5 Things on Friday: Joachim Strikes!

Happy Friday, folks.  There’s a hurricane off the East Coast, and as of this writing, no one is quite certain exactly where it’s headed.  Half the projections show it turning for DC, and half show it heading harmlessly out to sea.  This, of course, means they’ve split the difference on television and have it headed directly for New York City.  As I constantly tell my kids, nothing gets destroyed on TV as consistently as New York.
Speaking personally, I think the Football Gods are looking to smite Happy Valley.  My prediction is that the hurricane will hit full force in Pennsylvania just as Army is kicking off against Penn State on Saturday.  The game already projects to be a sloppy affair, and this small bit of advantage will put the Black Knights over the top, giving them their greatest victory of the twenty-first century.  Or else it will just cause chaos, which would also be fine perfectly fine.  As you can see, the track only needs to shift a little futher north to turn the contest into a water polo match.

In all sincerity, stay safe out there and good luck.
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[F]ive Democrats have been invited to participate in the debate: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb.
I get the feeling that Biden doesn’t want to be president, that he might once have wanted it but that he’s seeing things differently since his son died.  That’s not hard to understand.  The fact that we’re even talking about this, then, shows that he’s concerned about the direction that the country is headed, and although I personally like Senator Jim Webb from Virginia, it’s got to be said that his campaign isn’t doing very much.
To put it in Army Football terms: Biden is the AJ Schurr of the Democratic party.  He’s probably just as good as the starter—albeit with a slightly different skill-set—but he’s not the starter right now, and he’s enough of a team player to stay respectably out of the spotlight.  This doesn’t mean that he can’t or won’t perform if called upon, but considering his personal situation, he seems not to want to.  That’s fair enough.
CNN is hosting the debate on October 13th at the Wynn in Las Vegas.  That’s classy, baby.
Thirty-nine members or nearly 10% of the Forbes 400 are the controlling owner or managing partner of a team in the four major U.S. sports leagues. They own 47 teams with seven people owning multiple teams. The owners are worth a combined $182 billion…
The overall net worth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans is $2.24 trillion, up 2% over last year, but the worth of sports team owners jumped 14% on average.
If you’re interested, there are two former Microsoft execs on the sports owners’ list, Paul Allen, owner of the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trail Blazers, and former CEO Steve Ballmer, who just paid $2B for the L.A. Clippers.  Real estate is perhaps the most common shared profession, though it might be a little more truthful to call many of these guys entrepreneurs.  Of the self-made fortunes, most appear to have come from start-ups that succeeded.
3.  The Revenant

4. Jessica Jones’s Second Trailer

love that.


5. Bernie Sanders Narrows Fund-Raising Gap With Hillary Clinton (NY Times)
Mrs. Clinton, who has been able to tap into one of the most successful fund-raising networks in American politics, reported raising more than $28 million for her primary campaign since the beginning of July, while Mr. Sanders, who has largely eschewed fund-raising from large donors, reported raising more than $24 million.
The gap — comparable to Mrs. Clinton’s lead over Barack Obama, then a senator, during the same period in the 2008 Democratic primary, which Mr. Obama won — highlights the shift in fund-raising momentum that has occurred in the race since the last fund-raising reports.
The party machine can think what it wants to about Secretary Clinton, but the Democratic rank-and-file have made it pretty clear that they’d rather go a different direction.  I remain curious to see how all this plays out, but man, this has become such a weird election cycle.  It’s alternately fascinating and terrifying in equal measure.

While we’re at it, there was another report this week saying that Clinton has spent far more money than Sanders, meaning that she may well have less cash on hand.  Oops.
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It’s a short one this week, but that’s all I’ve got.  

Have a good weekend.  Enjoy the storm!

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