The early run-off polls are up in France, and the conservative front-runner, Nicolas Sarkozy, has an early lead over the lady lefty Segolene Royal; 53-47 is the early poll consensus.
That's interesting in that the vote of the centrist third-place finisher Francois Bayrou seems to be splitting down the middle; either that, or some Le Pen supporters are shifting to Royal on economics; Le Pen is a hard-core nativist but is a lefty on econ. Bayrou's center-right party used to generally shift to the conservative in the second round, but that might not be the case anymore.
_______
We've got a week left in April, and A-Rod's already tied the April homer record at 14, going yard twice in St. Pete this evening in a losing cause. That's about all the Yankees have going for them at present, for the Rays have moved to within a half game of the Yanks as the two fight to stay out of the AL East cellar.
_______
Here's an interesting headline from the BBC-"Virginia students return to class." Minor problem; I don't think the folks inCharlottesville were off.
Is it the sports fan in me, but when you use just the state name, you imply that it's the U of X (or XU if the state name goes first). That sounded funny to my ears to see it stated without the Tech part. Fox had "Va. Tech Back to Class" as its hyperlink headline.
That reminds me of a story from the Ford presidency. Ford was noted for playing football for the University of Michigan. When he went on a state visit to China, someone got the cute idea of playing the school fight song when he got off the plane. However, they didn't quite understand the difference between Michigan and Michigan State, and had the Spartan fight song cued up rather than The Victors.
_______
David Halberstam died in a car crash yesterday; he was a noted author who a liberal analog to George Will in that they covered politics and baseball with equal vigor. However, the book of his that comes to mind was The Breaks of the Game, which covered the '79-80 Portland Trail Blazers.
One story that comes to mind out of that book was Halberstam description of power forward Maurice Lucas' college days at Marquette, where the very tough nominally Protestant black guy for a tough part of Pittsburgh interacted with the Jesuits. A lily-white picture of Jesus got Lucas' attention, where he commented something to the effect of "He didn't look like that. I've seen pictures of people in that part of the world; they're dark."
Comments