Becky is airborne right now, on United flight 1604, scheduled to land at O’Hare within the hour. From there, she takes a connecting flight, United 1214, to Manchester, New Hampshire, where she’ll meet up with Kristy and get ready to leave on a road trip tomorrow. Y’see, Kristy and Vikki (who they’ll be picking up in Buffalo) are moving to Denver, and Becky is coming along for the ride, to help them move and have a, um, girls’ week out. :)

Becky is scheduled to fly back to Phoenix from Denver on Monday night, and then we’ll get ready for our move — back to South Bend for my final year of law school. Our likely departure date is next Wednesday. So, Becky’s going to be doing a lot of cross-country traveling in the next 10 days or so!

Anyway, stay tuned for blog posts from the road by Becky and Kristy. They both have the ability to photoblog and audioblog via their cell phones, so hopefully they’ll grace us with some updates on their road trip. That way I can live vicariously through them while I frantically try to finish up all my projects before my summer associateship at “the Cave” ends on Friday…

If you’re a registered Democrat in Connecticut and you’re reading this, remember:

Annoy the blogosphere, vote for Joe! :)

The polls open at 6:00 AM EDT and close at 8:00 PM EDT (5pm MST). Get out there and vote!

Also, if you’re a registered Democrat in the 4th congressional district of Georgia… Vote for Hank Johnson! Give McKinney the boot!

P.S. Back to Lieberman v. Lamont… after the jump, excerpts from Lieberman’s big speech on Sunday, defending himself head-on against the false charges that are being leveled by Lamont and his blogospheric allies:

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I thought I got some decent lightning pictures two weeks ago, but I got nothing on this photo. Wow! (Hat tip: Fark.)

Do any resident fellow WordPress users have any suggestions for me regarding this problem?

This is a test.

Let’s take a brief break, shall we, from all this bickering about Iraq, Lieberman and Lamont… and talk about something that’s even more divisive among readers of this blog: college football! :)

Kickoff is 24 days away — things get started on August 31 — and already the excitement is palpable. As a fan generally, and as an Irish Trojan specifically, it’s hard to imagine a more exciting setup for a season. Ohio State is ranked #1, Texas is ranked #2 (and they play each other in the second week), USC and Notre Dame (who, of course, play in the second-to-last week) are tied for #3, and Oklahoma, Auburn, West Virginia, Florida, LSU and Florida State round out the Top 10. Not that any of that means anything at this point… except that it does, since it’s harder to climb to the top when you start further down (unfair though that may be).

Anyway, one of the annoying things about sports commentary is that certain hyperbolic memes get repeated so often that they become almost meaningless. You know, like “this is the most hyped championship game ever” (since last year) or “that was the greatest game I’ve ever seen” (except for that other one). One such overplayed meme is the assertion that a given tournament/field/season is “as wide open as anyone can remember; there is no clear favorite.” You hear this practically every other year before the NCAA Tournament, the Kentucky Derby, the baseball playoffs, the World Curling Championships — you name it.

This year, though, in college football, it’s really true. Honest to goodness. Just look at those top five teams in the preseason coaches’ poll. Ohio State lost most of its defense; Texas lost its entire offense (his name was Vince Young); USC lost two Heisman Trophy winners and a bunch of other very good players; Notre Dame didn’t lose very much, but still has a lot to prove (Michigan and Navy are the only teams with winning records that the Irish have beaten in Charlie Weis era); and Oklahoma just lost its starting quarterback and another star player to a season-long suspension.

Bottom line, there are more question marks in that Top 5 than you can shake a stick at. It isn’t just that there’s no clear favorite; there aren’t even two or three or four clear co-favorites. The teams selected by the voters as the Top 5 are almost there by default, because nobody else better presented themselves. No one freakin’ knows who is going to be good this year. Many people think West Virginia, though probably not the best team, has the best chance to go undefeated and reach the title game, simply because their schedule is the easiest by far.

