Avalanches

They seem to be happening more frequently these days. I don't know, maybe mountain climbing has gotten more popular, so avalanches of the same frequency and severity are just killing more people. But I don't think raising an eyebrow at this makes me too much of a global warming alarmist.

Putting aside its larger implications, why are people still mountain climbing in light of these numbers? "[A]bout 100 climbers" have been killed in the Alps, 20 on Mont Blanc alone, since June. How many people successfully climbed those mountains during that time? How could that ratio possibly be acceptable to any prospective mountain climber who's not trying to cash in a life insurance policy?

It's Biden

Well that text message thing was pretty stupid. I never got one! I had to get the news with all the non-fanboys via CNN last night, with confirmation this morning.

... But it's not about me. Today's Joe's day, and it could be a lot worse.

How about this "analysis" by the AP's Ron Fournier? It's so evenhanded and dispassionate, you could never tell in a million years that the guy was actually considered for a job at the McCain campaign.

Actually even though Fournier is a sniveling party hack whom no self-respecting news organization would let pose as a journalist, he's right that the Biden selection is a tacit admission by Obama that foreign policy is his weak spot.

I don't really have that big a problem with it. Obama really is new to the U.S. Senate and the Illinois state senate doesn't handle foreign policy. Just as long as people recognize that the opposition to the Iraq War was the right call, and supporting it was a huge mistake.

Ah, now official party hack Ron Christie is reading from Fournier's column. "He's undercutting his message of change, etc. etc."

Ryan Church is back

Having finished his rehab, Ryan Church is back to reclaim his place in the outfield from Fernando Tatis. Unfortunately, as a result of the concussion he's still under the impression that he is Imelda Marcos, and no one in management has had the heart to tell him yet. Hopefully he'll wear traditional baseball cleats when he suits up tonight, but sources say open-toed heels remain a distinct possibility.

via Simon

Housegate

Boy did this story get a week's worth of attention today.

You'd have to attach electrodes to sensitive places on the D.C. press to get them to treat John McCain as a fancy pants rich guy like John Edwards, but I think it's a good idea for the Obama camp to run with it as far as they can.

But it's so very unfair, they complain. Rezko! Plus, they're not his homes, they're Cindy's, so this is all an attack on his wife.

Maybe McCain's plan for the economy is to have America find a hot, young country with lots of resources, marry it, and use its money to pay down our mortgages. That'd be pimp.

Hitting back

This is an excellent post by Theda Skocpol, making the argument that Obama needs to stop whining about McCain's negativity and start hitting back. I pretty much agree with it, but I still have a high degree of confidence that the Obama camp really knows what it's doing. Moreover, I think the plan definitely involves attacking McCain, and that appears to be happening right about now.

Mets sign Al Reyes to minor league deal

Omar signed Al Reyes. That's good news.

"Released by the Rays" used to been a pretty good indication that a guy is totally useless but with them leading the AL East I guess that's no longer necessarily true. In fact, I'm not sure what the Rays were thinking when they cut him. He was a pretty decent closer for them back in... 2007. In any case they did and Omar signed him to a minor league deal, getting a chance to let him pitch for the Zephyrs a little bit before probably getting a September callup.

He's injury prone and gives up more than the occasional home run, but for a freely available arm his record is pretty sweet. I don't trust the current reliever corps as far as I can throw them, so any sort of backup would be worth getting, but I can definitely see Reyes making a real contribution down the stretch (say a 3.50 ERA and a 3.00 K/BB).

And speaking of relievers that Omar recently scrounged up, Luis Ayala looks like a pretty good move as well. When I first heard about the acquisition I was unmoved, but he's just had an uncharacteristically bad 2008. His career ERA is 3.22.

It's not that Heilman, Sanchez or Smith are that bad, but for a playoff team's three best right-handed relievers, they're not good either. Both Reyes and Ayala could conceivably do a better job than any of them, so it makes all sorts of sense to get them in the mix.

