• The Good News: The Mets win and head to the NLCS. The Bad News: They’re playing the Cubs, and according to Back to the Future II, the Cubs are supposed to win the World Series in 2015.
See also: “The baseball gods are on peyote and throwing flaming furniture off the roof, and there isn’t a damned thing we can do about it.” That’s a fine summary of one inning in the final game of the playoff series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Texas Rangers — the first playoff series ever played entirely outside the borders of the United States.
• “Humans are clever. It does not take much to use just about anything to justify something that you did or want to do.”
• Pandagon is a terrific blog by Jesse Taylor, a whipsmart young writer down the street at Swarthmore. Wait … I don’t live down the street from Swat anymore, and Jesse graduated years ago, passed the bar and passed his blogging baton to Amanda Marcotte. And now Amanda is stepping aside from Pandagon to write for Salon.
I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
• Vice President Joe Biden disappointed horse-race media by declining CNN’s invitation to participate in Tuesday’s Democratic primary debate. Biden watched the debate on TV after hosting a reunion of high school friends.
I mention this mainly because it’s an excuse to point out that Biden graduated from Archmere Academy, in Claymont, Delaware, where he played football and baseball for the Auks. Yes, the Auks — and that’s my main point here, that “the Auks” is a really cool team mascot.
(And also that Biden-speculation is a product of ratings-chasing media whose own boredom and vapid incuriosity about matters of political substance leads them to the kind of contentless horse-race election coverage that’s seriously injuring our democracy. But mainly just that thing about Auks being a cool name.)
• I didn’t watch the debate because I was working at the Big Box. The best summary I’ve read comes from Katie Herzog at Grist:
So, who won? Well, we had a political debate where five candidates said mostly sane things. No one blamed tough questions on the moderator’s period or said that vaccines cause autism. At one point, Bernie Sanders even came to Sen. Clinton’s defense and said what we were all thinking: “the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” I’d say we all won.
• Rep. Trent Franks — a tea partier of the “Freedom Caucus” at the center of the leadership fight in the House GOP — says his gang wants the next House speaker to be a “Valley Forge American.” What does that mean? Erik Loomis has a good explanation.
I actually dated a Valley Forge American for a couple of years in the ’90s. She lived just outside the park, right on 23 in the outskirts of Phoenixville. In my experience, the main distinguishing characteristic of a Valley Forge American is that they’ve learned to drive 20 mph with their hazard lights flashing when they’re going through the park at dusk, because the @&#$ deer are everywhere.
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