Bears 31, Eagles 19

Hey, I'm as surprised as anybody. But my Bears didn't just beat the heavily favored Philadelphia Eagles yesterday at Soldier Field. They owned them.

Granted, the Eagles had injury problems in their secondary. Asante Samuels might have made a difference. But the Bears team I saw yesterday has a shot to beat anybody in the league. Don't look now, but I think we're actually good.

Note that I'm not predicting a Super Bowl or anything. But also note that the Bears are now in first place all alone in the NFC North. That other team- the one whose colors are typically found in a newborn baby's diapers- lost to Atlanta yesterday.

Oh, and by the way... all those Jay Cutler detractors are rather quiet today, for some reason.

Bear down!

Before there were Gale Sayers and Walter Payton...

...there was Willie Galimore (28), who was killed on the way to Bears' 1964 training camp at the age of 29. Also killed in the accident was Galimore's teammate, wide receiver John (Bo) Farrington.

Willie was a great one. Injury prone, his dazzling runs and unbelievable moves were a comparatively rare treat for Bear fans. If he'd stayed healthy and lived longer, it's hard to say how great he could have been.

Also featured are quarterback Ed Brown (15), fullback Rick Casares (35), and place kicker George Blanda (in a hoodie). Blanda, who is best known as a quarterback with the Oakland Raiders, was pretty much limited to kicking during his career with the Bears.

These guys, along with defenders like Joe Fortunato and Bill George and Doug Atkins, were my gridiron heroes when I was growing up. BTW, the games depicted below were played at Wrigley Field. Notice that the lack of space between the end zone and the wall, which caused the Big Ten to decree that all offensive plays in the Illinois-Northwestern game last week had to go the other way, was no obstacle either in these games nor in any of the others the Bears played during the years when they shared Wrigley with the Cubs (the other Chicago NFL franchise, the Cardinals, played at Comiskey Park. The Bears, like the Cubs, were regarded in those days as the North Side team, and the Cardinals, like the White Sox, as the South Side team).

The Bears are harder on Dolphins than tuna fishermen are

I guess it must have been on cable, since I couldn't find it on free TV.But the Bears won their second game in five days last night, beating Miami 16-0.

I'll be rooting for the Norse Force to beat the Mold 'n' Gold Sunday. But even if Green Bay wins, the Bears will retain not one but two tie-breakers in the NFC Central race: they beat the Pack in their only meeting so far, and they have a better record in the division.

Bear down!

A bizarre Northwestern-Illinois game at Wrigley tomorrow

The Bears played at Wrigley Field for years. In fact, most of the Bears games I've attended have been at Wrigley.

But for some bizarre reason supposedly having to do with safety, tomorrow's Northwestern-Illinois game at Wrigley will use only one end zone. It seems that the east end zone is too close to the wall for safety.

Right.

This is going to be the weirdest big-time football game since that bizarre NFL championship game back in the 'Thirties in which the Bears and the New York Giants played on a field that was only eighty yards long.

It is also lamer than most people on injured reserve.

Bears beat the Men in Braids

The Bears beat Minnesota 27-13 yesterday, moving into a tie with the idle Snot 'n' Pus for first in the NFC Central.

While I neglected to mention it, they also beat Buffalo last week. But then, so does everybody else- except Detroit.

The Ursine Warriors are not 6-3. Had Lovie but thrown the challenge flag when Jay Cutler fumbled after scoring what should have been the winning touchdown in the Washington game, they'd be 7-2. On the other hand, they probably would have lost the Detroit game if it weren't for that weird rule about receivers releasing the ball, so I guess 6-3 is probably about right.

I have no illusions about our winning the Super Bowl. Or going to the Super Bowl. Or getting very far into the playoffs. I will only say that any year in which we beat Green Bay twice and Minnesota at least once is a success- and beating both of them twice is very nearly as satisfying as taking home the Lombardi Trophy.

And we're half-way there!

What they said

Leading Republicans believe that the nomination of Sarah Palin in 2012 would ensure President Obama's re-election.

They're right.

Northwestern 21, Iowa 17!

Three years in a row, the Hawkeyes fall victim to the mighty Wildcats- and I can hold my head high in this state for another year!



