With the polls opening up in 24 hours, below is the way the Washington Post currently sees this election.

Notice they have Obama winning Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida, but they give Ohio, North Carolina, and Missouri to McCain.  Interestingly, Obama can win this election without Florida and Pennsylvania, as long as he hangs on to all the other blue states, including Virginia, Nevada, and Colorado.  If he wins those states, the final tally would be 270 to 268.

Then, of course, there’s the scenario that northern Maine goes red.  Should that happen, a single electoral vote would go McCain’s direction, and we’d be tied 269-269, and the Democratic House then would elect Obama President.  But that’s not likely to happen.

In the end, McCain has to win Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida to win this election.  If Obama wins any one of those states, he will be our next President.

I was flying on US Air flight 3054 on Wednesday night, travelling from LaGuardia to Portland.  As the flight attendant shut the door, she gave the standard line, “Please turn off all portable electronic devices.”  We all know this is the rule, and many people try to finish up that one last email or phone call before they are asked, personally, to turn off their phone.

I was in seat 3A.  Across the aisle from me, in seat 3D (I’ve never understood why they skip letters on these little planes), was the guy in the photo.  He had an iPhone that, after the announcement, he hid under his JAMA magazine.  When the flight attendant sat down, he continued to send and receive text messages and check email.  As we taxied down the runway, he kept texting.  And as we took off and rose above New York City, he didn’t stop.

My first thought was that there are some people in this world–way too many people in fact–who simply don’t believe the rules apply to them.  Rules, to them, are meaningless restrictions on their freedom of choice.  And it causes you to wonder:  if this guy has no qualms about bypassing this safety rule, what other rules does he choose not to follow?

My second thought was about safety and personal responsibility.  We all know–and I assume this guy knew–that use of a cell phone on an airplane can cause interference with the plane’s equipment.  In this case, what is my responsibility?  Should I or the woman on his other side have asked him to turn off his phone?  Should I have notified the flight attendant somehow?  It was interesting to me that he didn’t care at all what his airplane neighbors saw or thought–he just didn’t want to get caught by the flight attendant.  Any time she walked by, he hid the phone under his medical journal.  In the end, however, I did nothing but take his picture so I could post it here.

My final thought was that this guy was a McCain supporter.  Although “Country First” is written on Senator McCain’s campaign signs, a very large number of his supporters have a “me first” attitude.  This guy clearly was thinking only of his own needs, everyone else be damned.

Even when they were ahead 1-0 last night, it simply didn’t seem like the Red Sox had what it was going to take to win game 7 of the ALCS.  The mojo wasn’t there.  Lester pitched well enough to win, but Boston’s offense simply could not get it together.   They created a few–too few–opportunities, but ended a lot of at-bats with checked swings called as third strikes.

I wish the Rays good luck and predict they will beat the Phillies in 5 games.  

Carolina basketball starts in 26 days.

Back in 2004, a great deal was made of the now famous Bloody Sock.  A lot was written–okay, too much was written–about Curt Schilling’s “gutsy” performance, about how he pitched through pain, how his pitching may not have been vintage Curt Schilling, but his heart certainly was.  It all quickly became overly dramatic, and it didn’t take long for people to start suggesting that it all was a ruse.  The unfortunate thing is all the excessive hype covered up the fact that, in reality, it was a gutsy performance.  We’re talking about the limited context of baseball here, but what Schilling did in Game 2 of the 2004 World Series really was pretty amazing.

We saw the same playing on heart from several Red Sox players in last night’s ALCS Game 6 between the Red Sox and the Rays.  Josh Beckett clearly is hurting and is not at his best.  But for five innings and 78 pitches, he gave the team everything he had.  Allowing only four hits (two of which were home runs), Beckett put the Red Sox in a position to win.  It was not the vintage post-season Beckett we saw last year; but being one of the best pitchers in baseball is not just about how hard you can throw.

Similar performances came from Hideki Okajima, Jonathan Papelbon, and Jason Veritek.  Okajima has not been able to repeat his sensational 2007 season this year, but he pitched his heart out last night in some very difficult middle innings.  Papelbon clearly does not have a great deal left in the proverbial tank, but he gutted his way through that final inning with whatever he could deliver.  Veritek’s go-ahead home run after posting a battering average of 0.00 in the series up to that point was nothing short of exhilarating.

It’s interesting that it largely has been the young guys that got the Red Sox to this point.  Pedroia has been sensational all year.  Lowrie stepped in for the injured Julio Lugo and has played extremely well.  But last night it was the veterans demonstrating that baseball is not just about youth and talent. 

