The Zong

Actually, don’t kid yourself. There were always two.

With Edwards out of the race, my vote for Edwards in the primary seems like it’s gonna be a little tough to pull off, and I guess I won’t be finishing my voter’s guide to the primary because it’s pretty clear at this point that Barack Obama is far, far more progressive than Hillary Clinton.

It’s a disappointing development, to be sure. Edwards was never a perfect candidate, but he evolved into one of the most progressive presidential candidates that this country has ever seen. Mother Jones has a nice little obituary for his presidential campaign:

Edwards staked out clear and progressive positions on health care, poverty, labor, and economic stimulus weeks and sometimes months before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did. He took standard Democratic positions, but bled them of their prevarications and their hesitancy and, yes, their cowardice. He took the rhetoric of the Democratic Party and gave it backbone. In New Hampshire, I heard him compare at length the economic struggle of one hard-working family with the insane annual salary of a corporate CEO. He was the only serious presidential contender I’ve ever seen that was willing to engage in open and unapologetic class warfare.

As a result, he repeatedly pulled his competitors for the Democratic nomination to the left. In fact, this may have hurt him: Obama and Clinton adopted his polices and to some degree, his rhetoric. With little substantive difference with the frontrunners, he didn’t get the media coverage he deserved (He got it from Mother Jones!), but his fingerprints will remain on this race and possibly on the next presidency.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. It’s crappy to think that Edwards’ campaign was doomed from the beginning because the media simply decided who was going to be a viable candidate, and although he may never be president, there will be a lot of room in an Obama or a Clinton cabinet for Edwards, whose desire to fuck up greedy corporations might fit in nicely at the Justice Department.

Anyhow, this is the second time in a year or so that I’ve had my heart broken by a Southern Democrat. I guess it’s time to start looking northward for a leader. Best of luck to you and yours, Senator Obama.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Suck it, Rudy!

As someone who became hyper-aware of the difficulties facing the uninsured and underinsured American (by force) a few years back. This issue is pretty close to the most important thing on the agenda for me looking at the presidential race. Again, it slips down to number 4 on my list because of the massive similarities between the democratic candidates, but unlike environmental and energy issues, these three health care plans are actually pretty different, and much to the dismay of myself and others, I have to admit that Hillary is right: only two of them are universal health care plans.

Before getting into specifics, I have to briefly cover my own idealistic transformation on this issue. I believed for a long time, and continue to believe, that the only real permanent solution to this problem is the dreaded single-payer system of health care. I used to be very vocal about it, because I can’t really see how anyone in the whole country doesn’t appreciate the value of such a system; Liberals are for it because it covers everyone and makes the entire population healthier, and conservatives SHOULD like it because it takes a huge financial burden off of the shoulders of their old flame, Big Business. Alas, due to an insanely strong insurance and pharmaceutical lobby and the conservatives’ creed involving not taxing the rich, it has become clear that the single-payer system isn’t gonna happen overnight. Thus enters the great compromises offered by our three contestants:

Barack Obama is a great speaker. He really, really is. I have a lot of faith in his ability to lead this country and will vote for him in the general election without a shred of remorse or reservation, if it comes to that. That said, after reading his health care plan, I’m unhappy to report that it probably the weakest of the three. Short on actual numbers and long on pie-in the sky, here’s the basic rundown:

• Guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.
• Comprehensive benefits. The benefit package will be similar to that offered through Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the plan members of Congress have. The plan will cover all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care.
• Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
• Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.
• Simplified paperwork and reined in health costs.
• Easy enrollment. The new public plan will be simple to enroll in and provide ready access to coverage.
• Portability and choice. Participants in the new public plan and the National Health Insurance Exchange (see below) will be able to move from job to job without changing or jeopardizing their health care coverage.
• Quality and efficiency. Participating insurance companies in the new public program will be required to report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information technology and administration are being met.

This summary sounds great. The problem is, if you read the details of the plan, for me at least, it raises many more questions than it answers. While the plan does an impressive job of gathering important statistics which tell the sad story of our country’s broken health care system (you can download the PDF and all its endnotes here), I get kind of tired of reading the following solutions to these problems:

Obama will require providers to report preventable medical errors, and support hospital and physician practice improvement to prevent future occurrences.