Where's my damn text message?

I was led to believe that Obama's VP announcement was imminent. "As soon as Wednesday morning," they said. Well now it's Wednesday morning and I still have to spend another day wondering if it's really going to be the Iraq War superfan from Indiana.

Actually, there was what Marc Ambinder called an "oppo hit" on Bayh reported by Bloomberg, related to his wife's seven corporate board memberships, so maybe we're in the clear even though "100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh" Facebook group is actually only about 4,000 strong. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but Mrs. Bayh's board memberships shouldn't be that damaging to his prospects. The fact that she is even capable of serving on seven of them is proof enough that they don't do anything, and the directors get their $80-$100k/year stipend whether or not any federal legislation goes the company's way. But her husband sucks, in any case.

Plus it looks like Biden is out, as he told the press assembled outside his house that they could disperse because "I'm not the guy."

I hate to say it but at this point of the >5% Intrade possibilities I think I'm pulling for Kerry.

Update:
"Edna" mentions Gore in comments. I had excluded him just because I'm skeptical that he'd actually want to do it, but Intrade actually has him about twice as likely as Kerry. I would indeed prefer the big fella.

Rachel Maddow finally gets a show

Excellent. I'm sure this will be heartbreaking for everyone who got really attached to The Verdict with Dan Abrams, but it's for the best.

Washington Wire at its very worst

Elizabeth Holmes writes:

The Republican candidate had come under fire for associating with Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition who fell from grace after his involvement with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. McCain was one of the leaders of the investigation of Abramoff's lobbying activities that led to his imprisonment. Reed was never charged.

To read this passage, you would think that the very suggestion that Ralph Reed is an undesirable associate is crazy. It is written as if there weren't emails unearthed by the House investigation between Reed and Abramoff. In those emails, Reed bragged about having Karl Rove block a nomination in the Interior Department who was seen as hostile to Abramoff's casino clients. Charged or not, Reed didn't just "fall from grace" because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was up to his eyeballs in the auctioning off of the federal government and there's proof of it.

And now McCain's going to an event "promoted" if not "hosted" by Ralph Reed, and it's wrong for Democrats to object to this, because McCain led an investigation of Abramoff after he was caught? Holmes seems to be under the impression that McCain's leading those investigations, instead of perhaps strongly approving of already-exposed government corruption, should inoculate him from charges of hypocrisy. Holmes would have us pay no mind to the fact that Reed really was intimately involved in the biggest public corruption scandal in years.

At other points, Holmes just lashes out at McCain's critics:

"Yet the Democrats jumped on the email..."
"The Democrats"? All of them?

"That didn't stop the Obama campaign from issuing a 'response' to the absence"
"Will those little jerks at the Obama campaign never be satisfied?!"

"Others took it as an assertion of his involvement with the campaign, going so far as to insinuate he was hosting the event."
Given that Reed sent out invitations to the event in his own name, you arguably have to go further to preserve the distinction between "promoting" and "hosting" than to conflate them. [Bonus points for referring to the guilty parties as unspecified "Others."]

"On Monday evening, there was no sign of Reed at the Marriott Marquis here and no mention of him by McCain during his remarks."
So... McCain's failure to acknowledge Reed's support is evidence he didn't get any? I think it just means he wants to downplay it now that he's taking criticism for it. Yes, especially given that Reed is sending emails/fundraising for him and is on his Victory 2008 team, I think the latter interpretation is more likely.

That just about covers it I guess. It's not as though the WSJ's Washington Wire garners a huge audience as far as I know, and that's all to the good, but it still carries a major news organization's brand and it's churns out more than its share of awful posts. This is just my nomination for the worst of the season so far.

