An experiment

My phone says i can blog from it. This post is short on substance but long on potential. Perhaps having a computer in my pocket at all times will influence my blogging frequency.

Big Announcement

Although I have tried to do this from behind the scenes for some time now, I've decided to come right out with it now that it's being reported on News 3. Here's the video, with more to come about this big development soon.

Derby Wrap Up

Leaving the Derby is an exceptionally complicated process, where you're hearded like cattle onto a bus. It took forever, and in the end the clever gambit with parking the car at the end of the parking lot didn't do anything but make us walk a long way.

My favorite in the Derby, successful came in dead last, and Pyro, my mom's favorite who I'd put extra money on, came in 9th. None of us in our group picked Big Brown (save the knowledgable grandfather who'd asked us to pick him), who won handily.

Sadly Eight Bells was the only success in our group, picked by both my father and father-in-law, as well as one of the guys with us. We watched the equine ambulance speed past us to the end of the turn. Rumors flew around the boxes that the horse that was down was Eight Bells, and then rumors began circulating that she had already been put down. They had a big tarp up shielding whatever they were doing from view. My brother-in-law saw the Eight Bells jockey breaking the news to the owner's wife there on the track in front of where we were.

Ironic that despite the fact we were there we had to call out to people watching on tv to get the details. Last we heard was she suffered a heart attack, after which her two front legs broke. That poor horse.

Despite the pall put on the crowd by Eight Bells' collapse, it was a great day at the Derby. And we only ended the day about $5 down....as long as you don't factor in the cost of mint julips.
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Final bets

We were suprised to find ourselves $2 ahead going into the Derby. We're 17 minutes away. All of us put a throwaway bet on #11who currently has the longest odds. I'm for Monba. we'll see soon....

With so many people in this small area, and each of them having 1 or 2 cell phones on them, it's tough to get a signal. That makes live blogging hard. Still, i'm happy to report that we've pulled even in our betting after the 9th race, in which i finally picked a winner....or at least a shower. The winnings give us just enough to get two more drinks and place all the bets we need to make....with a dollar to spare!

Married to Money

Ann-Bailey's won again, cutting our losses on the day in half. All the losses, of course, are mine, so it's nice to have a wife that's so financially supportive.

Total spend on three races: $17
Total won: $11.40
Net loss: $5.60

Our favorite outfit we've seen so far was a guy dressed much like Abe Lincoln. His wife (well, I suppose that is just an assumption) was decked to the nines as well.

I wish I had a bowler hat. Why aren't they standard on young upwardly mobile men any more?

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Always trust the woman

For years my mom has always been very good at picking one of the top finishers in the Kentucky Derby. My wife is showing a pretty good knack at it too. While my horse finished 4th when I needed huim to show, her number 7 won the whole thing in the past race. We're off to see how much she's won. Maybe I should follow her betting line from here on out.
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First Bet....$7 back so far

Number 3 let me down. I let Number 8 down by picking Number 8 to place instead of show. So I'm down by $7 so far. I'll see if Number 9 can come through for me in race number 7....41 minutes away.
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In box B19

A picture of Ann Bailey's hat (and us too) in our amazing box. We're a quarter length part the finish line. We've picked up our first mint julip, the sun's out, and soon we'll take our first stab at betting. Great people watching here. I'll try to snap some covert shots of some of the more interesting people and outfits and hats we see.

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We're here! Stuck in bus unloading traffic but we're here!

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Getting there

Streets around Churchill Downs are closed except for buses and limos, so you have to park at one of various lots around Louisville. We're at the Louisville Expo Center. That's $5. Then we get on a $10 shuttle with a mix of the beautiful people going to their boxes and the bedraggled going to the Infield.

We've tried to park stategically for the easy exit. We'll know later tonight how effective that will be, or if we've wasted our time parking a half-gazillion miles from the shuttle pick-up.

OK, sunscreen's on and we're off to the races....
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Start Time

Per request from Bill, here's the official times for race day. The first of the 16 races run today was at 11:00 am. The Kentucky Derby will be run shortly after 6:00pm today, and I believe it's shown on NBC.
We just had a friendly cop compliment our well-dressedness and my wife's lovely hat and give us the tip that the interstate is back open so let's see if we can make up some time....
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Live from the Derby

Although it has absolutely nothing to do with the usual subjects covered in this blog, I'm going to spend today live blogging from the Kentucky Derby.

