I have a very shallow understanding of the allegations that some Democratic operatives sneaked their questions through to CNN presidential debates (both parties' debates). (This search will, in minutes if not seconds, get you to know everything I know.)
It doesn't look good for CNN but I can't remember the last time I had any respect for CNN anyway. The more important point: If these are Hillary's people planting the questions, they're doing a great job of it. That ability to get things done actually makes me support her campaign a tiny bit more than otherwise.
This has been in my head forever now. Obviously 29 isn't nearly as cool as 32 but right now New England, Miami, and Dallas (having lost only to New England) can't be part of any closed loop.
None Not all of what you see after the jump has been confirmed, but a simple closed loop will exist as soon as either San Francisco or Carolina wins their game (against each other) this weekend already exists.
UPDATE: Fixed.
1. Carolina beat Atlanta week 3
2. Atlanta beat San Francisco earlier this month
3. San Francisco beate Arizona on Warner's overtime end zone fumble.
4. Arizona beat St. Louis during the Rams' long winless start
5. St. Louis beat New Orleans to break that winless start
6. New Orleans beat Seattle on a Sunday night to break their own winless start
7. Seattle beat Chicago in the game NBC kicked to the curb (from Sunday night to Sunday afternoon)
8. Chicago beat Green Bay on a Sunday night
9. Green Bay beat Minnesota the game Adrian Peterson got hurt
10. Minnesota beat NY Giants by running back three Eli interceptions
11. NY Giants beat Philadelphia by sacking McNabb 12 times
12. Philadelphia beat Washington on Veteran's Day with Westbrook's late runs
13. Washington annihilated Detroit
14. Detroit annihilated Denver
15. Denver beat Oakland with a well-timed timeout to preempt the game-winning field goal
16. Oakland beat Kansas City to break a 17-game division losing streak
17. Kansas City beat San Diego back when Norv Turner looked especially shaky
18. San Diego beat Indianapolis on a Sunday night
19. Indianapolis beat Tampa Bay when the Bucs had been undefeated
20. Tampa Bay beat Tennessee week 6
21. Tennessee beat Jacksonville with a lot of rushing yards week 1
22. Jacksonville beat Buffalo a few days ago
23. Buffalo beat Cincinnati when Marshawn Lynch took over the game
24. Cincinnati beat Baltimore on Week 1 Monday night
25. Baltimore beat NY Jets a week later
26. NY Jets beat Pittsburgh right before Thanksgiving
27. Pittsburgh clocked Cleveland in Week 1
28. Cleveland beat Houston a few days ago
29. Houston beat Carolina week 2
(Inspired by this column.)
Does Seattle at Philadelphia produce the platonic ideal NFL logo showdown? (That is, put the visiting team's logo on the left and home team's logo on the right.) It's hard to top, specifically because the Philadelphia Eagle is the only logo to face the left instead of the right.
Packers-Cowboys looks like a regular expression.
49ers-Panthers looks like nothing.
Bills-Redskins: Tonto's about to get blindsided!
Texans-Titans: Basically the same logo twice.
Falcons-Rams: almost like a tickbird-rhino symbiosis but not quite
Lions-Vikings: given the cat's posture this is a most unfortunate pairing. It looks like Olaf has a Marques Slocum
Jaguars-Colts: now fluffy, we just need one more X-ray. open your mouth... and bite.
Chargers-Chiefs: boing! it's an arrowhead slinky!
(I got nothing on the rest of them, which is just as well rather than run the gag into the ground.)
The final five coins will start with Oklahoma, which entered the union in 1907. It will feature the state bird, the scissortail flycatcher, and the state wildflower, the Indian blanket.
--Yahoo! News (via Fark)
WTF?
(So what would I have done? Put a feather headdress on an oil derrick. Direct and to the point.)
This story is just crazy. (As is this comment thread.)
(Fark had the same story a week ago if memory serves, but I didn't look too closely.)
Dahlia Lithwick is right for once, and yet she almost lost me with her prose style here.
My favorite part where she leaves the impression (by subtle noun shift) that Jane Harman (D-CA) is part of the Bush administration.
(Strictly speaking, the subject of the mockery is the misguided adherents, misusing any given creed.)
If your faith is so brittle that what seven-year-olds name a teddy bear threatens it, perhaps you've chosen the wrong faith.