Johan Santana still feels like a disappointment, but shouldn't

The bad news:

Year   K/9 K:BB
2005: 9.25 5.29
2006: 9.44 5.21
2007: 9.66 4.52
2008: 7.53 3.22

As you can see, the strikeout rate fell off a cliff this year, but the K:BB has been in continued decline since its peak in 2005, when he was 26 years old. Of course, even though he still came into this year on the good side of 30 he'd thrown over five normal-starter-seasons worth of innings in his last four years, so it wasn't unreasonable to expect (as a lot of people did) a falloff this year.

And fall off he did, but how badly?

Year    ERA  OPS  GB:FB
2005   2.88 .594   0.91
2006   2.77 .616   1.06
2007   3.33 .678   0.92
2008   2.75 .652   1.14

Those metrics paint a much prettier picture of Santana's Mets debut. The groundball improvement isn't massive, and he's still miles from Webb/Lowe territory, but it's enough to suggest that more of the lost strikeouts turned into weak dribblers than warning track flies.

A translated ERA metric would be helpful in dealing with the differences in home park and league/opponent quality, and it's probably safe to assume that both factors would make the comparison to the Minnesota years slightly less favorable, but BP only runs those figures annually so I don't know how much.

They do, however, keep VORP updated daily, and that metric (which measures how many fewer runs a team surrendered while a given pitcher was on the mound than they would have if those innings had been pitched by a minimum salary scrub) is adjusted for park/league effects.

So we can look at this list of the top 10 most run-preventing pitchers in the majors and conclude that, even though Omar failed to swoop in on Cliff Lee this spring when the Indians barely wanted him to show up to camp, he didn't exactly screw up when he ponied up for Santana:

59.4 Cliff Lee
56.4 Roy Halladay
53.9 Tim Lincecum
49.1 Johan Santana
48.6 Brandon Webb
47.3 Dan Haren
44.6 Ryan Dempster [!]
44.2 Jake Peavy
44.1 Ben Sheets
42.9 John Danks

Mets rolling

I've been away from the computer for the last few days. Will have more in depth coverage later this evening.

I don't have much to say about the Rick Warren shindig except blargh.

Friday Cat Blogging

My aunt's cat, Fenway

Are you kidding me?

There's trouble in the Caucasus. The situation is "fluid and dangerous." You're John McCain. Who do you send?

That's right. Your personal backup singers, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham:


















That'll have Putin thinking long and hard about his next move.

Update:
Attaturk makes a good point, with the emphasis it deserves.

Bill Kristol's supposed "scoop"

Bill Kristol reported that Colin Powell was going to endorse Obama, and everyone went bonkers. Powell, sounding rather peeved, told ABC "I do not have time to waste on Bill Kristol's musings." A representative from his office made a slightly more direct denial, saying "There's no truth to it, no substance to it... I have no idea why Bill Kristol would be making this statement. There is no imminent endorsement."

Obviously, there's still ample wiggle room for Powell to do it (the endorsement anyway, not the convention speech), but now one of two things will happen:

1) Powell does endorse Obama, just not imminently, and the leak will have spoiled the surprise; or

2) Powell doesn't endorse Obama, and the leak will make it seem like more of a rejection than it would have otherwise.

It's certainly possible that Kristol really was just passing along what he heard from a source close enough to Powell to be considered reliable. Stranger things have happened. But for Bill Kristol, getting stuff wrong isn't just an occasional occurence. It's a way of life. Indeed, Kristol qualified his claim by saying an endorsement "is not an absolutely done deal, but these people are very confident..." So by his own account, he put the story out there without anything that could be called confirmation.

I just don't believe he would do this without regard for its political impact, and I don't believe he'd do it if he thought it would help Obama, which only leaves one option: He did it because Kristol's sounding the alarm early, whether or not he's right, is good for McCain.

In a sane world, this theory wouldn't make any sense because there would be strong disincentives for reporters/pundits to make terrible predictions. But as you can see from this January 2007 selection of Kristol's greatest misses on Iraq and this December 2007 announcement by the New York Times that they were hiring him as a regular columnist, it doesn't actually work that way.