The bad news: Northwestern quarterback Dan Persa ruptured his Achilles tendon, and is out for the season.

Persa sustained the injury in the act of throwing the game-winning touchdown pass.

Dubyah vindicated?

We asked the G20 to back our efforts to get China to revalue the artificially cheap renminbi upward in order to improve the relative position of American exports and save American jobs.

They said no.

Once again, we are in the position we were in the days leading up to the Iraq war of wondering why in the world we keep bailing the Europeans and other ingrates out whenever a Kaiser Bill or a Hitler is on the march. Maybe Rep. Ron Paul (R-Utopia Planitia), his son, Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-Cydonia), and the other neo-isolationists are right after all.

--HT: Drudge

Even if Obama rebounds, the future looks bleak for Democrats on the Hill

When the Democrats swept into control of both houses of Congress four years ago, commentators pointed out that the relative numbers of Republican and Democratic seats up for graps in 2008 would make it unlikely that Republicans could retake the Senate that year.

As things fall out, the arithmetic works the other way around where 2012 is concerned. The Democrats are going to have to fight like mad to avoid losing control of the Senate even if President Obama is decisively re-elected.

And now Republicans will be in charge of re-drawing congressional districts in the wake of this year's census. For the foreseeable future, it's going to be much harder for the Democrats to get a majority in the House than it was a week ago Tuesday.

HT: Real Clear Politics

When your head is in the sand, you can't see what's happening in the sky

Ever since President Obama unilaterally took America out of manned space exploration (leaving it to a private sector ill-equipped to compete with the government-sponsored programs of other nations), many of us have been waiting with a sense of foreboding for the moment a few years from now when the Chinese flag will be raised on the moon, and we will be years away from being able to return there ourselves. The blow to both our prestige and our national self-image will be devastating- and it will be left to China to exploit the rich deposits of helium-3 and other resources on our nearest celestial neighbor.

And already China is developing the capacity to wage war against us in space. One hopes that the Obama administration notices.

HT: Drudge

Well, it's certainly innovative...

The NHL has experimented with several different formats for its ALl Star Game. For a long time, the Stanley Cup champions played the all stars from the rest of the league. They've also had the all stars from North America play the all stars from therest of the world, and the all stars from each conference play each other.

But starting with this year's game, the teams will be picked the same way we all picked sides in informal baseball and softball games as kids. A pool of all stars will be selected, and two captains will alternately choose from it to form the two teams.

Presumably who goes first will not be determined by throwing a bat and seeing whose hand can come cloest to the knob.

He's at it again!

Once again, President Obama has done something that the President of the United States should never do to a foreign leader.

But he just can't seem to stop.... and this time he's done it to the entire Indian Parliament!

HT: Drudge

Putting Pluto in its place

The other night while watching PBS, I heard astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson give the most cogent explanation yet of why Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

"If Pluto were in the orbit around the sun Earth has," Tyson explained, "it would grow a tail. And that's no way for a planet to behave!"

If Pluto were in the orbit around the sun Earth has, it- like any other Kuiper Belt Object Kuiper Belt Object (KBO)- look like the picture at the left. It would be a very large comet.

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are rocky worlds. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are huge balls of gas (if you had a big enough bathtub, Saturn would actually float in it!), usually with metalic and perhaps liquid cores. But Pluto, Charon, Eris and the other KBO's are essentially "dirty snowballs-" just economy-sized comets in more or less stable orbits.

KBOs become comets when their orbits are perturbed and they are sent inward toward the sun. The gasses which form the ice become heated and start to boil away- forming the tail.

PLuto was one of countless thousands of KBO's. As long as it was the largest, it was sort of grandfathered in to the category "planet." Several KBO's almost as large as Pluto were discovered, though. And when Eris was discovered by Dr. Michael Brown of Cal Tech a few years ago, suddenly Pluto was only the second largest KBO- with the likelihood that there are hundreds of others as large as Pluto or larger out there.

Ultimately, Pluto was demoted in order to save schoolchildren from the necessity of having to memorize the names of a couple of hundred planets instead of only eight or nine.

