Random Pre-Vacation Musings

Tomorrow morning I board a plane at the unspeakable hour of 6 am - bearing the colors of the unspeakable airline, Delta - to fly to Maui for a well-deserved (if I do say so myself) vacation with my two favorite people in the world. Before I go, some random thoughts on three topics.

First, a follow-up to my proposed reforms posted yesterday. Here are some more, some proposed by my good buddies at d2football.com, some fleshed out from what I already came up with, and some that I forgot about, or came up with later.

1. I'd also do away with the party conventions. I'd like to do away with the parties, period, and have the election process simply be "Citizen A running for president, not Member X of the RNC," as one of my d2 pals put it. Not sure how to pull that off though.

2. I'd also do away with caucuses, in favor of primaries. And no dual-selection processes like we have in some places in Texas.

3. I'd scrap the electoral college. Not that a popular vote doesn't have its flaws, but the electoral college today simply leads to candidates playing a numbers game, and focusing on "key states" and "swing states" while ignoring others, either because they're a foregone conclusion to go to one party or the other, or because they don't carry enough electoral votes to matter. EVERY vote MUST matter!

4. To clarify, POTUS could take AFOne on a leisure trip, but would have to pay the costs for it and the security detail out of pocket. If s/he can't afford it - too bad. There are plenty of opportunities to visit New York on official government business, and the prez could take in a Broadway show then. Besides, DC has decent entertainment. If a national crisis breaks out on a self-funded leisure trip, of course the taxpayer funds would come into play to pay for the altered travel plans.

5. I might reconsider the deductibility of charitable contributions. If I did, I'd remove the caps. If somebody wants to give 100% of their substantial income to charity, they should be able to do so, and have a tax incentive for doing it.

6. From the same d2 guy, I'd strip all official positions from the political parties, including Speaker and committee chairs. Let the congresspersons run for chairmanships, and be voted on by their peers. There'd be a new voting process with each election cycle.

7. From the same guy (maybe I should make him Chief of Staff), I'd reinstate the peacetime draft, with certain exemptions - disability, or employment in certain fields. Pay would be based in part on length of service commitment.

8. I would provide tax incentives for saving and investment. I'd up the IRA/401k limits, and remove the caps. We have to get back to being a nation of savers and investors, not borrowers and consumers.

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I hate even giving this blog space, but I'm sickened by the whole Michael Jackson thing. He was a marketing genius who surrounded himself with very good producers; he wrote catchy pop tunes with little substance or meaning; he was a prodigious child talent, but an average singer as an adult; and he could only have been popular as an entertainer in our current/recent culture.

And he was a pedophile.

Yet they're selling tickets to celebrate his life. What does that say about us?

When we heard on the news that there'd be all-day coverage of this media circus today, my wife lamented that it wasn't tomorrow instead: we'll be on airplanes all day.

Some news talking head commented that it was "highly unusual" to find the surgical drug Propofol in a private citizen's home. My first thought was that the words "highly unusual" fit Michael Jackson like ... well, like a glove.

A very excellent book I'm reading called "The Reason for God" made a very appropriate point that applies to Jackson's life. I believe the author, Tim Keller, might have been quoting C.S. Lewis. To paraphrase, he noted that there's a God-shaped hole in all of us. And when someone finally reaches the zenith of one's chosen field - the pinnacle of what one is really good at - and finds they're still the same broken schmuck they were when they were nobody, with all the attendant warts, hurts and demons, it has to be devastating. At that point, what else is there? What else can they do to be somebody different, the somebody they thought fame, fortune, success, whatever, would make them? When they realize that they're not that butterfly, but still the same old worm, what then?

It can only end badly, and we've seen it too many times.

When you've got one puzzle piece left, you fill it with the only piece that will fit. Try filling it with a perfectly round piece, or a square piece, and there's still a hole. Get the message?

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As a cycling fan, I find this year's Tour de France intriguing. It is fitting proof that experience can often trump youthful vigor. To wit: the sporting press are making a mountain out of the molehill that Lance Armstrong, at age 37, managed to be in the lead group that split from the peloton yesterday, just when the group hit the stiff Mediterranean winds near the French coast, while his compatriot, young Alberto Contador, reportedly and presumably the leader of their Astana team, got caught in the back group.