Obama will accelerate efforts to develop and disseminate best practices, and align reimbursement with provision of high quality health care.

Obama will require that plans that participate in the new public plan, Medicare or the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) utilize proven disease management programs.

There is a lot of this kind of rhetoric in the Obama plan, and even without getting into specifics, it’s kind of easy to see that these types of measures suffer from a special kind of optimism that is easy to have when you don’t have to describe exactly how you’re going to get the stuff done. As far as I can tell, the plan doesn’t detail much other than just to say Obama’s gonna “require” and “support” and “accelerate” a lot of shit without getting into anything more specific than that. Do the other plans have this kind of language? Hell yes, but I happen to think they do a better job of qualifying their promises. In addition, many of the stated measures involve a lot of meddling with hospitals, requiring more paperwork and relying on “universal standards” that don’t exist yet. Who decides what the best way to treat a rare type of cancer is, and if someone disagrees (like, say a respected oncologist), you’re gonna penalize his hospital for treating someone differently? I’m all for big government, but this sounds kinda like the way George W. Bush tried to tackle our education problems. I’ll call it “No Tumor Left Behind.”

A couple of large, specific problems I have with the Obama plan are his lack of a personal mandate to get covered and his National Insurance Exchange. Taking the latter in hand first, it is described thus:

The Exchange will act as watchdog and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards or participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible.

As much as I love watchdog groups, I generally like them in the form of independent nonprofits (see: John Edwards’ plan) rather than in the form of government-run sinkholes for money that should be used for subsidizing public health care. This calls to attention the size of the subsidies endorsed by Obama’s plan. While all three candidates plan to subsidize insurance for those who can’t afford it, Obama’s plan actually subsidizes much less than the other two (Obama does not offer subsidies to small businesses and will not commit to a specific expansion of SCHIP and Medicare), and because of its lack of a mandate, the cost of health care will actually be more expensive for those who need it.

Speaking of mandates, which are truly people’s new favorite awesome when it comes to health care, Obama’s plan will leave approximately 8.5 million Americans uninsured (as stated by ontheissues.org), which is a great improvement over 46 million, but certainly isn’t universal. It’s true that Massachusetts’ new health care mandate is meeting with mixed results, but it’s early yet. The simple fact is that, for any of these crazy plans to be affordable, everyone has to share the responsibility, and that’s kind of an immutable fact. Do I wish it wasn’t so? Sure, but it is so, and So Obama comes in last in this horse race.

Between Clinton and Edwards, there are far fewer differences. Both point to specifics when it comes to not only their plans to reform healthcare, but also how they plan to do it. Both plans call for “shared responsibility,” which I really like, and Clinton even has a balance sheet detailing the financing of it. (I’m skeptical of its accuracy, but I guess Hillary Clinton probably knows a little more about the cost of national health care than I do.) Both of them plan to subsidize low-income families using a tax credit, and John Edwards actually promises to refund tax dollars to those who make so little that they don’t pay income tax. This means that, to begin with, the plans favored by both the candidates will cost more than Obama’s plan subsidy-wise. Clinton has as much as guaranteed new taxes to pay for it (really, a repeal of the Bush tax cuts), which I think is inevitable, but Edwards has a creative, and hopefully not completely unrealistic way of bringing overall health care costs down that he refers to as the Health Care Markets. As described by his campaign:

The U.S. government will help states and groups of states create regional Health Care Markets, non-profit purchasing pools that offer a choice of competing insurance plans.

I can actually see a lot of value behind this idea, mostly in the spirit that it will line up the available plans for all Americans and allow people to make an educated choice based upon straight comparisons. I’m assuming that, though he doesn’t explicitly state it, he’ll try to make his public health care plan a lot more appealing than the private ones, if not simply less expensive. In addition, it will force private insurers to compete with the public plan, which is good for everyone, and what I really like is this line:

This American solution will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan.

