When do the polls close tomorrow? All times Mountain Standard…

Georgia: 5:00 p.m. MST
Vermont: 5:00 p.m. MST
Ohio: 5:30 p.m MST
Connecticut: 6:00 p.m. MST
Massachuetts: 6:00 p.m. MST
Maryland: 6:00 p.m. MST
New York: 7:00 p.m. MST
Rhode Island: 7:00 p.m. MST
Minnesota: 7:00 p.m. MST (?)
California: 9:00 p.m. MST

UPDATE: A rehash of this post, with commentary, over on the Command Post.

Also on CP, the vice-presidential odds: Edwards is the favorite at 4 to 1. Evan Bayh, my top choice for selfish reasons (he’d make Indiana, where I’ll be living in November, competitive), goes off at 10 to 1. The linked site has Feinstein at 30 to 1, Hillary at 50 to 1, and Lieberman at 100 to 1. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is not listed at all, which is, in my view, an oversight; if Dean makes the list (at 500 to 1), surely Napolitano should be there somewhere.

The linked site also has presidential odds. They’ve got Kerry at 1 to 4, Edwards at 4 to 1, and Sharpton and Kucinich both at 1000 to 1. That seems about right (a little generous for Al and Dennis, actually), but I disagree with their 1000 to 1 ranking for “someone else.” Delegate-wise, Edwards’s best hope at this point is a brokered convention… and that would very much put the possibility of “someone else” in play. As my dad has said before: “Hil-lar-y! Hil-lar-y!” :) It’s very unlikely at this point, but if Edwards is 4 to 1, surely “someone else” is better than 1000 to 1… and anyway it’s way more likely than Sharpton and Kucinich.

The database at work is going really slow, so while I wait for the hourglass on my other computer to go away, a brief, post-lunch-break update…

The Meriden Record-Journal has a pretty good article with a roundup of Connecticut politicians’ opinions about tomorrow’s state primary. The headline: “As primaries go, Connecticut is funny“…

“Connecticut is a funny state. We have had some surprises on presidential primary days in the past, and I am thinking maybe this is the kind of year where we’ll see another surprise in Connecticut,” said state Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Southington, an Edwards supporter.

Jerry Brown’s utterly unexpected 1992 win over cruising front-runner Bill Clinton — my greatest personal political triumph — is prominently cited. Of course, as my dad has pointed out, that was an upset of a Southerner, not an upset by a Southerner. But who knows?

UPDATE: Edwards has won the all-important endorsement of Hootie and the Blowfish!

Today’s lunch-break update criss-crosses the nation, spans the globe, and moves from topic to topic in one long incredibly uninterrupted sentence so that no one could interrupt… okay, enough with the Star Trek reference; the point is, it has many topics. :) Okay, on with the show:

Aristide deposed by U.S.? To be clear, I don’t instinctively believe that just because Maxine Waters says something, it’s true. But, with that caveat, this story is worth following: Maxine Waters says that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide claims he ”did not resign” and was ”kidnapped” by U.S. diplomatic and military officials. U.S. officials deny this.

Of course, even if the officials are telling the truth, and Aristide’s alleged claim is totally bogus, the dye has been cast: blame-America-first lefties will forever say that we deposed Aristide. (Speaking of which, did you the hear the one about how Wolfowitz said the Iraq war really was about oil? He actually said it!) Anyway, Drudge is all over the story.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Latin America… Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez calls President Bush an “a–hole”; Bush replies, “Well, tell Hugo Chavez I think he’s an a–hole, too. You tell him just that!”; Chavez proclaims, “I’ll drink to that!” (Okay, maybe I made part of that up.)

Edwards is doomed, dooooomed: At least, that’s how it looks from the latest polls. Kerry leads 62-20 in Maryland, 48-38 in Georgia, 47-26 in Ohio, and 54-21 in New York. And those are the polls that are more favorable to Edwards. In the less favorable versions, he trails 45-26 in Georgia, 59-28 in Ohio, and a whopping 72-16 in New York.

Then again, “Edwards has done better than expected in primaries of other states where polls found him far behind in days leading up to those elections.” But this would be the mother of all comebacks for the fresh-faced, young-looking senator from North Carolina who by the way is the son of a mill worker. Rooting for Edwards on the day before Super Tuesday is feeling more and more like rooting for Lieberman on the day before Feb. 3.

The silver lining: The one bright side of a possible Edwards crash-and-burn tomorrow is that it would clear the way for a smoother transition between two of the most prominent “Many Seasons of Brendan” — political season and basketball season. With the NCAA Tournament rapidly approaching, BrendanLoy.com will be shifting into high-gear March Madness mode soon. If the Kerry-Edwards battle continues in earnest beyond tomorrow, a clash between the “seasons” would become inevitable.

