Sunday

Great day here in the QCA. The last week of Summer?

I seriously considered picking up the NYT this morning to capture the full experience of a SB's Sunday morning, but I hedged my action first by reading a couple of their on-line pieces, and thus decided to save my $5.

Obama's selection of Joe Biden as his running mate was fairly predictable. It gives the ticket some strength in areas where the nominee may be lacking, and it brings in an unhesitating attack dog to back up a candidate who likes to stay above the fray. This selection may also be the linkage needed to bring the Clinton branch of the party back into the fold. Interestingly, you also add a career politician, a classic Washington insider, to the Candidacy of Change.

In politics, ultimately, everything is about getting elected. And in the current environment, for virtually all Democrats, the battle cry is, "Anybody but the Bushies!" That unifying sentiment should be enough to win in November.

I mean, how many houses do you own? Really.

Switching gears...

One story from the Olympics that I have followed now for several weeks is the case of Becky Hammon, a South Dakota native who played for the Russian women's basketball team. There are many cases of curious connections of athletes to the countries that they represent in the Games, but no other situations have engendered the patriotism debate like this one. The Internet is filled with articles on this item. Just do a Google search and you'll get all the details.

This is the case of a good player with no collegiate or pro pedigree like most of the members of the US National team. She's not even asked to tryout for the team. So when she takes her game to Russia, for $2 large, and they offer her a spot on their Olympic team, all of a sudden she's Benedict Arnold. And when the US beats Russia in a semi-final game, several US players go out of their way to further paint Hammon in a bad light. Including star Lisa Leslie who won't even slap hands or acknowledge Hammon in the post-game line-up. What a crock.

The Hammon story has a reasonably happy ending: the Russians won the third place game, so she goes home with a bronze medal. Good for her.

And speaking of Nationalism, patriotism, and the Olympics, if this is a celebration of athletics in the world community, why do we go through the ritual of a national anthem for each medal ceremony?

The late night talk shows have been in hiatus or reruns during the Olympics. Do they get two more weeks of vacation for the conventions? For NBC which spent buckets of money for the broadcast rights to the Games, showing table tennis rather than Leno is probably justified. On the other hand, the bean-counters at CBS probably did the math and determined that the the marginal benefit of new material in the face of Olympics coverage didn't justify the production costs. Is that reality TV or what? And for the financial analyst in the crowd, is it a case of micro or macro econ?

Is Bob Costas the new Dick Clark of anti-aging fame?

From here, I'm headed to Lowe's to buy a dehumidifier for my basement. I think I've got so much mold down there that full correction may not be possible. It wasn't so bad until this Summer. I'm wondering about the incubation/gestation/reproduction period/cycle of common household mold. Actually, not really.

So hope everyone has a great day. Thanks for reading.

And lest anyone forget, it was originally my bed.

BCOT