I say it was no rivalry-bred conspiracy, but a simple matter of the experience of a seven-time Tour winner, who's forgotten more about racing tactics than most in the peloton will ever know, versus the lack of savvy of a young stud who's won three major tours, but with the guidance of cycling's greatest tactician, Johann Bruyneel.

Look back at past Tours. In those nervous, early stages, Armstrong always rode near the front. Always. That's what leaders do. You avoid the surprises, the unexpected breakaways, the field splits, and the crashes. That Conti was leisurely making his way from the back of the pack to the middle at that point just shows that he has a lot to learn.

Former Armstrong lieutenant George Hincapie, now a rival, was in the front group. Conspiracy? Nope. Big George is himself a veteran of 14 Tours. He knows the game. Two Astana teammates were with Armstrong. Team rift? Doubtful. If I were on Armstrong's team, I'd be on his wheel as long as I could hold it. You don't win 7 Tours by being lucky. The only reason I wouldn't be on his wheel would be if I were an arrogant young buck who thought his climbing prowess and his post-Armstrong successes made the leadership of the team his birthright. And that may prove Contador's downfall.

What if Armstrong and his two teammates had stayed back with their "leader," Contador?

Well, first, it was no accident that Astana had positioned itself as the leading team headed into today's team time trial. I have to believe it was part of Astana's strategy. Knowing the TTT was coming on the fourth stage, and that the leading team is last to hit the course, you'd want to be that team, so that you'd know all the other teams' split times at each of the three checkpoints. That strategy was also likely led by Armstrong and Bruyneel.

After stage one, in which Astana smashed the opening time trial, placing four riders in the top ten, and stage two, Astana held the team lead by 31 seconds over yellow jersey Fabian Cancellara's Saxo Bank team. The split between the lead group - containing Armstrong, the two other Astana riders, and race leader Cancellara - and the main group on Wednesday was 41 seconds. There were no other Saxo riders in the lead group.

Had Astana had zero riders in the lead group, they'd have possibly lost the team lead. As it was, Armstrong's two teammates in the lead group put the hammer down, putting distance between the two groups to maximize the TEAM's advantage. (That also fueled the conspiracy theories.)

Of course, with the benefit of being able to start the TTT last, Astana destroyed the field today. Looking at the average times from the lead five riders - those whose times count in the TTT for the team time - from Saxo and Astana from Stage 1's 15.5 km time trial, and extrapolating the distance to today's 39.9 km, produced a 44 second gap between Astana and Saxo Bank.

Astana beat Saxo by 40 seconds, enough to put Armstrong in second by a scant 0.22 second - a margin so small that the race officials had to go back to to Stage 1's results and, combined with today's, calculate the times to the hundredth of a second.

That margin almost put Armstrong in yellow for the 84th time in his career. But more importantly, it set up Astana for a cinch victory in this year's Tour. Cancellara can't climb, so he's not a GC contender. The other contenders? They have too much time to make up to overcome the Astana lead. Carlos Sastre, who won last year only because Contador and Astana were excluded from the race (don't get me started on that travesty), is 2:44 behind Armstrong, 2:25 behind third-placed Contador, 2:21 behind fourth-placed Andreas Kloden, and 2:13 behind fifth-placed Levi Leipheimer. Between those four Astana riders, they have 12 Tour podium appearances. Tough to make up that much time on that set of riders.

Two-time bridesmaid Cadel Evans is 2:59 down on Armstrong, and 2009 Giro winner Denis Menchov is nearly another minute back.

Heading into the steep stuff on Friday, Astana also has a couple of other mountain goats in seventh and 11th place. Only Team Garmin's Christian Vandevelde and Columbia's Hincapie have a decent GC shot at this point. Things are setting up nicely for a 1-2-3 finish for Astana, an unprecedented feat that would put a nice feather in Bruyneel's cap, regardless who's in what position.

Armstrong is smart like a fox - ask Jan Ullrich. And Contador can either learn from him, or congratulate him on the podium in Paris.