This is distinctly, emphatically, singlehandedly not worth giving one iota of deference.
Oh, it gets better: "In our culture a teddy bear is a wild and dangerous animal. It's not something to be cuddled by children before they sleep."
This is exactly why cultural imperialism exists (and should exist).
[On further review it's a pretty weak example compared to, say, genital mutilation.]
(In this context I'm not going to touch anything you shouldn't care about, especially if it just rings false.)
I got past the cover photo, with its army of youngsters and Mrs. Clinton's mandible-cracking smile, to search through the actual text, in hopes of finding some mention of Barbara Feinman who, in addition to other professional accomplishments, wrote the book. A decade ago, when [It Takes A] Village was first published, Feinman was much talked about for having gone unmentioned.
Shortly before the book came out, Mrs. Clinton boasted of having "written a 320-page book in longhand over the last six months." This came as a surprise to her ghostwriter. Feinman had often worked late nights at the White House and even followed Mrs. Clinton on vacation in hope of picking up stray thoughts she could use to bulk up the manuscript, and she had been assured her role as ghost would be generously acknowledged. Yet when Village finally appeared there was no mention of Feinman either on the cover or in the Acknowledgments. News stories appeared detailing Feinman's role, but White House spokesmen backed the first lady in her contention that the book was her work alone.
It became a minor controversy, stoked not only by Mrs. Clinton's political adversaries but also by Feinman's friends in the Washington press corps (she's a former researcher for Bob Woodward). With Mrs. Clinton's claims of sole authorship long ago disproved, I picked up this expanded edition of Village to see whether she had expanded it enough to make room for Barbara Feinman. Nope: Mrs. Clinton still believes that while it takes a village to raise a child, it takes nobody worth naming to write her book for her.
--Andrew Ferguson, reviewing a variety of presidential campaign books.
This list is fatally flawed without Barenaked Ladies' brutal takedown of Halifax.
"The Rooneys want Heinz Field to be natural. On Monday night, it was a natural disaster. Seeing two TV shots of punted balls landing in the mud and sticking there might convince the Rooneys to take the natural feel away from Heinz in 2008."
--John Clayton
But wouldn't punted balls also stick in the mud of the mythical "corner of Halas & Landry" from all those TV and web video ads?
0. The National Football League commissioner's office (as in literal "judgment," i.e. disciplinary measures)
1. The Miami Dolphins
2. Fans of the Miami Dolphins
3. (but most important) Ricky Williams
For all his pontificating, as far as I can tell Gregg Easterbrook belongs to none of those three groups.
Only Williams himself can decide whether he's living up to potential and, if not, to what extent that's a problem.
Replace the picture on this profile with the infamous (NSFW) photo seen here.
Also, I agree with Mickey Kaus (from November 23) that the last sentence of this column is absurdly inane.
Gosh: some single guy likes to get drunk and pick up women. Scandalous!
Rhetorical or not, this question is the dumbest pull-quote I've seen on the first page of a newspaper section in weeks:
"Would Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong have had the drive to become a real rock star if he'd had the chance to simply be a virtual star in his parents' basement?"
Also, the virtual groupies will get you off in ways you can only imagine.
While I wasn't paying attention, NBC choose (or else saw no reason to upgrade from) Cincinnati at Pittsburgh as the Week 13 Sunday night game.
Weeks 14-17 still seem to have flex options available; Awful Announcing somehow learned which Sunday afternoon games are protected.
If I had to guess...
Week 14: Upgrade from Colts-Ravens to Cardinals-Seawhawks (Steelers-Patriots and Giants-Eagles are both protected; Cowboys-Lions is unavailable because Dallas is maxed out on prime time appearances)
Week 15: Keep Giants-Redskins
Week 16: Upgrade from Buccaneers-49ers to whichever of (Eagles-Saints, Redskins-Vikings) has greater playoff implications as of the selection deadline.
Week 17: Too soon to tell and will depend entirely on playoff implications, but Lions-Packers and Titans-Colts are among the distinct possibilities. (Chiefs-Jets is overwhelmingly likely to be rejected.)
"Part of the problem was that [Dave] Winfield’s [10-year] contract [signed with the Yankees after the 1980 season] contained a cost of living adjustment, which meant that he received an automatic raise every year. He became much more expensive than the Yankees had initially planned (they apparently didn’t fully comprehend the impact of that clause at signing), and this was nettlesome to the owner."
