...Carter isn't like us...

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2010/08/carter_snubbed.html?p1=News_links

That article is rubbish.

Jimmy Carter went to N. Korea to get someone, and bring him back to the US. I don't think Carter, from what I know of him, cares about being snubbed, or worries about that type of nonsense. I don't know how, as a country, we voted Jimmy Carter President. That isn't an insult to him, it's an insult to us.

The guy isn't like anyone else in politics, ever. He is such a person of morals and passion and honesty to himself, and he is belittled daily by people who don't like him, and I don't think he cares. Well, Jimmy, I'll help you out there, too - I don't care either.

Carter went to get someone (who doesn't deserve to be "gotten"...stay the frick out of N. Korea, everyone), and he brought him home. The fact that he didn't have to shake hands with a psychotic dictator isn't going to ruin his day.

I don't know the man personally, and I could be wrong, but until he comes out and says, "BY GOSH, I'M SEETHING! I WAS SNUBBED. NOBODY SNUBS JIMMY C! NOBODY!", I'm not going to worry about his well being.

Col'nl Pritchard is projecting - his speculations say a lot more about his own personal values than it does about Carter's.

And yes, I'm prepared to take this all back when at 5:45 pm Carter admits he was, in fact, snubbed and seething about it.

...Dustin Johnson is weird...

I was on a boat coming home from Long Island when the drama unfolded at Kohler, and Dustin Johnson played himself out of the playoff yesterday afternoon.

I was looking at ESPN scorecenter, and I noticed that Watson & Kaymer were in the clubhouse at -11, while Johnson was getting to 18 at -12, in the lead.

Immediately, like every other golf fan in the world, I was brought to the memory of Johnson's brainless US Open collapse at Pebble Beach, shooting an 82 and blowing a big lead on the last day. I also was thinking about how hard 18 had been all weekend, and not a lot of birdies had happened there, but all he needed was par.

I am not going to criticize his decision to use driver, I think thats a completely personal "feel" type of thing, and if it was feeling good, then so be it.

But I am going to criticize what happened next. The dude needed par to win, and you can read all about what happened, but as a person who was watching the drama unfold via twitter, watching other pros feel for him, and journalists mock him, I thought that there'd be some kind of grey area, once I saw the replay. But I don't think there was.

That course, all weekend, was a display of unusual bunkers - rough cuts of grass meeting sand - a very unusual course for a major, but not for a PGA Championship really, and every mistake was greeted by a really odd look to the green, or odd lie in a surface you're not used to playing in.

I figured when I saw the replay there'd be some confusion as to whether or not this could be a bunker, but I was mistaken. I saw the replay and my first thought was, "jeez, that looks like a bunker to me!"

I understand that he put the ball into a gallery, and that there were people, stands, water bottles, even a turf mat covering that area, but each golfer is given the supplemental rules of golf at the tourney. Each golfer can read on a sheet in the clubhouse, almost explicitly, that this exact situation may occur.

There is a rules official nearby all the time. If he had just asked, it would have been clear. Heck, he didn't even NEED to ground his club, he chose to.

This isn't a situation where I feel bad for him, like if the ball moved after grounding the club, or if a bad lie was brought on by trampled spectator grass..

Johnson, in 2 majors this year, has been caught up in the moment mentally - he is doing the kind of thing we slay other athletes for, and I think we have that right. When Chris Webber called a timeout in the finals, when they didn't have one, he was wrong. When DeSean Jackson spiked the ball before he reached the end zone, when Leon Lett let Beebe strip the ball in the Super Bowl, we all mocked the athlete, and deservedly so.

I'm not saying we should pile on Johnson, b/c I think he clearly has an issue with handling pressure (And for crying out loud, if all you need is par, why in the world are you BOMBING a 4 iron out of a bunker/waste area instead of just trying to lay it up, chip and putt for the win?! And what the deuce happened on that putt for par? He missed it by way more than a pro should miss it by?!

Johnson collapsed, mentally. He isn't a victim of the rules, he's a victim of himself. You can feel bad about it on a human level, but don't feel like the game cheated him, b/c it didn't. This is a great example of how fair Golf really is as a game.

...Bypassing the electoral college...

I am really, REALLY confused about this proposed bill.

The bill will essentially make it so no matter how an individual state votes, the electoral votes within that state would go towards the candidate who won the National Popular vote. In theory, if all states enacted this legislation, the winner of the National Vote gets all electoral votes in a shutout.

In theory, that's sorta cool.

But in practice, in an environment when BP and Bank of America were given the green light by our Supreme Court to spend as much money necessary and possible in order to anoint the next CEO of America, it is a dangerous thing.

First of all, you'll hear mostly the Lefties, who are in favor of this bill, talk about how this will "make every vote count" and will energize the populace - which may in fact be true. You'll hear right wingers say that that it isn't fair b/c the coasts dominate the number of people in this country, and they can dwarf a "fly over" state in the middle. New York City, for example, will go a long way in swaying the vote, and New York City is going to vote Obama for President against every McCain, Palin, Sanford or Jindal.

If you are able to remove your own political bias, and see through the myths that both sides will create, you're left with this inner conversation and list of questions:

How will this change things?

Well, the answer is we don't really know. Electoral Math is a Science - or - Electoral Science is Math. People get paid a lot of money to determine how to spend the money that dictates the outcomes of elections. If you take TV advertising as the Gold Standard, essentially someone decides, "We are going to advertise in Alabama b/c we think we can win Alabama. We are going to spend 0$ in California, however, b/c the other candidate will win there."