This whole thing is pretty ambitious and will require a lot of government administration to work, I admit, but it seems to make a lot more sense than Obama’s national insurance exchange. Most importantly, the option for the plan to evolve into a single-payer system makes it that much more appealing.

That said, I’m not an idiot. I know that none of these plans is probably going to work out, at least not the way they’re being outlined, but I’m trying to figure out which one I think is the most likely to work. Are you ready for this? I think it’s Hillary’s plan.

Hillary Clinton’s failure to achieve universal health coverage as First Lady is widely pointed to as a liability, but I’m actually of the opinion that she learned her lesson. After reading her health care plan, which is quite simply the most detailed and possibly the most realistic of the three, I’m kind of convinced that, with the right congressional support, she could get it done. There isn’t any fancy nonprofit watchdog scheme, and I think that the idea of a health-care menu is pretty stupid, but I’m trying to look past the gimmicks here. The fact is that, while I find choosing health care options to be much more important than choosing what I want on my next burger, the Clinton plan may actually be the best of the three just based upon its simplicity; she plans to tax the rich to cover the poor, and create a public plan to compete with the private plans. Sounds pretty similar to the other two, but the key here is that the plan options will simply be a broad expansion of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program. I’ve always kind of thought that when candidates say “You’ll have the same health care plan that Congress does!” that it’s a bunch of gimmicky bullshit, but the fact is that enrollment in the FEHB will be like national enrollment in a group health care plan, with the public plan (essentially an expanded version of Medicare) listed as an option, and I guess that seems like a more direct, easier-to-get-through-congress type of approach.

It’s fair to mention here that Edwards was in front of the pack on this issue (again), and all the similarities you’ll see in the three plans are probably a result of the other campaigns simply trying to match what he outlined at the outset. This is yet another reason that Edwards seems like a great candidate to me, and it certainly seems as if universal health care is among the more important causes to him. In stark contrast to what Obama is proposing, I think a lot of thought and tough decisions were made when formulating the Edwards plan, and his campaign came up with a great (if not difficult to implement) compromise. As much as all us sane folks want a single-payer system in this country, it’s simply not realistic at this point, but I do believe that the Edwards plan is the one plan that will push towards single-payer in the future.

That said, it’s important to get something done, and I just think that Hillary’s plan, though she piggybacks Edwards on many points, is much more of an achievable goal. I’m certainly not voting for her in the primary, but if this was a one-issue election and that issue was health care, I’d have to consider it.

Next Up - Education.  Who will truly make sure our kids is learning?

I believe the definition of a Progressive, in the political arena, is someone who believes that the purpose of government is to do for the People what they cannot do for themselves (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln). I count myself among the growing ranks of bleeding-hearts who value common sense over blind idealism these days, and I really do believe that the Progressive Liberal, insofar as he or she wants to see this country improve after the next election, is the new sheriff in the Democratic party.

With no apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, because fuck that guy, you know you’re a Progressive if any or all of the following are true:

• You believe that a government that only serves the interests of the wealthiest of its people is worse than no government at all
• You’re pissed that there are more Americans without access to health care (around 46 million) than there are Canadians in the whole universe (33 million, all of whom do have it)
• You think that Lou Dobbs has a big secret
• You think big governments are sexy, as long as they’re big in all the right places
• You want to leave Nancy Pelosi alone in a room for 24 hours with 100 members of the Sierra Club. (The San Francisco Chapter of the Sierra Club)
• You understand what Howard Dean was screaming about

I’m offering up some opinions about the upcoming presidential primary as it applies to a few core issues. In the spirit of what I believe the American government can and should help its people out with, the most important issues to me are, by order of priority and reverse order of coverage:

1. Campaign Finance Reform
2. National Security
3. Education
4. Universal Health Care
5. The Environment

There are lots of issues, many of which may be more important to you, but these are, in my not-so-humble opinion, the primary issues facing this government in the nameof representing a people; issues that most people can’t go out and fix for themselves, with some exceptions.

