Georgia Republican Party chairwoman Sue Everhart said Saturday that the party's presumed presidential nominee has a lot in common with Jesus Christ.
"John McCain is kind of like Jesus Christ on the cross," Everhart said as she began the second day of the state GOP convention. "He never denounced God, either."
Wow.
It's amazing how teams in sports can look invincible one day, and mediocre the next. It appears the Detroit Red Wings team that I saw in Game 3 was a trick of the eye. Or, perhaps the Stars themselves were an illusion. The two teams that showed up in games 4 and 5 bear little resemblance to the teams I wrote about in the previous post. Suddenly, the Red Wings can't score at will and the Stars are capable of entering the offensive zone.
Marty Turco has been nothing short of a brick wall in the last two games and the team is playing some inspired hockey. The only people that are more surprised than I am about this turnaround appear to be the Detroit Red Wings, who are clearly on their heels now. The Stars are still an extreme long shot to reach the Stanley Cup Finals, but they have emphatically proven that they belong in the Western Conference Finals. If Game 5 ends up being the last hurrah of the season, the Stars have nothing to hang their heads about. For the first time in several years, a Dallas team has managed to not end their season with a giant face plant. We may not be parading the Stanley Cup through downtown Dallas this year, but we finally have a team we can be proud of.
When I was in high school, our football team did generally the same thing every year. We would dominate during the regular season -- usually going undefeated -- and then we'd win a playoff game or two. But then we would hit a brick wall. Some other team from somewhere else in the state would waltz in and just beat the ever loving snot out of us. It was bizarre, frankly, watching a team dominate for an entire year, only to lose by 35 points in the 3rd round of the playoffs. But that's what we did every year I was there.
Though the Stars certainly haven't been dominant this season, this series against Detroit has a similar feel to those old high school playoff games. Against San Jose and Anaheim, the Stars could win if they played well, and they were fully capable of hanging around and making things interesting even when they didn't play well. But against Detroit, I feel like the Stars could play their best game of the season and still lose. It's like watching a college team play against a high school team.
Midway through the first period last night, Detroit coach Mike Babcock called a timeout (which I thought was odd at the time). The Stars had been making a push and were generally hanging around. I think Babcock wanted to pull his team aside to tell them something along the lines of: "You know, guys...I know the plane flight was long and that you are looking forward to eating some good Texas barbeque tonight, but that doesn't mean we need to allow this to be a competitive game. Frankly, it's rude getting the crowd's hopes up like that. I'm just asking for a little bit of effort here. Get ahead by a couple of goals and then prevent the Stars from getting past the blue line. It's not rocket science, guys. Go team!" and then, he turned to his assistant coach. "Man... I haven't done that much coaching in weeks. I think I'm going to go take a nap. Could you handle things for the rest of the period?"
I think the Stars could play the Red Wings 20 times and they'd lose every game. So, for the first time as a sports fan, I am not particularly upset that my team is losing in the playoffs. We aren't beating ourselves; we're not grossly underperforming. We just ran into a team that is waaaaay better than us. And they're kicking our ass.
On a side note, I noticed that the Sharks fired Ron Wilson. Evidently, they wanted the privilege of getting slaughtered by the Red Wings.
The New Yorker's Rick Hertzberg on John McCain's Iraq strategy:
McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.
John McCain: StraightTalkMaverickReformer™
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game.
That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates.
It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all.
Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified -- and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?"
And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee.
CNN.com, the web site of the Most Trusted Name In News(tm), appears to have been authored by Terry McAuliffe this evening. Either that, or it is a takeoff of Stephen Colbert's bit the "No Fact Zone."
In an evening where Barack Obama outperformed almost every poll in both Indiana and North Carolina, and came through the night with a boost to his pledged delegate lead, all but squashing Hillary Clinton's already remote chances at winning, this is how CNN decided to cover the news:
Also, its top two headlines under "Election Coverage" are:
Just as Hillary proclaimed that she wouldn't "put her lot in with economists" on the gas tax issue, CNN has decided not to put its lot in with reality. Crikey...
Don't look now, but the major league leader in RBIs and strikeouts are Josh Hamilton and Edinson Volquez, respectively.
Never would have thought Volquez would be this good so fast. I suppose it does help to be pitching in Quadruple-A (aka the National League). I have a really hard time picturing him having the same success in a Rangers uniform, but who knows...
I still think this was a great trade for the Rangers. It's a very well-kept secret that our offense is, in some ways, weaker than our pitching. When Millwood and Padilla pitch the way they have in the past, (relatively competently) our rotation can be a small step above abysmal. But, with the loss of Teixeira, we really had a gaping hole in our lineup. It appears Hamilton may fill Teixeira's shoes and then some. Plus, he's a very good center fielder. Today, he saved Every Day Eddie's butt with a spectacular diving catch against the wall.
That being said, it is a little painful watching Volquez dominate for someone else. I had high hopes for him here.
New York Times headline today: For Exxon Mobil, $10.9 Billion Profit Disappoints
If they don't want it, I'll take it off their hands. I can think of 3 or 4 things I could buy with $10.9 billion.
