have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
(Except it's not, it doesn't and we don't: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/move-on-is-busting-social-security.html )

As a Quaker, am I allowed to like a Secretary of Defense?

NYT 8/10/10: "Secretary of Defense Gates bemoaned that “this department is awash in taskings for reports and studies,” and he ordered a freeze on the number of such internal assessments. For those that remain and others ordered by Congress, the Pentagon will publish the cost of preparation in each document.

Mr. Gates has already canceled or trimmed several dozen weapons programs, with long-term savings, based on projections of what the programs would have cost, predicted at $330 billion.

Mr. Gates has ordered the armed services and the Pentagon’s agencies to find $100 billion in spending cuts and efficiencies over the next five years: $7 billion for 2012, growing to $37 billion annually by 2016."

But wait, this means some corporations actually DO pay taxes?!

"According to the White House, in 2004, the last year data on this was compiled, U.S. multinational corporations paid roughly $16 billion in taxes on $700 billion in foreign active earnings— putting their tax rate at around 2.3 percent." - Arianna Huffington, Third World America

Really - they promise to trickle it down on you if you'll only cut them this one last deal

Everyone put your hands up if you want to borrow $700 billion over the next ten years to permanently extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent ! C'mon - lets see those hands!

Then I guess asking for them to make it a capital offense for ethics breaches is too much to ask

August 4, 2010
New York Times

House Republicans are chortling over the Democratic majority’s troubles with ethics allegations, but they also are ominously signaling their distaste for the Office of Congressional Ethics — the one new player on Capitol Hill with a clear determination to do something about the morass.

The Republican minority leader, John Boehner, said he wants to “take a look” at the office if his party regains majority power — a reminder that his members fiercely opposed the quasi-independent office when it was created two years ago by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Grumblers on both sides want to gut the ethics office. That is because it has been fulfilling its mission to put life into the lawmakers’ own stultified ethics process, to penetrate the murk of misbehavior and keep the public better informed. Republicans would be the ultimate hypocrites to subvert the ethics office while campaigning as the all-new party of reform that, ah, yes, learned its lesson after the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal.

Uncharted Territorial Senate Gains

A recent post at dailykos, showing the improving chances of Democratic Senator candidates. Wouldn't that be something if the Senate stayed roughly where it is?

"The chart above (not pictured - for some reason, I can't seem to copy charts onto here) also shows how Dems are actually playing some serious offense this cycle -- Ohio, New Hampshire, Louisiana, North Carolina and Kentucky are all pickup opportunities. Throw in Missouri and Florida (with independent Charlie Crist), and you've got seven legitimate pickup opportunities to offset the guaranteed GOP pickups in North Dakota and Arkansas, plus tough contests in Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, as well as potentially tough races in California, Washington and Wisconsin.

Throw in fading GOP challengers in Nevada and Illinois, and we've got something approaching parity heading into November."

But if you watch Fox News, The Recovery will not be televised

A column in today's NYT by Obama's Treasury Secretary, Tim Geitner, on all the great things that have started happening since their Stimulus Bill passed last year. It's amazing, given how bad things were early last year, how quickly things have turned and started in the right direction. There is still a long way to go though, especially in the one number everyone understands: the unemployment number.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/opinion/03geithner.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Just quoting Ronald Reagan again, as usual

Something for right-wing anti-immigration zealots to remember:

"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still." -- Ronald Reagan (1989)

...and no fair inserting the words "...as long as they are the same color as me..." anywhere in there.

I just wish I'd figured this out back in high school

I know this is tweet-worthy, which by my definition means it is an incredibly narcissistic post of virtually no interest to anyone, but I'm putting it here anyway, dagnabit!

I've never been a big believer in the theory that if you drink a lot of coffee and then go without it for a day, you get a headache. In fact, I've never even been sure I've believed that it does much to wake me up. I just like the taste.

Well, I've been grumpy and sleepy here at work all morning, and I just now went down and had a large cup of coffee from the pot that Saint Karen here at work makes me every day and I've noticed how much more awake I feel and in a much better mood, and dang if my headache didn't just go away.

Oh, did I forget to mention that there was no coffee at home this morning, so I drank Cheryl's decaf on the way into work?

So if R's ruined the economy and Obama is supposedly making it worse, is he a secret Republican too?!

If you want to understand what the Republicans have done to our economy, here is an article written by David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan.

The article shows how Rs have devastated our economy over the past 30 years, but worse, he shows how unlikely it is that we can recover, at least in the next few decades.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?th&emc=th

Thank Goodness there isn't also a sign saying they have to wipe too

I went to a restaurant the other day and when I went to use the restroom there was a sign that said "Employees must wash hands".

I waited forever for an employee to show up but finally just washed them myself.

Thank Goodness the Party of No even says No to its best candidates

I keep hearing over and over from Republicans that Obama won't be re-elected, and because of the state of the country right now, it is hard to argue with them, except for one important thing. They have no electable candidates to run against him. Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty, Barber, Thune - all of them have big strikes against them, so I have remained unworried, until I read this article in today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02douthat.html?th&emc=th

There is a reference to one candidate I have heard of, but didn't know anything about. This is the sentence: "Did Mitch Daniels’s June trip to Washington, during which he managed to irritate both neoconservatives (with talk of defense cuts) and social conservatives (by floating the idea of a social issues “truce”), quiet some of the buzz around the Indiana governor’s candidacy?"

There are two things I now know about this candidate:

1- He is totally electable and may be the one candidate who can beat Barack Obama
2 - No way the far right of the Republican Party allows him to win the nomination to even get that far.