Santana

We are rapidly approaching the 5pm deadline to get the extension done and ESPN is reporting the sides can't agree on guaranteed years: Santana wants 6, Mets are offering 5. Apparently Santana's agents opened the negotiations at 6 years, $28mm per year and the Mets came in with 5 years, $21mm per year with a vesting option for a 6th year.

While I can't believe the scale of this deal, for a guy who will only play every fifth day, I can only say this: GET THIS EPHING DEAL DONE!

Don't screw this one up, sign Kyle Lohse and tell me we look great for 2008. I swallowed that after the loss to the Cardinals going into 2007. While Maine and Perez were better than we ever could have expected, Pedro is one year closer to retirement and Beltran is one more year through his prime. You are in the biggest market. You have your own TV network. You MUST get this deal done.

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Update (7:55pm): ESPN is reporting that the figured out a deal. Thank ephing god.

Females Can Be Are Funny

I would normally never post anything during work hours, but this made me laugh out loud...a lot:

Much respect to Matt Damon for not taking himself too seriously.

Morning Commute: Democratic Debate

I have much to say about last night's debate from Hollywood. Too much to say for my 7 minute bus ride to work. I would like to say this: both candidates are extremely impressive people and I'd prefer either of them to McChuckaney McRomabee. I do have a preference between the two, which I will discuss at length before Tuesday.

I thought last night was really good stuff.

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Clinton vs. Obama

John Judis of TNR captures the dichotomy faced by Democratic voters in their choice this year:

Many of my friends and colleagues are firmly committed to either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, but I am among those Democrats who shift their allegiance from week to week, and sometimes from day to day, and will probably finally decide who to vote for when I enter the polling booth in Maryland on Feb. 12. And the debates don't help me decide. They exacerbate my indecision, because they invariably highlight the complementary strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates.

Clinton is substantive; a policy wonk who knows what she is talking about even when she is hedging her position. Healthcare certainly, but her discussion of immigration or foreign policy also seems to respect the complexities of the issues. Yet Clinton seems incapable of articulating broader political themes--saying in a novel and interesting way what is wrong with the country and what needs to be done about it. She is running on experience, which is to say on her own past, and on a promise to use that experience to solve problems. That tells voters something about herself, but nothing about how she sees the country or them. The two prior Democratic presidential candidates, Al Gore and John Kerry, had a similar problem.

Obama is the epitome of a thematic politician. He is very much a Democratic version of Ronald Reagan. He captures the essence of his own appeal--and his own biography--in his promise to unite a hitherto divided America and world. But his discussion of policy is perfunctory and plagued with inconsistency. That was evident during this debate. As my colleague Jon Cohn has explained, you can't really have a well-functioning universal healthcare system--or a social security system--without everyone participating. But Obama keeps saying that he doesn't want to "force" people to buy insurance.

Obama spoke seemingly eloquently of America as a nation of immigrants. He said it was "scapegoating" to blame immigrants--and presumably he meant illegal immigrants--for taking inner city jobs, but later in the debate, he justified giving undocumented workers a path to citizenship "because if we don't, they will continue to undermine U.S. wages." Well, if they undermine U.S. wages, they do so by replacing native workers who were getting higher wages. And it's not clear why providing a path to citizenship would eliminate the downward pressure on wages. It didn't seem like he had thought it through--and perhaps like Reagan and unlike Clinton he is not that interested in the details.

Clinton was clearly not at her best in trying to justify her vote for the Bush administration's resolution on war with Iraq. But I have never found Obama's promise to bring the world together through diplomacy very compelling. He thinks setting a specific date for withdrawal will "prompt the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds to actually come together and negotiate." Maybe, but I have my doubts. I am not sure Clinton knows what to do either, but when she refuses to be pinned down on a date for withdrawal, I hear someone who appreciates the difficulty of what she would inherit if she becomes president in January 2009. I worry about Clinton's political ability to get the country behind what she wants to do; but I worry that Obama wouldn't know what to do. And the last debate didn't ease these concerns.