Before I launch into this discussion, I should disclose that I’ll be voting for John Edwards in this primary. As much as I love Barack Obama, and as much as it pains me that I’ll be voting for a white man when I could just as easily cast my vote for a woman or minority candidate, I paraphrase Hillary Clinton herself: This election shouldn’t be about race or gender. This is true, and I believe Edwards embraces the progressive ideal more than either Hillary or Obama. While it looks to be shaping up as a two-person race in the Democratic party, I can only hold out hope that despite massive disparity in campaign money and media exposure, Edwards will somehow close the gap as his message gets out there a little more. It is for that reason that I’ll be looking at the three candidates’ takes on each issue, and will offer an honest opinion on all of them.

The environment is last on the above list of priorities only because all three candidates are pretty similar on it, and I believe it is the one thing that the People can probably address as well as or better than the government. Surely, I’d love to see legislation making it illegal to manufacture cars that get less than 100 mpg, but in reality, if consumers stopped buying cars that are so terrible for the planet, then the government wouldn’t even have to get involved. Before you start pegging me as a libertarian, I should point out that I’m still all for strict emissions standards, but I also really believe that nothing will really change until the general population of this country learns how to control itself.

That said, let’s take a look at our three contestants, and what they plan to do about the environment. As you’d probably assume, all three candidates have exceptionally similar platforms when it comes to energy and the environment. It’s kind of a no-brainer, I suppose, and all three have committed to reducing greenhouse emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (Edwards was actually the first to commit to this), all three are for cap-and-trade carbon credits, and all three plan to require energy companies to draw 25% of their total output from renewable resources by 2025. In addition, all three are looking towards new global treaties, making federal buildings more energy efficient, and all three probably own hybrids and use energy-saving lightbulbs. John Edwards made his campaign carbon-neutral early last year, and I think the other two have followed suit.

I remember being mystified to hear that all three candidates are big ethanol supporters, although I’m sure it had something to do with the importance of the Iowa Caucuses. As it turns out, all three acknowledge that corn ethanol is only a stepping stone towards a larger biofuel revolution and not a real long-term answer. I hope they are all being sincere about it.

One difference between the candidates can be seen their support for newer coal plants. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both support “clean coal” technology, which in my mind is just a nod to the coal industry. The very term itself was invented by the coal industry lobby, but the truth of it is, no type of coal is actually clean. There’s a decent look at the rundown on clean coal over at grist.org. John Edwards has come out against coal plants entirely unless they employ carbon-capture technology, which definitely sets him apart from the other two in my mind.

Another major difference between the three candidates can be found in their stance on nuclear power. Obama and Clinton are both somewhat noncommittal on the subject, with Obama saying he’s open to it and Clinton saying she’s “agnostic” (no, really) about them. Edwards once again is the dissenter, saying he’s against nuclear power plants because of inadequacies in our ability to dispose of the waste they generate, a big deal for most environmentalists. Here are their three answers to the same question at a CNN YouTube debate:

Edwards: Wind, solar, cellulose-based biofuels are the way we need to go. I do not favor nuclear power. We haven’t built a nuclear power plant in decades in this country. There is a reason for that. The reason is it is extremely costly. It takes an enormous amount of time to get one planned, developed and built. And we still don’t have a safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste. It is a huge problem for America over the long term.

Obama: I actually think that we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix. There are no silver bullets to this issue. We have to develop solar. I have proposed drastically increasing fuel efficiency standards on cars, an aggressive cap on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted.

Clinton: I’m agnostic about nuclear power. John is right, that until we figure out what we’re going to do with the waste and the cost, it’s very hard to see nuclear as a part of our future. But that’s where American technology comes in. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do about the waste and the cost if we think nuclear should be a part of the solution.

Personally, I love the idea that one day we’ll be able to use nuclear resources to provide clean and safe energy, but once again, I’m with Edwards on this one: I think that until we’ve proven that we can provide the proper infrastructure for it, the environmental risks far outweigh its benefits.

