All right, I know I’ve been dragging my feet on this, but I have indeed decided — as I alluded last Friday — to try out the weekly blog format. My intention is to make the switch on Tuesday. (I figure July 1, the halfway point of the calendar year, is a good arbitrary date to make such a change.)

However, the timing of the switch may change, depending on how much free time I have this weekend. There’s a lot of back-end stuff that I need to do, both to close down this blog and to set up the new blog. If I don’t make the switch on Tuesday, it probably won’t happen until July 14 or thereabouts, because Becky and I will be traveling over July 4 weekend, so I won’t have much free time again until the weekend of the 12th-13th.

Anyway, I need help from y’all on something. In switching from this "hyperactive" blog to a new, weekly blog, I want to make a clear, clean break by giving the blog a new name. I figure the subtitle could include the phrase "Irish Trojan," in order to maintain some semblance of "brand" continuity, but I want the title of the blog to be something different — and a more drastic difference than my switch last year from "The Irish Trojan’s Blog" to "Irish Trojan in Tennessee." I want a real new name.

Ideally, the new name would in some way emphasize the blog’s weekly/occasional nature. But at the same time, I don’t want it to be something totally pedestrian, like "Brendan’s Weekly Blog" or whatever. The problem is, I’m terrible at coming up with good, non-pedestrian ideas for things like blog names (as the "Ably Nerd On" fiasco demonstrated). So, I need your help. I need some suggestions for what I should call the new blog!

So far, the only decent idea I’ve had is to call it "Hopefully Considered," which was the name of my Papa Loy’s old weekly newspaper column. (The subtitle, I think, would be "The Irish Trojan’s Weekly Blog." So, in toto, the title and subtitle would read "Hopefully Considered: The Irish Trojan’s Weekly Blog.") But although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I’m not sure I like the idea of simply copying exactly the name of Papa’s column. Something that alludes to "Hopefully Considered," without being precisely the same name, would be great… but I can’t think of anything good.

Don’t limit yourself to spin-offs of "Hopefully Considered," though. That’s just one idea. Any and all other ideas are welcome! Please, submit ‘em in comments, and please feel free to comment on other people’s ideas as well. This isn’t a democracy, exactly, but at the same time, I’m definitely curious to know what my "regulars" think. 

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Earlier today, I read this article by Bob Beckel making the strategic case for an Obama-Clinton ticket, and I found myself almost beginning to doubt the ferocity of my oft-stated belief that such a choice would be “wolf-face crazy.” Then I read the little biographical blurb at the bottom:

Bob Beckel managed Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign.

LOL! And Obama should take this guy’s advice on political strategy, why exactly? ;)

Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Dan Balz argues that, so far, McCain vs. Obama is politics as usual:

Whatever substance they may contain has been buried in negative counterattacks from the opposing camp, designed to turn ideas into stereotypes and candidates into caricatures. In the hands of Obama’s advisers, McCain is nothing more than the third coming of President Bush. To McCain’s staff, Obama is merely a liberal, naive, arrogant extension of what Democrats have been offering for years.

Gone in the early stages of this campaign is any sense of the uniqueness of the two nominees. McCain is certainly no garden-variety Republican and the historic possibilities of Obama’s candidacy cannot be overstated. But those realities have been submerged beneath a tactical shouting match that feeds the cable culture of contemporary politics.

Don’t blame the media for this. The campaigns have deliberately adopted postures of hyper-aggressiveness to set the early tone. The testosterone levels appear extremely high. No charge however small or incidental can go unanswered. No proposal, no matter how innocuous or provocative, can be discussed calmly or intelligently.

That led a McCain surrogate to respond to Obama’s comments on the rights of terrorist detainees, a topic on which reasonable people can differ, as “delusional.” It led to an Obama surrogate to describe as “stupid” the positions McCain has taken on the Iraq war, though it is clearly arguable that the surge strategy has helped to reduce violence and U.S. casualties. …

Of all the candidates who sought the presidency this year, McCain and Obama seemed the least likely to fall so quickly into old habits. The question is whether the opening weeks are a true reflection of their characters and the kind of campaigns they intended to run or a temporary departure.