While I will be happy to vote for either of them next November, I guess because I am so pessimistic about the country’s current condition I come down slightly on the side of detailed problem solving (Hillary), not the vision thing.

Volcker-Obama

Personally, I think this big. Or maybe more accurately, could be big. Paul Volcker has a tremendous amount of economic credibility; something he earned while destroying inflation and rescuing the US economy in the early 80's. Volcker is no market/economic push-over like our current Fed Chairman and he has not endorsed anyone before.

I think that if Obama plays this right, he can appeal even more to fiscally minded R's and I's and increase his margins in primary states where people can still change their registration between now and primary day. Volcker, more than anyone, can recognize a crappy, inflationary/stagflationary US economy (basically we're ephed...and yesterday's further cut made us more ephed) and he believes Obama is most qualified and has the right policies/beliefs to help combat our bleak outlook. This may not sway rank-and-file, labor D voters, but it should help continue to bring new voters to the polls to vote for Obama that would otherwise stay home or vote in a different primary.

That is, if Obama plays this right.

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Morning Commute: Lost

I have to say I'm pretty giddy with excitement over tonight's season four premiere of "Lost."  Its been a really long time since last season's jaw dropping season finale and I've been anxious to see, not only what happens to the characters but also, how the narrative/storytelling style changes. Once the announcement came out that they had a set end date, I knew it was in good hands.

I tried to make the grummings catch up on the show by watching the season 3 DVDs with me. I had already made her watch season 2, much to her dissatisfaction. I promised that season 3 was much better, particularly after episode 6. Needless to say, she did not agree and she quit after 10 episodes. With no other new TV on (save a few episodes of House) and an empty DVR, it did serve as pretty good hangover entertainment.

That's the strength of TV shows on DVD. They are 22/42 minutes of candy. You can watch an entire disc of Seinfeld in the time it would take to watch one Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

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Bar Trivia

Victorious.  One hiccup, who would have thought Dan Quayle ran for President after four disasterous years as veep and 3 years out of office. Nelson Rockefeller, I hardly knew ya.

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Morning Commute: Florida

I don't even want to talk about HRC, the DNC delegate controversy and potential lawsuits. The whole thing has been handled pretty miserably and, unless there is a brokered convention, those delegates are going to be seated anyway.

No, I'm interested in the R results and what the media coverage will look like going forward. First, let me say THANK GOD that Giuliani got smoked and is withdrawing from the race. There was no one more fundamentally ill-prepared for the Presidency and no one who would put the country at greater risk in the race. Second, I'm extremely interested to see how the media handles this McCain victory. When I went to sleep, he had a four point edge over Romney, with Giuliani and Huckabee both capturing mid-teens percentages. As I shut off the TV, talking heads were saying this was a big win for McCain, which no doubt it was.

But because the press loves McCain, I have to be careful with my words. McCain needed to win FL to keep the race going. He is nearly out of cash. A Giuliani was bound to exit and a Romney win might have been enough to put Huckabee on the ropes. McCain has not gotten a majority of "conservative" or "Republican" voters in any contest to this point. Had it turned into a two-way race between him and Romney, this trend would be unlikely to change, with Romney serving as the establishment candidate and without lower tier candidates syphoning votes.

But with the win in FL, McCain is hardly unstoppable. He still needs to raise money, fast. With Romney still in it, are establishment conservatives like to shift money from him to McCain (who they traditionally hate)? Seems unlikely. Romney was running second or first in most of the Super Tuesday primaries before FL, with Giuliani sucking up a lot of votes in places like NY and CA. Will McCain win all of these votes? No. A majority? Maybe. Either way, with 6 days to go, this R race is hardly over. I'm curious to see how the press covers it for the next week.

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"Strikeout Machine"

News has been coming across the wire all afternoon stating that the Mets have agreed with the Twins on a trade to acquire Johan Santana. The Mets will part with four prospects, including Carlos Gomez and Phil Humber. They now have 48 hours to negotiate a deal. I can hear all of my Yankee and Red Sox fan friends saying in unison, "That's it!?  That's all it took!?"

