The electoral cycle may smile on Republicans lately, but Mother Nature does not. Which is why it's only a matter of time before many of our red states start to seek federal help to pay for their property/casualty policies.

That will be when lawmakers in those states see the light and clutch Global Warming to their collective bosom. And stop insisting it's all a plot by sinister scientists out for financial gain. (Hey, at least they're capitalists.)

It won't be as hard for them to do an about-face as you might think. As has been pointed out before, most red states, rhetoric notwithstanding, already have a predisposition to rely on gobs of federal support.

A 2014 study done by Wallet Hub showed all states get back more per capita from the federal government than they pay in federal taxes, but red states consistently hover near the top of the pack.

It's a classic case of Do What I Say.

Yup, it's raining alright, and it ain't raining men. Or cats. Or dogs. Except, of course, where they're in drought. Or the landscape is on fire. Or the wind is blowing down the front door. Damn those scientists. Why do they have to be so scientific?

The "lamestream media" breathlessly report how polarized our nation's electorate has become. Then, after inhaling, they marvel at how the president's approval ratings drop with each anguished Republican howl over the latest crisis of the day.

The President is now so unpopular that Democratic Senate candidates are afraid to be seen in public with him, to invoke his name or even admit they voted for him. Holy cow! How did this guy ever get elected?

Of course he's unpopular, leastways with half the country. Why? Because his policies are a failure? Because nobody agrees with his values and goals? Because he's really a Kenyan or a Muslim? Mainly it's because he's a Democrat. That's what polarized means.

On This Week With George Stephanopoulos (not this week; last week), Peggy Noonan, former Bush Sr. speechwriter, was chortling good naturedly, as she does, about how the President made a tactical error reminding people his policies are on the ballot even if he isn't. Because Democrats seem secretly afraid his policies have actually been a disaster for the nation.

Only to you Peggy, only to you. See, you're a Republican. Democrats actually seem to like the president's policies. Which is why they consistently give him an 80% approval rating. Their main regret is that more of his policies haven't made it into law.

They didn't like the way Iraq was sold or the way Afghanistan was handled. They think birth control restrictions are unconstitutional. They believe voter ID is a cheap political ruse to keep Democrats from voting.

They think government shutdowns are stupid. They want most of Wall St. not just regulated but jailed. They think Benghazi was a tragedy, not a conspiracy. They're sure global warming is real.

They don't want Social Security privatized, and as far as they're concerned, Obamacare is working. That's how you can tell they're Democrats, Peggy.

Stephanopoulos just let her talk, nodding his head like a bobble-head doll. He was probably trying not to look polarized.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that presidents tend to be much more popular with their own party than with the opposition, and somewhat more so than with independents.

What has changed is the margin of difference. The situation used to be more genteel than it is today. You don't have to look back past your own lifetime. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were not uniformly despised by that part of the general public that weren't of their party. Only by the Senators and Congressmen who weren't of their party. And not even all of them.

Reagan used to enjoy after-hours cocktails with Tip O'Neil. Clinton and Newt Gingrich used to ride Air Force One together. Okay, there the example begins to break down.

One suspects there's not a Republican in America willing to be seen drinking in public with the current president.

A little wonky, perhaps, but the table below illuminates the trends of our daily dislikes and how they've grown over the years. It displays the divergence between recent presidents' average overall approval ratings and those ratings broken down along party lines. The two diverging values are then added together (ignoring + or - signs) to create a "polarization" index.

The combined divergence values per president, and therefore party polarization, have clearly grown since Reagan and have grown more significantly in the time of Bush 43 and Obama.

Independent category ratings don't show pronounced movement, and the step down to Bush 43 and Obama is mostly a decline in the number of true independents. Nominally, the category has grown to over 20% of the electorate, but it's estimated that fully half are independents in name only who in reality lean heavily towards one party or the other.

Job approval scores from each president's own party stay resiliently high, headwinds be damned. At the nadir of George W. Bush's presidency, after he'd been hammered by Hurricane Katrina, Alberto Gonzales, Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley, Tom DeLay, Valery Plame, Interior staffers sleeping with oil and gas representatives, not to mention the financial meltdown, Republicans were still giving him approval ratings in the mid-70s.

