State of the Race

Time to check in on how the Colorado midterm elections are shaping up.

CO 1 - No troubles for Diana DeGette(D). Couldn't even tell you if she has an opponent.

CO 2 - No trouble for that Polis fella. Last time I checked, Republicans couldn't even find a candidate to run in Boulder.

CO 3 - Cook political has kept this race at "Lean Democrat" but I'm not sure why. John Salazar isn't the most popular guy in the world but Scott Tipton and Bob McDonnell haven't generated much buzz or money to the best of my knowledge. I'm sure the public opinion of Ken Salazar isn't helping his brother much.

CO 4 - Cory Gardner finally beat out the also-rans and gets to take out Betsy Markey, who seems to have tons of cash (most of it from outside CO) but not much passionate support. If this seat doesn't go back to the R's, it will be a disappointment. Gardner has a real talent for making mistakes.

CO 5 - Doug Lamborn(R) rolls.

CO 6- Mike Coffman(R) rolls.

CO 7 - Ryan Frazier has all the momentum over McCain carpetbagger Lang Sias. Ed Perlmutter is doing his best not to be noticed nor spend money. Frazier continues to fund raise at a high level. This district has flip flopped between Republicans and Democrats over the years and Perlmutter has done nothing to distinguish himself as being unbeatable. Something to watch as polling gets going after the primaries.

CO REP. SEN. PRIMARY - Ken Buck has opened up a 10 point lead over Jane Norton in the Republican primary. This is amazing considering all the political machinery Norton has in her corner. Good lord she's unpredictable though.

CO DEM SEN PRIMARY - Andrew Romanoff somehow managed to get involved in a White House job scandal and still not be noticed. Why Obama felt the need to bribe this incompetent politician is beyond me. Michael Bennett should get the nomination.

CO SEN - Both Buck and Norton poll ahead of both Dem candidates although Norton is virtually tied. Oddly enough, Romanoff polls better than Bennett despite his pathetic campaign. Doesn't say much for Bennett's chances in November.

CO GOV. - Last poll I saw had McInnis holding a 6-7 point lead for the second consecutive polling period. Clearly the Democratic fervor over Hickenlooper has died down since his record on taxes and job creation have become known. He too has gone into hiding to lessen the exposure.

Democratic Peoples Republic of Gridiron

~the West is the best~

Maybe not the most inspired line Mojo Risin ever came up with but fitting for today. It seems that Nebraska has decided to be an also ran in the Big 10 rather than feign respect in a weaker Big 12 causing Missouri to make an equally stupefying decision to follow them into permanent mediocrity.

Assuming of course, the Hidin' Irish don't make the sensible decision to join the Big 10 as well, then Mizzou gets to find out the exact dimensions of the shaft.

But the real interest here is what to make of Colorado possibly moving to the Pac-10.

At first glance it sounds ridiculous that CU, along with the Texas/OK contingent, could go Pac-10. They have about as much in common with the left coast as mint juleps and gator tossin'. The only real link is that all parties share the never ending cash-lust that seems on fine display in Los Angeles, so maybe they deserve each other.

Given a second examination, the idea of sending the Buffs left might just be a stroke of genius. Outside of football concerns, where CU should be an upgrade over the bottom feeders in the Pac-10, the Pac-10 would also be getting the City of Boulder, in all it's glory.

It's no secret that the Pac-10 is full of crazy liberals (Cal), spoiled students (USC, UCLA) and binge drinking and drug abuse (Arizona, Arizona St.). Well, I've got good news for guys, CU is no slouch in any of those categories. The only reason we haven't had any crazy tree people (Cal) is because everybody in Boulder is a crazy tree person. Poor babies have nobody to protest.

The revelation that the Buffs joining the Pac-10 is simply the reuniting of twins separated at birth, changed my whole perspective on the situation. What the rest of us see as a cash grab by greedy conference presidents is like a POW getting to return home for CU. No more dealing with Nebraska, Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Now they get to lose with dignity in California, Oregon, Washington. Plus, they get to party in Arizona every once in a while. Who wouldn't take that deal?

