In baseball, the "magic number" is the number of your team's wins and the next-best team's losses that clinch the division title. Despite the Cubs' 5-game losing streak this past week, (mitigated by the Brewers' three losses in the same period), the Cubs' magic number today stands at 19, with 23 games left. So 19 Cubs wins or 19 Brewers losses, or any combination thereof, means the Cubs go to the National League Division Series.
Still, one might have preferred the Cubs not drop five straight in September...
Come to think of it, perhaps the McCain campaign picked the wrong Palin. Perhaps they meant Michael?
Via Talking Points Memo, the McCain campaign has trouble explaining Gov. Palin's foreign-policy experience. Even CNN is fed up: Alaska bordering Russia, and Palin having "command" of the Alaska National Guard, are neither "foreign-policy experience" nor a combination of things we'd ever want to see taken to a logical conclusion. But here's the interview:
After Palin goes the way of Harriet Miers, perhaps "Fast Draw" McCain might vet the next candidate?
Finally. But the benefit of having a really strict instructor is that my landings are now better than two years ago when I flew more often.
And, of course, a Google Earth file is available.
Living in a temperate climate means everything changes constantly. But there are rhythms. Things change fastest in late August and early March, for example: the sun set after 8pm from early May until just three weeks ago, but last night, the sun set at 7:30; in two and a half weeks it sets at 7; three weeks after that, at 6:30.
So what prompted this nearly-inane observation? The insects. It's late evening and my windows are all open, so I can hear thousands of cicadas, grasshoppers, crickets—yes, even in the center of Chicago. And the spiders have come out by the hundreds, anywhere they can get two anchors and a cross-beam. While Parker and I sat at Ranalli's on Monday, two of them spun webs side by side in alternating gaps in the patio fence; there are four new webs on our back staircase in the last week.
To everything there is a season, at least above the 30th parallel.
My cousin and I went to Wrigley Field last night, and as expected, we had seats like you can only get at that park:
That was the only bad part of the evening, though, because thanks to Aramis Ramirez, the Cubs came back from a 4-2 deficit against the Phillies to win 6-4.
This put the Cubs fully 6½ games ahead of the Brewers. It's beginning to look a little like October...
There is one sad bit of news to report. The Mariners (50-83, almost the exact inverse of the Cubs' 84-50) yesterday became the first team to be officially eliminated from the post season. Maybe next year, Seattle.
Excellent speech by former nominee John Kerry tonight. (Where was this guy in 2004?)
I'm overwhelmed, even though everyone knew it was coming, even though it's "just politics:" tonight, for the first time ever, the United States has a nominee for President who is not a white man.
I have a degree in U.S. history, so I know full well that many of the most important events in our past passed right by the people living through them. This one, though, this one happened on international TV, in real time, and everyone watching knew it was important.
The best part? That he's black doesn't really matter. He's the nominee on the merits. People will vote for him because he's qualified, he's competent, he's shrewd, he's cool-headed, he's smart, he's a good judge of advisers, and he's exactly what we desperately needed (but desperately didn't have) to guide us through the horror of September 2001. His skin color does not matter in any of that. And yet, incidentally, my party has nominated someone who doesn't look like the guys on the currency to be its standard-bearer. And it only took 220 years.
I can hardly wait for 68 days to cast my fourth[1], and most important, vote for Barack Obama: our next President.
[1] I voted for Obama for Democratic nominee to U.S. Senate, March 2004; U.S. Senate, November 2004; and Democratic Nominee for President, January 2008.
I admit, I missed HRC's speech, and I'm looking for it right now on YouTube. But so many bloggers are commenting on it right now that I am, as my dad would say, "taking a Pasadena."
Instead, I would like to highlight (via Talking Points Memo) a ruling today, in which a Federal judge denied Harriet Miers's and Josh Bolten's motions to avoid testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee. This is a non-trivial victory for the legislature over the executive, probably in the short term at least as important as the Democratic Convention. From Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):
Today's ruling clearly rejects the White House's efforts to run out the clock on the Committee's investigation of DOJ politicization this Congress. I am heartened that Judge Bates recognized that the public interest in this matter is best served by the furtherance of the Committee's investigation. ... The Committee intends to promptly schedule a hearing with Ms. Miers and stands ready as always to consider any reasonable offer of accommodation with the White House.
"Reasonable," in its plainest meaning, means that the White House will turn over the documents requested. We'll see.
No, not me; Gustav. The National Hurricane Center forecasts the storm pointing straight at the Louisiana coast by this time Monday. True, six days out the error bars are pretty far apart, but New Orleans is right in the center of them.