As an aside, twenty-four-year-old Justin Masterson also was sensational last night, but for different reasons.  He does have youth and talent.  But after hitting the first batter he faced and falling behind in the count 2-0 to the potentially tying run, Masterson looked like he was going to collapse.  You could feel the momentum start to swing.  Timely visits from his catcher and pitching coach allowed Masterson to get his head together.  The next three pitches were strikes, retiring Iwamura, and he got B.J. Upton (a very dangerous batter) and Carlos Pena on infield pop-ups.

And so now the Red Sox go back to relying on youth:  John Lester, who, in game 2, looked very tired.  Boris Becker once set that the fifth set is all about heart.  The same can be said for games like last night’s and tonight’s.  Tampa Bay is a young and very talented team, but it has been a long season.  It will be the team that plays most from the heart tonight that wins.

I thought I knew who John McCain was at the start of this election.  Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about how Senator McCain is not being himself, that he’s caved in to party politics and has adopted a win-at-all-costs approach to this election.  Frankly, I’m not sure that they’re right.  I’m beginning to think that this is the real John McCain.  What we’re seeing today is who this man actually is.

His choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate provides unique insight into this man.  This country needs intelligent, experienced leaders.  Selecting an untested individual with no world experience was nothing short of irresponsible.  The whole Ayers mess–which McCain continues to press in his Robocalls–shows that McCain is much more interested in winning than truth.  And now he’s dropping the “S” bomb, suggesting that Obama’s policies are Socialist.

When McCain became the clear choice of his party, I actually was pretty pleased.  It seemed at the time that even if the Republican party were to keep the White House, we would have a moderate, centered individual as president who can make well-reasoned, extra-political decisions.  The last six months have shown that this simply is not the case.  In the spotlight, we now are getting a chance to see who John McCain really is.  And what we see is immensely disappointing.

The two videos below are in McCain’s own words.

So, there they were.  Down three games to one in the American League Championship Series, and losing 7-0 in game five.  Not only were they losing, they looked awful and had looked awful ever since losing that extra-innings heart-breaker in Game 2.  Games 3 and 4 were in Boston, and the Red Sox lost by a combined score of 22-5.

Game 5 had not looked any better, with Boston falling behind 2-0 before either team recorded an out.  Matsuzaka made it through only four innings but gave up 5 hits and 5 runs in that time.  By the time the second half of the seventh inning started, Boston was down 7-0, having only 2 hits.  Rookie Jed Lowrie started off the bottom of the seventh with a double, but Veritek and Kotsay both flew out to Upton (my vote up to that point for series MVP) in center field, and everything looked pretty hopelss.  The Rays were just 7 outs from the World Series.  Then, Crisp singles, getting Lowrie to third, and Pedroia singled in Lowrie in an 8-pitch at-bat (”yea, it’s not a shut-out”).  Up comes David Ortiz, who has had a miserable post-season (batting around .100 in this series).

It’s still unclear to me why the Rays manager did not bring in a different pitcher to face Ortiz.  He had hard-throwing lefty J.P. Howell in the bullpen, but he chose to let right-handed Balfour face left-hitting Ortiz.  Perhaps he thought a six-run lead was sufficient.  Perhaps Maddon simply had not seen (or remembered) the last two American League Championship Series in which the Red Sox had participated.  This is October, and these are the Boston Red Sox.  And this is Fenway.  Papi placed the ball nicely in the right-field stands, and suddenly it was a three-run game.

It was like the Red Sox suddenly started playing right-handed.  Like someone from the sidelines had yelled, “NOW!”  The momentum at that moment swung, and the Red Sox simply didn’t stop.  Papelbon quickly dispatched three batters in the top of the 8th.  Jason Bay started the bottom of the 8th with a walk, and J.D. Drew smacked a two-run homerun to make it a one-run game.  With two outs, Kotsay hit a double off Upton’s glove (it really could have been caught, although it would have been a fantastic catch), followed by a beautiful ten-pitch at-bat from Coco Crisp, that finally resulted in a run-scoring single to tie the game.

After 170 +\- games this season, Carlos Pena has hit into only two double plays.  Two, all season.  With one out and two on base in the top of the 9th inning, Red Sox fans were very pleased to see his third.  But the reality is that it was not Pena’s fault:  the Red Sox already had decided that they were going to win this game.