I say give hime 7yrs, $150mm if he wants it. The Mets called the Twins bluff going back to the Winter Meetings when everyone around baseball said they didn't have the talent to get the deal done. Not with the Sox and Yankees bidding their most prized assets. But oh, the Twins got a little greedy and since that time, Lester, Ellsbury, Buchholz, Kennedy, Hughes came off the table. And who was waiting to swoop in with some top tier-ish talent and a Citigroup funded checkbook?  The Mets baby.

Let's hope Pedro stays healthy.

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Don't Be Fooled

From The Plank:

Who Would McCain Appoint to the Court?

Apologies if you've seen this already, but John McCain's recent comments on Supreme Court appointments seemed worth a blockquote:

McCain mentioned that Sam Brownback would play an advisory role in helping decide who he should nominate for the Supreme Court. As models of who he would select, John McCain pointed to Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia.

The idea that McCain would let Sam Brownback do the honors of picking John Paul Stevens's replacement is unnerving, but hardly unexpected. People like Jacob Weisberg have occasionally suggested that, despite McCain's zero rating from NARAL and his vote to confirm Robert Bork in 1987, the man really has moderate views on, say, abortion and gay rights and wouldn't actually elevate Janice Rogers Brown to the Supreme Court. But, no. Even if McCain is a social moderate deep down inside (and I doubt it), the chances that he'll buck Brownback and friends on judicial nominees have always been unlikely.

Update: To keep this thread going, here's what John Fund reported earlier today:

More recently, Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because "he wore his conservatism on his sleeve."

Now, the daylight between Roberts and Alito looks pretty paltry to me (and anyway, McCain was downright gushing when Alito was first nominated), but the National Review folks didn't like where this was heading, so McCain's spokesman initially had to deny that any such blasphemy was ever uttered, and then McCain had to cobble together a conference call where he solemnly swore to appoint Alito-like judges. As a bonus, McCain then assured conservatives that he'd be just fine with nominating a justice who would strike down McCain-Feingold...

--Bradford Plumer

Morning Commute: Straight Talk

John McCain gave a very strange interview to Anderson Cooper post SOTU last night. Now, I'm a Democratic partisan, but to me it illustrated exactly what would make John McCain the most dangerous president (now that Giuliani is on his way out).

First, McCain clearly knows little to nothing about the economuy. Now, I'm the first to say that I think very few presidential candidates (or members of the house and senate) really know much about how our economy functions. But this is why they constantly yalk to economists and learn as much as possible. McCain doesn't seemed to have learned much in the last 20+ years, a fact he used to own up to. When Cooper mentioned this last night, McCain went on about the support of Reagan-era senators Jack Kemp and Phil Gramm as if this was enough to verify his credentials. Then he cited support from "leading economists.". First, he cited the support of Marty Feldstein, a supply sider's supply sider (who buy the way has said that Bush's stimulus plan will provide little stimulus). His next beacon of economic support was Carly Fiorina. Yes, the semi-disgraced former head of HP who brokered the ill conceived merger with Compaq and nearly ran one of the largest computer/printer makers in the world aground. She's one hell of an economist.

McCain also went on about how he is the best experienced to handle the "greatest threat of the 21st century: radical Islamic extremism." How a war-mongering, white man from Arizona who has been the biggest supporter of the Iraq war, the surge, thinks will be in Iraq for "hundreds or thousands" of years and wants to "bomb, bomb, bomb...bomb, bomb Iran" is going to be the best equipped to handle the complex adversaries of the US in the Middle East is beyond me. His thinking on the subject strikes me as as incredibly simple-minded. These guys spit out the names of different Islamic groups (Islamic Jihad, Hezbullah, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, etc.) as if they are all one big mish-mash of people with the singular interest of destroying the US. No consideration that they have disparate interests and might, gasp, hate each other more than they hate us. But no worries, we will "stay on offense against the Islamic extremists' war against us" (oh wait, that's Rudy). For someone who has been in the Senate so long, John McCain doesn't really seem too knowledgeable of these differences. Or worse, he doesn't care.

