Linkmeister

Fish win!

Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Rays, who, by defeating the White Sox today, climbed another hill in their astonishing rise from last place last season to the top of the AL East this year. That's notable enough, but that's the same division which houses the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays. Formidable franchises all, and it's a real credit to the Tampa team that they managed to beat them all.

They await the winner of the Red Sox - Angels series; Game Four is being played right now. If the Sox win they play the Rays; if the Angels win they play the Sox again for a winner-take-all Game Five on Wednesday.

Cri de coeur

Bruce Springsteen, from the stage at a Vote for Change rally in Philadelphia on Saturday:

I've spent 35 years writing about America, its people, and the meaning of the American Promise. The Promise that was handed down to us, right here in this city from our founding fathers, with one instruction: Do your best to make these things real: opportunity, equality, social and economic justice, a fair shake for all of our citizens, the American idea, as a positive influence, around the world for a more just and peaceful existence. These are the things that give our lives hope, shape, and meaning. They are the ties that bind us together and give us faith in our contract with one another.

I've spent most of my creative life measuring the distance between that American promise and American reality. For many Americans, who are today losing their jobs, their homes, seeing their retirement funds disappear, who have no healthcare, or who have been abandoned in our inner cities, the distance between that promise and that reality has never been greater or more painful.

[snip]

I've continued to find, wherever I go, America remains a repository of people's hopes, possibilities, and desires, and that despite the terrible erosion to our standing around the world, accomplished by our recent administration, we remain, for many, a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down.

They will, however, be leaving office, dropping the national tragedies of Katrina, Iraq, and our financial crisis in our laps. Our sacred house of dreams has been abused, looted, and left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs care; it needs saving, it needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power or a quick buck. It needs strong arms, hearts, and minds. It needs someone with Senator Obama's understanding, temperateness, deliberativeness, maturity, compassion, toughness, and faith, to help us rebuild our house once again. But most importantly, it needs us. You and me. To build that house with the generosity that is at the heart of the American spirit. A house that is truer and big enough to contain the hopes and dreams of all of our fellow citizens. That is where our future lies. We will rise or fall as a people by our ability to accomplish this task. Now I don't know about you, but I want that dream back, I want my America back, I want my country back.

Amen, brother.

A rematch

So now we know who the Dodgers will be playing in the NLCS: the Phillies.

I've seen this before. In 1977 and again in 1978 the two teams met in the championship series, with the Dodgers winning both times (and, it grieves me to remember, going on to lose to the hated Reggie Jackson-led Yankees). They also met in 1983, and that time the Phillies won.

My friend N has particularly bitter memories of one of those games in 1977. Personally I thought the events recounted there were miraculous.

Bliss

They won a playoff series for the first time since 1988 (the year of Gibson's home run and Hershiser's scoreless innings streak).

Joy is everywhere!

Numeracy-challenged

I've worked around accounting offices for years, so numbers don't ordinarily intimidate me. The home page at FiveThirtyEight.com, however, is another story. It's an electoral polling and projections site started by Nate Silver, a baseball sabermetrician gone bad.

Anyway, if you can get past the initial shock, there's an awful lot of useful and informative data contained within the site, combined with a conversational writing style. If you're a political junkie, you've probably heard the site cited on NPR and in the papers. It's worth a look.

Dear Commish

Why? Why do you let football-loving television networks push you into delaying your premium product's start time until 10:00pm EDT, when the viewership will probably approximate the number of bulls left on Wall Street after the past week?

The Dodgers - Cubs Game Three is scheduled for this evening at that ridiculous hour, and so is Game Four (if necessary) tomorrow. Now, last I looked the Cubs had a national fan base, many of whom live on the East Coast. Why would you inconvenience so many of them? Sure, the Dodgers have scheduled Saturday night games at 7:30pm PDT for years, but face it: those regular-season games haven't exactly had national import. This one does.

When are you going to realize, Commissioner, that your product is good enough that you can tell the cable networks that you want day games on the weekend? If you want to expand your reach, putting on your games on weekend nights (even the Phillies - Brewers game doesn't start till 6:30PM EDT tonight) is idiotic. Stand up to the networks, dammit.

Wanted: Asset Appraisers

Okay, the bailout/rescue plan has been signed by Bush. Now what?

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said agency workers were already working on details to put the rescue plan into effect, so that no time will be lost now that the president had signed the legislation.

The problem seems to be that banks won't lend to anyone including each other because of uncertainty about the ability of the borrower to pay the loans back. The underlying quality of the borrower's assets (particularly mortgage debt) which can be used as collateral would seem to be in question. If you happen to be a trained credit appraiser you could find a good civil service job real quick, I'd imagine.

Veep debate

Transcript. Read along while watching the video.

I was flipping between the Dodgers - Cubs game (Dodgers Win! Dodgers Win!) and the debate, but it sounded to me like she was sticking to talking points that she'd memorized, rather than talking about issues that she'd given a lot of thought to. Biden seemed to be talking about things he's studied and voted on for years.

Unconscious sexism

Dear punditocracy,

All this handwringing about how Senator Biden has to avoid appearing mean to Governor Palin or it will hurt his cause is sexist, in case you don't realize it.

She's "in the arena," to quote Senator McCain's favorite pol, Teddy Roosevelt. She leapt at the chance to get into this game, and she should be taken as an ambitious politician who happens to be female, not as a shrinking violet who was laboring in obscurity raising her kids in Alaska. She knew what she was getting into when she accepted Senator McCain's offer. Maybe she didn't expect this much attention, but that's her own damned fault. She should have.

If Senator Biden is pretty direct in his remarks during this debate, spare us the gasping "How could he be so harsh?" commentary, please.

Not a good comparison

Tim Dickinson writes in Rolling Stone:

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

That's how page one of ten ends. Read the whole thing.

4th Division Series begins

Preview, White Sox - Rays.

I know very little about the Rays beyond the obvious "worst to first" story line, so today will be the first time I've seen them play a full game. That should be fun.

How 'bout them Dodgers? A grand slam home run into the center field bleachers on a 1-2 count, a Manny Ramirez home run, a ninth-inning relief appearance by Greg Maddux against his former team. . .fun stuff!

Baseball playoffs begin

Baseball Prospectus offers previews:

Phillies - Brewers

Dodgers - Cubs

Presumably the site's authors will also offer previews of the White Sox - Rays and the Red Sox - Angels later today or tomorrow.

Update: And here's the Red Sox - Angels preview.

Pity not Palin

I admit that as I've seen Governor Palin flailing for answers when being interviewed by Katie Couric I've cringed. I'm not alone, as the links in this Salon article by Rebecca Traister point out. But Traister has a clear-eyed view of this:

Sarah Palin is no wilting flower. She is a politician who took the national stage and sneered at the work of community activists. She boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge.

When you stage a train wreck of this magnitude -- trying to pass one underqualified chick off as another highly qualified chick with the lame hope that no one will notice -- well, then, I don't feel bad for you.

When you treat women as your toys, as gullible and insensate pawns in your Big Fat Presidential Bid -- or in Palin's case, in your Big Fat Chance to Be the First Woman Vice President Thanks to All the Cracks Hillary Put in the Ceiling -- I don't feel bad for you.

Traister expands on the other parts of my feelings about her VP bid: that she went into it with her eyes wide-open (remember she told Charlie Gibson she didn't blink when Senator McCain asked her to run), and she doesn't deserve any pity. Neither does McCain.

Reap what you sow and all that.