Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Mmm... fish

By Brendan Loy

Poor Pug. It must be nerve-wracking, constantly dealing with this:

Thompson apparently dominating debate

By Brendan Loy

There's a Republican debate going on right now in South Carolina. I'm not watching it, but John Podhoretz says that Fred Thompson is "not only winning this debate, he is giving the most commanding debate performance we've seen from any candidate in either party since the beginning of this endless primary process."

At NRO's The Corner, Rich Lowry says Thompson has been "funny, pointed, substantive, and conservative." Kathryn Jean Lopez writes that his performance exemplifies "why he wears well with conservatives even after what seems like a lackluster campaign — he sounds like one of us. He spontaneously sounds conservative. Because it's a natural element for him."

But it isn't just conservatives who are impressed; so is the New York Times blog:

Mr. Thompson rocks tonight. Asked about the recent confrontation between United States warships and Iranian speedboats, he suggests casually that if Iran’s Revolutionary Guard becomes more hostile, the Iranians will see those virgins they’ve been looking for.

Heh. And earlier, "Mr. Thompson draws the biggest applause of the night so far with his litany of accusations against Mr. Huckabee, including the charge that he is basically a Democrat."

Jonah Goldberg says, "I think if he'd been this guy from the beginning, he'd be at the top of the pack." He wonders if Fred will get a bounce from his performance tonight. And a reader thinks it could be a double-bounce: "I don't know anyone who doesn't like Fred, but they all support someone else because they don't think he can win. If he gets a small bounce in the polls after tonight's performance, it could very well translate into a large bounce once it looks like he has a chance."

Peter Robinson seems to agree: "in my judgment, Thompson need only sustain this performance for a couple of days before votes, and money, start moving in his direction." In tonight's debate, Robinson adds, "the one consistent and authentic conservative in this race made himself the man to watch. When Fred roars, he roars."

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Ned Lamont has endorsed Obama. I'll try not to hold it against you, Barack. ;)

By the way, about that Kerry endorsement I mentioned earlier: NRO's Andrew Cline questions the timing.

Oh, and Dennis Kucinich is demanding a recount in New Hampshire.

UPDATE: Via Hot Air, Thompson on Huckabee:

Ouch.

#4 Wazzu visits USC tonight

By Brendan Loy

After a promising non-conference start featuring two close losses to Top 5 teams, followed by a disappointing 0-2 road trip to open the Pac-10 season, USC (9-5) hosts #4-ranked Washington State (13-0) tonight at 11:00 PM EST at the Galen Center. Wazzu is one of Division I's five remaining unbeatens, along with #1 North Carolina, #2 Memphis, #3 Kansas and #13 Vanderbilt. (USC's aforementioned "close losses" were against Memphis and Kansas.)

An undefeated team went down yesterday on the road when Tennessee beat Ole Miss in both teams' SEC openers. Can USC channel the Vols and knock off the Cougars tonight? It would certainly be nice to avoid an 0-3 start in the brutal Pac-10. Fight on!

UPDATE: Wazzu won easily, 73-58. Up next for the Cougars, a huge showdown at Pauley Pavilion against #5 UCLA. USC, meanwhile, hosts Washington on Saturday, in what is pretty close to being a "must-win" game, despite how early in the season it is. You don't want to fall to 0-4 in conference -- with losses to two of the weaker Pac-10 teams, Cal and UW -- if you fancy yourself an NCAA contender.

Obama gets Kerry's endorsement; now he needs Edwards

By Brendan Loy

Like Al Gore before him, John Kerry today snubbed his former vice presidential runningmate and endorsed someone else for the presidency -- namely, Barack Obama.

What Obama really needs, though, is an endorsement from the man Kerry just snubbed, John Edwards. The question is how to get it. And I fear the answer might be: offer him the vice presidency.

