Are my eyes really blue?

I remember four years ago, after the Spurrier firing, when we were casting about wondering what now…and one morning, the wife is watching the Today show while I’m getting ready for work, and they break in with the news that the Washington Post is reporting that Joe Gibbs is returning.
Seriously, I squealed like a 10 year old at a Hannah Montana show.
I did about an hour and a half at work before heading to the cigar shop. It was already packed when I got there, somewhere between New Year’s Eve and the birth of your first grandchild – backslapping, cheering, everyone excited, there probably would have been hugging if the population had been less Republicans-over-50. At one point, we watched a good 15 minutes of a soccer game on Comcast Sports Net just because they were running a crawl saying that the Redskins had called a presser for 5 PM.
And then, when they finally flipped over to CNBC, an announcer starts off, “Well, it looks like the Washington Post was mistaken with their report–”
GASP. All of the oxygen was pretty much sucked out of the room.
“–about nuclear materials at a bombsite in Iraq.”
Everyone exhales furiously. One guy groused, “The next headline was almost ‘Twenty Guys Found Dead In Cigar Shop.'”
And at 5 PM, we were all down in the shop crouched around the TV. There they were: the three Super Bowl trophies. There were all the old assistants: Joe Bugel, Don Breaux, there’s Bubba Tyer who had JUST retired as trainer in the off-season – as the Dog famously said, “it looks like Space Cowboys up there.” And then the man himself, who only spoke for a couple of minutes – but when he was done, every one of us was ready to run through the wall right then and there.
It didn’t work out like we hoped. Because hope is like that – hope is like heroin and crystal meth and Kona coffee and 18 year old Bushmills all rolled into one. It makes you think “I can whup any man in this house” right before you think “I can whup EVERY man in this house!” And hope – in the absence of anything else – will leave you suspended in mid-air like Wile E. Coyote, looking at the camera holding up a little sign that says “Aw, bullshit” right before you plunge to your doom.
Just like the Redskins to do this to me right as I cave and come crawling back. Shit, at this point they should just hire Ike Turner and get it over with. Huh? Dead? When? Nobody sends me the memos anymore.

Not surprised that Gibbs would resign – an emotionally trying year has probably worn him down to nothing, and I’m sure he’s wondering whether it’s worth coming back again for another 8-win-type season.

The problem has always been: if not Joe, who? The consensus seems to be Gregg Williams, who let’s not forget was absolutely godawful as head coach in Buffalo – but Bill Belichek didn’t exactly set the world on fire in Cleveland his first time out, and he seems to have done all right. At this point I would endorse Williams because of one thing:

STABILITY.

The one thing this franchise has lacked, ever since the Squire died, is stability. Snyder comes in, fires Casserly, should have fired the Norv but couldn’t because he got his one playoff berth, then does, then fires Marty Schottenheimer after one 8-8 season, then the two-year Spurrier disaster, and now four seasons of Joe Gibbs playing “Space Cowboys” (apologies to the Dog for nicking his line). And in those four years, two playoff berths, but a lot of casting about trying to find footing – and a complete offensive overhaul when you could argue that none was really needed.

Now what?

Here’s a tip: never live-repartition your drive with one utility and then try to Linux-partition it with another, especially when the live-partition tool is meant for creating a Windows volume. And when the Linux tool doesn’t work, for God’s sake don’t FORCE it.

This is the part where I say that Mac OS X 10.5 is the greatest consumer OS of all time, and if you have the opportunity, run, do not walk. And be sure to pick up a spare external hard drive when you do, and set it up for Time Machine, and for crying out loud USE IT.

“Well, now you’ve climbed up there it’s a hell of a lot higher than it looks, ain’t it? Dumbass.”

