Mark Byron

Supply and Demand Always Applies

"...Hos going for $100 on Ebay." They're black, and their sweet, and sometimes they get politely called a Hostess. But we know what they really are... a guilty pleasure you don't want to tell your wife about, especially if you're on a diet.

 

Witch, Witch, the Ding-Dong's Dead

Or at least in hibernation for a while.

Hostess, the makers of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread, is going out of business after striking workers failed to heed a Thursday deadline to return to work, the company said.

“We deeply regret the necessity of today’s decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike,” Hostess CEO Gregory F. Rayburn said in announcing that the firm had filed a motion with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to shutter its business. “Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.”

A Chapter 8 sale of the Hostess and Dolly Madison brands, along with their factories and outlet stores, should get them back in business by sometime next year, but if you were planning to get any Twinkies or Zingers for a Christmas happy-happy gift, you may have to move quickly.

I hadn't realized that Hostess also owned Dolly Madison; those seemed to be rivals in the snack market, with the Zinger being the poor-man's Twinkie. I've been a fan of the infamous rat Zinger for years.

The Missiles of November

Could we be looking at the first major war involving Israel in four decades? Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood-led government is backing their Hamas brethren, even sending their PM over to Gaza to give moral support while Hamas exchanges rocket-powered pleasantries with Israel.

Egypt and Israel have come to blows four times, most recently in 1973. After that, a rapprochement created an uneasy peace that saw Israel give the Sinai back to Egypt after grabbing it in 1967 as a buffer. Expect Jimmy Carter, who brokered the Camp David accords that codified that rapprochement, to be back in the news, likely bashing the Likudniks for breaching the spirit of Camp David.

I'm not sure if the Egypian government, having just gotten into power and still working to keep the Mubarak leftovers in check, is up to picking a fight with Israel. Camp David is part of the legacy of the Sadat-Mubarak team, but one that helped Egypt become allied with the US and a bit more prosperous than it otherwise would have been. Officers might well be inclined to drag their feet and not want to go back to the four-wars-in-a-quarter-century that crippled the Egyptian military.

____________

It's Friday morning; where are the Islamic rabble going to be roused today? Somehow, I expect something American to be trashed over the current unpleasentness in Gaza, since their isn't anything Israeli to be trashed in most Arab countries other than a Israeli flag to be burned in effigy. Friday is always a prime day for that, since it's go-to-mosque day and a good Jew-bashing sermon will get the rabble roused.

Edifier du Jour: James 1:9-11(NIV)

⁹ Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. ¹⁰ But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. ¹¹ For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

A lot of folks will want to declare this a turkey in the Epistle of Straw, for it runs counter to a lot of American thought. While the glorification of riches shows up most prominently in charismatic circles these days, it can trace its roots to the frozen-chosen, notably a Reformation meme that the wealthy churchmen were being blessed by God and that their wealth was a sign of their chosen nature.

James takes issue with that. Jesus noted that the last on earth will be first in God's kingdom, while the folks that are in charge of the building fund will be in Heaven's nosebleed section rather than in the box seats. That helps cushion the blow that came in the next passage that I riffed on yesterday where the doubters will not get much from God; here, the people who don't have much are blessed.

Dough-Boy In the Limelight

We've got a couple of hometown boys making news these days; Midland has the House Ways and Means Chairman and the Michigan AG as Dow High school-buddies (Dow High is my Midland High's arch-rival; since it is on the upscale side of Midland, we would call them the Dough-boys). AG Bill Schuette had what is now Dave Camp's House seat until a failed run for the US Senate; Camp got the seat and never gave it back. After spending a couple decades in semi-limbo as a state senator and appeals-court judge, he's in the statewide limelight as AG.

The news item that goe Schuette on the laptop is a state anti-affirmative-action law that got shot down by an en-banc 6th circuit. The vote was 8-7, so this is a very narrow decision that is bound to head to the Supreme Court; Schuette is already pledging to make an appeal.

It's interesting that a law that makes it illegal to discriminate for under-represented demographic groups is discriminatory, but that's what a majority of the 6th Circuit has ruled. Paging Anthony Kennedy; it's your call, in all likelihood, since this smells like a 5-4 split either way.

Schuette will then get his day in the sun pleading Michigan's case; as AG, he'd likely be first in line for the governor's nomination in 2018 when Gov. Tough Nerd gets term-limited, and such gigs only help build gravitas for a run for the big chair.

