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Archives for 2014
The Teachout Wake
I didn’t get a chance to comment on New York’s gubernatorial primary earlier this week. But, in case any of you were going to be convinced by Matt Stoller’s lengthy piece on Cuomo and Teachout, let me beg to differ on a couple particulars. I’ll bury it since most of you don’t give two shits about the delicate details of New York politics.
Boxing Still Exists
Josh Marshall reads the news that the NFL has finally admitted that about a third of retired players will have problems with cognition and asks:
But I say this all simply to ask, have we all really known this all along?
I used to follow sports a lot more than I do now, and when I was a kid I listened to Howard Cosell’s daily sports commentary show. For a while in the early 1980s, Cosell, who was certainly the most influential sports broadcaster of his era, focused his considerable eloquence and intelligence on boxing. This short entry in Wikipedia doesn’t capture the full flavor of what Cosell said in his show, but his critique was devastating, and it resulted in some changes like shortening the length of championship fights. Still, I don’t know how anyone who listened to Cosell, or just took a clear-eyed look at ex-fighters, could miss that boxing causes brain damage. And yet we still have boxing. So, whether the news about football is really news or just a confirmation of what we all suspected for years, we’ll still have football. Perhaps a few rules will change and we’ll get the brain injury rate down to 25% instead of 33%, but I doubt that anything else will happen. I think that’s obvious but, again, I don’t follow sports anymore, so perhaps those of you who do have a different opinion.
The Day: College Football Preview and Open Thread
Today is “The Day” — that special day when a Floridian who has spent months trudging through the sun-blasted hellscape of a Florida summer exits her air-conditioned home and finds that her glasses don’t immediately fog up and that there is a hint of something in the air that is, if not crispness, exactly, the hint of crispness to come.
Just because The Day is here, that doesn’t mean it won’t reach 95 degrees today, next week or even next month. It may very well be hot enough on Halloween to rot porch-dwelling jack-o-lanterns in less than 12 hours. But we still rejoice in The Day because it signals that summer has broken, like a fever. I’m sure you snow-country people experience your own version of The Day as spring approaches.
This afternoon, my siblings and I will be wolfing down BBQ and swilling beer, then taking our seats at The Swamp to watch the Mighty Gators stomp Kentucky, we hope. What games are y’all watching? Who shall prevail?
Speaking of college football, someone hacked Alabama’s site and altered the entry for Lane Kiffin:
Tee hee.
In case you missed it last night, valued commenter Satby needs some assistance with her rescue animals. She’s almost reached her goal. You can put her over the top by donating here.
Please feel free to discuss whatever.
The Day: College Football Preview and Open ThreadPost + Comments (50)
Saturday Morning Open Thread: A Democracy, If We Can Keep It…
Some good news, for a change, from Nate Cohn at NYTimes‘ The Upshot:
A few months ago, the Democratic path to a Senate majority looked long and arduous. It has started to look easier.
The Democrats started the campaign with a clear advantage in enough races to end up with 45 seats, well short of the 50 needed to retain control of the chamber…
But today the Democratic path to victory looks as clear as it has at any point this year. That path remains narrow, to be sure. The Democrats will probably still need to sweep those five fairly close races. Yet with just two months to go, the party appears to have an advantage in four of them. And the Democrats have other opportunities that might give them more breathing room…
Much wonkish detail at the link, but if the Grey Lady is ready to soften their preferred “DOOMED DEMS IN DISARRAY” stance…
And then there’s this, from Dave Weigel, “Democratic Voters Can Save Harry Reid’s Job, if They Just Realize That He Runs the Senate“:
Yesterday Greg Sargent talked to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and made a discovery that startles us political obsessives. Lake’s firm polled 1,000 “drop-off” voters—people who vote in presidential elections but stay home during midterms—in Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, and North Carolina. (Democrats are increasingly favored in Michigan’s Senate race, behind in Kentucky, and tied in the rest.)
