No..! No! No....

For the Love of God, No!!!!

Talking of my Cubbies, expect a lot more of this sort of thing over the next couple of weeks....

Here's Doug Glanville's quote to ESPN, on being asked about the team's historic World Series "drought":

"If you parallel that into environmental terms," Glanville philosophized, "it's sort of like we've been in the Sahara and the Gobi Deserts. It's like we've been living in the Sahara and vacationing in the Gobi. That's a lot of time in the desert. So our thirst level is off the charts. We're tired of seeing the mirages. We need to make it into some sort of reality. But there's still a lot of desert to traverse -- and the camels don't move too quickly."

I dont know about you, but the moment a utility outfielder starts a quote with : "If you parallel that into environmental terms....," all sorts of warning bells go off.

Beautiful!

I was going back over some notes I made for a panel discussion Clay and I did at Democrats Abroad in the aftermath of the mid-terms last year.

As is the way with these things, they asked us all at the end for our predictions, political and otherwise.

Here's what I said at the time:

1. Al Gore would be the Democratic nominee in the 2004 presidential election. (OK, it seemed plausible at the time, and I think all of us on the panel said the same thing)

2. Arnold Schwarzenegger would be Governor of California in 2006. (He might be recalled in favour of Jean-Claude Van Damme by then... Last November though, the recall was not yet a glint in Darrell Issa's eye.)

3. The Department of Homeland Security would announce a national smallpox vaccination program in order to maintain a level of popular paranoia over impending terrorist attacks. (There's still a long hot summer to go ahead of the election...)

and...

4. The Chicago Cubs would win the World Series in Dusty Baker's first season in charge. (Remember, at this stage, Dusty hadn't even been appointed..)

I would not be exaggerating if I was to tell you right now that the only one of these I remotely care about at the moment is number four....