I've been a bit slow to blog lately, often erring on the "think twice, speak once" side of things. Thus, I passed on Congressman Weiner's situation, for I didn't want to swing at that hanging curve ball of a double entendre.
He's likely to be gerrymandered out of his seat next year, as someone has to be the sacficial lamb as NY loses at least one seat. Often, if friendly forces are in charge of the drawing of lines, a congressman who is running for the Senate or Governor gets the dishonor of having his seat get cannibalized, but Weiner just made himself expendable.
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Speaking of gerrymanders (or lack thereof), California has done its first redistricting under a Ahnold-backed non-partisan committee. A lot of incumbents got thrown in together, which will lead to a lot of retirements. The new seats also will be contested using the new non-partisan primary system, where everyone is in one big primary with the top two going on.
The "jungle" primary might see some interesting coalition, where the runner up is a second member of the majority party; that might allow moderates of either party to put together a coalition of the opposition and the centrist wing of their party to beat a winger in the main party. Joe Lieberman 2006 might be a good example of this, where a centrist-GOP coalition can beat a liberal Democratic nominee.
Another scenario might be to have that second candidate be a backer of a wedge issue within the majority party. Let's say you had a 65% black district, and the runner up on the Democratic side is a Baptist social conservative who's otherwise a card-carrying liberal; that runner up could patch together a majority of Republicans and pro-life Democrats in the general if he out-polled the GOP nominee in the primary.
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The Pistons finally pulled the plug on Kuester. I don't like a lot of the names on the list. Isiah isn't the answer (recall the Knicks sexual harassment case of a few years ago), and after getting busted in two different college stops for recruiting violations, I don't want to be rooting for Kevin Sampson.
Mike Woodson would be the low-beta play on this one; a solid coach in Atlanta who could let the Pistons rebuild under a good young nuculus. Bill Laimbeer would be the high-beta play; he's had head coaching experience in the WNBA, winning a title with the Detroit Shock, so the folks at the Palace have seen him run a club. However, his NBA resume as a coach is as Kurt Rambis' assistant at Minnesota.
New owner Tom Gores is an investor by trade; he'll look to maximize his return, which might lean towards Laimbeer. Mike Woodson won't sell tickets, but Laimbeer would, especially for fans of a certain age who recall the Bad Boy era of two decades ago.
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Jim Tressel resigned since I last blogged; that might be due to some more bad NCAA juju coming out on the OSU program. The news of the latter part of the week is that ace QB Terrelle Pryor is bailing out as well, passing on a senior year that is become rather iffy given his rumored track record of raking in the "hundred-dollar handshakes" going back to high school.
The thing that I'm grateful for in 20-20 hindsight is that Pryor didn't sign with Michigan this time three years ago. RichRod had his sights on Pryor as Pat White 2.0 as he came to Michigan. He would up spending a year trying (with not much success) to run his spread with Lloyd Carr's leftovers before getting Forcier and Robinson in for 2009.
Had Pryor came to Michigan, we'd have Pryor's mess on top of the overpracticing violations that hit the program last year.
Instead, it's OSU that gets torpedoed. Tressel seemed to be a Coach K-JoePa kind of guy who you'd trust your teenaged son with were he a hot-shot prospect; when a Michigan fan starts saying nice things about OSU, you're doing well. I'm not sure if Tressel was that way and got seduced by the dark side of big-time football and a once-a-decade recruit, or he was a corner-cutting guy who put on a slick facade all along.
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ESPN was mulling over the coach-in-waiting meme that has hit college football as of late; if you have a long-time coordinator who you want to keep on board rather than see him take a head coaching job at another school, naming him the heir apparant when the sainted coach retires in a few years can work...
...but only if the old fogey is happy with the idea. West Virginia hired Dana Holgorsen as the heir to lame-duck coach Bill Stewart; Stewart proceeded to try to kneecap Holgorsen with a rumor campaign and just got shown the door now rather than at the end of the year.
Stewart was a lame duck and his successor was brought in from the outside; Stewart was being forced out and had no ongoing relationship with the new guy, so the meme of giving your aide-de-camp a shot wasn't there.
Even if he takes time to learn a few things, the Pistons have it and Laimbeer is the home run.
Posted by: alan | June 11, 2011 at 01:03 PM