Sabermetric Rattling

Old school won out in the war over WAR (wins above replacement) as Miguel Cabrera snagged AL MVP, 22-6 over Mike Trout. Cabrera won the Triple Crown and led Detroit to the AL title but Trout could well be said to be the better player; when you add baserunning and defense to the mix, Trout had one of the great all-around years in baseball history, better than Cabrera's year. WAR has Cabrera third behind Robinson Cano, but a first-in-a-generation-plus Triple Crown was hard to turn down.

Edifier du Jour: James 1:5-8(NIV)

⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

I'm not quite getting my mind around this passage. In verse 5, God is gracious and not finding fault, yet He turns around and gives the back of the hand to someone who has some lingering doubts.

What if your lack of wisdom flows from a lack of faith? The foolish thinks God doesn't exist, but the fool doubts and has no outlet to get that foolishness given this construct. The wise person believes in God, thus doesn't need the help.

There are times where I feel like the fool at the end of this passage, not getting much tangible from the Lord and emotionally shaky; taking that passage at face value seems to be depressing when doubt in God's willingness to deliver is chronic.

There is a way through that catch-22, but it doesn't seem to be evident in this passage. Everything is possible through Christ, who will dispatch the Holy Spirit to help lean us into faith.

Closing Down Lover's Lane and Sex Drive

When I saw the headline of Bolivians amputating thieves' hands, it reminded me of the eye-for-an-eye style of justice often seen in Islamic countries; the article-writer went that route-

The cutting off of hands has been used around the world for centuries as a way to punish thieves. Under Islamic law, the punishment is sometimes used part of Hdud and usually refers to the class of punishments that are fixed for certain crimes that are considered to be "claims of God."

Just a few months ago, a thief convicted of theft in war-torn Mali had his hand cut off by one of the radical Islamist groups controlling the northern part of the country.

The other rough justice technique to come out of the Andes is chemical castration-"the administration of medication designed to reduce libido and sexual activity." That would actually be less harsh than having your hand cut off, but your mileage may vary.

The more civilized version of libido-reduction goes back a couple of decades. I recall a case in Michigan in the 80s where a sex offender got treated with Depo-Provera; that lead to the op-ed cartoon in the CMU student newspaper of a gal at the bar, saying "Give this man a shot... of Depo-Provera."

Bolivia is supposed to be a progressive country; its president is in the Hugo Chavez school of populist-leftists, especially big on getting power to the indigenous folks who've gotten crapped on worse than the First Nations/Native American folks in North America. However, leftist doesn't always mean progressive, since a lot of the grace and mercy that is at play in Christian thought can go out the window when we throw that out with the colonial bathwater.

A Torii Even a Dipper Can Love

Sorry for the bad Canadian political pun, but I had to get a Tory pun in with the arrival of Torii Hunter to Motown; the NDP shop rats in Windsor will be cool with this Torii. Heck, one could christen NDP boss Thomas Mulcair as Tory-hunter.

If I were looking to spend money upgrading the Tiger roster, I'd look at a second baseman, but Hunter is a good catch. He fills a gaping hole at the two spot in the lineup, is a Gold-Glove caliber outfielder and a good clubhouse guy to boot.

The problem now becomes dealing with a backlog of good outfielders. Andy Dirks winds up getting penciled in in left, assuming Hunter gets right, and the projected platoon of Garcia and Berry gets demoted. Garcia might get sent to AAA for seasoning while Berry becomes the fourth outfielder/pinch hitter/pinch runner. Nick Castellanos gets some serious seasoning at AA or AAA and gets groomed to either take over for Hunter (or for Cabrera at third and make Cabrera and Fielder do a 1b-DH time-share post-Martinez) mid-decade or be trade bait for a top-caliber pitcher.

Brandon Boesch looks even more of a loose part that might be part of a trade to net an upgrade at second base. With the emergence of Dirks and the arrival of Hunter, along with the return of Victor Martinez to the DH slot, there isn't any good spot for Boesch to fit. He'd be a good fourth outfielder and pinch hitter/DH for someone, and some package of Boesch and a young pitcher (e.g. Porcello, Villareal) might pry loose a top 2B prospect or a fifth starter if Sanchez gets too good an offer elsewhere.

Just as we get a steady dose of highs in the 30s, the Hot Stove League provides some warmth.

The Steelers Must Use LIFO, Since This Batch has Been On the Books for a Decade.

Back when Charlie Batch was with the Lions, William Clay Ford played with the idea of getting Batch into Ford management. His HR folder would be an auto exec Batch file.