Wise old Barack explains things to the poor, dumb voters

We've been hearing it ever since it became clear that the Democrats were going to get plastered in this week's elections: it's not that the Democrats' policies were wrong. It's the voters who are wrong. The Democrats just didn't do a good enough job of explaining to the poor, dumb voters why the Democrats' policies were right.

And now, the President of the United States has joined the patronizing chorus.

Now, aren't you ashamed of yourselves, voters? You should have listened to Papa! Better let him do your thinking for you next time.

HT: Drudge

I never thought I"d defend Keith Olbermann, but...

After all the slanderous, partisan hate Keith Olbermann has spewed on MSNBC over the years, they suspend him for making campaign contributions to Democrats?

Sorry, but I don't get it. The guy may be the northernmost end of a southbound horse, but it's not as if he had any journalistic neutrality to protect. Or even as if he ever pretended to.

ET, Sarah P., lots of tea, Terry B., Chuck Grassley- and new MC's from the GOP

The first thing an astronomy buff such as myself must remark upon when it comes to the outcome of yesterday's election is that it was a good night for the extraterrestrial crowd. After all, a Moonbeam was elected governor of California, and a Martian was elected to the United States Senate from Kentucky.

By the way, only last night did I realize for the first time that the inhabitant of the West Virginia Governor's Mansion was Governor Manchin. After January, he'll be Senator Manchin.

About the only real surprise here in Iowa was the defeat of Secretary of State Michael Mauro, a fixture of what is naively referred to hereabouts as "the Des Moines Democratic machine." He will be replaced in January by Republican Matt Schultz. Nobody saw that coming- especially since (with one notable exception) all the other incumbents in statewide races were handily re-elected.

That exception was Democratic Governor Chet Culver, who went down to defeat at the hands of former governor Terry Branstad. The Once-and-Future Governor's margin was only about half of what the polls predicted, though- a paltry six points.

Our ageless senior U.S. Senator, Chuck Grassley, made short work of Des Moines Democratic attorney Roxanne Conlin. His not quite 2-to-1 margin was a squeaker for Grassley, though.

Re-election is one thing; retention is another. As I predicted yesterday, all three of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who were up for retention this year were ousted by margins ranging from nine to ten points. The reason was voter displeasure over a unanimous Supreme Court decision redefining marriage to include couples of the same gender.

In my home state of Illinois, Republican State Sen. Mark Kirk defeated State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias for President Obama's old seat in the U.S. Senate. The race between Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and Republican Sen. Bill Brady remains too close to call this Wednesday afternoon. In addition to succeeding to the Governor's Mansion when Rod Blagojevich was impeached, Quinn is known mosty for ruining a system which provided Illinois with much better state represetatives much more cheaply when he led a successful drive to do away with the state's clever and effective multi-member district system by which each voter had three votes which he could either cast for one candidate or divide among two or three. The system weakened incumbents and political machines by making them vulnerable to challenge by independent groups. Ironically, the clueless Quinn thought he was strengthening the reformers and weakening the Chicago Machine. I still don't see how he reached this conclusion, since under the old system the Machine had to divide its strength between two candidates in every Democratic district (custom allowed the minority party to have one of the three), while its opponents could field only one- and thereby force the Machine to get twice as many people to vote for its guys in order to simply break even.

Republicans- as expected- took over the state House of Representatives. Democrats- as expected- narrowly retained the state Senate. This will make it difficult (though not impossible) for a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court's gay "marriage" ruling to pass the legislature. Iowa's constitution requires a referendum every ten years on whether or not to hold a constitutional convention., and since this provided the most direct route to a referendum on the subject, I had a hunch that habit and the recommendations of almost every politician of either party would be overcome and the referendum passed. I should have known better. Iowans are conservative people who don't like to take chances, and the fear of a "runaway" constitutional convention doing all sorts of crazy things outweighed their desire for a quick reversal of the consequences of that Supreme Court decision.

Regrettably, Rep. Leonard Bowell- er, Boswell (his name is written in cursive letters on his campaign sign, which even after all these years makes me do a double-take) was re-elected after one of the most personal negative TV campaigns I have ever seen. State Sen. Brad Zaun, his opponent, nevertheless was more gracious in defeat than I think I could have been.

