While the hated Yankees look likely to win the World Series, Mets fans can take solace in the fact that at least the Mets may not have lost money to Bernie Madoff.

I was going to follow up that Kal Penn post with a more substantive post, but I decided to take a nap instead. Advantage: Canavan!

* The U.S. dollar as Ponzi scheme. Via Alex Greenberg. See also: The Investment Delusion and Money and the Crisis of Civilization.

* Paging Superman: Barack Obama calls for a world without nuclear weapons. More at Attackerman.

* Things more likely to kill you than terrorist attacks.

* Two visits to the Mets' new Citi Field. I still miss Shea.

Shea falls.

With the [Undisclosed Location]quinox behind us, we move into the Back Nine of my period of extremely intense summer employment. Here are a few links to properly mark this monumental occasion:

* Deconstructing Barry: an English professor reads Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father at TNR.

* History's most elaborate rick roll. Or was it this one at Shea Stadium?

* For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

* And once more, with feeling, the end of suburbia.

My demographic of dirty-hippie quasi-pacifistic vegetarian atheists (aged 25-29) has had pretty abysmal luck when it comes to preidential politics. Bill Bradley was my guy in the 2000 primary, and the first vote I ever cast for president was for Al Gore. I liked Dean in 2004, and switched to Edwards after Dean dropped out—and of course I voted for Kerry in 2004, with memorable results.

So I'm still a little bit surprised to find that my preferred candidate has somehow managed to actually win, and the Mets fan in me assumes that this is just the universe's way of having a little bit of fun before things get back to normal.

But November, six months out, really looks like a landslide for the good guys. Chuck Todd's preview at MSNBC's First Read draws on polling and demographics to find a very favorable landscape for Obama:

Base Obama: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, MD, MA, NY, RI, VT (153 electoral votes)
Lean Obama: ME, NJ, MN, OR, WA (47 votes)
Toss-up: CO, FL, IA, MI, NV, NM, NH, OH, PA, VA, WI (138 votes)
Lean McCain: AR, GA, IN, LA, MS, MO, MT, NE, NC, ND (84 votes)
Base McCain: AL, AK, AZ, ID, KS, KY, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY (116 votes)

If you head to electionprojection.com or the RealClearPolitics swing state aggregator you find the same results. Throw NJ and MN at least into "Strong Obama," and PA into "Lean Obama" (he's ahead pretty significantly there), and you've got a map that has a resource- and enthusiasm-poor McCain forced to play defense.

So I guess what I'm saying is that it's a very good idea to become emotionally invested in an Obama presidency that's all but inevitable. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

This is probably old news to most people, but I haven't been paying attention to either baseball news or Cleveland news and I've only just found out from Neil that they renamed Jacobs Field "Progressive Insurance Field."



This is an abomination. I'm still not over the Mets' plans to leave Shea, and Neil rubs salt in our mutual wound when he informs me they're moving to a place horribly named Citi Field.

For what it's worth, The Field's Al Giordano—who for my money has had the best state-by-state analysis of anyone these last few weeks—looks at the internals of the last SurveyUSA poll before the Chesapeake Regional and advises us to throw caution to the wind:

Although many are saying that Obama will come out of tomorrow with an extra 25 to 30 delegates over Clinton, The Field thinks it will be closer to 45.

The reason: “Safe” Clinton voters are moving rapidly toward “undecided” and are telling pollsters “might change my mind” and as many Virginians, Marylanders and Washingtonians that came to DC to take jobs with them – sixteen years later – begin to show buyer’s remorse, the jig is almost up.

Obviously, Al has never been a Mets fan. But he makes a good case.

How Yo La Tengo took its name from the 1962 Mets season. Via blucarbnpinwheel.