Parity Party

The NFL finds its dynastic days at an end, and births a number of real teams out of the ash-heaps of age-old joke squads.

The Steelers are not the dynasty of the '00s. Really, two in four is good, but not great. The Patriots are also not said dynasty. In an amazing twist of fate, the perennially disappointing Giants, who in the '90s did a turn as whipping-boys for much better Super Bowl teams, beat the indefatigable Pats in the eleventh hour. The dynasty of the decade--though other than for Ravens and for Buccaneers, it's a broken dynasty at best--is the underdog. Sixty percent of Super Bowls in the last ten years have included a first-time contender for the Lombardi. The teams that we used to make our little brothers control in Super Tecmo Bowl (and those Bucs '90s unis in 8-bit were glorious) now have trophies, and in some cases, rings.

These are the teams of our times--squads with tiny fanbases in towns where most people have either stuck with the next closest team or given up on football altogether.

I moved here to Phoenix in August and was happy to hear that our Cards were doing alright, even if they were in a crappy division. I was really excited that we made it into the playoffs, and elated to beat the Falcons. Then we advanced again. Then again...wait. The Arizona Cardinals were in the Super Bowl? This was the team you could count on being beaten by your horrible home team. Your one sure win. And suddenly I was a die-hard. I am an Arizona Cardinals fan.

The AP tells of 4,000 fans at the airport for the Cards' return home after losing the Super Bowl. Awesome. A man from Surprise (aptly-named!) called them "the big red band of brothers". Word up. I officially join all those crazy Titans, Ravens, Bucs, Seahawks, and Panthers fans in supporting a team whose best years are ahead of, not behind them. Let's hear it for the Big Red Band.

The Real Palin Effect

I am sad to inform you that it's PAY-lin, not PAL-in. Or is it?

My wife and I were sitting in an undisclosed Arizona Motor Vehicles Department office, switching our licenses and registering our vehicle, when, of course, the dude at the window started talking politics. It makes sense--we registered to vote (except there was a problem with mine) and we were obviously Mormon and therefore conservatives, even though neither of us registered as a member of a party.

He said, "So, my brother-in-law is always watching Fox News--now everyone says Fox News is biased, but, you know, they're out there on their own, and you know, it's usually the lone wolf out there that's the one that's right--so, and I saw McCain's running mate, that Sarah ['pejlIn], and you know who she reminds me of?"

I was really hoping Elaine from Seinfeld. I really think she looks like Elaine.

"You know, Lynda Carter from the old Wonder Woman days? Yeah..."

"I always thought she looked like Elaine from Seinfeld."

"Hey, that's a good one, but I think she's way better-looking than Elaine from Seinfeld. So, you know, dress McCain up in his military uniform and ['pejlIn] up in the Wonder Woman outfit, and it's like Major [Steve Trevor] and Wonder Woman--"

"What a presidency!"

Yikes. a) Yikes. b) Cindy would transform into a thing that makes the Cloverfield monster look like Barney and eat Washington whole. And I wouldn't blame her.

Yes, my friends, this is the Palin Effect, other than torquing me royal 'cause I think it should be pronounced ['pælIn]. Comparisons to the girl next door, to Elaine, and to Wonder Woman. Life into people who were afraid to be Republicans. It's as if Bob Dole were to have been given Adam Sandler as his VP candidate instead of, wow I really have to look this up, Jack Kemp! Right! Kemp! All of a sudden, McCain's gone from boring old guy to boring old guy with cool running mate.

Anyhow, that's the Palin Effect--making Slate writers coach Biden in fear. Making the polls look neck-and-neck. Making "lipstick on a pig" comments inappropriate. Making DMV workers say really strange things. Is it "Star Power" or just a flash in the pan? The world will only know in November.

The New Numbers

Why reports about national polling numbers can be safely ignored.

Big news! Polls taken after the Republican National Convention have John McCain up by as much as ten points! How can Barack Obama possibly recover from this? Is the election already wrapped up?

Hardly. Pundits tend to emphasize national polling numbers as a way of taking the pulse of the nation as a whole, but that's not the way presidents are elected. As we learned in high school civics class, the electoral college is responsible for choosing a new president, and those electors are chosen on a state-by-state basis. It's the individual state polls we need to look at, and those mask a significant advantage for the Barackstar.

Pollster.com is a great source for analyzing current numbers for any of the states. Using that as a guide, we see that Obama holds statistically significant leads (at least five points) in enough states to account for 243 electoral votes. That's huge, considering a candidate only needs 270 to win. John McCain, on the other hand, can only claim safe leads enough to pick up 179 votes. That leaves 116 votes in swing states, though it's telling that most of those states have been safely Republican in recent elections. Let's examine, shall we?


Traditionally Republican Swing States (90)

• Montana (3)
  
• Colorado (9)
  
• North Dakota (3)
  
• Virginia (13)
  
• North Carolina (15)
  
• Florida (27)
• Ohio (20)
  

Traditionally Democratic Swing States (26)

• Nevada (5)
• Michigan (17)
• New Hampshire (4)

We can read two things from this. First, it's possible that since so many more electoral votes are from traditionally Republican states, Johnny Mac stands to pick up more than the Barackstar. That's certainly possible. It's equally worrisome for McCain that so many traditionally Republican states are up in the air, though. When was the last time Montana's vote was in question? Or North Dakota? It's possible that the addition of Sarah "Frostbite" Palin could shore up the conservative vote in those states, but that still remains to be seen. My evaluation is that McCain is in worse shape than the mainstream media would like us to believe. Strange though it may sound, the MSM could be biased in favor of McCain rather than the Barackstar.