It will be nice not to have to see those negative ads anymore. Most candidates on both sides used nothing but attack ads. It got so bad that one of our local weatherman began his broadcast one night with a negative ad against himself: "Ugly forecasts. Lots of rain. Bad for Iowa."

A third ET- the Queen of the Planet Shrill- will be leaving the post of Speaker of the U.S. House in January. She will be replaced by an earthling. The days of what- though the media predictably hasn't noticed- has been the most extreme Leftward lurch our government has taken since the New Deal are over. Barack Obama will be playing defense for the next two years. And while the examples of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton warn against prematurely writing the president's political obituary, Republicans nationally are feeling a whole lot better today than they have since the morning after Dubyah was re-elected in 2004.

The 2012 GOP nomination is clearly worth having. While her success in electing her hand-picked candidates was distinctly mixed yesterday, perceptions are everything in politics- and the almost universal perception seems to be that Sarah Palin has greatly improved her chances of ensuring Mr. Obama's re-election by being nominated to run against him. Mitt Romney may be the only Republican in a position to keep the GOP's chances of winning back the White House viable. Should Palin be nominated (or Obama be re-elected some other way), I've pretty much picked out my candidate for 2012: newly elected Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a guy I've had my eye on ever since he was in the U.S. House.

The Tea Party- that ephemeral if much-demonized movement which has displayed an uncomfortable tendency toward defeating viable candidates in Republican primaries and replacing them with individuals of dubious contact with reality- also had a relatively good, though not entirely unmixed, night. It's worth noting, though, that there seem to be a great many people who believe that if Mike Castle rather than Christine ("I Am Not a Witch") O'Donnell had won the Republican primary in Delaware, the Republicans would have wound up winning one more Senate seat than they did yesterday. And similarly, Nevada pundits seem to think that Harry Reid would have lost if Republicans in that state had nominated a conventional Republican instead of Tea Partier Sharron Angle.

Election day, 2010

There won't be much drama here in Iowa tonight. Some, but not much.

I voted early last Saturday, since I was downtown and don't relish that two mile walk past another polling place to get to mine. In any event, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is going to absolutely obliterate challenger Roxanne Conlin- a smart, if rather radical lady who deserves better of electoral politics than her career has dealt her (she lost to Terry Branstad in his first race for governor back in the 'Eighties because she had run on a platform of tax reform and didn't have to pay any taxes herself the year before a contradiction I still fail to comprehend myself, but one which my fellow Iowans felt somehow made her a hypocrite).

Branstad himself, having tired of civilian life, will crush incumbent Democratic Gov. Chet Culver (who hasn't actually been all that bad a guv, though Branstad was a better one).

The GOP will end up with control of at least one house of the legislature, and at least two of the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who are up for retention this year- and probably all three- will be sent into early retirement as a reward for that decision legalizing same-sex "marriage" here in Iowa, putting liberal noses out of joint all over America and sending up howls from those who believe that the judiciary functioning as an auxiliary legislature and standing constitutional convention is a better idea than the separation of powers.

Though nobody has pushed it, I have a hunch that the voters will surprise everyone and vote "yes" on the proposal that comes up every ten years to call a constitutional convention. That might be the fastest route to reversing that gay "marriage" decision, though even the decision's opponents profess fear of the "loose cannon" potential of a constitutional convention.

In my home state of Illinois, I'm pulling for Brady for governor and Kirk for the U.S. Senate. Both are involved in races that could go either way, though I feel good about both.

Nationally, the Republicans will pick up about twice the usual 28 seats the party out of power usually gains in off-year elections for the House, but will fall just short in their bid to re-take the Senate. The fifty-two members of the Democratic caucus will, I suspect, have to pick a new majority leader, since I suspect that Harry Reid will be looking for work in the morning.

Looking ahead two years, I'm leaning toward Mitt Romney as Obama's opponent, not only because the Republicans almost always nominate the "next in line" but because he probably has the best chance of preventing the nomination of Barack Obama's best hope, Sarah Palin.

Oh. And while their concerns won't go away, the Tea Party should enjoy their hour in the sun. By 2012 they will be yesterday's news.