Why does it matter how they spend the money, they want all the votes they can get, right?

Electoral advertising isn't purely about speaking to as many people as possible, its about adding up the potential electoral votes you can get or not get. If you know you're going to lose California and its 55 electoral votes, why waste a single dime there? Find a way to make up the other 55 in a combination of 8 or 9 states - thats how you win.

But I like to look at the National Election #'s and paint a picture!

Well, tough crap. Take my example above, the population of California could be, and likely has, completely forfeited in favor of attempting to secure a collection of smaller states, whose electoral votes could be more powerful than their population #'s.

What I'm trying to say is that adding up the popular vote IN PAST ELECTIONS and using it as a point, "My guy should have won, he got more votes!" is really disingenuous. It's not telling a complete story, its an irrelevant practice using numbers to their own advantage.

So if this bill passes, won't we just cut through all that crap and elect the person we want, as a Nation?

Maybe we will, but I don't want to take that chance. I like the electoral college - there haven't been examples in which a candidate won a particular state, but didn't get the credit for it. That isn't in danger. Voters are confused by the system, but those who don't vote b/c that portion of the system confuses them are not worth pandering to - it is remarkably unfair to pander to them.

So what is your solution, mr. hotpants know it all head?

Listen, if you want to abolish the electoral college, I'll have that conversation seperately, that's NOT what this bill is. This bill is keeping the electoral college there, and then assigning the votes to the candidate who gets the National vote. In practice, if McCain/Palin had more votes than Obama, and if Obama won Massachusetts by 80/20, Massachusetts electoral college votes would go to McCain/Palin.

This would be fine if all 50 states + DC were on board, but the group steering this bill is hoping purely to get just enough of the states to add up to an electoral majority. 270 state electoral votes or so are needed in order to coup this next election. So there is some grey area, a few rounding errors away from the unthinkable.

A candidate could win MA by a landslide, win the National Popular vote by a slim margin, but still not have enough electoral votes to take the cake.

If your problem is with the electoral college system, remove the system. Don't tweak it just enough to give us a potential disaster then Deval Patrick your way out of it with a last minute vote change. Don't try to Hilary your way out of it by acting as if you care about the voice of the voters.

Its about winning, and its cynical.

What are you so worried about? What effect could it have long term?

I can tell you the effect, and I can see it playing out sooner than later. In '08, Hilary and Obama agreed that Michigan & Florida, if they moved up their primaries before NH, would not count towards the Democratic nomination, it was agreed on beforehand. Hilary didn't like the result, she demanded the MI votes count, and fought for it.

In '10, the Democrats in MA fought to allow Deval Patrick to place an appointment in as Kennedy's replacement after his death. In '04, the Democrats fought to strip Romney of that same right if Kerry had become President.

My point is, all of this hemming and hawing is a way that the Democrats see a chance to steal a few elections. Make this about NY and LA, energize the base in Miami, Chicago, Houston, etc - and there is no way that Middle America will be able to overcome the will of the traditionally lefty groups.

That's the Dems goal, and its dishonest and unfair. And that makes me sad. At some point this Law will come back to bite those who voted in favor of it, and they will want to change the rule.

This isn't a law about making the will of the people heard, its a law about being cynical enough to think you can trick voters into thinking they matter - but it's really about the math, the science and the fact that Democrats know they will win if they win battleground CITIES, not States, under this format.

...an additional tube, or pipe, or bag or SOMETHING...

I have a question, and I don't think it's crazy to ask.

One can assume that the notion of capping this leak in the Gulf was imminent. They knew that was the goal, and the hope.

Taking judgment out of this, we also all knew there was a possibility that the cap would not hold, at least on the first try. But lets say it captured 95% of the oil for 10 hours...only a small % was leaking, and it was very manageable. Or even better, lets say it captured 100% of the oil for even less time, 5 hours, this is my question.

Why haven't they been developing some sort of bag, or tube, or SOMETHING, that would capture oil if the cap were to break. We see images of this capped leak, and it looks awesome, but what if in 3 seconds it pops off?

This reminds me of when you pump up a tire on a bike. The way bike tires work is fairly simple.

1. Unscrew the black cap, and air doesn't leak out

2. Put on the pump and you'll get a quick air leak, but then you start pumping up.

3. When you're done pumping, and you remove the pump nozzle, a small leak happens again, but it stops when the whole pump is removed.

4. You screw on the black cap, for no reason other than cleanliness and a safety precaution.

Why aren't we doing #4 in the gulf?

Why aren't we putting something OVER this cap?

On July 4, 1994, I had the pleasure of assisting in setting off the Marshfield 4th of July fireworks. It was fun. I was there with the big tubes, lighting fuses, watching them launch into the sky from the best vantage point possible.

After it was over, the grizzled vet of fireworks displays inspected the tubes to make sure everything was set off, and he literally was looking into the pipes with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I am not kidding.

Looking at the image of the capped well reminds me of this dude - we are all standing here looking at it on the HD image capture, staring into the face of this cap that we hope will work, and we seem like we're trusting the people to take all precautions whose lack of taking precaution put us in this place.

I'd be 100% more comfortable if we couldn't see this cap, b/c an additional tube, or pipe, or bag or SOMETHING would be covering it.

Sincerely,

Less Than Cautiously Optimistic This Cap Will Work