--Stephen Goldman
I wonder whether the COLA percent was fixed. Given the year the deal was signed, I could imagine somebody vastly overestimating what inflation would be like through the 1980s (compared to the late '70s).
(Yet more intersection between football and politics.)
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
--U.S. Constitution: Second Amendment
Consider a fantasy football league that the commissioner used to run manually, giving each team at most one add/drop transaction per week. Then the league went on-line, but the web site in question didn't have a "one per week" option in the standard set-up, so instead the new rule was 15 transactions per year. Anyone who wanted to make more than one a week was welcome to, but still, 15 per year, enforced automatically.
Now suppose that league had a bit of draft chaos because of ESPN's flaky servers. Nothing catastrophic, but just people losing connectivity at inopportune times. The commissioner sent out a note (that I just looked for and couldn't find, ruining what would have been a very elegant post) indicating that because of the draft issues he increased the transaction limit to 25 per team.
If you were a league member who'd had no draft/server problems whatsoever, would you consider yourself morally obligated to make no more than 15 (instead of 25) add/drops?
(That's a real question, not a rhetorical question.)
Despite how I feel about what weight (if any) to give the first clause of the Second Amendment, I actually did intend to hold myself to 15 pickups out of sportsmanship, but then Donovan McNabb got hurt. So be it, 16.
(Week two of pasting all content directly from a spreadsheet.)
There are nine teams at 5-6, none of whom play tomorrow. I have seven of them slotted in the 15-21 range. Pairwise they all make sense to me but if somebody said, "No, you're wrong, Denver should be #20 instead of #17"... it's not like I'd spend much time arguing either way.
Fewer comments than usual but from here on out I'm including each team's full remaining regular season schedule.
Monday update: I almost flipped the Steelers and Jaguars, but not quite.
32. Miami (0-11) (Last week: 31) I don't think they'll go 0-16 though. (Remaining games: vs. NY Jets, at Buffalo, vs. Baltimore, at New England, vs. Cincinnati)
31. Atlanta (3-8) (Last week: 29) Outscored 62-20 in their last two games (both at home). (Remaining games: at St. Louis, vs. New Orleans, at Tampa Bay, at Arizona, vs. Seattle)
30. San Francisco (3-8) (Last week: 32) Wins entirely attributable to two missed field goals and a defender foolishly failing to bat a ball out of the end zone. (Remaining games: at Carolina, vs. Minnesota, vs. Cincinnati, vs. Tampa Bay, at Cleveland)
29. St. Louis (2-9) (Last week: 30) (Remaining games: vs. Atlanta, at Cincinnati, vs. Green Bay, vs. Pittsburgh, at Arizona)
28. NY Jets (2-9) (Last week: 27) (Remaining games: at Miami, vs. Cleveland, at New England, at Tennessee, vs. Kansas City)
27. Carolina (4-7) (Last week: 25) Can't win at home; QB situation is a mess. (Remaining games: vs. San Francisco, at Jacksonville, vs. Seattle, vs. Dallas, at Tampa Bay)
26. Oakland (3-8) (Last week: 28) (Remaining games: vs. Denver, at Green Bay, vs. Indianapolis, at Jacksonville, vs. San Diego)
25. Baltimore (4-7) (Last week: 23) Think New England will be mad? (Remaining games: vs. New England, vs. Indianapolis, at Miami, at Seattle, vs. Pittsburgh)
24. Cincinnati (4-7) (Last week: 26) (Remaining games: at Pittsburgh, vs. St. Louis, at San Francisco, vs. Cleveland, at Miami)
23. Arizona (5-6) (Last week: 22) For awhile last week I wondered if I'd egregiously underrated this team. Guess not. (Remaining games: vs. Cleveland, at Seattle, at New Orleans, vs. Atlanta, vs. St. Louis)
22. Kansas City (4-7) (Last week: 21) (Remaining games: vs. San Diego, at Denver, vs. Tennessee, at Detroit, at NY Jets)