(Hat tip: Halperin.)

The Waterbury Republican-American evidently does not believe in God and Senator Dodd. Well, maybe the former, but certainly not the latter. :) In an editorial Monday, the Rep-Am’s editorial board calls Dodd "Tammany Hall’s senior senator" and scolds the national media — as well as, in a subsequent editorial, the Hartford Courant — for failing to more vigorously cover "the sweetheart mortgages he got from Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Nozilo." (Countrywide is described as "the Enron of subprime mortgages.") "This scandal has legs," the editors assert.

I haven’t followed this at all, so I have no idea whether it’s a big deal; I just saw the link on InstaPundit, and since it involves Connecticut’s, er, other senator, I figured it deserved a post.

Meanwhile, in other Connecticut news — and speaking of the Courant — the Nutmeg State’s paper of record is eliminating 60 newsroom staffers and reducing the number of news pages in the paper per week from 273 to 206. Here’s the memo to staff. (Hat tip: my dad.)

It’s times like these I’m really happy I went into law instead of journalism.

Ross Douthat has a good post about Iraq and the surge.

The L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll finds the following national breakdown in a four-way race: Obama 48%, McCain 33%, Nader 4%, Barr 3%, Undecided 10%. Even if we assume that most of those 10% will eventually vote for McCain, in accordance with the Bradley Effect, Obama’s still clearly winning.

What’s particularly intriguing is that, although Nader does slightly better than Barr, their combined effect hurts McCain far more than Obama. When only two candidates are mentioned, it’s Obama 49%, McCain 37%. Another 4% volunteer their intention to vote for "someone else," while 10% remain undecided. The poll write-up explains:

Eighty-seven percent of McCain’s voters would stay with him [in a four-way race featuring Nader and Barr], but 11% would vote for another candidate, with 2% undecided.  Almost all of Obama’s voters (95%) would still stay with him even when the race opened up to include more candidates.

More specifically, when the two-way race becomes a four-way race, 5% of McCain voters switch to Barr, and 6% switch to Nader, while 2% say they "don’t know" how they’d vote. By contrast, just 2% of Obama supporters switch to Nader, 0% switch to Barr, 2% "don’t know," and — just to prove that you can always find a tiny segment of poll respondents who’ll say things that don’t make any sense whatsoever — 1% switch to McCain! (Remember, he’s an option in both scenarios; why anyone would vote for Obama in a two-way race, but McCain in a four-way race, is beyond me.)

Other interesting findings:

• "More than 80% of Obama voters said they were enthusiastic about their candidate, including 47% who are very enthusiastic.  It’s another matter for McCain.  Just under half (45%) of McCain voters said they were enthusiastic about voting for him, but 51% were not enthused about the prospect."

• "While almost a fifth of moderate Republicans would support Obama, just 7% of moderate Democrats would support the Republican candidate.  Overall, almost four out of five liberals support Obama, just 58% of conservatives support McCain."

• "[M]en are somewhat divided — 40% for Obama to 37% for McCain — but women give the Democratic candidate a 25 point lead (54% to 29%)."

• Among whites, it’s McCain 39%, Obama 39%, Nader 5%, Barr 4%, someone else 2%, undecided 11%. (If Bradley/Wilder holds, McCain will get the bulk of those undecideds in the end.) Among blacks, Obama gets "nine out of 10" or thereabouts, while McCain gets just 2%, and 2% are undecided. Obama wins 61-23 among "other ethnic groups."

State-by-state polls, it should be noted, have been trending in the same direction. Five Thirty Eight, which was projecting an extremely close race as recently as a few weeks ago, now has Obama winning 344 to 194 in the Electoral College, with a map that roughly resembles Clinton’s win over Dole in 1996.

