The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

O, thou Cub, thou cruel band

At the first Cubs game I went to the season, the very first pitch wound up on Waveland Avenue. The Brewers won that game 8-2, and we Cubs fans figured that was a foretaste of the entire season.

Well, the Brewers lost last night, and the Cubs' magic number fell to 1 (against the Brewers). Except that yesterday, the Cubs hosted St. Louis, who got a grand slam in the 1st which pretty much set the stage for the game. Final scoreboard:

Let's look at that close-up:

Well, it's likely they'll clinch the division today. They can't possibly lose two in a row against St. Louis, can they?

Morford on McCain's better half

Mark Morford thinks she-who-will-no-longer-be-named-on-this-blog-because-she's-not-running-for-President is per se an insult to women's rights, and I have to agree:

[Thinking women] say: You've got to be kidding me. They say: This is what we get? This could be our historic role model? Two hundred years (OK, more like 2000) of struggle, only to have this nasty caricature of femininity try to hijack and mock and undermine it all?

...

WTF? Could it be true? Are cadres of formerly Obama-leaning white women really so enchanted by [her] gender and motherhood status that they openly ignore the fact that she basically wants to shove women's rights back about five decades? Can it be so simple, crude, sad?

But again, let us all remember, her purpose is to distract voters from the inconvenient fact that McCain is long past his "sell-by" date, and should under no circumstances be allowed anywhere near the nuclear launch codes, just in case he mistakes another NATO leader for Che Guevara.

Cubs beat Brewers in 12; Magic number now 2

'Nuff said. That it went to extra innings disturbs me only a little. I'll be at the game against St. Louis tomorrow afternoon, but I won't see them clinch; the earliest that can come is at the end of Milwaukee's game at Cincinnati tomorrow night.

Also, the 2009 schedules are up. The Cubs open in Houston on April 6th. No word yet on when tickets go on sale.

Update: The Trib has the story of today's game.

Long solo flight

With my days for doing this sort of thing dwindling rapidly, I took advantage of the perfect weather this morning to do a cross-country solo flight: Chicago Executive, Madison, Kenosha, back home. And, of course, I have a Google Earth file, in which you can see that I overshot the turn to final on my last landing, which mars an otherwise good track. It's not apparent from the track, though, that winds aloft were around 30 kts, which accounts for the course corrections on the long legs.

Fundamentally sound Hoover

Via Krugman, a good description of how the Bush-McCain economic program resemples the Coolidge-Hoover program that caused the Great Depression:

The real cause [of the Depression] was the collapse of the banking system, which followed the crash in part because Hoover believed strong fundamentals would protect the economy from disaster.

For the likes of Hoover and McCain, asserting the strength of fundamentals is shorthand for saying that business leaders, with maybe a little cheerleading, can sort out the crisis and that Congress should not try to regulate their behavior. It's too soon to know if McCain will be proved right (I doubt it), but Hoover certainly turned out to be wrong.

At the time, Sen. Robert Wagner, a New York Democrat, characterized Hoover's response to the crisis as "the time-worn Republican policy: to do nothing and when the pressure becomes irresistible to do as little as possible." In fairness, Hoover didn't quite "do nothing," but he followed a script that may sound familiar to students of the modern Republican Party.

Why does the name "Santayana" keep popping up in my head? (Third quote from the bottom, perhaps?)

Cubs beat Brewers

And the magic number drops by two. Though, I gotta say, the top of the 9th was nerve-wracking—but Wood pulled through, finishing the game with a strikeout.

Philadelphia has clinched the NL East, so now it's beween New York and Milwaukee for the wild card, assuming the Cubs don't choke.

Oh, and the Cubs win has eliminated St. Louis.