JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO HATE SIMMONS: He's clearly on the side of the angels with this whole Sonics debacle.

Here's something I've been having a hard time finding information about--I hope somebody in Seattle is working on whatever Cleveland did to keep the Browns' history in town.

EDIT: Googling for reasons Howard Schultz sold the Sonics in the first place got me to this, which I liked insofar as it implied that the skillset for running a large, successful corporation are much different from running a somewhat successful pro sports franchise. And I hate Starbucks sometimes and Schultz comes off like an ass in this whole debacle. Venti my ass. It's a large coffee. LARGE!

MAYBE--DON'T FEAR THE MILLENNIALS?: Kept meaning to write about this, it's your pop sociology article of the moment that the Inky published a week or so ago about the generational dynamics behind the Obama phenomenon. It fed into my Boomer hatred (or whatever flattened emotional response a card-carrying GenXer is supposed to have) as it portrayed them as an idealistic generation unwilling to compromise and thus unable to get shit done, and contrasted them with a civic generation--and they're putting the Millennials in that category--who're more low-key and--gasp!--actually capable of compromise. Previous civic generations gave us Lincoln and FDR so Obama is going to be a super-memorable president, is I guess what the take-away conclusion is. And it wouldn't be a pop sociology article without one moment of stupid overreach:

Since they started watching Barney as toddlers, the millennials have learned to be concerned for the welfare of everyone in the group and to try to find consensus, "win-win" solutions to any problem.

Yeah. And Mr Hooper taught Generation X apathy!

Note: following Kevin Drum's guide to blogging, I googled the authors and neither one is an actual sociologist and they have a book to push. Yay for pop sociology written by laymen!

RIGHTWING NOISE MACHINE NEEDS REWRITES: Not this stupid Deval Patrick thing, which is from the leftwing noise machine (when even Cap'n Ed says something is bogus.....). It's even stupider! Both Hannity and Medved had these clips of an Obama audience member fainting on multiple occasions--not the same audience member, but a front-row audience member fainting at multiple rallies. Obama responds the same way at each fainting--interrupts his speech, asks people to give the fallen space, etc. And this was evidence of PERFIDY! The Obama campaign is planting fainting people! To make Obama look....umm....more like the kind of guy who cares about fainting people! Yeah! To me, this is evidence that Obama is kind of a rockstar, something your average rightwinger wouldn't know anything about since they weren't allowed to watch the Beatles in the 60s. (WHY DON'T THEY CUT THEIR HAIR???)

A QUESTION OF POLITENESS: Is it better to let the poor lady in Hyderabad go through her whole "let's get your account activated today" routine and then say no (because you always say no--honestly, if you fall behind on your payments aren't you going to end up spending the same amount? These protection plans just take the money from you gradually, versus socking you with the fees all at once) or to interrupt her mid-spiel so neither of you waste your time? I go with the former, just because it seems nicer not to try and fluster someone--not everybody can swiftly recover from spielus interruptus, after all. And we're both working for the company store, y'know? Might as well not get mad at the wrong people.

DEFUSING THE "OBAMA LOVES CHE" CONTROVERSY (HA!) IN TWO LINES: A comment in a Cap'n Ed thread:

1...WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THAT WAS A REPUBLICAN OFFICE?

2...WHAT IF THEY HAD A CONFEDERATE FLAG ON THE WALL?

There are as yet no replies to this comment. (Whole stupid story via John Cole.)

CLINTON RACEMONGERING NOT A RANDOM SLIP OF BILL'S TONGUE?: Not that it ever was, in reality, a random slip of Bill's tongue, but at least they could claim that and it looked like they realized it backfired since they locked in him in Dick Cheney's bunker after he said what he did. But now Hillary's doing it? Jeez. Doesn't that generate far more bad press than it does votes for Hillary?

I am an Obamabot, of course, so feel free to point out where he dismissed California due to all the Latinos or something.

ONE WAY THE SHAQ TRADE MIGHT MAKE SENSE: Riffing off this Yglesias post--if you believe the NBA to be sort of mildly fixed (mildly fixed: assigning certain refs to games when a certain outcome is desired, like when you want a playoff series to go seven games, as in the sixth game of that Lakers-Kings series a few years back; allowing refs to be influenced by star power, though this might be a problem with basketball at all levels; arbitrary enforcement of the rules, like the Horry incident from last year (Horry is one of the great on-court bastards, by the way, and he never gets enough credit for it); the general appearance of wanting certain personalities to be successful, as in the atrocious championship won by the Shaq and D-Wade Heat) as I maybe* do, and you believe the Suns sort of realize the league or the officials were never going to really reward their style of play (THE NBA IS PHYSICAL!!!! DEFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!) you might as well roll the dice and get a guy who has been handed titles in the recent past and still might have some pull with the refs. And you weren't going to win in your present configuration.