“Though it be not written down, yet forget not…”
NH goes on Tuesday, not Saturday. So it’s not 48 hours, and we will have a college football champion before a NH primary winner.
(By the standards of blog political discourse, this naturally means that EVERYTHING I said is automatically impeached and invalid. Which is why I don’t do this too often ;] )

First off, a clarification: I don’t blame the D’s directly for the current state of affairs. I think it’s an unintended consequence of their desire to shorten the primary season with the Super Tuesday project in the 1980s, but I think the good Doctor (commenting on the last post) hits the nail on the head when she says that the Iowa phenomenon in 2008 is a media creation. Iowa last night, NH tomorrow, and Festivus on February 5 – obviously whoever wins in Iowa will have a great deal of momentum in the popular mind, but why? Because they will get coverage suggesting that.
Two caveats: Sure, Hillary took a torpedo at the waterline last night, but unlike some candidates (cough*Mitt*cough) she didn’t go all in on the first hand. Her organization is just as strong everywhere else and she still leads nationally, so the suggestion that she has somehow been repudiated and will never be heard from again is, quite frankly, preposterous. Other caveat: Fred Thompson finished 3rd without even bothering to set up an organization in Iowa, and Rudy G. never seriously tried; he put everything into Florida and the 2/5 states.
Actually, let’s look at this. 2000: George W. Bush has triple the record for fundraising and comes into Iowa running the Rove offense of inevitability (think Mitt’s gameplan only successful). No contest. 1996: Dole is the designated heir. No contest. 1992: Tom Harkin, D-IA, is running, so nobody bothers with Iowa. 1998: both eventual nominees finish 3rd in Iowa. 1984: Mondale, the presumptive nominee from the start, wins it. You see where this is going: post hoc, ergo propter hoc. (Catholics, wanna give it a shot?)
But in 2004, Dean had all the momentum, and got tripped up in Iowa by Kerry – and then skewered by the media for doing so. Iowa finished him off and Kerry ran the rest of the way on the resulting momentum in a short schedule. Like generals, the press is always covering the last war.
And this helps McCain. A LOT. The party rank and file may not go for him, but the media ADORES John McCain. This will help him a lot going into NH, which he won in 2000 if you remember – and then it’s just a question of whether the GOP rank and file will accept him as the “STOP HUCKABEE” candidate. It won’t be Mitt; if he can’t win Iowa he’s cooked down South where the Baptists rule. Giuliani might still pull it on name recognition, but his steady sinking spell doesn’t inspire confidence. Hell, Fred Thompson might catch fire if only he showed any interest in actually running, but I don’t see it happening.
Meanwhile, look for the media to try to fit everything into the defined narrative: with Obama and Huckabee finishing a solid 1, the whole “change in Washington” is now the storyline. They might run for the “comeback kid” angle, which they love, and it would help McCain immensely, but whether they can overcome their hatred of Hillary long enough to make her the comeback story her husband was is open to debate.
(an aside: I don’t think the media really grasps how much the hardcore D’s really do not like Hillary Clinton. Among the kinds of people who actually vote in Democratic primaries, she’s polling above the clap but below lima beans. There are a lot of reasons for this – largely stemming from the Parliamentization of American politics and a little bit of revisionist history in certain quarters – but she was never as inevitable as the media wanted her to be. If she manages to win through, she’ll earn it, but as much as they’d like to think so inside I-495, the Presidency is not something bestowed on you by that slobbering tool Russert and the rest of the Sabbath Gasbags.)