I say "fear" because, personally, I don't want to see an Obama-Edwards ticket. First off, I don't like the new, angry, virulently anti-business John Edwards 2.0 that has emerged this election season -- and I don't think general-election voters will, either, once they get to know him. (Edwards's strong showing in national general-election polls is based mostly on people's lingering impressions from 2004, just as McCain's strong showing is based mostly on lingering impressions from 2000 and Giuliani's strong showing is based mostly on memories of 9/11. Things can and will change once voters actually start paying more attention to this election, which should happen around, oh, Labor Day.)

Second and more importantly, I firmly believe that Obama needs to pick someone older and more experienced, with "gravitas" and foreign-policy experience... someone like Joe Biden, for instance. A "message of change" is all well and good, but a lot can -- ahem -- change between now and November, like a terrorist attack or major developments in the Middle East, and a duo as inexperienced as Obama-Edwards would be extremely vulnerable to a major public-opinion shift in such an event, especially if the Republican nominee is McCain or Giuliani.

But Obama can't win the general election unless he wins the nomination, and it's becoming increasingly clear that Edwards is a major obstacle to that goal. At some point -- and we're not there yet -- it may behoove Obama to do whatever it takes to get Edwards out of the race, even if that means offering him the #2 spot and dealing later with the potential negative ramifications of that decision.

Obama lost to Clinton by 3 percentage points in New Hampshire, with Edwards drawing 17 percent. Does anyone doubt that, if the hard-core liberals who comprise Edwards's base had to choose between Obama and Hillary, the vast majority of them would pick Obama? He may represent a kinder and gentler sort of change than the mad-as-hell Edwards, but he's still a genuine "change" candidate, whereas Hillary remains the "establishment" no matter what her slogan of the moment says. Oh yeah, and she's despised for her triangulation on Iraq by those who believe the war is the defining issue of our time. It's an oversimplification to say that Obama and Edwards are splitting the anti-Hillary vote, but as a practical matter, that's basically what it boils down to. I bet Edwards's 17 percent would have broken down something like 10-4 for Obama if Johnny Boy were out (with 3 percent either for Kucinich or not voting).*

The bottom line is this: Obama needs Edwards out before Super Duper Tuesday. Otherwise, Hillary could sweep back into "inevitable frontrunner" status with a whole bunch of 40-percent pluralities on February 5, and suddenly people would start pressuring both Obama and Edwards to drop out, even though 60 percent of the party doesn't want to nominate Hillary (and even though the Dems' ban on winner-take-all delegate allocation makes it tougher to rack up a majority by getting 40 percent everywhere).

So, how does Obama convince Edwards to step aside? Ideally, he won't have to: if Edwards finishes third in both union-heavy Nevada and southern-fried South Carolina, you'd have to think he might drop out on his own. But what if, say, he finishes second to Obama in Nevada, and second to Hillary in his birth state of South Carolina, with Obama a close third? (Hillary shouldn't win S.C., but thanks again to the vote-splitting problem, she could.) In such a scenario, Edwards, despite losing the only state he won in 2004, could easily convince himself he's still in the first tier of contenders, and that he ought to make a stand on Super Duper Tuesday.

Perhaps, though, he could be made to see reason in such an event -- if the price were right. What if Obama came to him, the day after South Carolina (two days before Florida and nine days before February 5), and said: "Look, we both want change, but if we both stay in the race, Hillary's going to win. One of us needs to drop out before it's too late. You beat me in your home state, but I'm doing better than you nationally. If you withdraw from the race, I will make you my vice presidential runningmate, and we'll campaign together as a team, fighting for change."

Would Obama make such an offer? Would Edwards accept it? I don't know. (For what it's worth, Edwards will be 63 years old in 2016.) But imagine the political power of such a development. Just when it looked like Hillary was building up a major head of steam heading into Super Duper Tuesday (winning on Obama/Edwards turf in South Carolina, leading in the polls in Florida), the Boyz 4 Change ticket emerges, holding a joint campaign rally on Florida's Eve -- or maybe it would be better to wait until, say, February 2 or 3, after delegate-less Florida and right before Super Duper Tuesday -- to announce that Edwards is dropping out and will be Obama's runningmate, and that together they will change America. Hillary wouldn't know what hit her. And Obama would be your 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. Boom. Case closed.

