Feckless in Florida

I was listening to NPR on the way home from work today and they were discussing the GOP primary in Florida. Skip ahead to 38:10 and listen to the gem comment from one caller.
 

Caller: "...I've always voted Republican. And I'm going to stick with Rick Santorum because I believe he is the one that's got the cleanest slate. He doesn't have all the baggage that Romney has with his IRS issues and that um, Gingrich has with his wife issues. So I think uh, I think it's safe to say that Santorum would have the least ammunition to uh, to go against with Obama. Obama would probably have not much to fire at him. So uh, I am going to go safe and go Santorum."

I mean, let's keep this in perspective, this is just some guy that happened to get his call answered but I really feel that many, many conservatives (to be as least judgmental as possible) share at least one of these sentiments. Let me count the fail:

1. Total allegiance to the republican party.  OK, I give a marginal pass and an "Agree to Disagree" on this.
2. Voting for the least dirtied candidate.  Santorum only seems so safe to this guy because he hasn't drawn any attention from the others.  It's not like he doesn't have any skeletons, which I'll get back to in #4.
3. Complete confusion on the actual issues.  Romney's IRS issues?  If making a ton of money and paying a low (legal) tax rate on it were IRS issues, I'd like to shoulder some of that burden. Come on, Guy!
4. Complete ignorance of the actual issues.  Maybe it's selective memory, illiteracy or something else but Santorum has got some really shady stuff in his past regarding dead babies.  Maybe I am being hypocritical but I really don't care enough to find out exactly what the facts are.
5. Going "safe".  Yawn. And so on.

Gingrich primary win good for the country?

With football in the rearview mirror (save for the Super Bowl, yawn), the recent surge in politics in the news has caught my attention lately. The republican primary has been pretty hilarious to say the least.  A recent news article (thanks to Yahoo!'s The Signal) was especially interesting.  Basically, it was analysis of some data from an information market (links to the wikipedia entry) in which trading indicates that Gingrich's recent success in South Carolina (and throughout the primary) was correlated to an increase in the likelihood of Obama winning the general election.  It kind of tells us something we already know but it's always nice to see some simple data backing up our intuition.  I feel like a fourth seed in the NCAA tournament rooting on the twelve-seed over the five because it gives me a better chance of advancing. To use a sports analogy...

Good Football in Our Great State

It's been a month since I posted last and because I was posting so much on football, I wanted to do a season wrap-up now that the Spartans, Wolverines and Lions are all done playing.  My plan was to post a few links and make a few comments for each team but as I curated some reading material, it became evident that there was a lot more to be said about the Wolverines.  So just a couple links for the good guys and a bunch of links for the bad guys.  Did you think this would be unbiased?

The Lions

This season, my dad started DVR'ing the Lions games.  For me that says it all.  Before 2011 he watched exactly one half of one NFL game per year, the second and third quarters on Thanksgiving.  Just enough to make a few comments about the long-term patheticness of the team.  I saw many people join the Lion bandwagon in a big way on Facebook too... not to criticize either my FB friends or my dad.  I think it says a LOT that so many people still care, at all.

So now that the season is in the books what's next?  Some guy at ESPN says "the Lions have earned themselves big boy treatment".  Fair enough.

The Spartans

Well, it was a great season for the Spartans and their fans.  I won't go too much into it but as ESPN B1G blogger, Adam Rittenberg, points out: keeping their defensive coordinator, Pat Narduzzi, is a good indication that the program is headed where it wants to go.  Agreed.

The Wolverines

You can't argue that the Wolverines didn't have a successful year.  But as DFP columnist Michael Rosenberg points out, it was just one of those years where everything went their way. Rosenberg: For Michigan, an honorable end to lucky season

Not many people outside of Ann Arbor were too high on the Wolverines (and Hokies) selection to the Sugar Bowl.  Rittenberg says that the game diminishes the league's aspirations of being perceived as equal to the SEC.

Some dude from Fox Sports takes it a step further, calling it a fraudulent bowl game.  Another writer from CBS Sports basically says the same thing. Comparing the game to a puppy falling down the stairs.

This is the one that gets me.  All this talk of "Is Michigan Back?".  Granted, much of it is prompted by the media who think it's a great story line. And when asked if they're back, the players have little choice on how to respond... Coach Hoke finds a way to turn it on its ear a bit by saying that "Michigan never left".  But where is it that Michigan Football is back too (or never left, depending on whom you ask)?  Why not acknowledge the hard work and fortuity that lead to a surprisingly successful season and let the winning speak for itself?  It is this sense of pre-destination or responsibility or entitlement to greatness that people outside of the Michigan fold really detest.  But I guess it's also what draws many people to the program... and gets them into games like the Sugar Bowl.