But opposition approval ratings are what make the telling difference. Two things quickly become very clear. One, George Bush Sr. was a really likable guy, no matter what your political loyalties. And two, that was then. Nobody likes the other party's guy anymore. Oppo approval ratings have tanked since Reagan to the point where Bush 43 and Obama are down to the single digits.

When Reagan's job approval rating was at its all-time low in 1982, Democrats still scored him at 43% of what his own party did. If Obama could collect 43% of his Democratic rating from today's Republicans, his overall job rating would be mid-50s rather than the low-40s, and the fourth estate would need something else to talk about. Bill Clinton was getting approval ratings in the 30s from Republicans even as the House of Representatives was impeaching him.

But if Democrats like Obama so much, what's the problem? Why are his own party's Senate candidates treating him with the deference reserved for an untouchable? That's probably a good question, but the thinking is, those guys are running in states where the electorate has turned Republican. Being a Democrat or being seen with one could be a liability.

A third of the Senate's seats are in play each election cycle, and by random chance this time the bulk of closely contested races are in red-leaning states.

The states most likely to cost Democrats control of the Senate (because they're moved to the right or because the incumbent is a retiring Democrat) are Arkansas, Louisiana, Alaska, Iowa, South Dakota and West Virginia (which now votes red in national elections but blue in local elections.) Democrats are probably just getting outraced in Colorado.

There still are Democrats in those states (and they still like Obama), but not as many as there used to be. So the strategy appears to be to hope the voters will overlook the fact that you're a Democrat. There was a time when that could, and did, work. People would vote for the person rather than the party. But by and large, those days are gone (QED).

So if you're a Democrat running in one of those red states, what, indeed, is the point of pretending? Might there not be a better chance in wooing your natural constituency? Embrace their values—Obama's values—and try to win on turnout?

North Carolina is a state that will be decided purely on turnout. Could Kay Hagan help her cause more by saying, "Hell yes, I support Obama, and Republicans are cheating you to death on Medicaid out of pure spite, so get out and vote." (Right now she's winning, so maybe not.)

But if you're a Democrat in Georgia or Arkansas or Alaska (or North Carolina) and you can't win as a Democrat, chances are you won't win by implying you're really a Republican. They've already got one of those.

Republicans, enjoy your moment if a moment it be. And Democrats, seek solace in the future. In the 2016 Senate race, the tables will be turned. A majority of battleground races should be in blue states then. Geography is destiny.

Of course, that will probably be too late to save Obama from impeachment. Elections have consequences.

But summer is never really out of reach; you'll always have your memories. And there are no bad memories of summer. Or at least in time there won't be. Just be patient

Here was this summer's top-15 playlist on the Summer Song Jukebox. Feel free to reminisce.

But when you're the President, all you have to do to be popular is get the unemployment rate down below 5.5%. So much easier than being a teenager.

The converse is also true. If employment doesn't come down, you will surely be unpopular. And what if you happen to inherit unusually high unemployment? Won't you get some credit for bringing the rate down even if you don't get it to 5.5%? Not really. Why not? Because people are cruel. Didn't you learn that in high school?

After Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, he watched his approval rating sink steadily to 35% as unemployment climbed, to 10.8%, in the recession of 1982. Nothing helped.

Almost nothing. Obviously other things move the needle, too. Reagan's approval rating spiked to 68% after he was shot by John Hinckley, Jr in 1981. Although it almost immediately reversed itself and resumed its steady slide. A 2010 Pew Research Report on presidential approval entitled "It's All About Jobs, Except When It's Not" probably got pretty close to the mark.

George H.W. Bush ("the first one, the good one," as John Pinette liked to say) racked up an 89% approval rating during the 1991 Gulf War. But he was at 29% in 1992 as unemployment jumped in a declining economy.

The early 1990s recession technically lasted just eight months. But it came along just in time for the election and helped make the man with then the highest average approval rating in modern times a one-term President. He had climbed back up to 56% by the time he vacated the office, even though employment had barely budged. Voters' remorse? Probably, but the damage was done.

