Polinaut: December 28, 2006 Archive

Daily Digest: 12-28-06

Posted at 6:39 AM on December 28, 2006 by Mike Mulcahy
Filed under: Daily Digest

There was a lot said in the coverage of Gerald Ford's death yesterday about how Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney got their start in his administration. Now Bob Woodward reveals that Ford disagreed with his former proteges and President Bush about the war in Iraq. Too bad Woodward had to agree to hold off on publishing the interview until Ford died.

In other news both the Star Tribune and MPR follow up on the pending sale of the Strib.

And the Star Tribune has a story about Paul Reuben, a contractor from Minnesota who was abducted in Iraq. His kidnappers made a videotape of him and other hostages. According to the story:

The clip was shown to McClatchy News Service in Baghdad on Tuesday night on condition that the provider's name and other identifying details be withheld.

Which raises the question--once the Strib is sold, will it have rights to the McClatchy News Services reporting? I don't see why it would. And doesn't that mean the two biggest papers in the state won't have their own foreign or Washington bureaus? Oh well, maybe craigslist will start doing news.

Campaign 2008

John Edwards is announcing today in New Orleans. But apparently he was having Web problems yesterday and tipped off everyone about what everyone already knew. Darn those IT guys!

Other items

The Pioneer Press leads with another problem we didn't know we had--the grocery gap.

MPR continues its previews of legislative issues. Today the focus is on transportation.

Fantasy Legislature update -- IV

Posted at 9:24 AM on December 28, 2006 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)

We stocked the "Maroon" league yesterday. I got a couple of extra entries and can't see any reason why we shouldn't just have a 22-team league there to keep everyone happy.

I'll start drafting the Maroon League, probably, tonight. Hard to say because my dear old sister is in town and she's not likely to want to hear about Fantasy Legislature. Her loss.

Last night and this morning I completed just about all of the initial team pages (the art work and format isn't done but I'll throw these up anyway until then), and I also wrote the initial spreadsheet for scoring. You'll find a "standings" page and a 'rosters" page which is just a sorted Excel spreadsheet (my hope this year is the Legislature bans that creepy Microsoft nonsense from Excel's Web page function).

But here's the thing. I put the email addresses of managers on the team pages (which aren't "live" yet) so that managers can contact one anothr for trades etc. But I guess I need everyone's permission to do that (I thought that was in the original sign-up form). If you're a manager and you want your e-mail address listed drop me a note. Otherwise you won't be able to trade players because you'll have no way to contact other managers other than via the blog and that's a pretty public way to work a deal.

Update.
Here. If you're a manager, you can voluntarily submit information for your fellow managers' interest.

If you want to set up an account on Hotmail or gmail or any of those rather than using your primary e-mail.

I think Julia is working on a form for you to provide some bio information if you want that on your team page. More on that later.

Happy fantasies!

Comment on this post

Fantasy Leg: Maroon League draft underway

Posted at 5:44 PM on December 28, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Two rounds of the Maroon League draft have been completed. The draft is posted here.

I'd love to hear more about the reasons for the top picks in both drafts but that will have to wait. In the meantime, be sure to submit your information for your teams pages if you haven't already (link is a post or two down).

I, obviously, don't have a horse in this race. And I've never had great luck with my fantasy baseball teams -- when I played them. But that won't stop me from analyzing things.

Here's what I think I would do.. strategy-wise. I would draft a ton of reps/senators who serve on local government affairs committees. There's a lot of legislators who do a lot of work that doesn't get a lot of attention, often carrying the water for local governments to tweak an existing statute etc.

Now, sure, the big bills -- K-12, transportation, etc -- get all the spotlight, but will they get all the points? I don't think so. First, there's a pretty a good chance that major bills will become the omnibus bill, and in our rules, once a bill becomes the omnibus bill, it becomes worthless in the scoring system.

Meanwhile, these little bills are zipping along from committee to committee, racking up points, get to the House or Senate floor, get some big points and then -- if you're lucky -- get cleaned up in a conference committee before being sent along to the governor for a quick signing. Yahtzee!

Get a couple of those bills and you can do very, very well while the teams that were swinging for the fences, are still wondering when their bill will get a floor vote (hint: in the last week of the session).

Comment on this post