Update:
To revise and extend, I was kind of kidding about the "proof" that IF Kristol would consider politics AND not wish to push the scales towards Obama THEN he must be doing it to help McCain. Obviously there are other things to consider. Professional considerations would really demand going public even if he thought on balance even a rumor of Powell support would give Obama a bump.

I just find the idea of Kristol being the media figure most closely connected to Colin Powell's inner circle even more farfetched then the idea that he's just hyping the story because he thinks it's possible and he wants to steal its thunder.

Bill Ackman: So hot right now

Yesterday after the market closed, CVS bought Longs Drug (LDG), for $71 a share, over a 30% premium to their closing price of $54. It wasn't a shocking merger, given CVS's history of growing their store base through acquisition, but some people were surprised at the magnitude of the premium.

Why am I mentioning this? Because per James Altucher (sub. site with no permalinks), Bill Ackman, famous/notorious for his short positions in certain financial firms (Fannie Mae, MBIA, etc.), owns 8.8% of Longs, and "also bought 'total return swaps' to bring its 'economic' exposure to about 15.4% of Longs."

And he just did it last week! The timing was so good, he's probably not happy about it, because surely if the guy bent on the ruin of the U.S. financial services sector nailed a big takeout so perfectly, he must have been tipped off.

Jerry Manuel: Maine, Perez & Pelfrey could pitch out of the pen

That's the chyron on the Mets pregame show. They're speculating that it's just Manuel lighting the proverbial fire under Sanchez, Heilman and company, letting them know that the blowups must stop.

I sure hope that's all it is. It sucks to have a terrible bullpen, but taking a good starter and decreasing the number of innings they pitch isn't the way to fix it.

Update:
Keith Hernandez just characterized the Mets bullpen situation as "Emergency Plan F." It's nice to hear analysis like that on a team-owned television network.

Mets lose to Pirates in excruciating fashion

Eric Simon's response to this loss is that the Mets should "just blow up the bullpen" and I think he may be onto something.

Aaron Heilman got one strikeout, and then decided it was time to take the ninth inning in more of a "walks and base hits" direction, and turned the one run lead into a three run deficit. Maybe he really is a headcase. I don't know. He's pitched effectively for weeks at a time. He can strike guys out with his changeup. Back when I was there was some lobbying (which I agreed with) to put him in the rotation, a lot of people made the argument that he's "too good in the bullpen" to be used as a starter. By that logic, he must be looking pretty tempting as a starter now.

Nights like tonight make me wonder why Omar saw fit to send Heath Bell to San Diego for Ben Johnson, the baseball equivalent of a half-eaten turkey sandwich.

WTF, Russ?

Atrios gives the Wanker of the Day to Bob Kerrey, for calling John McCain "a known quantity" who "can deal with crisis."

Certainly a worthy selection, but I was disappointed to read less likely suspect Russ Feingold also lavishing centrist cred on the Republican nominee: "I think the guy calls 'em as he sees 'em, and as president would call 'em as he sees 'em" etc. etc.

Hey Russ, how about suiting up for the big game, huh? Maybe do what you can to help your party's nominee, rather than saying nice things about his opponent? I've never been a U.S. Senator so maybe I just don't fully understand the fraternal bonds between co-sponsors of campaign finance legislation. But how about next time you feel compelled to give a quote about what an honorable centrist John McCain is, you just keep your fucking mouth shut instead.

Contrary indicator watch

In a post entitled "Paper Tiger?", Paul at Powerline opines: "I'm not an economist or a futurist, and I've never been to China. But for what it's worth, I strongly suspect that the predcitions one hears constantly these days about China dominating the 21st century are likely to be wrong, perhaps spectacularly so."

Time to check out online courses in Mandarin.

Chris Wallace

Looks like he gave McCain campaign manager and unbelievably unappealing human being Rick Davis more than he was ready for. Good work, Chris.