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Doctor Cleveland's blogCollege Football: Stranger than FictionWhy College Football Playoffs Are WrongSo a lot of people, including the President, have been talking lately about remedying the evils of college football. The chief evil that needs remedying is apparently the Bowl Championship System, which isn't enough of a "real" championship and needs to be replaced with a system of playoffs. That's a big surprise to me, because I can think of a lot of other problems with big-time college football, and instituting playoffs would probably make them worse. Obamanomics
What the Left Should Do About Obama2009 was a frustrating year for liberals and progressives, and 2010 is off to a bad start. After electing the first unapologetically liberal President of the United States in forty years, with large majorities in both the House and Senate, liberals have seen our agenda diluted, stalled, and now seriously set back. It shouldn't have happened. And now, of course, there is rage and confusion and we are circling into our old firing squad. But as I see it, there are only three questions, and they all have simple answers. Call Your Representative
I'm going to shamelessly repost this from Tim F. at Balloon Juice, because it's good and timely advice. Call your member of the House and tell them to vote for health care reform. Tell them loud, and tell them proud. Here's how:
Robert B. Parker Is Dead, AlasRobert B. Parker died today, in Cambridge, at his writing desk. I turned on my cell after an afternoon class and found that every male member of my family had left a message with the news. Massachusetts Senate Betting PoolI don't like to blog about narrowly political horse-race topics often, and whoever wins in Massachusetts today I'll be blogging the same big picture. If Coakley wins, it's still instructuve that she had trouble with a specific breed of Democrats (whom I will call the Big Daddy Democrats), and even if she wins there may be trouble ahead in places like Ohio and West Virginia. If COakley loses, Obama and the Dems will still be in much the same relatively difficult place as before, and the difficulties (and their relative nature) won't change radically. The big-picture advice for progressive Dems will be the same. [Read more] Conan, Leno, and the Recession
Progress and the PendulumI'm watching the snow through an airport window, thinking about the posts I've meant to get to in the last hectic week or so, and about the things I have to do and the places I have to fly over the next ten days. But for today, it'll have to be a short one, and mostly a metaphor. [Read more] Why Obama Won the Nobel, Part IIWhen Obama's Nobel Prize was first announced, I tried to explain why the Nobel Committee might have chosen him. Today, as he accepts the Prize, seems like a good time to finish that attempted explanation. But first, two quick things I need to say to frame the discussion. Having an FDR ChristmasExactly three weeks before Christmas, my bank failed. Mister Hope Is Secretly Mister ReliableThe day before President Obama announced his Afghanistan strategy, Politico published John F. Harris's very important and newsy thumbsucker about the peril that "anti-Obama storylines" pose to Obama's Presidency. The first sentence of the article is, no kidding, "Presidential politics is about storytelling." Patrick Kennedy's Orders from the Vatican and the Abuse ScandalThe Bishop of Rhode Island has told Congressman Patrick Kennedy not to take Communion at Mass any more. They are now publicly feuding about whether or not the bishop ordered his priests not to give it to him. Forty-nine years after JFK promised not to take orders from the Church hierarchy, that hierarchy is sanctioning his nephew for not taking orders. The nominal issue is abortion. The underlying issue is the Church's sexual abuse scandal. [Read more] Palin Mania and the Triumph of NarrowcastingSarah Palin may be very unpopular by any traditional polling standard. However, pundits are eager to explain that the important thing isn't how many people like her, but rather the intensity of her followers' enthusiasm for her. Sure, she may poll like Herbert Hoover in 1932, but the thirty-to-forty percent of the country that approves of her includes a hard core of fanatical support. That intensity, we are repeatedly assured, will give her political power, no matter how many people oppose her. Sarah Palin is officially popular, whether the rest of us like it or not. Palin's Window of OpportunitySo, the rollout of Sarah Palin's book has led to a flurry of speculation about whether she will someday run for President. That conversation, in itself, is evidence of how little the American political media listens to what it's saying. Joe Lieberman as Fredo CorleoneJoe Lieberman has spent a lot of time over the past few weeks making a spectacle of his disloyalty to the Democratic Party. He's gone out of his way to announce that he'll filibuster against the public option, preventing the majority that gives him his committee chairmanship from bringing their most important legislation to a vote. Then, as if it weren't already clear, Lieberman wanted make sure everyone knew he'd be stumping for some Republicans in 2010. Just in case, you know, anyone mistakenly thought he was loyal to the caucus that gives him his power in the Senate. Sports Are SeriousSo last Sunday I was thinking: could Chris Berman be a political talking head in this country? And would he be any worse than the natterers on cable news, or the morning shows? I mean, Berman is clearly a silly and shallow blowhard, but that never stopped Tim Russert. My suspicion, fully borne out this week by l'affaire Limbaugh, is that sports are treated far more seriously in this country than politics are, especially by our media. That a comment on the state of our political press and on our national priorities. [Read more] Why Obama Won the Nobel, Part ISo, have you heard about President Obama winning the Nobel Prize? If you'd suggested this to me yesterday, I wouldn't have believed it, let alone been able to put forth an argument for it, so I won't pretend it made intuitive sense when I woke up this morning. "Especially for the Women": The Scarlet LettermanNear the end of his televised confession Thursday night, David Letterman admitted that the details of his affairs with staffers might be embarrassing, "especially for the women." Not About PolanskiIn 1977, a publicly-admired man committed a violent crime against a woman, and the actual events are not in dispute. Between his arrest and his sentencing, the man fled the United States and settled in France. Decades later, the French strenuously resisted extraditing him to the States. Dag? Nab it! Subscribe to the latest from your favorite topic, blogger, or entire site. Copyright © 2009 dagblog. All rights reserved.
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