The Way It Ought To Be

Pac-10 Conference (12 teams, 2-6 team divisions)

Oregon
Oregon St.
Arizona
Arizona St.
USC
Washington
Washington St.
UCLA
Cal
Stanford
San Diego St.
Hawaii

Rocky Mountain Conference (14 teams, 2-7 team divisions)

Boise St.
Utah
BYU
Colorado
Colorado State
Air Force
Wyoming
Nebraska
Kansas
Wisconsin
New Mexico
New Mexico St.
UNLV
Fresno St.

Big Ten (14 team, 2-7 team divisions)

Missouri
Notre Dame
Iowa
Michigan
Penn State
Michigan State
Illinois
Minnesota
Purdue
Indiana
Ohio St.
Northwestern
Cincinnati
Marshall

Red River Conference (12 teams, 2-6 team divisions)

Texas
Texas A&M
TCU
Houston
Oklahoma
Oklahoma St.
Baylor
SMU
UTEP
Texas Tech
Tulsa
Rice

Big South (16 teams, 2-8 team divisions)

Alabama
Florida
Florida St.
Miami
South Florida
Georgia
Georgia Tech
LSU
Auburn
Arkansas
Miss. St.
Ole Miss
South Carolina
Kentucky
Louisville
Vanderbilt

Big East (14 teams, 2-7 team divisions)

Virgina
Virginia Tech.
Clemson
North Carolina
NC St.
Boston College
Syracuse
Pitt
West Virginia
Maryland
Wake Forest
Connecticut
Rutgers
Tennessee

Just Sayin'

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was recently speaking to a group on the state of education in Jersey. Needless to say, it was pretty pathetic. Low test scores, low graduation and burdensome union contracts were topics for discussion. During the speech Christie let it slip that Jersey is currently spending $ 24,000 per student, per year on education. Take one class of 20 students plus one overpaid teacher and you're paying $ 300,000 to turn bright lights into dim bulbs.

It got me thinking though, what kind of education can you get for around 24 K a year?

You could go to:

Rutgers - $ 22,968 per year
Colorado State University - $ 18,022
University of Colorado - $ 25,752
Arizona State University - $ 21,924
University of Massachusetts - $ 20,898

And to think these prices also include room and board. Something tells me the good people of New Jersey are not quite getting the bang for their buck. Maybe they should just send their kids to Rutgers for K-12 as well.

Bud Gets Close

Word has come down from casa de Bud that MLB has decided not to overturn the bad call that cost Galaragga a perfect game last night in Detroit.

While overturning the call and awarding the pitcher a perfect game would have been a noble thing and spared the umpire and pitcher more days of press harassment, it would've been the wrong move.

Statistics are like Halls of Fame, they are historical references to what has happened on the field over the years. As bad as the call was, it was made. Play continued and Galarraga got the 28th out one batter later. To change the ruling would be to pretend that these things never happened which would undermine the whole purpose of statistics.

There is a way to fix it though. Simply change the hit to an error and award the pitcher a 28 out perfect game. This kind of stat manipulation happens all the time regarding hits, why not for this call? Call it an E-0.

The umpire gets relief but not forgiven, the pitcher gets his deserved perfect game and the history books will accurately reflect what actually happened on the field.

A far better option than ignoring the problem or pretending it didn't happen the way it did.

Whew! Glad That's Fixed

Finally, the Securities & Exchange Commission has developed a new strategy to combat massive crashes in stock prices such as the one experienced in May. You may remember this incident vividly as the being the only time a stock crash was blamed on a fat fingered trader who typed in "billion" instead of "million". Having been unable to actually find this obese, dim-witted titan of Wall Street as of yet, the SEC was forced to act on the logical assumption that there was no fatty screwing with the Dow, rather it was an actual, market driven occurrence.

Normal, capitalist minded individuals would look at a massive stock crash and try to examine the reasons how it could have happened. Europe's credit collapse, rampant American debt and sagging credit, the current administration's hostility to all non-crony related forms of capitalism are all plausible theories that spring to mind.