Another reason I’m so excited about college football in 2006 is that the schedule lends itself to a truly awesome season — and perhaps a bit of BCS chaos. So many potentially good teams are playing so many other potentially good teams that it isn’t hard to envision some truly wacky results. For instance, try this “perfect BCS sh*tstorm” (hat tip: Burnt Orange Nation) on for size:

USC beats Oregon, which beats Oklahoma, which beats Texas, which beats Ohio State, which beats Michigan, which beats Notre Dame, which beats USC (perish the thought). All seven of those teams finish with just one loss. For good measure, LSU beats Auburn, Florida beats LSU, and Auburn beats Florida — and all three of those teams, too, finish with one loss apiece. Meanwhile, West Virginia goes undefeated against its pansy-ass Big East schedule. Ladies and gentlemen, you now have eleven teams with a perfectly legitimate claim on a spot in the national-championship game. What do you do? If you’re a member of the BCS selection committee, you spontaneously combust, that’s what.

Admittedly, such a wacky scenario is highly unlikely to take place. But is it so hard to imagine some substantial portion of it taking place, enough that there’s a total BCS system meltdown? The West Virginia thing, in particular, is compelling. Imagine an undefeated team finishing #3 or lower in the final BCS standings, behind a pair of one-loss teams. If those Top 5ers play their cards right — which basically means a narrow early-season loss to a quality team, followed by impressive late-season wins — it could happen.

What I like best about this season’s potential, though, is Notre Dame’s schedule. The Irish have a relatively tough, though by no means hellish, first seven games, and I personally suspect they’ll lose to somebody in there, probably a team from Michigan. But if the Irish manage to win their first seven games, just imagine: they’d be more than a month away from their date with USC, and the four teams standing between them and arriving at the Coliseum undefeated would be: Navy, Air Force, North Carolina and Army. Needless to say, none of those teams should be a serious threat to knock off the Irish (knock on wood!). So basically, we’re talking about a full month of hype for the USC-ND game. Can you even imagine how crazy it would be?

Of course, to really push the crazy hype factor to stratospheric levels, USC would need to be undefeated, too. For the Trojans, the schedule situation is a bit different; the Trojans’ stretch run is anything but soft. On the contrary, their schedule is back-loaded, as I’ve observed before. The first eight games present some good opportunity for USC’s inexperienced players to grow into their roles, and while there will doubtless be challenges (indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a loss in September), the setup is perfect for a young team like this. Just when everything should really be clicking, we come to the last four games, which promise to be absolutely brutal: Oregon, Cal, Notre Dame and UCLA. (Because of its loaded late schedule, USC may have the best chance of anyone to make it to the title game as a one-loss team, if they lose early. There will be lots they can do in November to impress the voters.) Just remember: three of those last four games are in November, and at home (UCLA is on Dec. 2 at Pasadena), and USC has never lost in November during the Pete Carroll era — and hasn’t lost at home since 2002.

Anyway, if the stars align, if the football gods are smiling on us, come November 25 we will have what could honestly be the most-hyped game in the history of mankind (hyperbole? did someone say something about hyperbole?)… #1 vs. #2, the Irish vs. the Trojans, USC vs. ND, Weis-Carroll II, a battle in L.A. for a likely spot in the national championship game. Can you imagine it? I can, and man, it’d be awesome.

P.S. Funniest thing about the coaches’ poll? Somebody voted for Duke, which went 1-10 last year, with their 25th-place vote. LOL!

P.P.S. Blame Spurrier. Apparently he’s done this before in the preseason poll:

Duke gave Spurrier his first college head coaching job 19 years ago. … [Spurrier said,] “I’ve been voting for the boys from Duke since, oh, about 1990, whenever I started voting on that poll. I just want ‘em to know that I haven’t forgotten about ‘em and I appreciate everything they did for me. That’s why I did it.”

Heh. AdamGold writes: “I got another e-mail lamenting the fact that the Duke Blue Devils received a vote in the pre-season Coaches’ Poll. And it’s this that helps to prove my point of last week when I said that the fact that Spurrier continues to mock the system by putting Duke 25th actually does more to embarrass the Blue Devils than anything else you could possibly hope to accomplish.”

(Hat tip: Bonnie.)

Now THIS is (at last! :) some Hopeful news, which I Doubly did Not expect. I had assumed that last Thursday’s Quinnipiac Poll would be the Last one before the Real one tomorrow ~ but also, that if there Were to be another survey it would surely show the momentum-borne Lamont bandwagon continuing to Roll Up the lead.