However, he was let go by the Lions and landed with the Steelers, where he's been a perennial backup since 2003. I can't think of too many quarterbacks who have been a lifer backup for a club for a decade.

Charlie Batch made the news now that Big Ben is dinged up; another guy who always gets my attention, Byron Leftwich, is the starter for now, but Batch is at the ready if an opposing defence turns Leftwich into Manwich.

Showtime 2.0?

Interesting piece on new Laker coach Mike D'Antoni, who seems to both have a handle of what he's in for and is very honest about it.

"I'm going to do everything I can do to win a championship," D'Antoni said Tuesday afternoon on the "Mason and Ireland" show on ESPNLA 710. "If we're not at least in the hunt, a serious hunt, then I've failed as a head coach. I'm comfortable with that."

With a starting line-up with three sure-fire Hall of Famers and a probable forth in Pau Gasol, the only thing between the Lakers and releasing the hounds on that serious hunt is the egos on the team; mismanagement of the Knick egos might have been D'Antoni's downfall in New York, but the Lakers seem more mature than the ones in the Garden.

If D'Antoni can get those egos to mesh where folks like Kobe and Howard might have fewer points but more wins in an ensemble cast, then we're in for a playoffs for the ages, where OKC and San Antonio and the Lakers and maybe one or two others (the Clippers come to mind) will wind up having Western semi-finals that will have the firepower of a good league finals.

Not to say that the East is chopped liver. The Heat are back and loaded, a retooled Boston may prove interesting and a revamped Knicks could be a factor, along with Chicago if Rose gets back by playoff time.

Meanwhile, the Pistons are 0-8, but not 0-8 bad. This isn't going to be their year,to be sure, but there are a lot of bright young players that are starting to mesh, just not enough to win games so far. At least that's the glass-half-full way to watch.

Brown Dwarf... Shouldn't That be a Small Person of Color?

I like learning about astronomy, especially in this era when new discoveries are popping up on almost a daily basis. Here's the lastest of the list, where they've discovered a free-agent planet that was not orbiting a star.

Astronomers have spotted a "rogue planet" - wandering the cosmos without a star to orbit - 100 light-years away. Recent finds of such planets have suggested that they may be common, but candidates have eluded close study.

The proximity of the new rogue planet has allowed astronomers to guess its age: a comparatively young 50-120 million years old.

That last sentence makes being a Bible-totin' evangelical with a sci-fi geek inside problematic, for you need to tell the Answers in Genesis people to stuff a cork in it while you ponder the universe. Either the scientists are off with their ages, or the young-earthers are off on theirs.

One can split the difference in astronomy by making the days of Genesis eras; God's still in charge, but you can read modern science without having to flag an astrophysicist 15 yards for Time-Line Interference every time a reference to a time frame in millions of years or higher shows up. It doesn't violate inerrancy, it just violates a very literal version of it; a 24/6 creation is problematic since the sun and moon don't show up on day one.

Anyways, back to the science. The new rogue planet Palin-2012a- no, CFBDSIR2149-0403 is its designation- is big as planets go-

The team believe it has a temperature of about 400C and a mass between four and seven times that of Jupiter - well short of the mass limit that would make it a likely brown dwarf.

What remains unclear is just how the planet came to be - the tiny beginnings of a star, or planet launched from its home? Study co-author Philippe Delorme of the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble, said that the latter implied a great many planets like it.

We may find that the line between a big planet and a brown dwarf will be hard to draw. On one level, Jupiter is a brown dwarf, for it radiates more energy than it takes from the Sun; it just doesn't quite have the size to start the internal nuclear fusion that marks a star. Many systems have multiple stars; it isn't too big of a stretch to see a super-Jupiter not-quite-star get kicked out of the nest and go rogue in intersteller space.

The Jupiter-sized rogues will be harder to see at a distance, so their might be quite a few rogue planets, but since they don't radiatate much energy and don't do eclipses of their star to be detected via the changes in light, it may take far better telescopes to pick up the smaller ones.

Interesting times.

 

Edifier du Jour: James 1:13-15(NIV)

¹³ When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; ¹⁴ but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

I recall the old bumper sticker-"Lead me not into temptation; I can find it myself." We don't need that much prodding to fall astray, and God isn't the one doing any entrapping. That's not to say that Ol' Sloughfoot might not be doing it, but we shouldn't do our Geraldine imitation too often, since we're more likely to rush headlong into temptation without help.