Unemployment and approval scores don't always move in lockstep, but the 5-6 percent range does look like what technical stock analysts call a resistance level. Once unemployment crosses through there, moving either one way or the other, a President's approval rate starts to accelerate inversely.

People forget, but Reagan—a feel-good kind of guy if ever there was one—found himself bedeviled by sliding approval ratings during both terms in office. In his first term, he didn't get much over 50%, and stayed there only tenuously, until the unemployment rate finally got down to 7% in 1984. (Unemployment would drop to 5.3% by the end of his second term.)

Reagan was reelected resoundingly and enjoyed high approval ratings in '85 and 86.' He would drop back into the mid-40s after Iran Contra broke, but unemployment moved steadily downward during the remainder of his second term, which helped to right his ship.

He climbed again towards the end of his tenure as unemployment fell below the 5.5% mark. (He got a nuclear arms deal with Gorbachev in 1989, which might have also helped.) Reagan went out on a high note (63%) even though he averaged only a 52.8% approval rating over his full time in office.

Bill Clinton, a different sort of feel-good kind of guy, saw a steady if unspectacular gain in his approval scores, apparently no matter what he did, including getting himself impeached. (Granted, a little hit from that one.) But one thing Clinton did have going for him was the continuous drop in unemployment throughout his White House occupancy. He didn't seem to get too much boost from it until it crossed 6%, but from then on it was smooth sailing in a following sea. An opposition-controlled Congress that insisted on making fools of themselves didn't hurt.

Based just on unemployment numbers, George W. Bush should have garnered good approval ratings. After 9/11 he enjoyed an approval rate (90%) that exceeded even his father's. Following the recession he inherited from Clinton (who essentially "got" both Bushes with recessions), unemployment on Bush 43's watch dropped steadily through both his terms, until it suddenly stopped dropping and blew up in the 2008 financial meltdown.

Click here to enlarge.

George W. Bush's approval scores bounced down into the 40% range by early 2006, but he would drop even further, to 28%, once the "Great Recession" took hold and unemployment spiked to 7.4% (from 5.4%) in just six months.

Barak Obama's first major miscalculation took shape before he even took office. In its first month his new administration issued a report predicting unemployment would peak at 8% with the President's proposed $800 billion stimulus package, versus 9% without it.

Few economists grasped in late 2008 how severe the recession really was. Fourth qtr. '08 annualized GDP would decline by 8.9%, a fact not known to Obama's chief financial advisers, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein when formulating the report's projections. The Bureau of Economic Analysis had estimated the decline would be 3.8%.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been credited with a real GDP boost of between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent, as well as an additional 2 million to 4.8 million jobs. (Republicans! Stop hyperventilating. See "How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End" by Alan S. Blinder and Mark Zandii.) But it was not remotely large enough to counter the country's massive output gap.

It's inconceivable Obama could have pushed a larger package through Congress. Ask any Republican. The three GOP moderates who supported the Stimulus, thus breaking the Republican filibuster, insisted the package not exceed $800 billion. So did a number of centrist Democrats, including Mark Begich (AK) and Mary Landrieu (LA) who are about to close out their Senate careers in November as final atonement for their support of Obama.

It's just as inconceivable ANY response could have been enough to keep unemployment under 9 (much less 8) percent. (It was over 8% by the time the Stimulus passed in Feb. '09.) To this day, Republicans insist the Stimulus was a total failure because it missed its baseline unemployment projection.

A year after Obama signed the bill, the percentage of the public that believed it had created jobs was lower than the percentage that believed Elvis was alive. (Michael Grunwald, Washington Post)

Unemployment reached 10% in November 2009 and then began trending downward from there. Obama's approval rating continued sliding until Feb. 2011. His numbers now hover in the mid-40s, and he continues to be excoriated in some quarters for his disastrous economic policies that are ruining the country.

And yet, the Dow hovers at record highs, the federal deficit has shrunk by half, GDP (4.6% in 2Q14) has been trending positive, if not stellarly so, since 2009, running ahead of almost all other developed economies, and the ranks of the employed (if not the quality of their jobs) have finally surpassed their 2007 peak.