*I know it's the Internet, and it's okay to be a total crank, but still, thinking the NBA is fixed is still just outside reasonable opinion. Because of and/or in spite of Simmons.

RECOMMENDED: Chris Bowers handicaps Hillary's chances for the rest of the race. (Via tennbengal in The Swamp.) The comments break down Texas district by district. It's good to know that not even Texans understand how the caucus part of the Texas primary-caucus thing works.

2004 WAS SO LONG AGO: And so was my Howard Dean fandom. And I thought, "Let's say we click on this Joe Trippi interview and take a little trip down memory lane, hmm?" So I did! And it's from right before Super Tuesday and I was struck by this bit:

On Hispanics, I didn't know how he was going to undo what had been baked in cake in Nevada about his appeal to Latinos. There's no better name in the party [to help him with that] than Ted Kennedy. The Kennedy name, particularly Ted. Look at Massachusetts. He was 38 points down. Now he's got Kennedy, Kerry, Patrick. He's got a real chance. He can win. No way he can win California without a big shift in the Latino vote. If he could somehow pull out California and Massachusetts, he could be right back in it. If she wins California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arkansas, what states is he going to win? Illinois and Georgia? Then where? Alabama? Then where? She's way ahead in Tennessee, Oklahoma. You know what I'm saying?

And everything he was talking about came true--Obama lost CA and NY and NJ and even the hoped-for MA. And TN, and OK, and AR. But he still won the day, more or less, or at least tied it (tied in the popular vote it looks like, slight victory in the delegate count.) And I'm like--how did he do it, despite Trippi's points above?

My answers would be: 1. C'mon--it's Joe Trippi. 2. His "Then where? Alabama?" query was answered with CO, MO, ND, AK (sounds like Cthulhu's brother-in-law.....COMONDAK!), DE, CT, ID, UT, MN, and KS. Now--did Trippi forget about them? Not consider them a big deal since five are pretty tiny? Not think about CT or MO at all? Or think Clinton's Hispanic edge would give her CO, and so on. I don't know. CT and MO are ones he could have lost (or "lost"--proportional, proportional!) but won (or "won" in the sense that CNN will color them his color), and those were the only close races at all. That's part of the perception of Victory: Obama. 3. I'm taking Trippi out of context, he wasn't saying Obama was doomed, just sort of handicapping the race. Probably true. I was just struck by the (basically accurate) paragraph above in combination of what seems to be an Obama win. 4. Obama really is a media creation! Or an elite blog creation! (Like that would translate into actual votes.) Like the people at Talkleft keep saying. So of course the elite bloggers/talking head media think he won. I dunno, wouldn't the televised media prefer to keep the Clintons around? If they really are obsessed with them, which strongly suggests that Clintons mean RATINGS!!! 5. Trippi didn't realize the Obama caucus advantage. Which he wouldn't realize before yesterday

Eh, I'm rambling at this point. Trippi's larger point was that he thought Hillary had repositioned herself as the Change Candidate but I don't think she's going to convince the Obama fanbase of that anytime soon. And it's the same size of her fanbase at this point. Tie game! I am not looking forward to "smoke-filled rooms" being the catchphrase of the summer of '08.

SO WHAT WAS OBAMA'S MOST IMPORTANT VICTORY?: Missouri? Really? It is what they call a bellwether.

New Jersey was personally disappointing. New York was a loss but at least Obama got to 40%. California was a huge bummer. And stupid TAXACHUSETTS! But you gotta remember, it's proportional, no matter how many times Wolf mentions California going to Hillary or whatever. It's the delegates, stupid. And Missouri.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, THE 2007-08 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS WERE TO BE REMEMBERED AS A HISTORICAL CURIOSITY: Holy crap.

By the way--what was up with that mindbendingly offensive animated pandas speaking broken Engrish ad? Somebody's going to get several strongly worded blog posts in the morning, if they haven't already.

SUPERBOWL XLII MENU: What a depressing season. The only rational response is GLUTTONY:

Barbecue turkey legs. My boss told me her slow-cook method (simmer a few hours, then bake for an hour under foil, then add your sauce) and it's wonderful.
I am going to attempt the Tom in Texas chili recipe. Couldn't find a chili beer in Jersey, though, and I don't think I have exactly the right dry peppers either.
This is the wing recipe I've settled on. Shamefully, I do like the wings at Applebee's or Chili's or whatever.
Bacon-wrapped jalapenos. The simplest, tastiest appetizer of all time.
Spam musubi! Must invoke spam at the Superbowl! (All references to the Superbowl are property of the NFL Corporation.)
White Castle enchiladas. Yeah. And then I make actual sliders with Asian pork patties.
Recipezaar has this recipe plastered over its front page. It looks good, so it's bound to turn out right when I make it!
Oh, there's some other stuff too. Maybe even some vegetables.