Caveat: It’s still very early, and polls at this point can be extremely misleading, arguably to the point of meaninglessness. It’s clear that Obama is doing very well right now; it’s not at all clear what, if anything, that means for November.

P.S. It should also be noted that, although some pre-election polls in 2000 showed him in the high single digits, Nader ultimately got just 2.73% that year, and in 2004 he managed a paltry 0.38%. It seems highly unlikely, then, that in a high-stakes election offering such a stark issue-based contrast as Obama vs. McCain, he’ll ultimately get anywhere near 4% of the vote. In fact, given that Obama is practically a liberal’s dream candidate (at least as plausible Democratic nominees go), I find it hard to believe that Nader will do better than the 0.38% he got in ‘04, when he was running against the far less dreamy John Kerry. (On the other hand, I suppose Nader’s numbers could be boosted by the "racist liberal" vote — folks who won’t vote for McCain because he’s a Republican, but won’t vote for Obama because he’s black.)

The only way I can see Nader breaking 1% is if he truly does pick up a whole bunch of erstwhile McCain voters — and that itself seems highly unlikely, given how anathema his views are to anyone who is remotely conservative or libertarian-ish. My guess is that those 6% of McCain voters who currently gravitate to Nader in a four-way race are simply disaffected with their candidate, and are casting a "protest vote" for the third-party candidate whose name they recognize, namely Nader. But once they start paying more attention, I’d imagine that most of ‘em will realize Nader is really not their kind of guy. Nader is a liberal candidate; it’s hard to believe he can build a sizable support base that’s based fundamentally on anything other than liberal voters.

In the end, most of the disaffected conservatives/Republicans will either stay home, vote for Barr, or hold their noses and vote for McCain. The "conservatives for Nader" movement is about as plausible as the "elderly Jews for Buchanan" movement in Palm Beach County eight years ago. ;)

TNR’s James Kirchick asks an intriguing question: "Will the Candidates Recognize Morgan Tsvangirai as President of Zimbabwe?"

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the
Movement for Democratic Change, is the legitimately elected president
of Zimbabwe. Or at least he should be. He won that country’s
presidential election (and his party won its parliamentary election) on
March 29th, a victory that has been denied to him and his colleagues
over the past three months as Robert Mugabe has murdered nearly 100
opposition supporters, tortured many more, and driven thousands from
their homes. A week after the election, the Zimbabwean junta announced
that Tsvangirai did not win an outright majority, thus forcing a
runoff scheduled for this Friday. On Sunday, however, Tsvangirai announced
that he was dropping out of the election, stating that "we cannot stand
there and watch people being killed for the sake of power."

So here’s a question for
Senators Obama and McCain. Back in April, Assistant Secretary of State
for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer declared
Tsvangirai the winner of the March 29th election, and certified that he
won over 50% of the vote. Recognition of him as the duly elected
president of Zimbabwe — with all of the diplomatic measures that would
imply, specifically spelled out today in a New York Sun editorial — should have been forthcoming, yet the State Department has been reluctant to go that far. With Tsvangirai hiding in
the Dutch Embassy for fear of his life, will either of you call upon
the United States to recognize him as the elected president of
Zimbabwe?

Sounds good to me. But wouldn’t that constitute "regime change"?

"John McCain and the Republicans will lose if this campaign is about issues. They only mismanaged the economy and mismanaged the hurricane and mismanaged the budget and mismanaged the war and mismanaged the hunt for Osama bin Laden and mismanaged the world." –John Brummett, Arkansas News Bureau. (Hat tip: Ben Smith.)

P.S. Meanwhile, on an unrelated note, the Obama campaign takes some MSM heat for its less than entirely progressive attitude toward the American Muslim community. Money quote from Congressman Keith Ellison (he’s the guy who was actually photographed being sworn in with his hand on the Koran), regarding Obama’s aggressive denials of those pesky "smears" alleging that he’s a Muslim: "A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way." More here and here.

The new Great Big Sea album is available on iTunes. Woohoo!

