I feel your Palin

Frankly, not sure I have anything to say about today's Election 08 topic du jour that you haven't thought for yourself. But for starters: WTF?

First two thoughts that came to mind:

1) Is this the kind of thing that's going to seal the deal for the Hillary's-women-supporters-who-were-considering-McCain-out-of-spite voting bloc to actually go Republican in November? Sure seems like that's what good-time Johnny was thinking. Either that, or he can check off "Lock up up Alaska's hotly contested three electoral votes" on his Road to the White House checklist.

2) I'm sure Sarah Palin is impressive in her own right and all, but I just circled October 2 on my imaginary calendar. (I guess it was also an imaginary circle.) Biden, who's been in the Senate for 36 years, versus Palin, who for the last 36 years has been... hm... older than 8 years old, I guess. It oughta be a barn-burner on the order of, hmm... well, sorta like this.

Here I stand / head in hand

I've had about an assful of people who are Hillary supporters who say they're going to vote for McCain out of spite. If they legitimately think McCain is a better choice than Obama, fine. To each her own. But it's like they think they're in a reality TV show, and this is their chance to reward Spencer for breaking up with Heidi even though they hate Spencer. I don't even know who those people are, but ... aggghhh ... the point is that these misguided morons seem to be forgetting that they're choosing the person who's going to lead the country for the next four years, but they're content to get their jollies playing mind games with people they don't actually know.

But let's move on. Two other quick thoughts on political stuff:

1) Besides those McCain spite-voters, does anyone have a weaker grasp of reality right now than Kwame Kilpatrick? There's no way this guy can keep his job as mayor of Rock City (and if I ever held that job, you can be sure that's what my business card would say), but he keeps dragging out his long farewell, and every new chapter in this weird saga has to be like a bad dream for everyone in Detroit and, well, just everyone.

It seems like one of those strange episodes people will look back on in 10 years and think to themselves, "Christ, that really happened?"

(Similar situation: Is it actually possible that voters in our nation's capital intentionally re-elected a mayor who had recently been convicted for doing cocaine with underage girls?)

At this point, I'd bet the average Michigander (I once met him, by the way - nice guy) doesn't even remember what the hell Kilpatrick did to get in trouble in the first place. But ol' Kwame has certainly made an ass of himself in just about every way possible since then.

2) I thought Hillary did a nice job with her speech at the DNC last night. I even thought her "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits" line was a cute touch - poking fun at herself with a 2008 pop-culture reference - even though it made my beautiful wife groan.

But there was one line that left me a little confused. While she was talking about the regular/sick/uninsured folks she met along the campaign trail (or, maybe, didn't actually meet, but who's counting?), Hillary described the coulda-been-touching story about meeting a woman with cancer.

And I quote: "I will always remember the single mom who had adopted two kids with autism, didn't have health insurance and discovered she had cancer. But she greeted me with her bald head painted with my name on it and asked me to fight for health care."

And I wonder: Why did this woman greet a presidential candidate with her head, instead of just shaking her hand like everyone else would?

And, apparently, only one idea

Y'know how the slogan for the just-completed Olympic Games (hmph, now what am I going to do from 8 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. every night?) was "One World. One Dream."?

Yeah, well, I'm starting to think that around August 8 or so, some big-cheese Democrat exclaimed during some fancy meeting, "Hey, the Olympics has its own slogan. We should have one, too, for our big convention in Denver!"

And some other Democrat exclaimed back, "Great idea, Hillary."

And then some other Democrat posed the not-so-hypothetical question: "Anyone know a good slogan?"

Whereupon yet another Democrat rolled his eyes. Because he knew where this was headed.

"It's a shame One World One Dream is taken. That would have been suh-weet. Think we can use it anyway?"

"Nah, I don't think so. But... wait! I have an idea. Well, it's a little crazy. How about... well, how about this?"

Dick to Lynne: Sweet! I made the Time magazine list!

... Oh.

... Uh, wait. Never mind.

Lesson learned here: If you're a vice president and you shoot and/or kill someone, whether it's accidental (Dick Cheney) or on purpose (I mean you, Aaron Burr and Richard M. Johnson) - or, now that I think about it, if your first name is Richard and your middle initial is M - you've got a decent chance of being considered one of the worst ever.

Maybe only medium rare

This may look like a sports-related post, but it's really not. Non-sportsies, stay with me on this...

Today's installment of Quotes That Almost Made Sense (a new feature!) comes to us courtesy of Ned Colletti, general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Ned is talking about the Dodgers' acquisition of pitcher Greg Maddux, who also played for the Dodgers for part of the 2006 season. Ned, take it away: "It's very rare that you get the opportunity to add a pitcher like Greg even one time, let alone twice."

Yeah, um, it doesn't seem that rare really, since you've done it twice inside of two years.

This reminds me of one of my favorite sports quotes of all time - again, I submit this is funny even if you don't give a damn about sports. While his team was in the midst of a 28-game losing streak in the 1970s, Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach John McKay was asked what he thought about his team's execution. Good answer: "I'm in favor of it."

Good aim

I feel like I should win something. Just looked at my new cell phone bill and I went exactly one minute over my anytime minutes for last month. One minute. That is incredible accuracy in cell-phone minute usage. Until cell phone companies start counting in 30-second increments, this record will never be broken. Go ahead, try to beat it. You can't. Can't be done.

Unrelated: I'm not sure if this is the ultimate proof that I'm a grammar geek or just shows that anything is funny before you're actually awake in the morning. But just hours ago, KROQ's Kevin and Bean were giving away trips to Las Vegas for listeners who wanted to go to a swingers party. One TF* called up and said that his girlfriend had "never swang" before.

Swang.

Made me laugh so hard I almost had to pull Al Jr.** over to the side of the road until I could recover.

Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing with asterisks today. Probably just a phase.

* turdface
** my car. He's named after Al Sr., my recently retired 1996 Altima. Al Sr. is living on a farm in upstate New York right now and if you don't believe it, then stick it.

Swimfan

Last few things (well, maybe) about Michael Phelps in the Olympics:

1) Was this the best athletic performance you've ever seen? Growing up, I always wondered what it must have been like to watch Spitz do his thing in 1972 - I was just short of a year old, so if I saw it live, I don't recall - and now I don't have to wonder anymore. Feelin' lucky that I got to see the new standard being set. This was one of two sports records I always figured was completely safe. The other? Well, I got to see that one broken, too - in person, no less.

2) He was so focused on his mission that, as he said during a news conference this weekend, he didn't even know what the outside of the swimming venue looked like. I like that. Although he should go take a look - that Water Cube thing is damn cool.

3) The video of his .01 second win over Mike ("Let-me-say-something-stupid-to-fire-up-the-best-swimmer-in-the-world") Cavic was shown ad nauseum over the weekend on NBC, but if you're not sick of seeing it, here's a neat slideshow of still images that shows again how much ground he made up in the last few meters of the race.

4) Wonder what the city of Baltimore is going to name after him, and whether city leaders will do something soon or wait until after London 2012.

5) How about this for the Democratic party ticket: Obama-Phelps '08?

That's probably enough.