Hometown boy Deval Patrick makes good in a big way with his SWEEPING victory in the Dem. primary for the Governorship of Massachussetts. Patrick handily captured 50% of the votes, leaving his competition to split the rest. All told, he won nearly every county in the state, painting an electoral map of surprising uniformity for this history-making win. I didn't hear much about his candidacy until election day, but his progressive positions give me a good feeling for our Bluest of Blue states. Job well done.

Apparently, Bush is creeping back up into daylight in the latest polls. USA TODAY has him unassailably in the 40s! Given that Iraq is as bad as ever and his "New Fangled Torture" effort is being blocked by heavy hitters from his own party ( Kudos to Graham for putting America over his candidacy BTW ), the only credible positive is falling gas prices. In SoCal, we've seen prices plunge nearly .40 cents/gallon in the last 4 weeks. That's more than a $5/tank difference for me. $2.89/gallon is nowhere NEAR Clinton prices, but anything lower than Bush's magical $3 threshold is like manna from heaven. Of course, the oil companies are also battling California's Prop. 87 which would chop into their profits while funding alternate energy. In an example of sublime political calculus, the oil companies started their price drop in a sweet spot that gives them just enough time for consumers to appreciate the price relief in the run-up to the election WHILE still maxim...

Plenty of people are BASHING Mark Burnett et al for the structure of this year's Survivor season. To wit, the decision to split the tribes into four groups on racial/cultural lines of Black, White, Asian and "Latino." IMHO, Latino is the sketchiest in terms of a "racial" category inasmuch as there are plenty of Black Latinos and Latinas thank you very much... I actually have a different view on this issue. In the rare Survivor seasons where there were two non-white competitors of the same ethnic group, they never allied with one another. Alliance-building has been a key component of Survivor and Big Brother so a (non-White) racial alliance runs counter to the generally accepted strategies of the show. However, with four tribes divided by race, each race will have a chance to develop WITHOUT the 800 lb. gorilla of race affecting alliances. Each racial group shares the focus... in the game AND on the show. Between the tribes, the competition will boil down t...