UPDATE: So far, so good; I’ve listened to tracks 1-4 and 7. "Banks of Newfoundland" is, as I thought it might be, quite dissimilar from (and probably more authentic than!) the Irish Rovers’ version; the lyrics are roughly the same, but they’re set to a completely different tune. It doesn’t have the same hairy-chested, belt-it-out feel as the Rovers’ version (or, for that matter, as some other GBS songs like "General Taylor," "Captain Kidd," "The Old Black Rum," etc.), but I still like it, I think. I’ll have to listen to it a bunch more times to decide for sure. :)

One song I definitely like is track #3, "England," which contains the lyric that gave rise to the album’s title, "Fortune’s Favour." It’s a very neat little ditty about the first English settlers who came to Newfoundland (or "the New Found Land," as the island was originally known, and as the song initially describes it). "England" has good lyrics, beautiful harmonies, and some nice little nuanced touches in the way the song evolves and the way the boys sing it.

P.S. Appropriately enough — and, come to think of it, this is probably intentional on Great Big Sea’s part — today is the anniversary of the date in 1497 when John Cabot landed in Newfoundland*, becoming the first European to since the Vikings to reach North America’s shores. (Hat tip: My Adversaria.)

*Probably. Various other locations, including Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, claim he landed there rather than in Newfoundland. But it was most likely in Newfoundland, at Cape Bonavista.

You can take our lives, but you can never take our silly British hats!!!

Joe Biden: hell yeah, I’d be Obama’s veep!

As I’ve said before, I think Biden is a great choice in theory — an experienced hand, sensible on foreign affairs, forceful on the war on terror, etc. In practice, he’s a bit trickier: he’s as slippery and slimy a Washington insider as they come, which doesn’t exactly jive with Obama’s message of change, and he has a bad habit of putting his foot in his mouth. (See: “articulate and clean,” Indians at 7-Eleven, etc.)

Still, since I ultimately rank national security and foreign policy as my #1 voting priority, I’d be reassured by Obama picking Biden. I kind of doubt it will happen, though, especially now that he seems almost to be campaigning for it.

Great Big Sea’s new album, Fortune’s Favour, debuts tomorrow — and I just noticed that Track 7 is "Banks of Newfoundland," which happens to be the first Newfoundland song that I ever learned! The chorus, as it’s sung by the Irish Rovers (iTunes link here), goes like this:

We’ll rub her ’round and scrub her ’round
With holy stone and sand,
And we’ll say farewell to the Virgin Rocks
On the Banks of Newfoundland!

My father had (and presumably still has) a vinyl record of the 1969 Irish Rovers album The Life of the Rover, which had "Banks of Newfoundland" on it, and he would play it frequently on our old record player when I was a little kid. It was one of my favorites; I used to love singing that chorus when I was, oh, maybe 5 years old. :) I was also a big fan of the end of the final verse — "And to the docks, they come in flocks / The pretty girls will stand / Sayin’ it’s snugger with me than it is at sea / On the banks of Newfoundland!" — though of course I had no idea what those lyrics meant. ;) In the words of Grandpa Loomer, albeit referring to a different bawdy Irish tune that I famously sung at an even earlier age: "What kind of song is that for a three-year-old?" Heh.

Anyway, as is typical for traditional Irish/Maritime music, there are various different versions of the lyrics floating around, and probably different tunes, too. The snippet of an early Great Big Sea demo of "Banks of Newfoundland" that’s played in Canada.com Webisode 11, Part 1, from 5:32 to 6:20, certainly sounds very different from the version I know. (Hat tip: Between The Rock And A Hard Place.) So I really don’t know what Track 7 of Fortune’s Favour will sound like. But I can’t wait to find out! The prospect of hearing my favorite band belt out the hearty chorus of a song that I’ve known for almost my entire life, a childhood favorite, makes me even more excited than I already was for tomorrow’s big debut.

I’ll definitely be using a portion of one of my Father’s Day presents from Becky — an iTunes gift certificate — to buy the album tomorrow. Great Big Sea rocks!

