If you watched the presidential debate last night, you no doubt heard the many references by John McCain and Barack Obama to "Joe the plumber," which might as well be written Joe the Plumber with a capital P, seeing as that's his official name as far as the media is concerned. (Read more...)

Although I've railed on CNN in the past, I think their election coverage and analysis team on the whole has been top-notch. Even though I want to stab Wolf Blitzer with a screwdriver every time he parrots "the best political team on television," I happen to believe that CNN does in fact have the best and fairest analyst group, and I must also confess that even John King's overly informative Delegate Map (seen in the primaries, and certain to be seen on Nov. 4) is pretty darn cool.

Check this shit out (Fig. 1). McCain and Obama square off on the issues while partisan, color-coded lines tell you how much the candidates rock/suck.

But CNN still has a tendency to get bogged down in their goofy technological gimmicks, and the most recent and flagrant example has got to be that EKG-looking thing during the recent presidential and vice-presidential debates.

This thing is just plain stupid.

If you haven't seen it, the way it works is this: A group of participants is selected and is given a dial that works not unlike the darkness selector on a toaster. During the debate, the participants turn the knobs either toward positive or negative to reflect their feelings based on what they're hearing. Plus for positive (I like what I'm hearing); minus for negative (I don't like what I'm hearing). Got it? The results are tallied in real time and fed to the readout which appears on the screen during the debate, sort of like a live heart monitor for debating acumen. (Read more...)

So. I just watched the Cubs lose the third of three straight losses to be swept out of the playoffs in 2008, a season that from my vantage point most of the way seemed like it had the makings of something special. This team seemed like it had the best chances of a Cub team in a long time. But they got swept out of the postseason in the first round, for the second year in a row. (Read more...)