It's worth noting that unemployment remains above 6%. But it is now approaching that magical resistance level. And it will be interesting to see, should it fall below 5.5%, whether regression to the mean will at last trump blind, seething hatred (or rank, unconscionable opportunism, take your pick). Might the President's approval rate actually start climbing? OH, MY GAWD!

And if it doesn't, maybe Obama can take solace in the advice his mother at one time or other surely must have imparted to him, maybe in high school: "Popularity isn't all it's cracked up to be."

A young George H. W. Bush might well have heard that same advice from his own mother but would probably take issue with the sentiment. Maybe not at the time, but soon and for the rest of his life.

You think you've outgrown such childish stuff. But nobody else has, especially not your kids. Among adult Americans, 87% are online, and 74% of them are active on social networking sites. Women more likely than men. Younger more likely than older. But even 49% of those 65+ are social networkers. So try to keep up.

You say it's hard for you because, well for the most part, you're not even sure what they're talking about with Social Networking. And you don't have a high degree of confidence in your ability to compose meaningful sentiments within some 142-character limit. What is this, haiku?

Social Networking Explained in This Brief Video Tutorial.

Well, fuggedaboutit. Remember when social commentators were bemoaning the younger generation's sorrowful lack of verbal skills? Now everybody's a writer. And a social commentator. Even a photographer.

What matter if it's all banal trash, faster forgotten even than produced? People who create real genius are always long gone before anyone figures out their stuff was any good.

F. Scott Fitzgerald died convinced he was a failure, a flash in the pan. He was the only one buying his books at the end of his life. Vincent Van Gogh died destitute and crazy, and he never sold a painting in his lifetime. Not even to himself. By 1947 It's a Wonderful Life had already been permanently assigned to the dust bin of history. It didn't even earn back its production cost and was shut out at the Academy Awards. Producer Frank Capra was written off by the studios, another washed up has-been.

How democratizing. With no standards, everyone is free to unleash his inner muse. The order of the day is shameless exhibitionism, and the Internet is the modern-day version of Macy's window.

Herewith what is pretty much the au courant definition of social networking: It's a computer system that allows for the creation of distinct user accounts or profiles and lets those accounts communicate with one another.

Just like what The Eagles said about freedom: it's just some people talking. (And you're still a prisoner walking through this world all alone.)

Why do people reach out to each other? It's not really so much about the content. It's more to find or build some kind of commonality. Commonality of interests, of beliefs, or even just a shared past. Sometimes folks are just coming together to "ooh and ah" collectively over a picture someone put up with a purple haze over it.

The Big Three social networks today are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Know what the original unifying social concept behind Facebook was? Which Ivy League college you went to. Sigh. Smart kids and preppies: they still rule the world.

Facebook feeds morbid curiosity. It's a way to keep in touch, or just keep an eye on, that girl you had a crush on in junior year who was so far out of your league that it was never going to happen. It's still not, by the way. She married way above you, and even if she is divorced now she's probably not looking to you to help her put the pieces of her life back together.

1.23 billion monthly active users
757 million daily users
945 million mobile users
2004

Twitter is premised on topical visual commonality. Its trick is that whatever you want to say, or hear, it has to be epigrammatic. And let's face it, you don't really have anything penetratingly deep to say about anything anyway, do you? Not judging by Facebook you don't.

Twitter sentiments, or Tweets, whatever their content, are limited to 140 characters. (A standard established when cybernetic real estate was more valuable than it is today. It endures as a charming quirk. They extend it to accommodate links, and even publish photos now.) It's a proven way for staying in touch with your fan base. Assuming you have one. Donald Trump has 2.67 million Twitter followers.

271 million monthly active users
500 million Tweets sent a day
78% of active users are on mobile
2007

Instagram is limited to posting, filtering and commenting on photos taken with your iPhone or Android. The wonder of you captured in an experiential image offered up to others for their reactions. Enhanced with any of a number of available graphic aftereffects.

200 million users
60 million photos a day
2010

So, each a little different. But the important, the common, the bonding thing is the social intersection. Joined at the hip to your fellow (wo)man, congealed by this social bond. And thus congealed, you may become more than the sum of your parts. In commitatus, you approach the ideal of meaningful human existence.

