Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Presidenting

As we turn into the homestretch of the race to Election Day 2008, things are looking bad for the Republicans.  After two presidential “debates” and another between the vice presidential candidates, state after state is bluer than it was yesterday.  And yesterday was bluer than the day before.

Whether you follow Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight or Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com, or local number cruncher Darryl Holman of Hominid Views, it’s looking good for the good guys.

Many states won by Dubya is 2004 (some of them quite comfortably) are now nicely in the Obama column.  Iowa has been bright blue all year, and New Mexico solidly Democratic for months.  We’ve been seeing Obama in the lead for the last couple of weeks in Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina.  And Nevada, Missouri, and West Virginia seem to be joining the fun as well.  Even a rock-ribbed Republican bastion like Indiana may be within range!

With the disastrous choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, with his horrendous performance in last night’s “town hall” debate—supposedly his strongest format—and with a gutter campaign of negative attacks, Senator McCain is finding that his erratic gambles are falling flat at every turn.  He’s long been known as a coarse and impetuous man, prone to sudden decisions without much forethought.  As I understand it, he’s a high roller at the craps tables in Las Vegas (though he doesn’t report gambling winnings or losses on his tax returns).

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign continues to operate at a high level of competence and intelligence.  One metaphor is that they’re playing chess while the Republicans are playing checkers (though it’s looking more and more like Go Fish or even 52 Pickup these days).  The contrast between the two campaigns is ever more visible, ever more definitive.

In honor of the current state of the McCain candidacy and the down-home folksy Joe Sixpack g-dropping diction of his unqualified running mate, I’ve taken the liberty of slightly adjusting their campaign logo for them.  I hope you find it at least slightly amusing.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Still rolling!

Phils win!  Phils win!  Phils win!

Thanks to the big stick of Pat the Bat and surprising effective mound work by midseason acquisition Joe Blanton, Philadelphia beat the Milwaukee Brewers this afternoon by a score of 6 - 2, thereby winning their National League Division Series, three games to one.

Their next game will be at home on Thursday, against Los Angeles.  The Dodgers swept Chicago, ensuring that those futile lovable, cuddly Cubbies will go yet another season without a World Series appearance (this makes it 63 straight years) and that they’ll begin a second century since they last won the Series.

I know that Linkmeister has a strong rooting interest in the Dodgers, and suspect he’ll be commenting here soon.  I’m looking for the Phils to avenge the awful NLCS events of 1977 and 1978, particularly the top of the 9th of Game 3 in 1977 (emphasis in original):

DODGERS 9TH: Baker grounded out (third to first); Monday grounded out (second to first); DAVALILLO BATTED FOR YEAGER; On a bunt Davalillo singled to second; MOTA BATTED FOR RAUTZHAN; Mota doubled to left [Davalillo scored (error by Sizemore; assist by Luzinski), Mota to third]; Lopes singled to third [Mota scored]; ground ball off turf-seam hit Schmidt in knee and caromed to Bowa who apparently threw to 1B in time; Froemming said safe; Lopes was picked off first but was safe on an error by Garber [Lopes to second]; Russell singled to center [Lopes scored (unearned)]; Smith grounded out (pitcher to first); 3 R (2 ER), 4 H, 2 E, 1 LOB.  Dodgers 6, Phillies 5.

Neither the strange Schmidt-Bowa play—and yes, the throw did beat Davey Lopes to the bag—nor the botched pickoff was the worst event of that inning.  No, it was that “double” off the bat of Manny Mota.  All season long, manager Danny Ozark had replaced Greg Luzinski in left field with defensive specialist Jerry Martin when the Phils led in the late innings.  Inexplicably, The Bull was still on the field with the good guys leading 5-3, two outs, and nobody on base.  After Vic Davalillo’s bunt single, Mota hit a deep flyball to left.  Martin would have been standing at the wall to make the game-ending catch, but the slow Luzinski was still on the move as he reached for it, banged into the fence, and dropped the ball.  Calling it a double was extremely charitable to Luzinski (it was clearly an error, though whether to charge it to Luzinski or Danny Ozark remains unsettled), but the play was extremely painful to all of us phans.

Beating the Dodgers in the 1983 NLCS partially made up for 1977 and 1978, but it isn’t enough.  They need to be defeated again, here in 2008.