BUT NO! :) The poll, completed yesterday, has Lamont at 51% (down 3 from the previous 54%), Lieberman 45% (up 4 from 41%), undecided 4% (down 1 from 5%). I.e., a Net shift of 3 points from Ned to Joe & 1 point from Undecided to Joe, reducing Ned’s margin by 7 points, from 13 down to 6.

That’s still a significant lead & I fear that Lamont is still the probable winner tomorrow ~ but it does put Lieberman within possible Striking Distance, which 13 percentage points Behind was Not. / And, it indicates that the Late Trend is For Joe ~ which to me is a Stunning (and welcome) surprise.

Also to Me :), Table 4 of the poll (scroll down to it) is Interesting, though not stunning because the previous Quinnipiac data have indicated similar Demographics. Counterintuitively it seems, Table 4 shows Peacenik Ned with a Big lead among Men (55-42), but Tied with Warmonger Joe among Women! (47-47) Thinking it through though, I suppose the Democratic Ladies ARE much Fiercer that us nambypamby D-Boys. :] AND, the same Table shows Lieberman winning (by smallish margins) the party’s Proletarian sectors ~ the No-College-Degrees and the Below-50K Incomes ~ while Lamont Romps in the Better Class Of Dimmycrats :> with all kinds of Higher education adorning their Assets. :}

Well as Bonnie said in her comment, Tomorrow tells the Tale. / GO JOE! :)

Note: the poll shows the Dem Gubernatorial primary also tightening. / If they Both end up actually Close, say a little prayer** for my former colleagues in CTSOTS ElectionDiv. / We Hate Close! (**Sean, you can just Think a little Good Thought. Special Dispensation. :)

P.S. ~ Just to shed a little Illumination upon a Previous-thread-Comment question, re whether the Lamontistas may, or may not, be Fairly called [e.g., by me :] the “Demleft”, here is a good (and Entertaining :) Hartford Courant profile of the Radically brilliant :} Tom Swan, the Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) skilled veteran commissar :> who Recruited Ned into the race, signed on as his Campaign chieftain, and deployed a platoon of his CCAG comrades ;] to help him Run the Show (which he & they have indeed done very effectively). Sample:

George Jepsen, the former state Democratic Party chairman who is supporting Lamont, is amused by the partnership between the Greenwich businessman and the coffee-stained, sandal-wearing CCAG crew that Swan leads.

“They’ve been on the other side of the barricades throwing rocks at the tanks every day of their lives and here they are, possibly on the verge of one of the greatest political upsets in national history,” Jepsen said. “I like to tease them that they were Bolsheviks in a former life and they’re being punished now by being forced to work for the grandson of J.P. Morgan’s partner.”

:) Whole thing.

UPDATE BY BRENDAN: Mystery Pollster is skeptical that the shift in the numbers is really as dramatic as it appears.

Meanwhile, here’s a look at what the other half is saying, straight from the Kos’s mouth.

Jeff Masters states that a tropical wave about 700 miles southwest of the Cape Verde islands has some potential for development. Surface winds and convection are both relatively unimpressive right now, but conditions are still favorable for development. There is some dust and dry air to the northwest, but according to Masters, much less than with Chris. Wind shear is relatively low and surface temps are relatively warm.

UPDATE: Dr. Masters just posted for today. He seems less optimistic for development with this system any time soon, and seems more concerned about the dry air to the northwest . Development is still possible later on in the week, however.

Joe Lieberman might have cause to think so after Tuesday’s primary. It’s his honesty that could cost him his Senate seat, writes Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan:

If Lieberman loses, it will not even be because he supported the war. Almost every leading Democratic politician and foreign policymaker, and many a liberal columnist, supported the war. Nor will he lose because he opposes withdrawing troops from Iraq this year. Most top Democratic policymakers agree that early withdrawal would be a mistake. Nor, finally, is it because he has been too chummy with President Bush. Lieberman has offered his share of criticism of the administration’s handling of the Iraq war and of many other administration policies.

No, Lieberman’s sin is of a different order. Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn’t recant. He didn’t say he was wrong. He didn’t turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn’t claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn’t try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn’t claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn’t go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted “public intellectuals.”