21. Minnesota (5-6) (Last week: 24) Other than the Cardinals and Eagles, these 5-6 teams are practically interchangeable even aside from their records. I readily admit that defeats the purpose of bothering to read a power poll, much less write one. (Remaining games: vs. Detroit, at San Francisco, vs. Chicago, vs. Washington, at Denver)
20. Chicago (5-6) (Last week: 20) I almost ranked them higher but playing at home vs. Denver they shouldn't have had to rally from a 14-point deficit. (Remaining games: vs. NY Giants, at Washington, at Minnesota, vs. Green Bay, vs. New Orleans)
19. New Orleans (5-6) (Last week: 19) Crushed a team that seems to be phoning it in after all. (Remaining games: vs. Tampa Bay, at Atlanta, vs. Arizona, vs. Philadelphia, at Chicago)
18. Buffalo (5-6) (Last week: 18) (Remaining games: at Washington, vs. Miami, at Cleveland, vs. NY Giants, at Philadelphia)
17. Denver (5-6) (Last week: 15) Blew it. The other teams in the 15-18 tier lost road games that they were reasonably expected to lose. (Remaining games: at Oakland, vs. Kansas City, at Houston, at San Diego, vs. Minnesota)
16. Houston (5-6) (Last week: 17) (Remaining games: at Tennessee, vs. Tampa Bay, vs. Denver, at Indianapolis, vs. Jacksonville)
15. Washington (5-6) (Last week: 14) (Remaining games: vs. Buffalo, vs. Chicago, at NY Giants, at Minnesota, vs. Dallas)
14. Tennessee (6-5) (Last week: 10) Overreaction? Maybe. But what happened? Injuries only explain one side of the ball. (Remaining games: vs. Houston, vs. San Diego, at Kansas City, vs. NY Jets, at Indianapolis)
13. Detroit (6-5) (Last week: 12) Tiebreaker situation means 8-8 is unlikely to be enough; that means they need to win at San Diego, at Green Bay, or vs. Dallas. Good luck! (Remaining games: at Minnesota, vs. Dallas, at San Diego, vs. Kansas City, at Green Bay)
12. Philadelphia (5-6) (Last week: 16) Computer programs love this team. Games like this show that the potential is always there. It's also pretty nifty that this week's top 12 match my (as of now) predicted playoff teams. (Remaining games: vs. Seattle, vs. NY Giants, at Dallas, at New Orleans, vs. Buffalo)
11. Seattle (7-4) (Last week: 13) (Remaining games: at Philadelphia, vs. Arizona, at Carolina, vs. Baltimore, at Atlanta)
10. NY Giants (7-4) (Last week: 5) No need to panic over one bad game; that said, it was a terrible game. At least one NFC East team must miss the playoffs, and neither the Eagles nor Redskins are laying down. (Remaining games: at Chicago, at Philadelphia, vs. Washington, at Buffalo, vs. New England)
9. Cleveland (7-4) (Last week: 11) Are you ready for a(nother) Browns-Steelers wild card game? The last one was most excellent. (Remaining games: at Arizona, at NY Jets, vs. Buffalo, at Cincinnati, vs. San Francisco)
8. Tampa Bay (7-4) (Last week: 8) The first seven slots all seem obvious to me, as does Seattle at #11. Like the whole mess of non-extreme 5-6 teams, #8 to #10 might be interchangeable. (Remaining games: at New Orleans, at Houston, vs. Atlanta, at San Francisco, vs. Carolina)
7. San Diego (6-5) (Last week: 9) (Remaining games: at Kansas City, at Tennessee, vs. Detroit, vs. Denver, at Oakland)
6. Jacksonville (8-3) (Last week: 7) (Remaining games: at Indianapolis, vs. Carolina, at Pittsburgh, vs. Oakland, at Houston)
5. Pittsburgh (8-3) (Last week: 6) (Remaining games: vs. Cincinnati, at New England, vs. Jacksonville, at St. Louis, at Baltimore)
4. Indianapolis (9-2) (Last week: 4) (Remaining games: vs. Jacksonville, at Baltimore, at Oakland, vs. Houston, vs. Tennessee)
3. Green Bay (10-1) (Last week: 3) (Remaining games: at Dallas, vs. Oakland, at St. Louis, at Chicago, vs. Detroit)
2. Dallas (10-1) (Last week: 2) (Remaining games: vs. Green Bay, at Detroit, vs. Philadelphia, at Carolina, at Washington)
1. New England (11-0) (Last week: 1) (Remaining games: at Baltimore, vs. Pittsburgh, vs. NY Jets, vs. Miami, at NY Giants)