Let’s go, Phillies!

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Red pinstripes on a roll

Readers of this blog are well aware that I am a lifelong phan of the Philadelphia Phillies.  So too is Google (aware, that is, not a phan).  An appreciable number of the pathetically low number of hits I receive come from searches for the Phillies logo, which I placed within a posting from almost exactly a year ago.

I wrote that post on the occasion of the Phils coming from way behind the New York Mets to win the National League East championship.  Well, lo and behold, this year they’ve come from not quite so far behind the Mets to take the NL East again!  It’s their first back-to-back postseason appearances since 1980-1981, and the second of the appearances back then occurred only because of the odd arrangements resulting from that year’s lengthy labor dispute.  The Phils were in first place when the strike started on June 10, but went under .500 and came in third in the second half of the season.  MLB chose to have the artificial “first half” and “second half” leaders play off to determine the division champs, and the Phils lost to Montreal in that “division series”.

The last time the Phillies won consecutive division championships was 1977-1978, the second and third consecutive titles for that great Schmidt-Carlton-Luzinski club.

Even before last year’s celebratory post, I’d written fairly long pieces about the team I’ve been following for over half a century, both here and on DailyKos.  As those essays indicate, my team hasn’t exactly been a raging success over the decades.  They are, I’m all but certain, the losing-est team in history.  Not just baseball history ... I’m talking about every sport, every country, every continent.

As I write, the Phils have already advanced far beyond last year’s accomplishments.  Not that it would have taken much—last season ended abruptly with a quick NLDS sweep by the eventual World Series-losing Colorado Rockies.  Going into today’s game, the Phils hold a 2-0 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers in one of this season’s NLDS matchups.  Today, the ageless Jamie Moyer, who turns 46 next month, will try to win the series for the Phils!

Interestingly, all four of the Division Series currently stand at 2-0.  Like the Phils, the came-out-of-nowhere Tampa Bay Rays won their pair at home, against the wildcard Minnesota Twins.  In the other two series, however, each league’s winning team was beaten twice at home.  Both the Los Angeles Angels and the Chicago Cubs now face do-or-die contests on the road, at Boston and Los Angeles (the Dodgers, that is), respectively.

The Cubbies, as everyone knows, had high hopes for their first World Series win in a full century.  Or, at the very least, their first WS appearance since 1945 (that’s 63 years, if you’re counting).  Doesn’t look like they’re going to get off either of those schneids, does it?  Which is fine by me; I like the Cubbies “cuddly” rather than formidable.

Though, as noted earlier, the Phillies have lost far more games than any other team, their postseason record—at least, for as long as I’ve been around—hasn’t been nearly as bad as that of the Cubs.  The Cubs, after all, are 0-for-my-lifetime in World Series appearances.  While hardly an earthshaking record compared to that of the damnYankees or Red Sox or Dodgers or Cardinals, the Phils have been in the Series four times since I was born.  Now, one of those appearances shouldn’t really count, since it began approximately 8.5 days after my birth.  I was alive for the Whiz Kids, but not particularly aware of them as a neonate.  I was certainly attentive, however, in 1980 (from afar, as I was out of the country at the time), 1983, and 1993.  I even had the privilege of attending a World Series game in 1983 ... alas, the Phillies lost.

Will 2008 be another World Series adventure for the guys in red pinstripes?  I sure hope so.  But as a phan, I certainly don’t expect it.  I’ve learned not to expect much from my team.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Banking after WaMu

The latest domino to fall in the continuing and ever-surprising Wall Street subprime fubar, as I’m sure everyone has heard by now, is WaMu (née Washington Mutual).  As a customer of the bank—checking and ATM card only—I am saddened by this turn of events.  While its recent corporate (mis)direction, and ultimately the reason for its demise, had been an attempt to mimic the megabanks like Citigroup, Bank of America, and the like, WaMu’s original mission was that of a community bank serving the largest town in the newly-minted 42nd state.

That history is, to no small degree, the reason I chose to bank at WaMu when I moved here in 2001.  I saw it as an integral component of Seattle, as a valuable piece of the fabric of the place.  That its original 1889 name was “Washington National Building Loan and Investment Association” resonated with me, as though WaMu was something of a grown-up, real-life Bailey Building & Loan Association. 

What I didn’t know at the time was that its birth, like its death, took place on my birthday.