These have been the chosen tactics of self-preservation ever since events in Iraq started to go badly and the war became unpopular. Prominent intellectuals, both liberal and conservative, have turned on their friends and allies in an effort to avoid opprobrium for a war they publicly supported. Journalists have turned on their fellow journalists in an effort to make them scapegoats for the whole profession. Politicians have twisted themselves into pretzels to explain away their support for the war or, better still, to blame someone else for persuading them to support it.

Al Gore, the one-time Clinton administration hawk, airbrushed that history from his record. He turned on all those with whom he once agreed about Iraq and about many other foreign policy questions. And for this astonishing reversal he has been applauded by his fellow Democrats and may even get the party’s nomination.

Apparently, amazingly, dispiritingly, it all works. At least in the short run, dishonesty pays. Dissembling pays. Forgetting your past writings and statements pays. Condemning those with whom you once agreed pays. Phony self-flagellation followed by self-righteous self-congratulation pays. The only thing that doesn’t pay is honesty. If Joe Lieberman loses, it will not be because he supported the war or even because he still supports it. It will be because he refused to choose one of the many dishonorable paths open to him to salvage his political career.

What’s even more amazing and dispiriting is that some people have the unmitigated gall (not to mention lack of common sense) to claim that Lieberman’s honesty is actually a sign of “spinelessness,” an indication that he has “no principles beyond winning and political expedience and no honor beyond his own self interest.” I’m not just picking on dcl; it’s a distressingly common sentiment among liberals on this blog and elsewhere. This despite the fact that, manifestly, Lieberman’s entire political career is in mortal peril this week precisely because he stuck to his guns arguing for an unpopular position of principle. It doesn’t matter whether you think that position is right or wrong — if you have a shred of intellectual honesty in your body, you should be able to acknowledge that it’s the exact opposite of “spineless” or “expedient.”

There is absolutely no way Lieberman would be facing a serious primary challenge if he had pulled a John Kerry, back in 2003 or 2004, and turned against the war when that became the hip, popular thing to do. But Lieberman didn’t do that, because his conscience told him that supporting the war is right, and thus he continued to do so, even though the political tides had obviously turned against such a stance. As a sitting senator in a deep-blue state, Lieberman had absolutely nothing to gain, and absolutely everything to lose, by continuing to support the war. Because he continued supporting it anyway, he became a joke of a presidential candidate in 2004, and now he has become the left wing’s favorite whipping boy, a pariah in his own party — and, on Tuesday, he may become a lame-duck senator, or at least a lame-duck Democratic senator. None of that would have happened if he’d taken the dishonorable route and pretended to oppose the war.

Look, I don’t go around calling Russ Feingold “unprincipled” or “spineless”; he’s an honest, principled man with whom I happen to disagree. Likewise, those of you who disagree with Lieberman, even if you disagree profoundly and virulently, should be able to recognize that he’s an honest, principled man. You can call him stupid if you like (you’re wrong, of course, but that’s a whole different argument), but you can’t call his stance on Iraq dishonest or unprincipled if you expect anyone with functioning logical faculties to take you seriously.

Anyway, Kagan is right. (Hat tip: my dad.)

P.S. Let me add a caveat to my statement “Kagan is right.”

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Heh:

BEIRUT, LEBANON—As the cost of rocket fuel soared to $630 per gallon Monday, Middle Easterners who depend on the non-renewable propellant to power 10-kilogram rockets have been forced to severely restrict their daily bombing routines, bringing this latest round of fighting to an unexpected halt.

“The way things are going, I won’t have any money left over for other necessities, such as anti-aircraft missiles, land mines, and machine guns,” said Hezbollah guerrilla Mahmoud Hamoui, who is just one of hundreds of Islamic militants compelled to scale back their killing until rocket-fuel prices return to their pre-2006 levels.

On a decidedly less funny note, Andrew Sullivan quotes an Iraqi civilian comparing and contrasting the Israel-Hezbollah war with the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq: “They count their dead in dozens. We count ours in hundreds.”