Apart from these issues, there aren’t a ton of differences. Edwards and Obama seem to have a more detailed summary of the economic ramifications, and each candidate has his or her own little flourishes (gimmicks?), like John Edwards’ GreenCorps sector of the PeaceCorps, and Barack Obama’s phaseout of incandescent lightbulbs, but the bottom line is that this is a pretty easy subject on which democratic candidates to hang their hats. I know it’s kinda lame to say you were into something before it was cool, but it is true that Edwards was out in front on most of these issues, and was the first to outline his plan, many tenets of which are now being echoed by both Obama and Clinton.

You can find each one of the plans below. Read them for yourself and make a decision.

Clinton

Edwards

Obama

If Edwards loses in South Carolina on Saturday (which I imagine he will), there’s a possibility he won’t even make it to Super Tuesday. I guess that will make this series pretty much pointless, but a man can hope.  Next up: Universal Health Care.  Stay tuned.

So imagine that you’re a large, Siberian tiger. Your DNA is coded as such that you have an innate sense of the food chain, and your emotions, while basic, probably function only to assist survival in the wild.

Now imagine that you’ve been put in captivity at one of the worst zoos in America. I mean, any zoo is crappy because you’re a fucking tiger, but this one is especially bad. If you listened in on the general gossip from the staff and could understand it, you’d know that the following happened there recently:

Three of the zoo’s four elephants have died since March 2004 - two at the zoo, a third at a Calaveras County sanctuary where it was sent, broken-down and ailing. The lone survivor still lives there. The fight over the pachyderms’ fate, taken up by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and animal rights activists, enraged the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which tabled the zoo’s accreditation for a year.

Puddles, a venerable 44-year-old hippopotamus, died in May, a day after a move that some employees say was bungled and others say should never have been made.

This summer, two giant elands, valued at $30,000 apiece, were killed by their peer soon after all three arrived at the zoo, during a quarantine that sources say was doomed and mishandled. Two black swans, introduced with much fanfare in May 2006, also didn’t last long.

So maybe you’re starting to feel scared and confused by your surroundings, knowing that if they killed anything named Puddles, you’re probably in big fucking trouble.

Fast forward to Christmas, 2007, when the following may or may not have happened:

According to the elder Sousa’s account to police, Dhaliwal told him that he, his brother and the younger Sousa had been “waving their hands and yelling at the tiger” just before the animal bounded up a 12 1/2-foot wall from its dry moat and attacked them.

Well, in all honesty, this probably happens to you a lot, and because you’re fearsome killer, you probably don’t give a shit. Ignoring dipshits is kind of what you do. But let’s imagine that these kids, who were high at the time and possibly drunk, started throwing shit at you.  Like, maybe some washers or rocks.

No police reports have been filed as part of an evolving civil case against the zoo and the city, but affidavits filed with Manoukian in San Jose include statements by a longtime zookeeper and a security guard about events after the Christmas evening mauling.

Any evidence that the youths provoked the tiger’s attack could limit the zoo’s and city’s liability in a civil case.

Anthony Colonnese, noting he had worked at the zoo since 1971 and was very familiar with the tiger exhibit, said he examined the grotto a few days after the attack “looking for things that did not belong in the grotto.”

He said he paid close attention to the part of the grotto “where I knew the two Siberian tigers were in the habit of resting after their mid-afternoon feeding.”

In that area, “I found two stones,” he said. “One stone was made up of a smooth material that was different from any of the rocks or gunite that make up the grotto exhibit.”

Colonnese also said he found a medium-size steel washer in the bottom of the moat. “I am informed that the keeper responsible for the Siberian tiger grotto inspected the grotto the morning of Dec. 25,” he said, suggesting the washer ended up in the moat after.

Admittedly, the evidence looks kinda thin here. Even if the kids were on crack, that doesn’t mean they necessarily threw shit at you. We may never know the real story. But we do know one thing. That you were fucking pissed off:

An autopsy conducted by a zoo veterinarian on the Siberian tiger after police shot it to death showed that the animal had been “very determined to get out,” Matthews said. Its claws were broken and splintered by clambering up the concrete moat wall, Matthews quoted the veterinarian as saying.