Next week’s Feb. 9 primaries in the South fall smack in the middle of Championship Week, and if Edwards is still alive after those, we could still be talking politics — looking ahead to the big Illinois showdown — on Selection Sunday itself. Indeed, the Illinois primary is on the same day as the #64-vs.#65 play-in game! The blog could become very crowded, with two of my obsessions competing for my attention… oh, the humanity! :)

But if Edwards loses everywhere tomorrow and drops out — or is rendered essentially irrelevant by Kerry’s enormous delegate lead (a 72-16 loss in New York would do that) — I’ll be able to cut back on the political posting and focus on stuff that really matters, like complaining about Gonzaga’s inevitably deflated seeding, and figuring out which #14 seed to pick as a Cinderella in my bracket this year!

Of course, notwithstanding all of the above, I’m still rooting for a miracle Edwards comeback. He’s the better candidate, and I like information overload anyway… it’s fun. :)

Hey, Edwards has the early lead in CT: Hold the phones! Stop the presses! Extremely early BrendanLoy.com exit polling shows that John Edwards has jumped out to a stunning early lead over John Kerry in Kerry’s next-door neighbor state of Connecticut. That’s right, with 0.00001% of the precincts reporting, it’s Edwards 1, Kerry 0, after my absentee ballot arrived at the Newington Town Clerk’s office at 10:59 AM Eastern time this morning. Go Johnny, go, go! Woohoo!! :)

In other Newington news… The Newington High School girls basketball team plays its first-round state tournament game tomorrow, at home at 7:00 PM, against Hall High School of neighboring West Hartford. The Indians (14-6) are seeded #11; Hall (11-9) is #22. With the victor playing the winner of the Trumbull-Conard game, all eyes will be on a possible all-West Hartford grudge match of Hall vs. Conard in the second round Thursday, but let’s hope Newington can derail that train.

Oh yeah, there are other NHS teams, too: So I’m a little obsessed with girls basketball. So sue me. I managed girls basketball; I lettered in girls basketball! But there’s also an NHS ice hockey team (12-6), and they’re seeded #10 in Division I, and they play #7 Fermi (14-4-2) at Enfield’s Twin Rinks on Wednesday. The winner probably gets #2 Fairfield Prep (13-1) on Saturday. Damn you, Fairfield County, damn you for always having good sports teams!

Damn Bruins: Staying on the topic of basketball but moving 3,000 miles across the country, UCLA’s women’s basketball team beat the Women of Troy yesterday, knocking USC into a third-place tie in the Pac-10 and reducing their NCAA at-large hopes. It may come down to the conference tourney for the women — as it most certainly will for the men, who are 12-13 but could salvage their season with three well-timed wins next week (assuming they can stay in the top 8 and qualify for the conference tournament in the first place).

What next? The return of ratf***ing? It’s official: this year’s USC Student Senate election is more of a debacle than the scandalous 2001 contest that led, among other things, to my resignation from the Daily Trojan. For starters, whereas that election’s controversial candidate du jour, Hema Patel, was eventually reinstated by the Judicial Council after being temporarily disqualified from the race, this year’s man in the middle of the fracas, Andrew Ritter, has been permanently disqualified from the election by the Judicial Council for “undermining the fairness of the elections by violating the Student Senate Code of Ethics section 6B.” Fun!

But that’s not the half of it: the Senate’s legislative branch has also voted to remove the sitting Student Senate president from office because of an ethics violation of his own! “The matter now moves to the executive cabinet,” the DT reports. “Mann’s removal will be solidified only if two-thirds of the voting members of the cabinet vote for it. The hearing will most likely be Tuesday night, said Jessica Marek, the Senate chief of staff.”

Ah, USC politics. It’s enough to make an alumnus swell with pride. As the DT’s editorial headline-writers declare in today’s nominee for understatement of the year, “Senate elections embarrass USC.” (Oh, and if you’re wondering about how the election — which took place last week — turned out, I believe the results are due today, which means we’ll be able to read about them in tomorrow’s paper.)

Mike Williams and the Aftermath of Doom: BrendanLoy.com’s favorite Daily Trojan writer and reporter, Arash Markazi, is getting all sorts of heat from dumbass USC fans who don’t understand the concept of journalism. Worse, some of the people giving him grief are so-called “journalists.” Arash’s crime? He reported some not-so-nice stuff that Mike Williams said about USC just before he decided to leave for the NFL. That Williams said these things is not in dispute (though he claims, as people who say stupid things to a reporter always do, that they were “taken out of context”), but apparently the fans think Arash should have suppressed the quotes in the interest of team spirit. Yeah, because that’s ethical. Anyway, Arash does an excellent job defending himself (and bashing his critics) in today’s paper. You tell ‘em, Arash!

Williams, meanwhile, has hired an agent, which means he will be royally screwed if the NFL wins its appeal and overturns the rule that allowed him to turn pro early. Hiring an agent makes him ineligble to play in NCAA, so if the NFL is closed off as an option, he could potentially end up not playing football at all next year. Stay tuned.

Boring? Not for us nerds!: Finally, the Washington Post’s Tom Shales declares last night’s Oscars boring. Boring?! Lord of the Rings sets an all-time record and you say “boring”?!? Fie!! Blasphemy!!! Go back to the shadow!!!!!