Unfortunately, the United States bureaucracy is not populated by normal, capitalist minded individuals.

The solution devised by the SEC is to monitor stock prices over a floating time frame and if there is a massive devaluation of stock prices, to simply stop trading.

Awesome.

Nothing more to see here folks! No need to figure out why your investment is worth about 1/32 what it was five minutes ago. Big brother stopped trading, don't you feel better now?

You shouldn't. This plan won't work because the underlying problems aren't being addressed. Trading can't be halted forever and as soon as the freeze is lifted, whatever root causes were in play before will be in play again.

Finances are like a river. You can't stop the flow, you can only dam, divert or delay. All those things can do is buy you time. You ultimately have to fix the main problem. If you don't, those tactics will fail and the failure is often times more spectacular and costly than the original problem you were trying to avoid.

Where's Waldo? Crazy Adnan Edition

Boy, those Jews sure know how to get the world riled up don't they?

How dare they walk into a trap set up by Turkey armed with only pocket knives and paint guns. How dare the kill 9 people trying to save their own lives and prevent arms from entering Gaza.

Ever since it has been a steady stream of Palestinian this or Palestine that.

There has been so much patriotic Palestinian flag waving that it is sometimes easy to forget that there is no such place as Palestine, outside the fevered minds of radical Islamists anyway.

Go ahead and find a decent map. I see lots of things in the middle east but Palestine isn't one of them. It has no boundaries, no government, no capital and no official recognition. If you're thinking about the Gaza Strip, that isn't a nation-state. It's a pathetically small strip of land that was hijacked by terrorists that the Israelis essentially use as a jail camp. Is Kurt Russell part Jew? Escape from Gaza starring Simon Plisken! It writes itself.

You never know how far back Arabs go when they are talking about historical rights to property, etc. I'm sure they would take all of this back to the Crusades (while ignoring the fact that the first crusade was in response to militant Muslim expansion) if they could but for rational people, we will look to the last time there was a Palestine on the map. That would be the British Mandate of Palestine, that ended after WW2.

Yes indeed, to look at a map of the British Mandate, there appears to be a rather large section of this earth called Palestine. Certainly large enough to house all the "Palestinians" in Israel today, so what happened to all that land?

Well, the vast majority of it was used to create Lebanon and Jordon while also expanding the territory of Syria. The tiny sliver that wasn't used up expanding those Muslim states was used to create Israel. Even that wasn't a fair enough split though as Israel was supposed to be set up as a partial independent Jewish/partial independent Arab state. The Zionists agreed to this compromise. The Arab League gave a big hell no and promptly tried to eradicate the Jews. As has been the case, the Arabs were soundly thrashed by the Jews, setting the stage for the last 60+ years of conflict.

Since then, Palestine has ceased to exist in any tangible way. It could easily exist if Syria and Jordon ever decided to give some of that former Mandate up to become Palestine. Certainly those two countries aren't doing anything productive with it. Why not just create a Palestinian state that way and end this nonsense?

Arabs will tell you that they have some right to Jerusalem, etc. If you go back far enough there isn't a culture that doesn't have some claim to the Holy Cities. I'm pretty sure if you dig deep enough you can find some artifacts from the little known Eskimo Reign of Terror period in Bethlehem.

The real reason though is that if Palestine were to become a legitimate State, then the surrounding Arab nations, in addition to Hamas and Hezbollah, wouldn't have a built in excuse to kill Jews, which is all they really want to do. No two-state solution, no original partition plans. These groups want a free license to kill Jews at will and the perceived oppression in "Palestine" is the convenient cover they need. The UN, who created all this partitioning nonsense, seems more than willing to buy that tripe hook, line and sinker.

So next time the world gets righteous and indignant about the plight in Palestine, just remember, that it's all a myth.

You can't steal land that is legitimately yours.

You can't oppress criminals engaged in seditious rebellion. It's called law enforcement and every country on Earth does the same thing.

You can't reason or rationalize with dreams or ghosts.

And you shouldn't try.