When you work here you can name your own salary. I named mine "Fred."

When fathers babysit.

The headline on Sports Illustrated’s web site reads: “A Thrilling Opener.” The story underneath tells about South Africa and Mexico playing to a 1-1 tie.
Play for about two hours, end with a 1-1 tie, and call it thrilling? Sorry, I don’t get it.
But I tried. I clicked over to ESPN about noon and watched a few minutes of Uruguay v. France. Why do the fans make so much noise when there’s nothing except the normal back-and-forth happening down on the field. Is soccer like ice fishing, an excuse to drink?
That game ended in a 0-0 tie. Woot!

I don’t ride Fridays because Saturdays are the long rides. So this morning I played 18 on the short course here. I’m improving, but incrementally. I decided Romans 7 describes my golf game at this point. The good that I know to do I do not, and the bad that I don’t want to do, that I do.
I’m stubborn enough to keep at this. I’ll never be good but I can be solidly adequate. My goal is something near bogey golf. The first number should always be a 9. Is that so unreasonable?

Got home a little before 10 and finished up the sermon.
What were they thinking?

On the way to the course I heard an interview with Gov. Schwarzenegger. It’s hard to take him seriously with that accent. Maybe that’s because Leno does it so well.
He talked about a new referendum just passed that revamps the way their primaries work. If I understood correctly, they will no longer have separate Republican and Democratic primary elections; they’ll be combined into a single election. The top two vote getters will then face off in the general election. So if the two top vote getters are from the same party, or if one of them is an independent, that’s who runs in the general.
The Governator said the political environment has become so polarized that in each party a candidate has to move to the extreme end to win the primary. The centrists get pushed out. He said that in the current climate he never would have become governor because he offended the extremes of both parties, certainly the Republicans.
Presumably, the center wing of both parties may get behind a centrist candidate in sufficient numbers to get them into one of the top two spots.

Interesting, huh?
I don’t pay a lot of attention to the left wing of the Democratic Party. OK, I listen to Diane Rehm on NPR sometimes (and go crazy in the process). But I do get concerned about what I perceive as the extremism developing in the Republican Party. The local manifestation of that is AZ candidates who are saying some of the most ridiculous things in an effort to out-conservative the other Republican candidates. Another effect is that more reasonable Republican candidates have to move way to the right, saying things inconsistent with their long-held (and thoughtful) positions to avoid losing their primary fights to some whacko who will take any position appealing to tea drinkers.

Assuming the same dynamic is at work among the Democrats would a CA-type system work to weed out the extremists?

As long as we’re talking politics, the President said today that some in Congress bear responsibility for the mess in the Gulf. He said that if he had gone to Congress six months ago and asked for tighter regs on companies drilling in the Gulf some would have fought it in the name of govt. over-regulation and excessive spending.

Uhm, isn’t a more salient point than what might have happened if you had gone, the little detail that you didn’t go ask for that increased oversight?
I’m just sayin’....