P.S. After the jump, I’ve posted the lyrics of the Irish Rovers’ version of "Banks of Newfoundland," since I couldn’t find that particular lyrical rendition online anywhere.

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The Associated Press says everything seemingly is spinning out of control.

I blame George Bush the media global warming Al Gore the Clintons illegal immigrants Barack Hussein Obama teh gays the Jews Karl Rove Halliburton Canada.

I’m afraid I have some very sad news to report. A few days ago, while we were out west visiting Arizona and Colorado, our beloved greyhound, Robbie, died unexpectedly and suddenly of bloat. He was two months shy of seven years old.

It happened overnight last Sunday night at the kennel where he was staying. It wasn’t the kennel’s fault; bloat strikes rapidly and without warning, and there was no indication anything was wrong until too late. I got a call early Monday morning giving me the news. I didn’t mention it here on the blog until now because I wanted to wait till I had had time to put together a proper photographic tribute. I’ve now done so; you can view 186 pictures and 12 videos of Robbie, from 2004 through 2008, on Flickr. (Slideshow here.)

The photo gallery traces not just Robbie’s life, but our lives over the last four-plus years: getting our graduate degrees at ASU and Notre Dame, moving in and out of various apartments, and criss-crossing the country by car, from Mesa to South Bend, then to Glendale and back to South Bend, and finally to Knoxville. In each place, we’ve found new places for Robbie to play, from Mesa’s Quail Run dog park, to the tennis court and lawn at South Bend’s Clover Ridge apartments, to Jay & Ashley’s back yard in Loudon, among others.

And of course, geographic changes haven’t been the half of it. Since adopting Robbie from the Arizona Greyhound Rescue in March of ‘04, Becky and I have gotten engaged, married, and had a baby. We’ve both earned graduate degrees, and have gone from being 21- and 22-year-old kids to 26-year-old adults. Oh yeah, and I briefly became a national media sensation — to the point where Robbie himself made the New York Times. :)

Through all these changes, we’ve had our gentle giant — our very own “40 mile-an-hour couch potato” — as a constant presence in our lives. Needless to say, he will be sorely missed.

Much more after the jump.

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It’s official: there’s ice on Mars.

Two weeks ago, I announced that I intend to close down this blog on July 20 — one month from today. But, like Frodo standing at the edge of Sammath Naur, looking down into the fires of Mount Doom, I find myself wavering and wondering whether I should "choose to do what I came to do," if you will.

In my June 6 post, I mentioned that Becky had initially suggested an alternative solution to my bloggy dilemma: I could simply "cut back drastically… by maintaining the current blog but committing to do just one post per week." But I explained that I had rejected this idea on the grounds that it "wouldn’t work" (because I’d cheat) and that ultimately, "it wouldn’t be desirable" (because "the Irish Trojan community would die a slow and painful death," waning due to bloggy inactivity rather than "go[ing] out while I’m on top").

In comments on the post, however, several readers endorsed the weekly-blog idea. Bea, for instance, wrote, "I like Becky’s idea of a weekly column of sorts. So what if you spend a
little time every week thinking about the topic and a little time on
research? I think it’s doable, a great outlet and, hey, the WIFE is ok
with this!" Christine also made a compelling case:

Life is about limits and prioritizing and relaxing (oh and a few other things). But if you enjoy having a blog (which I get the feeling you do, as well as your mentioned past blog-like antics), then you really should keep going. Just tweek it. … I LOVE the idea of a weekly column of sorts. Gives you something to ponder (nothing wrong with that) all week AND an outlet! And your loyal fans have something to look forward to! If something is particularly intriguing to you, you can blog more on that topic, but I would hope it would allow you to not feel like a slave to brendanloy.com but still give you the freedom to write and get your ideas out there.