“This behavior may be consistent with a tiger that has been agitated and/or taunted,” Matthews said.

So, no matter what the kids did or didn’t do, you wanted to eat them so fucking bad that you basically destroyed your claws climbing up a concrete wall (ouch!) just to get to them.

So yeah, these drunk and high idiots, who drove from San Jose to San Francisco on Christmas morning, maybe didn’t deserve to get eaten, but neither did the tiger deserve to get shot to death. I guess the zoo is still at fault for not making the walls higher, but tiger lovers everywhere are pretty curious for more of this story to come out.

I used to feel kind of bad for the tiger, but after reading how it died, I actually envy the end of its life. Most animals who die in captivity are probably sick, frail, and lonely. Many die peacefully but on a table (as do a lot of humans). Think about how sweet it must have been for that tiger to get free from its confines through sheer will and and despite physical pain, and then snack on its tormentors. Sure, it got shot to death, but I’ll bet any tiger would love to go out like that. The rest of us should be so lucky.

Is there a more boring day for progressives than the fucking Michigan primary? I was just sitting here thinking about how hilarious it is that, for the purposes of selecting a representative to be leader of the free fucking world, Michigan isn’t even part of the United States today. Unless you’re a Republican, in which case, the following two tidbits about your possible front-runners should prove somewhat hilarious.

Wearing his lucky green sweater and clutching his lucky penny, McCain visited a polling place early in Traverse City.

“It’s going to be a very close race,” he told reporters who outnumbered voters at the polling site shortly after voting began. “We’re confident because of the enthusiasm at the town hall meetings and the rallies but we’ve got a long way to go.”

That’s right. John McCain has a lucky green sweater and a lucky penny, and evidently the Straight-Talk Express runs on eye of newt and magic farts. I don’t know much about the penny, and maybe it’s an Indian Head or something, but someone should tell the man that lucky charms should usually have some sort of rare quality about them. This isn’t to say I haven’t had a few lucky pennies in my day. In fact, I think I had close to 1,000,000,000 of them. When I was seven years old. I guess the sweater is fine because McCain is kind of Irish-sounding, and I guess praying to Leprechauns for a win in Michigan is pretty much the same as anything.

But today is exciting in one place: Mitt Romney’s Magic Underwear!

Romney, stressing his experience running the Salt Lake City Olympics as well as a venture capitalist, has called McCain a pessimist. He has said he would restore Detroit’s lost power by lifting the regulatory burden on companies and boosting research to generate new jobs.

“I spent my life in the private sector. I didn’t spend my life in government. If you only talked, and didn’t get things done, you got fired,” Romney told supporters at the rally.

I guess that’s pretty inspirational. I mean, Obama’s speech in Iowa was pretty great, but it doesn’t really compare to “If you only talked and didn’t get things done, you got fired.” Let’s be honest here: wouldn’t America be awesome if it was being led by an arrogant, rich executive asshole? If Romney wins the presidency, I’m sure his first act will be to make every man, woman and child in the whole country interview for their jobs.

The tides are changing, my friends. See those large waves wash over the prow of this little ship. Watch so many old precepts, records, and platitudes be caught in those cold dark waters and be taken over board, sinking to the deepest darkest recesses of those rocky ocean bottom of the historical record. Look out, it’s a revisionist kraken! Augh!

All kidding aside, these days are heady days for me. With the results of the Iowa caucuses in the bag, and my favorite team of all time having just completed a sweep of the season, the the times, they are a-changing, and the old guard, all those little Shulas and Clintons, are being slowly but surely etched into the history books. I couldn’t be more pleased.

Considering the virtual cacophony of vitrolic diatribes that occupies this space on a regular basis about Bay Area “sports” “teams”, I feel it is my solemn duty as someone with a rabid love of the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox, as well as a precious login to this blog, to gravely and seriously impart some words to the rest of the nation’s fans, as well as to the supporters of HIllary Clinton:

Neener, neener, neeeeener.

