Obama, and other notes

I'm still debating in my mind whether to keep celebrating Barack Obama's victory, or cringing in fear of what could be happening before his January 20 inauguration. That's two months in which W. is still the President. He's already disapproved sensible Democratic economic proposals, continues to speak against any particular regulation of businesses, still thinks nothing of ordering strikes into other countries, and has done nothing to keep track of how the bailout monies are used nor to make the banks use it to give out loans. Also, I wonder who'll be on his list of pardons; every administration puts up a bad pardon or two, but I smell a raft of them for folks involved in government cover-ups and business corruption.

It won't be fun.

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As usual, I stunk at guessing the baseball playoffs. I've picked the winner twice in five years, 3 times in the last eight. This year was my usual miss. Next : football playoffs and NCAA basketball. I do a lot better with football, though I was as surprised as everyone else at the Giants' rise last year. I got to watch their conference championship game against Favre and the Packers last year on a big-city bar's big screen. (Even though I was more interested in the Amazing Race finals, which was what I was there to watch.) The Giants look even better this year. So far, so do the Titans -- however, they get to face Favre and the team that used to be known as the Titans. The Jets should use the throwback uniforms in this game, to add more to the battle of the Titans. Except that would be titanic. Which would give us that sinking feeling.

Re the Race : Nick and Starr vs. Toni and Dallas. (And the winner is : Starr and Dallas??) The rest don't count. This year's crop had many poorly-picked teams, but really great tasks and locations. I know some TAR fans are sick of seeing India, but it is probably the single most different, strangest, and most varied country in the world. They could go there every year, and not exhaust the many facets India offers. I hope next time they go there, they try Chennai. Frankly, I'm sick of Moscow, their next stop. Let's hope the tasks stay this good.