Although WaMu was already trying to remake itself as a nationwide conglomerate in 2001, its presence in Seattle and its place in the regional consciousness was still very much what it had always been.  I never had any complaints about my experience as a WaMu customer.  But WaMu has now been consumed by another of the giants.  Just 24 hours after the deed was done, the WaMu website already prominently displays a Welcome to JPMorgan Chase link.  For the moment, they say, nothing’s changing.  Same account number, same debit card, same checks.  But it won’t stay that way:

Soon

• You’ll be able to use over 9,300 Chase ATMs fee-free - jointly, that’s 14,000 ATMs for your banking convenience!

In the future

• You’ll begin to see the Chase name on your statements, online, and on your credit cards as they reissue.
• Your branch will be re-named Chase and you’ll be re-issued new debit cards with the Chase name. Until then, bank as you do today.
• As our systems merge, you’ll be able to use any of the Chase branches nationwide. This won’t take place this year, and we’ll let you know well in advance of any changes.

OK, I’m happy to see that they’ll send out warnings beforehand.  But I don’t think they’ll really have to be concerned about me, because I intend to move my checking account to another institution.  The only remaining question is where.

Given the choice, I’ll always prefer to go with a local, community-oriented organization rather than a national conglomerate.  In my previous home, I banked at the Bank of New Hampshire (which, alas, has since been swallowed up by something called TD Banknorth).  And before that was perhaps my favorite bank of all—Butler County PA’s locally-owned, independent Mars National Bank.  How could I resist an institution with a name like that?  Especially after seeing its motto ... Service Out of This World!

As banks merge and merge and merge, though, it’s getting harder to find an appropriate landing zone.  Now that WaMu is gone, the Seattle banking fraternity appears to consist solely of behemoths (B of A, Wells Fargo, Key Bank, U.S. Bank, and now JPMorgan Chase) and tiny shops.  There are several reasonably large banks in the environs, but they’re mostly in surrounding counties rather than King, and might have one office in the city.  The megabank group is out of the question, for reasons already mentioned.  But I want to have at least a modicum of available choices in surcharge-free ATMs, to have at least a few branches nearby where I can deposit paper checks ... that pretty much eliminates the other Seattle banks.  What’s a fella to do?

The solution will probably end up being a credit union.  I don’t really care about the infinitesimal interest they pay on some checking accounts, particularly since I generally don’t keep much money in my checking account.  As I begin researching them, however, I find that credit unions have developed regional, even national, networks.  If I’m reading the information correctly, in fact, with a credit union debit card one can withdraw no-surcharge cash from networked credit union ATMs nationwide, perhaps in Canada as well.

It used to be that you had to possess some attribute—a job, trade union membership, etc.—that qualified you to be a credit union member.  Those restrictions have largely disappeared.  Anyone living in Washington is eligible to join BECU (the B and E used to mean “Boeing Employees"), though WSECU still appears to require you to have some sort of association with a Washington city, county, state, higher education, or public school employee.  Then again, as a Harborview employee receiving paychecks from the University of Washington, I do qualify for WSECU.  Those are just two of the many credit unions in the area.

It’ll be a hassle to change all of my auto-pay setups to new routing numbers, but so it goes.  It looks like I’d have that problem even if I didn’t choose to change to a new bank.  After all, my bank has already chosen to change without me.

Friday, August 29, 2008

McCain's Veep performs

From Alaska, the Last Frontier, we hear a campaign song (or is it Alaska’s state song?) by John McCain’s chosen running mate:

[h/t to Goldy]

I have to wonder, though—how is McCain going to explain his way around the constitutional prohibition on a foreign-born (to say nothing of foreign-national) Vice President?

Oh, wait a minute… McCain introduced Sarah Palin, not Michael!?!

Never mind…
<⁄emilylitella>

Seriously, this selection completely invalidates, and totally puts the lie to, McCain’s “he’s inexperienced” argument against Obama.  Compared to Sarah Palin, who was the part-time mayor of a village of 5400 two years ago, Barack Obama might as well be Al Gore or Bill Richardson.  Sure, this is only the running mate, but McCain turned 72 today and has had melanoma surgery.  If there’s any presidential candidate for whom “a heartbeat away” applies, it’s the oldest person ever to be a major party nominee for Chief Executive.