Like I said, I don't actually like the idea I'm proposing, because I don't think Obama-Edwards is a good ticket for the general election, either strategically or in terms of earning my vote. But if things develop just so in the next few weeks, I can see this becoming a very attractive -- perhaps even necessary -- possibility for Obama to at least pursue.

It would be better, of course, if he could coax Edwards out of the race with a lesser offer (Attorney General? Secretary of Something-or-Other?), and maybe if Johnny Boy is looking weak enough, that would work. But if Edwards is still viable enough to drive a hard bargain, it might have to be the veep spot that Obama offers him. And if Hillary is still winning 40% pluralities, Obama might have to do it.

*As an aside, did any of the exit-pollsters ask the question: "Who's your second choice?" It's not on CNN's exit-poll page. It should be!

The iPhone's untold story

By Brendan Loy

Wired has a lengthy, fascinating article about the "untold story" of how the iPhone came to be, and how it has already changed the wireless industry. Well worth a read. Excerpt:

For those working on the iPhone, the next three months would be the most stressful of their careers. Screaming matches broke out routinely in the hallways. Engineers, frazzled from all-night coding sessions, quit, only to rejoin days later after catching up on their sleep. A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her.

But by the end of the push, just weeks before Macworld, Jobs had a prototype to show to the suits at AT&T. In mid-December 2006, he met wireless boss Stan Sigman at a suite in the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas. He showed off the iPhone's brilliant screen, its powerful Web browser, its engaging user interface. Sigman, a taciturn Texan steeped in the conservative engineering traditions that permeate America's big phone companies, was uncharacteristically effusive, calling the iPhone "the best device I have ever seen."

But the money quote is the final paragraph:

It may appear that the carriers' nightmares have been realized, that the iPhone has given all the power to consumers, developers, and manufacturers, while turning wireless networks into dumb pipes. But by fostering more innovation, carriers' networks could get more valuable, not less. Consumers will spend more time on devices, and thus on networks, racking up bigger bills and generating more revenue for everyone. According to Paul Roth, AT&T's president of marketing, the carrier is exploring new products and services — like mobile banking — that take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. "We're thinking about the market differently," Roth says. In other words, the very development that wireless carriers feared for so long may prove to be exactly what they need. It took Steve Jobs to show them that.

Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: David K.)

GOP chaos theory

By Brendan Loy

Some good analysis of the Republican race from Larry Sabato:

Just as in 2000, McCain will face tough challenges in the South and among conservatives and strong Republican party identifiers as he moves beyond New Hampshire and Michigan (where he has to be rated the early "momentum" favorite against native son Romney). The key question is this: Can McCain manage to carry states he lost in 2000 by becoming as much of a darling in his own party as he is among Independents and the news media? If so, McCain could emerge as the nominee this time around. Yet McCain is despised by various wings of the GOP for his pro-immigration, anti-Bush tax cut, and pro-campaign finance reform stands. McCain must win over some of these voters, mainly using the electability argument--"I'm the one who can defeat Clinton or Obama in November, and the other Republican contenders cannot." If McCain fails to make progress with these key target groups, either his hopes for the GOP nomination will be dashed or a conservative independent candidate may arise to take a critical several percent of the general election vote from GOP nominee McCain in November. Of course, Hillary Clinton will remain the Republican nominee's best friend, assuming she's the Democratic standard-bearer. Having responsibility for electing Hillary may deter some possible independent conservatives.

South Carolina on January 19th looms as a critical test for McCain versus Huckabee, and possibly Romney, if he's still in the race, and Fred Thompson, who apparently is still running after his 1 percent showing in New Hampshire--no, that number was not a misprint. Rudy Giuliani's strategy of waiting until Florida on January 29th to make his stand has appeared improbable for some time. Nonetheless, even Rudy's gambit has a chance of working under the right circumstances. Giuliani has always hoped for chaos in the Republican field, with different candidates winning different contests in January, and chaos could be descending on schedule.

