Thursday, September 24, 2009

Thursday's throwdowns

TED KENNEDY'S REPLACEMENT IN THE U.S. SENATE:
...will be former DNC head, and former Kennedy confidant and key player in Kennedy's 1980 campaign for the presidency, Paul Kirk. Note that basically the Kennedys got who they wanted:
"Kirk, a Kennedy family friend, served on the senator's staff for eight years and is chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. Kennedy's widow, Vicki Kennedy, and son Edward Kennedy Jr. had urged Patrick to pick Kirk and attended the announcement at the Massachusetts Statehouse."

And so he was chosen. Shouldn't surprise anyone.

BASEBALL DIARY: the Tigers did what they needed to do last night, pummeling the Indians 11-3. Rick Porcello got his 14th victory. Not bad for a rookie. Carlos Guillen hit 2 home runs. The Tigers will really need his bat down this final stretch. Tonight's pitching matchup seems to favor the Tigers--they'll have Justin Verlander going against Cleveland rookie Carlos Carrasco. A win would give Detroit a 3-game lead over the idle Twins. They need it.
Meanwhile the Cubs lose to Milwaukee 3-2. It's the story of the Cubs' season--they strike out 10 times against unheralded Milwaukee pitcher Chris Narveson.
The Texas Rangers though managed to beat Oakland, 9-8. Good to see Hank Blalock homer and have a bunch of RBIs, and the Ranger bullpen hold a lead. That's one victory closer to 90 for Texas.

OBAMA'S UN SPEECH:
The more it gets analyzed, the more naive it becomes. For example, as Charles Krauthammer points out:
"...the alarming part is what he said in the same paragraph where he said that it makes no sense anymore "the alignments of nations that are rooted in the cleavages of the Cold War." Well, NATO is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. The European Union is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. Our alliances with Japan and Korea and the Philippines, our guarantees to Taiwan and Eastern Europe are all rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. (Interesting noun, incidentally.) So he is saying that is all now irrelevant. What does he think our allies are going to think who hear this?"

That's the key--I don't think either he or his advisers thought it through that far.

POLL WATCH:
Important--Obama may be losing the support of independents:
"Independents gave Obama the White House last year with a vote for pragmatic competence. They have been repaid with partisanship and dithering. And unlike liberals who Obama has quickly re-energized after their summer doldrums, independents are devilishly hard to win back once they lose faith. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the Rolls-Royce of public surveys, showed that for the first time, independents disapproved of the president's performance, 46 percent to 41 percent....More shocking is that independent voters now favor a Republican-controlled Congress by a four-point margin and would overwhelmingly like to see their own member of the House replaced."
The 2010 elections are only 58 weeks away...