Jesus in the wilderness was temped in that Satan offered up scenarios that Jesus could abuse His powers, but Jesus didn't bite, even as Satan backed up his pitches with proof-texting. You could say that Satan temped Jesus, but it's a tricky question to say that Jesus was tempted, since a sinless person wouldn't even mull over the prospect of sinful behavior.

However, even the best of us will occasionally mull over a tempting prospect. We might momentarily ponder clicking though the "Hot pictures of [insert starlet]" link at the bottom of an unrelated article before moving on and avoiding the offer. God doesn't nudge us along; we find enough temptation as is, and do well to move quickly past it without giving in.

 

...and the Bird to Miami Fans

Sources: Miami flips stars to Jays.

The one remaining Marlin of note is POed, "plain and simple." Stanton wasn't expecting to play AAA ball next year, but he'll have a good AAA team in Miami that might be a good major league team in a few years in the Miami brass.

A Pauline Political Epistile

Interesting development on the post-election push for immigration reform; Rand Paul is now on board-

In an interview with POLITICO, Paul said he’ll return to Congress this week pushing measures long avoided by his party. He wants to work with liberal Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and Republicans to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for pot possession. He wants to carve a compromise immigration plan with an “eventual path” to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a proposal he believes could be palatable to conservatives. And he believes his ideas — along with pushing for less U.S. military intervention in conflicts overseas — could help the GOP broaden its tent and appeal to crucial voting blocs that handed Democrats big wins in the West Coast, the Northeast and along the Great Lakes.

I'm not sure how much a softer stand on pot will help, but it will appeal to some libertarian-leaning swing voters. When I referred to backers of such reforms as "anarcho-narcos" on Facebook, one friend related positively to the prospect. A lean away from neocon-style activism isn't going to be that ill-received, especially when past over-reaches makes a more paleocon-paleolibertarian foreign policy more of a realpolitik response.

What's more interesting is the push for a immigration package; the early media push had Lindsey Graham as the guy making it bipartisan. The problem with that push is that Graham is about the most moderate Republican left after a number of moderates retired (Snowe, Hutchinson) or were defeated (Brown, Lugar) this year. Susan Collins and Mark Kirk are the two members of the Senate GOP who are to Graham's left on balance.

Since Democrats need five defections to get to a cloture vote, they'll need two more beyond the three folks mentioned above to get to 60, assuming they have everyone in the Democrat caucus voting yes. Rand Paul has some serious Tea Party chops and isn't one that easily get the RINO label, although his libertarian streak does get him off the conservative reservation from time to time.

If Paul can get a few more Republicans on board, that will create the nucleus of a group that will give cover to conservatives who will have to face the immigration hawks within the party in primaries down the line. That's encouraging, for if the Republicans can look less like the wetback-haters that dominate conservative-rhetoric, it will help them with swing voters both Latino and Anglo, since that tamps down on the hater-persona that gets placed on conservatives in general.

{Update 5:45PM-This Yahoo piece reminds me of someone more RINOy than Graham-Lisa Murkowski. Given that she got reelected as a centrist independent, she's almost not even a Republican, but since she caucuses with them, she get an effective (R) behind her name. I'd bet that John McCain would be more bipartisan than Dean Heller, but Yahoo went at least 4 for 5 in picking out the most RINOy of the caucus}

Tickle Elmo.... Not Down There!

Voice of Elmo on leave after denying 'underage conduct' with teen.

More information that we needed, to be sure.

Old-Time Religion, Salafi Style

Reading up on the various strains of Islam finds some interesting parallels with Christian movements. The hard-conservative Salafis are a case in point.

On one level, the Salafis remind me of Restorationists (Campbellites) looking to reestablish the early church without two millennia of stray tradition and added doctrine, getting back to the New Testament basics; the Salafis are looking to the 7th century as their benchmark when Islam was new and close to the original. On that level, we might have fellow comrades on some issues of the day if it is simple Ten Commandments-level morality.

However, one key difference between a Christian going back to basics is that we don't have a tradition of Christian government; from a worldly perspective, Jesus never ran anything but His mouth. We don't have hands-on experience on how Jesus would have run a government, or even how Paul or Peter would have served as a prime minister or President. Thus, Christian back-to-basic are more theological in nature and have little political economy in the mix.

Conversely, Mohammad did run a good hunk of Arabia before he died. Muslims have more of a track-record of Mohammad and his early successors as political leaders as well as mosque leaders. Couple that with a lack of church-state separation in Muslim thought makes their theology political and their politics theological.