Chaos could also potentially help Fred Thompson, which is why, contra Marty, he ought not even consider dropping out of the race at this point, his non-misprint New Hampshire disaster notwithstanding. Even if he can't win at the polls, Thompson -- who, alone among the Republican contenders, isn't viscerally hated by a sizable portion of the Republican electorate -- could be a plausible "savior" candidate in the event of a hopelessly deadlocked convention.* Though perhaps not as plausible as Brian's suggestion, Haley Barbour.

*Of course, in theory, Thompson could drop out of the race and still step in as a savior later on. But it'll be easier to emerge at the convention if he at least has some delegates to start with.

Mildly amusing politics/Star Wars thingy

By Jay Johnson

I looked at this once and though it was kinda funny.

I looked at it again and thought, ehh, this is stupid, but I've already started the blog post.

I report, you decide. Or don't. It's really OK either way.

You, too, can apply to be Hawaii's coach

By Brendan Loy

Heh: In the wake of June Jones's departure as Hawaii's head football coach, state-employee union rules have forced the university to post the job on the Internets, available for anyone to apply. "By mutual agreement with the Hawai'i Government Employees Association, the position must be advertised for at least five working days." It was posted on Tuesday, so you have until at least Saturday to apply:

Head Football Coach, position number 80110, UHM Athletics, (Manoa), Duties: Under administrative direction, Coach is responsible for planning, administering, and evaluating the overall operation of the intercollegiate football program to include, but not limited to, academic achievement of student-athletes, recruitment of qualified prospects, supervision of assistant coaches and other staff assigned to the program, compliance, program management (eligibility, scheduling, travel, budget, equipment), and student-athlete welfare. The head coach assumes full responsibility for ensuring that team performance is competitive in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) with the goal of achieving post-season competition.

And so on, and so forth. Applicants must submit a cover letter, a resume, three references, and UH Form 64. (God bless bureaucracy.) "Review of applications will begin on Jan-15-2008 and will continue until the position is filled." They've received 30 applications so far -- including, apparently, one from former Michigan State coach John L. Smith.

This is kind of ironic, at least in the Alanis Morrisette sense, considering that Smith's Spartans lost 41-38 at Hawaii in 2004, then spent the better part of 2006 trying to weasel their way out of a contract to play there again in 2007. They finally succeeded -- though not until after Coach Slappy had already been fired -- paying $250,000 for the right to not play Hawaii.

The scheduling cowardice of Smith & co. helped doom Hawaii to an abysmal SOS rating, while allowing Michigan State (under new coach Mark Dantonio) to go 4-0 in its non-conference slate against cupcakes UAB, Bowling Green, Pitt and Notre Dame. (Okay, so those last two might not have been cupcakes when they were scheduled, but still...)

And now, Smith wants to go to Hawaii. For good. He's not shy about it, either, telling a reporter: "With 18 years of collegiate head coaching experience and over 130 wins, I would hope that would qualify me as a candidate to be the next head coach at the University of Hawaii."

"And if they don't hire me, I'll slap myself," he added.

Okay, maybe he didn't actually say that last part. But oh, John L. Smith, how I've missed you.

Hawaii, please, please, make this happen. It'll be good for college football. Check that: great for college football. John L. Smith doing crazy s**t while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a lei = COMEDY GOLD.

(Hat tip: EDSBS.)

In other coaching news, it seems a Washington booster offered the school $100,000 to fire Ty Willingham.

News flash: N.H. primary wasn't rigged

By Brendan Loy

A Daily Kos diarist, in a post on the site's homepage, thoroughly debunks the notion that the reason Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire is because Diebold hacked the election. (Yes, this theory has gained enough currency among the nutroots that it needed to be debunked.)