…it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Don’t forget, the use of primaries as the method of picking a candidate nationally is less than 50 years old, and the Iowa caucus system only dates to 1972. In all that time, only one non-incumbent has finished first in Iowa and gone on to the White House – George W. Bush in 2000, and don’t forget, he had three times as much money raised by caucus night as any candidate in history. In 1980, Iowa went for Bush over Reagan; in 1988, they picked Pat Robertson and Dick Gephardt. Seriously.
Here’s the thing: the Iowa caucuses were never meant to be dispositive. They were meant to be the first cut that winnows the field to 5 or 6 (or maybe fewer) via the 15% “viability” rule. New Hampshire would take a whack a while later, purging some more, and by the time you hit the South, you’d probably be down to 3 candidates battling like hell.
If you need somebody to blame, blame the Democrats. In 1988, they concocted a system of Iowa in January, New Hampshire in February (during the Olympics no less) and Super Tuesday in March, meant to find a winning candidate who wasn’t too far left and crown him well before the onset of a prolonged death march like the Mondale-Hart fiasco of 1984. What they got was Jesse Jackson, who ended up with 7 million primary votes to the nominee’s 9 million (Mike Dukakis, as if you cared). So they kept compressing the schedule over and over with hopes of simultaneously getting a centrist candidate and not burning through all the money before the general election – and then Clinton got in in 1992, was the incumbent in 1996, and had a designated successor in 2000, so much good it did them.
Anyway, because of the continued compression of the primary season, we now find ourself in a situation where the game could be over in 4 weeks. Iowa and New Hampshire will be done before we even have a football champion, and the Gold Medal Double-Double MegaUltraDeathStar Tuesday voting on February 5 should settle the deal just in time to give us a NINE MONTH GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN.
This is no way to pick a President, folks. And I’ll tell you something else – the only thing worse than having this done by February 5 would be NOT having it done by February 5; if one party is still picking between 3 or more candidates by then, they’re in for a world of pain.

Tough break for Hawaii, who has a fine program and does some nice things – they just got booked way way WAY above their weight class. Really, this was Georgia’s only option. If you lose, disaster – and if you win, you were supposed to. All you can do is pour it on and try to destroy your opponent. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but the way the system is constituted, it’s all you’ve got. Once we have a playoff and take human selectors out of the system, we can afford things like sportsmanship again. And after Arkansas and Florida took a dump today (Heisman curse? Anyone?), Georgia pretty much has to put it down HARD for the SEC. And even so, they have some kid at QB who apparently has his age on his jersey…

Meanwhile, the audio is shot on this broadcast, the announcers are godawful, the production values are mediocre at best – FOX doesn’t show a lick of college football until January 1. That they have all the BCS games but one is one more proof of the blight that is the BCS. Either have a playoff or blow it all up and go back to a truly mythical national championship, which I think would make everyone happier.

OBTW – the SEC put 4 teams on TV today. If the Pac-10 is sincerely happy with their bowl contracts, then their commissioner should be staked out on a fire ant mound.

HAPPY NEW YEAR. 2008 – this had better be good.

Hope your 2008 is as good as my 2007 was godawful. Better days coming, if I have anything to say about it.

Okay – maybe Joe Gibbs doesn’t know how to coach anymore. I can’t say for sure one way or the other. But he knows how to lead this team – and it looks like they had to completely crash out and hit rock bottom before they could start climbing back up. Since the brain-cramp against Buffalo that lost the game, the Redskins have not trailed. Today, Dallas went 0-11 on 3rd down and combined for one yard rushing. Read that last sentence again. ONE YARD.

Todd Collins is running this team better than any QB has since the Brad Johnson season in 1999. Guy sits as a backup for a decade and then, flip of a switch, rattles off four wins. Well done young old man. The defense has, amazingly, managed to gel even without Sean Taylor (RIP 21) and has put the wood to most everyone they’ve played in December (don’t forget, Buffalo did everything with field goals). And don’t look now, but at 9-7. the Redskins are off to the land of rain for a playoff game.

So…four years into The Return, Joe Gibbs has delivered two playoff appearances – and made the Dallas games competitive every year. During the years in the wilderness, you could write off the Cowboys as two losses almost every season. Playoffs every other year and beating the Pokes – you know, you could do a lot worse.

Maybe they had to have this whole tragedy to really come together as a team. Maybe you have to struggle through that kind of adversity to really become family. I don’t know, but this is manifestly not the same team that kept blowing 4th quarter leads in October and November. Something has changed – and if it carries over to 2008, watch out.

Meanwhile…