No, I take that back. That’s not fair. I’ll admit it. It’s been a good year. In fact, as far as sports is concerned. it’s been a pretty great decade for me so far. And as someone who prides themselves on his basic fairness and love of the true roots of the games involved, I concede there has been some unfortunate events.

There’s a lot of talk of ‘change’ in politics and in sports, and more often than not, the personnel in both are shuffled around so rapidly and with such vigor that it seems to encapsulate some type of hope that change is like a thermostat: dial up the right number, and the roomer will get hotter or colder, left or right, win or lose the championship. But that’s not really the way it works, is it? Some organizations in recent years have tried to dial up change like that and have failed miserably.

Let me impart for our admittedly Bay-centric audience something that may catch their eye a bit more than my ranting, from SI.com’s Peter King, on the recent retirement of Forty Niners great Bryant Young:

“San Francisco DL Bryant Young had just one tackle in the last game of his life, the 49ers’ loss at Cleveland, but the game has lost an excellent player and an even better ambassador. Young, as classy a guy as the NFL employs, bent down at midfield after the game and became emotional, his 14-year career over. “I was just taking a minute there, giving thanks and realizing how blessed I’ve been to play a game every kid grows up dreaming of playing,” he said via cell phone afterward. “All good things must come to an end, and my life has been blessed because I’ve been able to be a pro football player.”

That, my friends, is what sports is about. Effort. Dreams. Perseverance. Gamesmanship.

Brady just broke the single season TD record, Moss broke the TD reception record, and in the age of salary cap and free agency, they went undefeated, smashing that pathetic old man’s record.

Barack Obama has just won the Iowa caucus, one of the whitest state’s in the nation, on the backs of young people and independents, with a message that the status quo is not acceptable anymore.

Even Huckabee’s success is remarkable, and as the Salon implies, may have a little more to do with economics than God.

These are all remarkable achievements, regardless of where your loyalty lies. They have a long way to go to the finish line. But they have all performed a remarkable feat, and when it’s all said and done, you will talk of the days when you saw it happen.

Try and enjoy it. Pull a Bryant Young. There’s room in this party boat for all of us, from Obama fans to Bengals fans.

Except for Guiliani and Cowboys fans. Who needs those lunatics?

In case you missed it, Barack Obama woke up last night.

Perhaps just in the nick of time, the Obama of the ‘04 Democratic National Convention has shown up and thrown his hat into the presidential race. His skills as an orator have never been in question, and although he had been running what I thought was a somewhat disappointing campaign to this point, his people sure earned their paycheck in Iowa, and that speech has got to scare the shit out of the Clinton camp.

A look at the Iowa numbers suggests that far from simply appealing to younger voters, a trait boasted by just about every progressive candidate I can remember, they actually showed up for Obama at the caucuses. I think things are obviously far from settled, even if Obama takes New Hampshire, but if younger voters actually show up this year across the rest of the country, (entrance polls in Iowa showed a 5% increase over 2004 in younger voters) Obama should easily win the nomination, and the story of 2008 will be the uprising of young voters. As long as it isn’t about swing states or butterfly ballots, I’ll be just fine with that.

I’ll admit that it bothers me how much most of these political cycles are scripted; had Hillary Clinton won Iowa, I’m sure many of the stories surrounding her victory would sound very similar to those surrounding Obama’s. I’m also wary of voting for a candidate based upon a well-manufactured cult of personality, and will struggle hard to separate enthusiasm for a cause with fanaticism for a public figure who speaks really well. Nevertheless, that speech was a great one, and it might be just what’s needed to galvanize the brain-dead electorate of the last two presidential elections into doing something right for a change.

Happy New Year, to all 8 of you who still read this thing. I’ve been drinking prodigiously in anticipation of today’s announcement that the 49ers can’t get enough of Mike Nolan and the amazing teams he has led for the last three years. I guess they figure he’ll do a lot better with someone undermining his authority by having more of it than he does.

After two days of deliberation, 49ers owners John and Denise DeBartolo York decided Tuesday to retain Nolan, who has two years left on the five-year contract he signed before the 2005 season. His 16-32 record over three seasons, including a 5-11 mark in ‘07, put his job in jeopardy, and he will likely make changes to his coaching staff.