For a moment (or several) you touch, intimately, another or even several others, like Rita and Phil and Doris the waitress did in Groundhog Day.

Phil Connors (Bill Murray) to Rita (Andie McDowell) in Groundhog Day:
"I'm just trying to talk like normal people talk. Isn't this how they talk?"

Rita (who like Penny in Big Bang Theory seems to have no last name:
"Close."

Doris the waitress (Robin Duke):
"I can come back."


Social Networking premised on a shared place and time.

There were others; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are not the first. The rudiments of today's social networking services were around far earlier than most people realize.

The first social networking website, SixDegrees.com, debuted 15 years ago. Five years later, a site called Friendster.com is credited with spawning the social networking craze that led to MySpace and Facebook.

But even before that, people used computers to communicate and socialize. AOL was a pioneering version of today's social networking sites. It featured member-created communities with searchable member profiles. For a lot of us, AOL was the Internet before there was an Internet.

AOL's instant messaging service (AIM) enabled you to talk with any member of your community who happened to be online, a feature Facebook still maintains. Kids used to carry on chats with 15-20 friends at a time. Granted they were conversations one level up from grunting. "U up?" "Yup, U?" "LOL!"

Actually, social networking is centuries older than computers. Think jungle drums. Think church bells. Religious pilgrimages. Scouting jamborees. Wife-swapping parties. Community bulletin boards, the real kind that used to be in the front of grocery stores and were where you found a baby sitter when you were new in town.

In the eighteenth century, Russian aristocracy would actually send their foot servants running all over town all day long delivering whimsical messages and gossip penned by jaded counts and countesses. The original sneaker network.

With the invention of the postal service, you didn't even have to be rich to join in the fun. By 1900 free mail delivery was the norm in almost 800 US cities. Carriers walked as many as 22 miles a day carrying 50 lb. sacks of local mail. They made twice-a-day deliveries to private residences and as many as four times a day to businesses.

Message: "Nice place to sleep. This hotel destroyed by the fire." (The Hotel Rockwell was among 75 buildings in Monticello, NY burned to the ground in a fire which devastated the village in August 1909.)

Message: "Got your letter this morning. Will write soon. Now do you know what a gridiron is? Sonny"

Message: "Hello goody old soul. You're a long time coming to kill me. Mrs. A. Quinn"

Message: "I hope you still have something to do. I haven't found anything. Yes, will be home about 16th or 16th [sic]. Will write you when I get home."

In the pre-telephone era, People regularly used penny post-cards as a short-form messaging system, for anything from setting up a rendezvous or a reunion to commenting on the weather. Most missives were probably fewer than 140 characters in length.

Certainly they didn't confuse them with sending a letter. They often used post cards to promise they'd write.

So if you've been holding back, relax. You can handle this. Your great-grandma was doing Social Networking long before you were born. And if you're descended from Russian servants, it goes back longer than that.

Brat is an economics professor at Randolph Macon College in Ashland, VA. He ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility. He wants to control the "ballooning" federal deficit. Apparently he was working with last year's PowerPoint presentation.

Remember when House Speaker John Boehner let a clean debt ceiling bill through the House a while back? And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put his own neck on the line to get the same bill past Ted Cruz's filibuster threat (designed to embarrass Senate Republicans)? Did you think the Republican leadership had suddenly undergone sensitivity training?

McConnell said sometimes his job just required him to do the right thing for the country. But let's face it, coming out of Washington that's just crazy talk.

Partly, smart political observers just figured it was good jiu jitsu for Republicans to keep the airways clear so that things like Obamacare and Benghazi could monopolize the stage without distraction.

There was also concern that The People have grown unfond of callow brinksmanship rooted in hostage-taking, especially when engineered by their own government.

But it was also partly this: it's less fashionable to pillory the Obama administration for reckless spending because such attacks are not really buttressed by the facts. Republicans, except for Mr. Brat, have come to recognize that more and more people are catching on.