In an attempt to speed things up a bit around these parts, I’ve made the homepage static instead of dynamic, so visitors won’t be accessing the WordPress database every single time they visit the site. The static version is created automatically, every 60 seconds, via a shell script referenced by the crontab. This means it may take up to a minute for newly published blog posts to actually appear on the homepage (and for the comment counters on the homepage to accurately reflect newly added comments), but the trade-off should be well worth it: the homepage is loading much faster, for me anyway (how is it for y’all?), and my server is less likely to crash or massively slow down during high-traffic times (because the database won’t be processing a query with every single hit).

For all you curious UNIX geeks, the shell script says:

wget http://www.brendanloy.com/wp/ -O /var/www/html/index-s.html;
mv -f /var/www/html/index-s.html /var/www/html/index.html

The dynamic, up-to-the-second version of my homepage can still be viewed at http://www.brendanloy.com/wp/.

Seriously. First of all, any ailment which negatively affects my ability to talk is obviously a bad thing, given that I love to talk. :) Secondly, puberty was bad enough the first time; reliving it every once in a while by having my voice become ridiculously squeaky for a few days is not my idea of fun. Curse you, laryngitis, we hates you! We hates you forever!

Just yesterday, I saw a show on The History Channel advancing the theory that the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea was the location of Atlantis, and that the great civilization was destroyed by the Thera eruption between 1630 and 1500 BC. (More on that theory here.) Now I see, via Fark, an article claiming that the same eruption also caused the parting of the Red Sea and the other Biblical plagues in Egypt. Interesting.

The Washington Post submits its preliminary draft Brief in support of Brendan’s contemplated divorce litigation against the Democratic Party ~ foreseeing a wild spree of further infidelities by the coquettish Donkey Mare, following her soon-to-be-consummated seduction by Greenwich jackass wealthy liberal Ned Lamont :

FARMINGTON, Conn., Aug. 5 — The passion and energy fueling the antiwar challenge to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in Connecticut’s Senate primary signal a power shift inside the Democratic Party that could reshape the politics of national security and dramatically alter the battle for the party’s 2008 presidential nomination, according to strategists in both political parties.

A victory by businessman Ned Lamont on Tuesday would confirm the growing strength of the grass-roots and Internet activists who first emerged in Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. Driven by intense anger at President Bush and fierce opposition to the Iraq war, they are on the brink of claiming their most significant political triumph, one that will reverberate far beyond the borders here if Lieberman loses.

An upset by Lamont would affect the political calculations of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who like Lieberman supported giving Bush authority to wage the Iraq war, and could excite interest in a comeback by former vice president Al Gore, who warned in 2002 that the war could be a grave strategic error. For at least the next year, any Democrat hoping to play on the 2008 stage would need to reckon with the implications of Lieberman’s repudiation.

…Strategists say the Connecticut race has rattled the Democratic establishment, which is virtually united behind the three-term incumbent’s candidacy, and will force an uneasy accommodation with the newest, volatile power center within the party.

…The Connecticut race may be seen as an intensification of the partisan, polarized politics of the Bush era. Lieberman is paying a price for being an advocate of bipartisanship.

As a result, a loss on Tuesday could generate more demand for a strongly anti-Bush, antiwar candidate in the Democratic primaries. Several are ready to run, including Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), former senator John Edwards (N.C.) and Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), the only one of the three to vote against the war in 2002.

None, however, may be as attractive to the grass-roots activists as Gore. He has said he cannot conceive of circumstances that would put him in the race. But he may be coaxed to reconsider if the sentiment for him grows after the November midterm elections.

…many party moderates say they see worrisome parallels to what happened to the Democrats during Vietnam, when they opposed an unpopular war but paid a price politically for years after because of a perception the party was too dovish on national security.

“Candidates know they cannot appease [antiwar] activists if they are going to run winning national campaigns,” said Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute. “It will intensify the tension inside the Democratic coalition as we head into two critical elections.”…

Read the whole thing. / Brendan, They say the Political Bachelor’s life isn’t so bad, really. No Worries…no Responsibilites…no pesky Primaries to go Vote in…freedom to Chat up whatever winsome Fringe parties might happens to catch one’s roving Eye… :>

Nine people were killed when a Hezbollah rocket hit a building in Kfar Giladi in northern Israel, while Israeli officials said 9 people were critically wounded in by rockets in in Kiryat Shmona Sunday morning. Visit CNN for the latest.