Nolan, who has also been the 49ers’ de facto general manager since joining the franchise, agreed to give up front-office control as a condition of his return. The franchise will hire a general manager to assume those duties, and the leading contender is believed to be current vice president of player personnel Scot McCloughan.

I’ve long been past the point of actually trying to figure out what the fuck the Yorks think they’re doing, but when a team goes three seasons and has DOUBLE the number of losses as they do wins, and when the most recent of those seasons was maybe the hardest to watch as this last one was, professional NFL franchises fire the head coach. There’s just no other decision to make, and if you were still on the fence, you might look and see that this team scored the fewest points (219) in franchise history for a 16-game season, tied with the 1979 Niners, and you might remember the public spat with Alex Smith, a first-pick, world-class bust who was Nolan’s first major decision as head coach, and you might read the Chronicle article that suggests that the man has lost the respect of at least part of the team.

“Do you think he’s coming back?” two defensive starters asked point-blank. The question was startling. For obvious reasons, they didn’t want their names used.

Told that Nolan appeared safe for a fourth season, both players reacted negatively.

“This win shouldn’t gloss over anything,” one player said. “I really hope it doesn’t.”

Both players said they wanted a coaching change, citing numerous issues with Nolan they said have been setbacks for what they consider to be a strong defense: questionable personnel schemes, such as abandoning the base 3-4 scheme too often in favor of nickel and dime sub packages that left the edges and middle of the field exposed; favoritism that determines playing time; poor game and clock management; poor communication that extends beyond the Nolan-Alex Smith injury flap.

And if you were still stupid enough to think he deserves another year, you might remember the countless tactical gaffes Nolan has made ON THE PLAYING FIELD. Ranging from simple bad decisions on declining penalties that should have been accepted to clear demonstrations of a lack of understanding of the game, I’m just not sure what else you need to see to fire the guy. The thing is, I personally really like Nolan. He says the right things and may yet turn out to be a good coach some day, but the guy has to be held accountable. There’s more to coaching a winning team than wearing a suit and reminding people that you’re in charge all the time.

So, as Niner fans look forward to next season, they can probably expect more of the same. Patrick Willis is amazing, but he’s only one guy.

Not to be outdone by the Yorks in the race to field the most miserable franchise in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Baseball Giants and owner Peter MacGowan are hard at work making sure that they’re even more embarrassing to their fans than they were with Barry Bonds as the face of the team. With Bonds facing indictment, I guess it’s hard for me to imagine the Giants actually bringing him back at this point, but barring the signing of a few more players who should be retired, your starting lineup in 2008 is starting to look a lot like this:

1. Dave Roberts LF
2. Randy Winn RF
3. Aaron Rowand CF
4. Bengie Molina C
5. Ray Durham 2B
6. Dan Ortmeier 1B
7. Omar Vizquel SS
8. Rich Aurilia 3B

There is no doubt in my mind that this will represent the worst offensive team in Major League Baseball in 2008. On the heels of the Mitchell Report, which points a lot of fingers at the Giants’ front office and few at anyone else above the players, one wonders if things can get much worse for this team. It’s sad to me that the Giants will actually have a great rotation in place for the foreseeable future, but expect a starting ERA up around 5 by season’s end, as the great young pitchers on this staff will go out every game thinking they have to pitch a no-hitter to get a win. This might actually be true, and the fact is that no pitcher can pitch well under that kind of pressure, and no team can win without scoring runs and without a closer. Brad Hennessey does not a successful bullpen make, and it looks like the Giants will be waiting on the post-Bonds-era Youth Movement for about a half-century or so.

I guess this is the year I start watching the Warriors again, since they’re the only Bay Area team that seems to have its shit together, but I get all weirded out when I see Nelly coaching and Chris Mullin in a suit.

I guess San Francisco Sports in 2008 will be bad enough that I’ll forget all about 2007, and if that’s the best silver lining I can find, then fuck it, I’m gonna buy some paper bags.