Go Big Red! Too bad, Sooners. A special teams breakdown and an interception leading to a field goal made the difference in this year’s Red River Rumble. OU’s a good team but not a great one.

Meanwhile, ORANGE POWER!!! The ‘Pokes took on No. 3 Missouri on the road and walked off an upset winner. Ride ‘em, Cowboys, ride ride ride.

While all of us are trying to surf an economic storm wave and digesting the news that Oklahoma City’s newest billionaire, Aubrey McClendon, got wiped out with a margin call on his Chesapeake stock, the world still turns. In this London Sunday Times article, David Owen, Britain’s 70s era foreign minister, talks about the apparent likelihood that Isreal knows that if it’s going to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, it’s got to do so soon. Soon as in before Bush leaves office.

Do you think Isreal’s “unilateral” action might get the presidential campaign off economic hard times, bad for the McCain campaign, and onto supposedly better foreign policy concerns for the former Navy POW hero? What would Karl Rove advise?

Mr. Rove might like this: Karen Tumulty of Time reports on the newest campaign joke by the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party. “What do Osama bin Lauden and Barack Hussein Obama have in common? They both have friends who bombed the Pentagon!” Hardy har har.

It’s a respectful campaign, isn’t it?

I really can’t begrudge the GOP their little bit of fun these days because it must not be such a great time for them behind closed doors. The polling site FiveThirtyEight.com sees McCain behind by 7+ points, the odds for an Obama win at 9 to 1, and losing the election badly in the electoral votes, 349-183; The “conservative” RealClearPolitics.com aggregates polling and has Obama up 7.3%, 49.7 to McCain’s 42.4, shows Obama leading the electoral vote 277 to 158 (O+119) and projects Obama to get 353 electoral votes to McCain’s 185 (O+168) if the election were held today; The “professional” polling aggregator, Pollster.com, has it 50.2% for Obama and 41.9% for McCain with the current electoral vote tally at 158 McCain, 320 Obama, 60 “toss up”.

Part of the problem for the McCain campaign is that Obama isn’t just leading, but that Obama’s numbers are going up while McCain’s numbers are going in the tank. Also, time and tide are running against him in every “battleground” state because Obama is outspending him and out-organizing him. When you’re losing like that, it just isn’t any fun at all to be in a political campaign and I should know because I’ve been there and done that.

Therefore, it must have been a really bad day Friday for the former POW to see Gov. Sarah Palin, his “well-vetted” vice presidential nominee, blow up in smoke in front of his eyes as the so-called “Troopergate” report came out. She appears to have violated Alaskan state ethics laws by heading an orchestrated campaign to get her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, according to the report. Her self-defense response is lame. She says she was acting to protect her family from Mr. Wooten, who she claims made a death threat against her father during the trooper’s divorce proceeding against Gov. Palin’s sister. The report notes this is a load of crap because getting him fired would simply hand him a reason to retaliate and increase the danger, not reduce it. TalkingPointsMemo.com covers the report, the response and the fallout. Maybe if she’d have a press conference she could clear this all up, but she’s the first and only vice presidential nominee to ever refuse to have a press conference. It’s all about transparency, isn’t it?

Politics, sports and economics are all just blahblahblogblah to my friend MCARP, it seems. Over on his blog, 340am, he’s sitting in his newly transformed back yard worried about more important matters. It seems that underneath his six-foot and mustachioed exterior is the heart and mind of a stone-cold bitch, a compassionless girly-man. I’ve known Mike pretty well for a couple of years now and I have to express surprise. I never woulda guessed.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want to give a shout out to the world that’s out of my control for a couple of things. Gasoline has come back down to the $2.50 range and I’ve had both my air conditioning and heating turned off and my windows open for some time now in this great weather we’ve been having. Last Monday, at Prohibition Room’s jazz in the Gold Dome night, they had a xylophone player and a trumpet player and a pretty big jam of guitars and drums, etc., and it was really good to hear live music that doesn’t assault my ears. When Cami Stimpson and another woman I don’t know added their voices, it was even better. I can’t wait for tomorrow night to see what happens after 9:30 p.m. when the OCU music majors show up.

You betcha, doggonnit (wink wink).

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