If you have a problem with setting limits, then set some (I personally hate limits) but it’s kinda like you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water … Life (or blogs) don’t have to be all or nothing.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come around to the idea that a weekly blog might work, provided that I structure it in such a way as to reduce the temptation to "cheat." The goal would be to create basically the same situation that I described with regard to the photoblog: making the new blog so obviously different from the old that I won’t "be overly tempted to co-opt it" for the old-style "hyperactive" blogging, because doing so "would be so foreign to the nature of the blog itself."

If I can manage that — and if I can prevent my blogging "schedule" from feeling like an obligation or assignment — then I think a weekly blog would be worth doing, and preferable to the alternative of quitting cold turkey. In other words, I am increasingly tempted to declare:
"I will not do this deed. The Blog is mine!" :) But for me, unlike for
Frodo, I think this actually might be the correct decision. (And
hopefully I won’t lose a finger over it!)

For one thing, blogging weekly would be a new challenge, as it would effectively force me to hone a very different writing style: the lengthy, essay-ish, often multi-topic blog post (a la Lileks’s "Bleat"), as opposed to the clipped immediacy of hyperactive blogging, usually about one topic at a time (but many per day). To keep things flowing, interesting, and adequately focused in such a format can be difficult, and trying to become as good at writing in that style as I’ve become in the current format would be a worthwhile endeavor unto itself, methinks.

Furthermore, although my audience would undoubtedly shrink markedly, many of the die-hards would presumably stick around, and that’d be nice; I’d hate to lose touch with the Nadines and kcatnds of the world. :) Also, maintaining a textual blogospheric presence would mean that I won’t have to improvise something — like temporarily co-opting
the photoblog — in the event I’m caught up in breaking news, or otherwise have
a burning desire to share my thoughts on a particular topic with, say,
InstaPundit’s readers. I’d still have a public blog for such things;
I’d just use it less often.

But perhaps most importantly, I’d be following the sage advice of the fourth one:

Make sure that, in addition to dedicating yourself to family, career,
and community, you have at least one important outlet that belongs just
to YOU, and that speaks to you in a way that nothing else does. In my
own life, I have found that kind of independence and release to be
vital, not only for my own personal well-being, but for energizing me
in a way that allows me to give even more to the people I love.

Or, as Alasdair put it, "be careful that you don’t make a void in your Life without having something useful and positive with which to fill said void."

The reality, as I said in my June 6 is post, is that "I’ll still need some way of
expressing myself, of publishing my thoughts to the world, of letting
loose the occasional rant; I’ve always had, and needed, such an outlet,
at least since seventh grade." My original thought was to satisfy this need by way of the photoblog and Flickr, my Pajamas Media hurricane-blogging, and perhaps the occasional Facebook post. But if I’m going to post bloggy rants on Facebook anyway, why not channel that aspect of my creative energy in a more productive direction by still maintaining a public blog, just on a weekly basis? With the right amount of structure and discipline, I think the latter solution is better than the former.

Crucially, the calendar gives me time to do a "trial run" of this weekly blog idea, before the impending changes in our lives. If it works, I can keep doing it; if it fails — whether because I can’t resist the temptation to "cheat," or because the scheduled nature of it (most likely, I would try to blog every Sunday) makes blogging feel less fun and more obligatory, or for some other reason — then I can go back to the original, cold-turkey plan.

I haven’t yet finally decided what to do; I’m going to sleep on it this weekend. But if I do decide to switch (on a trial basis) to a weekly blog format, I will actually move up the date of this blog’s retirement — most likely to June 30 — and start up my weekly blog (which would be a new blog, separate and distinct from this one) in early July. That would give me time to test out the concept and see how it works.

I will, of course, keep y’all informed about what I decide to do. In the mean time, your feedback is much appreciated. One big question for my regulars: do you anticipate that you would continue to regularly read my blog if it were updated only once a week, provided of course that those weekly updates are interesting and worth reading? Also, in terms of keeping the discussion going and the community alive, would it make a difference if I disabled purely anonymous commenting, such that you’d at least need an OpenID account, or perhaps a WordPress.com account, in order to comment?

[Bumped from 12:07 PM to 5:00 PM. -ed.]