That makes modern Salafis problematic in the public square, since democracy wasn't in the mix in early Muslim history that they look to as normative; that's new stuff that is best avoided as impure to them.

Note that only a minority of Salafis are violent, but they are the ones that get the press, like the guy who wants to trash the Pyramids. Interestingly, you have folks appealing to the Salafi love of early Islamic history to save the condos made of stone-

But in retaliation to Gohary’s remarks, the vice president of Tunisia’s Ennahda party, Sheikh Abdel Fattah Moro, called the live program and told Gohary that famous historic military commander Amr ibn al-Aas did not destroy statues when he conquered Egypt.

“So who are you to do it?” he wondered. “The Prophet destroyed the idols because people worshiped them, but the Sphinx and the Pyramids are not worshiped.”

Hopefully, they'll learn to adapt to a democratic system that may be flavored by the Koran, but not as strict as they'd like; that is going to be a touch-and-go proposition. Before we cast too many stones, recall that we had the Alien and Sedition Acts a decade into our Constitution era; the Egyptians and other Arab democracies might have to fumble towards their own version of a viable political culture.

Sorry, Wrong Deity

Interesting Get Religion piece over the weekend on a Unitarian outreach to atheists. This passage was what pulled the chatty-ring-

Many people who come to All Souls as atheists have not rejected God but their fourth-grade concept of God, he said.

“I say to them, ‘Tell me what God you don’t believe in, and I’ll probably tell you I don’t believe in that God either.’”

That brought back memories of this 2007 post, where discussion of The Golden Compass' Magesterium pointed out that the God that the writer was railing against didn't exist. Richard Heyduck had a good insight that fits all too well in this setting-

The description of the god at which Pullman aims does not fit the God of Christianity (though it does, unfortunately, fit the god some Christians have claimed over the centuries). The god of the books is closest to the god of medieval Christianity at its worst. The only attribute of Pullman’s god is omnipotence - and that omnipotence is pretty shoddy, reduced in reality to a mere exercise of authority.

The real God is omnipotent - but that omnipotence is always expressed in, through and around other characteristics, including holy love. It’s for this reason that Pullman’s picture of god and ‘Christianity’ has no place for Jesus. Jesus is not only the opposite of Pullman’s atheism but also of Pullman’s god.

It’s good to remember that one of the things for which the early Christians were persecuted was atheism - they didn’t believe in the right gods. (That’s why when you converse with someone who says, “I don’t believe in god,” it’s always a good idea to figure out which god they don’t believe in. There are more gods that I don’t believe in than that I do.)

People who reject God (sadly, that includes quite a few UUers) may be rejecting a false version of God. Introducing them to the real God is important, since they may be bashing a straw deity that has little resemblance to the Great I AM.

P.S.- Thankfully, they haven't done any sequals to the movie. Five years out, and you'd think that the second installment would be out if they were going to run with the series.

Charitable Tongues

Here's an interesting piece that an Eastern-Rite Catholic friend posted on Philip's Fast, a partial fast not unlike Lent; folks are supposed to go meatless on MWF in Advent leading up to Christmas.

This passage towards the end of the essay struck me as timely as folks on the right come to grips with four more years of the old man born a day before me.

To worthily meet our Lord and Savior, we should sanctify this pre-Nativity season of the Phillipian Fast.  Sanctifying means spending our time in faith and in the service of God and in kindness towards our neighbor, especially those who are in need of our assistance.  And we should think of what we would have been had Christ not come to our lowliness and poverty.

Kindness should start with recognizing the humanity of folks in need, rather than treating them as bums and wetbacks. Even if we don't want to open up Washington's pocketbook and raiding our paychecks a bit more, being charitable in our rhetoric in debates on immigration policy and government programs will make our discussions less toxic and more godly.

Opening up our own pocketbooks (and giving of our time) to help the needed wouldn't hurt, but charity should also begin with our tongue and written verbiage.

Seven Second Rush Hour in LA

I put in a plug the other day for Mike D'Antoni as the new Laker coach, and the Busses seem to have thought the same way. The Zen Master was under discussion, but was asking a lot to come back according to reports, so the plan B was the best available veteran coach currently unemployed. D'Antoni does have a working relationship with Kobe from his coaching of the US national team and had Steve Nash as his coach-on-the-floor during his Phoenix stint.