But while this stuff concerned me, it was one exchange over Romney's opinions on Iraq that disturbed me the most. John McCain is loved by the press. When he says, "Let me tell it to you straight," they get their stenographic pens ready, swoon and take down his every word (typically). "Straight Talk" has become code for "let Poppa McCain tell you the truth." So last night when McCain incorrectly claimed that Romney had supported timetables for withdrawl from Iraq (a position supported by over 60% of Americans), Cooper tried to correct him, including by putting the entire quote up on the screen. Here is the exchange:

COOPER: You said that he wanted to set a timetable. You know, there are a lot of folks who, even though they support you, say that's not the straight talk that they're used to. I know you're referring to, I guess a quote...

MCCAIN: It's absolutely straight talk.

COOPER: A quote that he gave.

MCCAIN: It's absolutely straight talk. It is. It is...

COOPER: He gave a quote in April that he said...

MCCAIN: It's absolutely straight talk. Yes. It's absolutely straight talk.

COOPER: I just want to read the...

MCCAIN: And he said he wanted to set a timetable. And I've read it many times. I'd be glad to read it again.

COOPER: Well, he said, there's no -- well, right here, it says, "well, there's no question that the president and Prime Minister Al Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about, but those shouldn't be for public pronouncements."

It's not -- I mean, he's not saying...

MCCAIN: Now, you have to read the rest of the quote.

COOPER: ... timetable for withdrawal.

MCCAIN: No, you have to read the rest of the quote, where he says we're not going to tell the enemy when we are going to be gone. And that's an important part of that quote. And if you'd read it. And it's obvious that he was ready for the timetables.

And that was the toughest time. That's when the Democrats essentially declared the war lost. That was -- that was when timetables were the buzzwords. And -- if you read the entire quote there's very little doubt as to what his intention was. And that's just a product of his inexperience and his lack of judgment.

McCain's "it's absolutely straight talk" in the face of the actual quote which showed he was distorting Romney's words was extremely uncomfortable. It was clear that he was either uninformed, lying or didn't care about the truth. He gritted his teeth and insisted he was correct. When Cooper tried to correct him (in a very non-Russert kind of way), McCain continually interrupted him insisting that if he put up the full quote he would see that McCain was right. In fact, the quote was up on the screen and it made it clear that Romney supported benchmarks that were negotiated privately between the US and Iraqi government to track progress. Not some public timetable for withdrawal. Here is the full quote.

My point is simply this: eight years is more than enough of a president with a temper and contempt for the truth. I understand that stretching your opponent's positions is part of campaigning, but when someone catches you in it, it's time to back up. When Romney has been caught, he has backed away from statements (when they showed his "amnesty" ad during one of the debates, he didn't claim that it wasn't his or that you have to watch the full ad). Instead, McCain just kept going, using the cover of "straight talk" that the press has awarded him. Cooper called him on it last night, but I'm not sure how many members of the press have done it or will do it in the future. And no matter who the next president is, we need someone that will answer questions truthfully, not "straight."

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Thick Skin

Man, what happened to me?  I spent four years wandering around Cambridge and rowing on the Charles, all the time freezing my ass off, solely in hopes of developing a thick skin for the cold. I used to go out on the river in little more than a short sleeve CoolMax and an extra pair of socks. When I first moved to LA, I used to run around in shorts and a t-shirt in the 45 degree winter weather, proclaiming how wonderfully warm it was outside (to the strange looks of those bundled up like they were in the Arctic).

Now, I'm not sure what happened but, I'm walking around with a fleece vest (yes, I'm an ephing nerd), a scarf and a long winter coat. Even when the wind isn't blowing, 40 degrees feels miserable to me. At night, when I return from work, my apartment feels tortuously cold...at 59 degrees. I don't know when or how this happened. Its not like I just moved to Boston from LA. I had two years of freezing UWS NYC winters to break me back into Nor'easter conditions. But with the brief exception of some very drafty windows in December '06, it never bothered me.

I'm not really sure how to fix this, short of getting back on the river regularly (5:30am wake-up...not gonna happen). I've already resorted to the vest, but in reality, I'd like to reverse the trend. Any suggestions?  I can only eat soup so many nights of the week.

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