Obama is in his fifth year as President, and spending, revenue and deficit trajectories are now pretty obvious to all but those with their hands over their eyes. Spending attacks have impact now only if they're quick hits—what Sarah Palin would call the "drive-by" variety.

Mr. Brat may discover in the general election that sustained debate over the budget won't make him much hay. In a recent CNN/ORC Poll, 15% of respondents rated the deficit their top concern.

Not that it's not still an issue—we've still got a deficit—it's just that it's burned out. But it's clear now Obama has actually done a reasonably good job of reversing the trends he inherited. The deficit is down, not up, and he obviously didn't "balloon" spending by any measure imaginable.

What are Republicans like Mr. Brat to do? They'd rather die than give Obama credit for anything. Must they now, at the very least, credit him for not really breaking anything after all? Oh my Gawd, what a fockin' nightmah," as Mona Lisa Vito exclaims in My Cousin Vinny.

Here's another option. Why not just take credit for the improvement? There are people who'd listen. Like Democrats. Who have long contended that it was congress all along, and not the president, that actually controlled spending. That's what legislation does. (And why it's hypocritical to refuse to raise the debt ceiling to pay the unfunded bills you've run up.)

Republicans actually did pass legislation that helped lower spending. Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing. Some of it, to be sure, was bad legislation. The sequester(s), which until recently some Republicans were still defending (for it after they were against it), really was a bad idea and never seriously intended to be implemented. Still, who can deny that, in a ham-fisted way, the sequester(s) did lower spending?

Moreover, the budget deals that ended or avoided government shutdowns also resulted in reduced spending, in however poor fashion those deals were arrived at.

So with a clear conscience, Congress can step up to the microphone and say, "You're welcome." Certainly no bigger a lie than "Obama is an alien."

The real reason the budget looks better, of course, has not much to do with the President or Congress. Spending's only gone down by about 1%. The improved federal financial picture, as is almost always the case, is the result of increased revenues, up over 6% last year.

Congress and the President, working together, did little beyond waiting around long enough for things to get better on their own. Why do they call them downturns? Because they never stay down forever, or they'd just be called "downs."

The financial meltdown and concomitant recession are now receding back into the corners of our mind. We only think we remember them. But the "structural" problems are still around, the things that were wrong before things even went wrong.

The social safety net: how much is just the right thing to do, and how much is just waste? "What does that get us? A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty, working class." (Henry F. Potter)

Health care spending per person has outpaced GDP growth per capita by about 1.5% per year since 1985. Net federal spending for healthcare programs can be expected to grow from 4.6% of GDP in 2013 to 8.0% by 2038. (Why do you think politicians wanted health care reform in the first place?)

Not as much to work with as you think

You don't like the Affordable Care Act? Well we can't go back to the way we were because that was bankrupting us. You want to suggest improvements, fine. Just keep in mind the federal government is always going to be the healthcare payer of last resort, no matter how expensive it gets, unless you can accept the sight of people dropping dead on the street.

The social security retirement trust is going broke. (Well, in 30 years.) The disability trust fund is going broke as we speak. The only reason not to sit down and do something about that is if you're philosophically opposed to the whole idea of these programs and harbor a secret hope, which you dare not confess, to do away with them. But that is not the way most Americans feel. (By the way, it's an insurance fund, not an investment fund. Read up on the difference.)

Military spending was getting out of control even before 9/11 and two wars. It needs to readjust to today's world. Only politicians with military installations in their districts don't think so. Along with John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Unless of course we're going to go to war with Russia.

And we already have an annual deficit. Admittedly it's been coming down, but it's still over $600 billion, which is over 20% more than we collect in tax revenues. How much tax is the right amount? For the record, taxes have been running about 18.5% of GDP over the past 40 years and have contributed to average deficits of 2.6% of GDP. Is that paying too much historically or too little now (16.7%)? In any event, who's going to make up the difference?

Come. It's time to reason together.

Our political leaders think they're engaged in this discussion even now. But they're really only in the warm-up phase where they simply trade insults. At some point an earnest give-and-take has to commence.

How much social safety net does the country require and can we afford? What is the best government response to rising medical costs? What is the right size military to support our national ambitions and pocketbook? Just address those three things, and that would be a good start.