Meanwhile, Weekend at Bernies worked well, as Bickerstaff went 2-0 as an interim. Whether he'll stay on with the new regime remains to be seen.

Anybody Home?

We had an interesting sermon yesterday on hearing from God that was almost Pentecostal; however, it was seated in a more grounded framework of an unchanging God not shutting His trap two millennia ago.

Before you get all worried about Scripture getting trumped, an unchanging God won't be changing the truth, either. If what you hear from the Holy Spirit is something that goes counter to scripture, then it might be last night's burrito platter rather than the Spirit.

If God is speaking to our spirit, are we listening? Better yet, do we want to listen? If He is saying things that are uncomfortable, we might opt to become a cessationist-by-convience and discount the idea of God talking to folks in the present age.

Kissing Your Sister... Near the Castro District

We're looking at the first tie in the NFL in 4 years if the St Louis-SF score holds up. Colin Kaepernick seems to have worked nicely coming off the bench for Alex Smth, but not well enough to win, using some of the dual threat skills he had at Nevada.

Old School Abuse... Again

Texas Tech has had a history of coaches who were somewhat abusive of their players. Both Bobby Knight and Billy Gillespie had issues on the basketball side and Mike Leach was forced out when he was accused by Craig James' son of maltreatment.

Leach's history seems to have followed him,as he ran his ace receiver off the team at Washington State, telling a story not far from James' tale. Whether it's true or not remains to be seen, but one doesn't put a NFL career in jeopardy by walking out mid-season for getting a bad stare, so something made Marquess Wilson snap and call it quits.

Coaches can change, but often, the problems that plagued them at one stop will follow them elsewhere; Gillespie had a rocky, in-your-face relationship with a number of players at UK, so the stories out of TTU weren't all that shocking. That's why seeing Bobby Petrino on the short list for the UK football job is a bit disturbing; he bailed out of Atlanta after not even a year after signing on just before Michael Vick's Bad Newz hit the wire, then being forced out at Arkansas after hiring his mistress. That kind of poor behavior tends to stick with you unless there is some sort of serious repentance.

Immigration Politics and a Culled RINO Herd

I'm not sure I'd read too much into this story, where Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham are plugging a bipartisan outreach on immigration reform. Minor problem; Graham's low-hanging fruit, as one of the more moderate Republicans.

The Democrats have 55 seats counting Angus King, the new Maine senator-elect. That still leaves them 5 seats to get cloture, and King replaces Olympia Snowe, so there's only one RINO Sister left from Maine, Susan Collins. Also, Dick Lugar will be retiring, replaced by a Democrat thanks to Richard Mourdock's ill-timed foray into theodicy. Scott Brown also was replaced; thus, three likely targets in a race to 60 are already in Democratic hands.

If 2010 trimmed off a number of Blue Dogs, 2012 has trimmed off a few RINOs, leaving the parties a bit more polarized. In the drive to 60, you have McCain, Graham, Collins and...two more to go. Easier said than done. Kirk would be one strong prospect from the moderate camp, but it will be harder than in the past to patch together enough moderate Republicans to do a center-left 60-vote filibuster-buster.

Living in the Purple

We shouldn't get too carried away with a red state-blue state civil war motif, since most states aren't that homogeneous. Romney only cracked 2/3rds in three states and Obama only got above 2/3rd in Hawaii and DC. Michigan, who last voted Republican for president in 1984, was only 54-45 Obama.

There is a cultural divide between the rightmost quarter of the electorate and the leftmost with the middle half largely in play. For instance, a number of liberal-oriented ballot proposals got shot down in the 60-40 range while Obama was getting 54%; that makes 15% or so of the electorate here pro-Obama but anti liberal overreaches on mandating green energy and banning state regulation of union contracts.

That 15% is reachable, but wasn't reached by Romney or Pete Hoekstra.

 

Kelly Green

I don't think we've seen two namesakes go after a title, but we might have a shot at such a outing this year if we get a Kelly Bowl with Chip bringing Oregon to face Brian's Norte Dame team. After the Aggies took out Alabama earlier today, we're a Kansas State loss away from an Oregon-Notre Dame title game.

I'm not a big Nick Saban fan, so seeing low Tide in Tuscaloosa is a good thing, especially when it is Texas A&M delivering the take-down; I've got Aggie in-laws, so that's a program I have a soft spot for.

Alabama isn't out of things quite yet. A 12-1 Alabama would likely beat out any other X-1 team, so if there's only one undefeated team left come December, they'll still have a shot a defending their title.