Not that I have very much to report at the moment. We're in a car on some backwoods highway in Kentucky, taking a detour around an interstate-closing accident on I-65 North. The news coverage stopped briefly to report the accident before we left the hotel, but felt one mention was enough. Afterall, they had HATS to talk about!! So we learning nothing helpful to allow us to avoid the accident.

Hopefully there will be more exciting things to report soon....
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Email etiquette

If you type in all caps, you are screaming at me.

If you don't take the time to punctuate with any semblance of effort, you are saying you have more important things to do than communicate with me.

If I ask two questions and you only answer one, I know you didn't take time to read my email, and probably should be skeptical of the one answer you did give.

If I copy someone on an email to you but you only reply back to me, it looks like you're hiding something (or, again, aren't paying attention).

Email's great and email's fast, but email also says a lot about how you value me.

I've never wanted to be in a Mamet play more

Stumbled on this in today's Political Diary from the Wall Street Journal:

"I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.... [Now I] question my hatred for 'the Corporations' -- the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live. And I began to question my distrust of the 'Bad, Bad Military' of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world.... I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism"

-- Playwright David Mamet, writing in the Village Voice on why he is no longer a
"brain-dead liberal."

That. Is. Awesome.

Impressive reporting

CNN's article on the resignation of Elliott Spitzer, the Democratic governor New York (can we call him "former governor" yet?) fails to mention his party affiliation. It makes a reference to the party affiliation of the Lt. Governor's mother's party affiliation, but you have to read the sidebar of the article to learn that "The first-term governor had been considered a rising star in the Democratic Party."

That's it. Nothing in the article proper. And this isn't a blurb, either - it's nearly 1,000 words long.

It's impressive. Really. Quite a feat. Way to rise above partisanship, CNN!

(note: the article will be continually updated throughout the day, so at some point the above post may become out of date if they fix the article. Currently, though, everything above is fact.)

Conservative blood

The Economist has a great quote in this week's edition:

"A disappearing species is good for fund-raising; blood on your hands is not."

The article's about the culling of endangered species in Africa. It made me think of the Grand Old Party, though, and how it is getting significantly outraised by the Dems. Could it be because they've sacrificed the party's conservative principles in the name of keeping power? 

Look where that's getting ready to get you....

On the DC streets

I just walked by Trent Lott on F Street in DC. I nodded and he nodded and we went on our ways. He was all by himself - that's what happens when you leave the Senate behind.

VRWC or VACC?

I like this headline in today's Newday:

Clinton accuses media of pro-Obama bias at debate

So maybe the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" she use to complain about really is just a Vast Anti-Clinton Conspiracy."

If she thinks the media doesn't like her, she really shouldn't go here.

McCain is not the answer

If you watched McCain's debate performance last night you can't help but be a little fearful of the man. Several people have noted to me that Senators are endorsing him just because they're scared of him and don't want to deal with him on the Senate floor after he loses.

But other than his temper, we need to be worried about the ideals he holds. Would he be an excellent defender of our national security? Probably. But what about liberty? Free enterprise? James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal points to some things that had me worried in last night's debate as well:

Two of McCain's comments--"I did it out of patriotism, not for profit" and "sometimes people lost their jobs"--lead us to think that McCain's problem with economics goes beyond mere indifference. He seems to view the making of money--that is to say, the production of goods and services that people want, and the act of supplying them through voluntary exchange in a free market--as a less than honorable pursuit.

Post-Florida, it is very easy for a lazy voter to pick McCain. The media loves him and will tell you everything you need to know about how wonderful he is (you saw this in the debate last night, with regular banners at the bottom of the page while McCain was speaking letting viewers know you can read more about his economic plan or his defense plan or his other plans at CNN.com - but they never highlighted this on any other candidate that I saw).

But he isn't the answer to the Republican's problems. He talks a good game on defense, and I believe him. He talks a good game on spending, and he probably means it but who knows if he'll act. He voted against the tax cuts that have, until recently, kept the economy afloat. He limited the rights of inviduals to give to candidates through McCain-Feingold. He is zealously trying to regulate carbon and add layers of taxation on Real People through McCain-Lieberman. And he's mean, as he showed last night.

McCain is not the answer.