One last harrowing thought - if each set of swing states holds like we have laid them out here, then the electoral vote will be tied at 269, throwing the decision to the House of Representatives. Are you any happier than I am about the prospect of Nancy Pelosi choosing our nation's next president?

Pop Politics

Is your party alignment really dependent upon what you call a carbonated beverage? Just a little bit.

While up late eating everything in our pantry, I realized this one thing: There's a cultural divide in America. What? you say. This is a big discovery, you say. I know, I know. I'm just brilliant like that. No, hear me out. There's a cultural divide in America, and it should be visible in American English. Cultural divides very often create language shifts. It seems cultural boundaries fit themselves to linguistic boundaries, and vice versa. Well, my friends, it seems that the "Pop vs. Soda" site is backing me up on this one. Note:

Places that use "soda" primarily are definitely blue (Democrat, not blue on the map, though this is the case).
Places that use "coke" primarily are definitely red (Republican, see above).
Places that use "pop" primarily are mostly red.
Places that are sparsely populated:
If they're mostly "pop" they're probably red.
If they're mostly soda, with a significant mix of either or both of the others, they're probably swing states.
Washington, Oregon, and Arizona are a little weird here, but that may be because it's an internet poll, and people like to prove their own points, inappropriately.
Indiana. What the crap?

Further, note that there's a divide, geographically between West Coast and East Coast Dems, but that there's the coke/pop divide between Red States, which corresponds mostly to the Western Republican/Southern (Christian) Republican divide apparent in U.S. Politics.

So, in the end, look at this nice county map of it all and wonder, why didn't we think of this before? I'm going to start calling Arizonans "soda Republicans" and that's that.

*Special thanks to David Bowie (not the rather more famous rock star of the same name) of University of Central Florida for apprising me of this map's existence.

Why the World Doesn't Need Google Chrome

It's because Firefox still exists!

Man, I don't know that I need to say more than that. Yes, Chrome, Google's new browser, is designed to be faster. Yes, it is supposed to keep one site from crashing the whole app. The tab shuts down, but not the browser. Awesome. Now, does it have the open-source developer support that can block the wretched banners from appearing on facebook? Answer: hecks no. Mozdev is awesome. That is all. Bye.

P.S. I still think that Google is a good company, and not the demon some people make it out to be.

Wait, What Just Happened?

Content notwithstanding, Mac's acceptable acceptance speech gets contradictory reports of review.

Id est, The Guardian, well known for reporting from the hip, claims that everyone though Mac's spiel was a one way ticket to Boresville, or more appropriately to the outlet, Borington Cross. The U.S. News and World Report says everyone liked it. Now, the USNWR is also known for being a one-way ticket to Dull County, but really, did everyone like it or everyone hate it? The Beeb says the reactions were mixed and Salon calls it empty (you can search for Salon yourself, I refuse to link to it).

Here's what he said: I'm a maverick. Let's stop spending so much. Obama, I shake hands with you before we go at it, octagon-style. It wasn't a bad speech. It wasn't a great speech. It was a decent speech, and what he mostly talked about was, strangely enough, change. It's interesting to note that Obama galvanized the primaries with Hope and Change and then switched to Explaining My Platform and Mac went from Explaining My Platform to Hope and Change. Funny things, these elections.

Obama. Biden. McCain. Sarah. None of these people is a demon.

This is what I learned from the RNC: Mac is not actually a doddering old fool. I thought he was, and I guess I listened to a lot of blue rhetoric there, but having defended Obama so hard in the past was wading through the same kind of crap, delivered by red-staters. I still don't think he's the man for the job, but if he [Mac] wins, I won't move to Canada. Necessarily. I might move to Canada anyway, but it won't be because I'm afraid of our president. It's 'cause Canada has awesome food.

Barrow

Another in an increasingly oddly named series of worbticles about Sarah Palin's ability or inability to lead. Today, it's about why the Democrats' rhetoric is misplaced, why Sarah's rhetoric is misplaced, and why I prefer to call her Sarah.

So, I've only read the text of the speech--I didn't listen to Sarah's inflection--but I'll tell you this: I don't think McCain's selection was off the cuff or anything of the sort. Gut feelings vs. safe choices aside, I think that this was thought out by the Mac Camp. Perhaps they even knew about Bristol, although I bet the seventeen-year-old didn't tell her mommy until the nomination was in the bag. That's how teenagers think.

On, on to the economy, stupids. Sarah talks about drilling Alaska. Drill Alaska, she says. That was the whole idea, but she took a long time on it. In fact, despite that CNN labels her speech an Obama-bash, the oil economy is her primary focus. Let's not deny it, this is an ingenious move if this is why Mac chose her (and come on, I'm pretty sure this is). Americans want to be rid of foreign oil dependency. I want to be rid of oil in general, but America's not ready for that, at least on the right.

So, that's a good plan, if you've got one. But, in the end, what this proves is that we can't just throw away Sarah 'cause her daughter's pregnant, and we can't throw away Mac if his plan is to Drill the Heck out of the Great White American North.

Also, she doesn't really look like a VP, but she does look like someone you'd chat with at the PTA or whatnot. Hockey mom image accurate or not, I can't call her Palin anymore, and will reserve that for the Python of the same name.