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Youkilis reached on an in-field hit (which also could have been an out) and got to second on the throwing error to first.   I was surprised to see Tampa Bay walk Jason Bay to get to J.D. Drew.  I guess you look at the stats and make a call, but Drew has accepted many opportunities to be a hero, and last night was no exception.  With the count 3-1 (a hitter’s count, and Howell did NOT want to load the bases), Drew hit a change-up over Gross’s head in right field, and another Boston miracle was complete.

The Boston Red Sox have one eight straight ALCS elimination games.  I would love to see them make it ten, but last night’s victory also meant the season will not end with Boston simply lying down.  Let’s hope they can keep this momentum going for one more game.  If successful, they’ll need just one additional game to get back to the World Series.  Wouldn’t that be fun.

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re exotic, different.
  

• Grow up in Alaska, you’re a quintessential American story.

• If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
  

• If you name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track, you’re a maverick.

• Graduate from Harvard Law School and you’re elite.
  

• Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well-grounded.

• If you are editor of the Harvard Law Review, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the State Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
  

• If your resume is local weather person, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

• If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
  

• If you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.

• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
  

• If your husband is nicknamed “First Dude” with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

I was driving along Interstate 295 today, when I came across one of those portable digital display signs that warns you about things up ahead–you know, one of those signs made of lightbulbs that can change its message every few seconds.  This one started with this:

 DAYLIGHT
SAVINGS TIME
HAS ENDED

Fair enough.  However, it then changed to:

PLEASE
DRIVE
CAREFUL

Okay, leaving aside the use of the adjective where there should be an adverb, I found this message rather … odd.  So odd, in fact, that I slowed down to watch the message flash by again–I was not sure I had seen it correctly the first time.  As it turned out, I had.

This raises all kinds of questions.  Do people really drive around at 4:30 as it’s getting dark and fail to turn on their headlights because they forgot the clocks were set back?  That does appear to be the implication:  our driving is based not on weather or traffic conditions or how dark it is but what time we think it is.  Being reminded that the clocks were set back, therefore, will cause us to change our driving behavior.  Is that it?

And is this really why this sign was towed to this location?  I’ve driven by that spot quite a bit, and there has not been a portable light sign there before.  It seems the state highway commissioner or the department of transportation or the state police or whoever is in charge of these signs decided it was very important to remind people to drive like it was an hour later–whatever that means–so important in fact that it was worth programming one of these signs and towing it to that spot on the Interstate.

Naturally, these people must be right, and I’m simply overlooking some obvious point of safety.  Accordingly, I implore anyone reading this to remember that we moved our clocks last weekend and that you all, therefore, should drive careful.

The Boston Red Sox’s World Series victory last night was very different from the win four years ago. In 2004, they were the Wild Card team, the underdog. They had managed to get into the World Series only after coming back from a 3-0 deficit against that team from New York that shall not be named. And the National League’s representative in 2004–the St. Louis Cardinals–was a very good team. Somehow, it was hard to believe it actually could happen. They had not done this in 86 years. They could not possibly be doing it now.

Not until that final out, not until Keith Foulke jogged the ball half way to first base and threw his excessively cautious underhand toss–and not until Doug Mientkiewicz actually caught it for out number three of game number four in the bottom of inning number nine–did you really believe they were going to win. Until that moment, something could go wrong. It had gone wrong in the past–very, very wrong. There was, after all, The Curse, which still could show up to stop the Red Sox when they needed only a simple out. It had happened before. Why should this year be any different?

The win in 2004 was magical, something many Red Sox fans had waited full lifetimes to witness. Headlines all over New England had a single, emphatically printed word: Finally!

This year, we knew the Red Sox were going to win the World Series even before the last game started. The Curse was dead, and nothing was going to stop this team. They simply were the better team by far, and it was just a matter of time. Certainly, the Rockies could win a game or two, but not four. Not against these Red Sox.

The 2007 Red Sox were the best team in baseball all year. Yes, they had intervals of mediocrity, and there were other teams that played amazing ball in the final weeks, including the Colorado Rockies. But the Red Sox’s 96 wins at the end of the regular season was tied only by Cleveland (the true runner up this year). They won their division for the first time in a great while, then earned the American League pennant by taking three straight against the Indians after trailing in the series 3-1. When it came time to play the World Series, they were expected to win. And when they did win, it was great. We stood there in the living room beaming at the TV as the players jumped all over each other. But if it was not magical like in 2004, that’s okay. That team had defied History to win the title. This team simply was the best.

And now, of course, we expect them to win every year. But all I want at the moment is to get some sleep.