“One of the things that came up,” said Lake, “is that these drop-off voters had no idea that control of the Senate was even up for grabs and were even very confused about who controlled it.”…
And this is the point of MoveOn’s poll, taken for its “Voters Rising” campaign. The theory is that there are enough voters who basically support the Democrats, but don’t know what’s at stake, to motivate and elect the party’s on-the-edge candidates. The most potent messages for these potential voters, both supported by 71 percent of them: “Republicans will shut down the government again” and “Republicans will cut funding for Head Start and K-12 Education.” When told that they could make the difference between keeping the Senate Democratic or letting it fall to Mitch McConnell, 50 percent became “very interested.”…
…[A]ccording to MoveOn [these voters] always voted for Democrats. All they needed to be told was how bad Republicans were, and what they stood to gain if Democrats stayed home. MoveOn had seen similar message spike turnout before, as Sasha Issenberg and others had reported, and as MoveOn had learned from targeting its 8 million members in 2012. This is the dream of the final midterm: If Democrats just don’t refuse to drop off like they did in 2010, if they show up proportionately, they win.
Good to be reminded of this two months before the election, and not ten minutes after it’s too late.
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Apart from girding our loins, and this evening’s Boston area meetup, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Saturday Morning Open Thread: A Democracy, If We Can Keep It…Post + Comments (80)
Late Night Open Thread
Did my annual office cleaning today in between other things, and man it sure is nice to have everything nice and clean. I had let my office get beyond clutter to the creeping filth stage, and at some point this afternoon I went to type something and my keyboard felt like a seven year old’s hand in August after eating an ice cream cone. At any rate, everything is nice and clean and bright and smells good, files have been filed, to do list has been updated, and so on.
Watched the Bill Maher two hour thing on HBO, which was fun, and now am watching Predator on Encore and playing a little Wasteland 2.
This has been in my head all day long:
What’s up, late night juicers? I had a nap before dinner and a cup of coffee afterwards, so I’m kind of screwed.
Pet Bleg – Emergency Medical Funds Needed
Long-term commentor, Garden Chat/Recipe Exchange regular, and general friend-of-the-blog Satby has just experienced one more shock in a chain of nasty news:
Last night, I discovered a tumor under the jaw of my oldest rescue dog. And it’s a disaster, because I have no money for medical care for him, or even to put him to sleep if that turns out to be the merciful thing to do.
I’ve been an pet / animal rescuer for about 15 years. I’ve rescued, fostered, transported, and adopted out hundreds of dogs, cats, and the occasional wildlife baby in that time…
Along the way, I ended up with 12 loving and lovable hard to place or “unadoptable” animals, most due to medical issues. All of them were accepted by me at the last minute, usually on the day they were to be euthanized. All are great pets, none have aggression issues. I have 6 dogs and 6 cats. Three of the dogs are labrador retrievers with epilepsy, one of those has an autoimmune skin disorder as well. One of the cats also needed over a thousand dollars worth of surgery to correct benign tumors in her ears that recurred (now fixed, finally!). To house my gang, I moved from Chicago to a “farmette” in a rural area of Michigan six years ago.
Umfortunately, last December I lost my job in IT, which had allowed me to feed and more importantly, pay the medical bills that these guys have. I accepted the first job I was offered when my unemployment ran out after 6 months, and it’s insufficient to cover more than my mortgage and food for us all. I used what was left of my 401k to fill the gap, and now that’s gone. Though I continue to look for better employment, and have an Etsy shop and tutor on the side, it’s not enough. I need help, for my old dog to get diagnosed and treated if possible; and to keep these guys fed, immunized, on their epilepsy medications, and housed, especially in winter, when the heating bill for the kennel will hit hard. Can you help?
Her GoFundMe site is here (there are adorable puppy photos!). I just chipped in a mite, so I can attest that donating is easy & requires no complicated extra-registration process.
Pet Bleg – Emergency Medical Funds NeededPost + Comments (36)