Will this be an ideological debate? Of course. Only instead of taking place in snippets of disjointed jargon on campaign posters and billboards and 3rd party TV ads, let it be done at length and in the open and with real honesty.

No cryptic code words, artful obfuscation, false equivalencies, exaggeration or over-simplification. Terms like "train wreck," "terrorist," socialist," "tyrant" and the like should not be allowed.

"No new taxes" should not be a valid response to anything, merely one of several possible conclusions. Where you end up, maybe, but not where you start. (A more rational and fairer corporate tax code, written by legislators rather than lobbyists, is needed, but we'll talk about that next time.)

This conversation should involve slow talk and small words, and everyone should understand what's really involved and what's really at stake.

Really too much to expect from politicians whose only really pressing need is to get reelected, the devil take the hindmost. Just ask Eric Cantor.

We know that anyone who claims to speak for the Founding Fathers speaks with larceny in his heart because the true miracle of the US Constitution is that we have one at all. Those guys were contentious.

The Founding Fathers were not of one mind on anything: not law, philosophy, governance, their present situation or their vision for the future. They argued constantly, couldn't agree on anything, and yet they agreed on a Constitution. Probably a lesson in that for the current Congress

What they did hold in common was a bunch of words and phrases that nobody really knows the meaning of anymore. How can we really pretend to understand what they were trying to say if we don't understand the words they were using?

"Big Tony" Scalia doesn't need to understand. Scalia's enough of an "originalist" that he can look back 300 years' into the Framers' hearts to see what they were feeling. (Calls to mind "Big Julie" of Chicago and his spotless dice in Guys and Dolls. "I had the spots removed for luck, but I can remember where they formerly was."

We won't get into grammar and syntax today. Whew, right? For one thing we got into that two years ago. (Gluttons for punishment click here.) And two, let's face it, you don't know what an ablative absolute is either.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

True to another tradition, we open this "slow down and live" season with a review of the memories visitors were warming up to this spring listening to the Summer Song Jukebox. Herewith, springtime's top-10 summer song playlist.

Time to go out now and make some new memories. Check back after Labor Day, and we'll help you figure out if they're going to be any good. Even if they're not, you can always stick with your old ones and you've got plenty of those. The Jukebox will help you remember them all summer long as time ticks slowly away.

Blame it on the tax-cut panacea, a traditionally axiomatic piece of right-wing orthodoxy. To many conservative politicians, there is no economic scenario for which a tax cut is the wrong prescription.

Red-state majorities have been subjecting this belief to a test by fire with unprecedented messianic fervor. It seems no Republican gets elected these days who has any say at all over taxes who doesn't think cutting them is the first order of business. With not a thought given to whether this might be a solution that is at least a little situation-specific.

It's said an Eastern potentate once charged his wise men to conjure up something he could say that would be true and appropriate in all times and situations. And so they created the adage: "And this, too, shall pass away."

That bromide actually seems to work as intended. But the exigencies of economic reality are nowhere near so accommodating to "tax cuts," and in a lot of states that got enthusiastic new Republican governors or legislations or both in the last few years they are starting to find that out.

You'd really have to suspend your common sense a little to think that cutting taxes to raise taxes is a universal general rule. Certainly, there are circumstances where tax cuts can be just the right thing. (It worked okay for JFK in 1960.) But every time? The idea will always get a welcome reception, but life's not like that.

Whatever happened to fiscal conservatism? The father of the Laffer Curve, Arthur Laffer (who readily concedes it preceded him), points out that he popularized the device to show that, in some circumstances (emphasis added), a reduction in tax rates will actually increase government revenue without the need for decreased government spending or increased borrowing.

The Laffer Curve gained popularity in DC at an afternoon meeting between Laffer and Ford Administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in 1974. He reportedly sketched the curve for them on a napkin to illustrate his argument.

The Laffer postulate: the tax rate that maximizes revenue is lower than you think. E.g., cutting taxes from 80% to 50% could actually increase revenue. Any wonder Dick Cheney would go for this?

Laffer has always acknowledged that the curve should not be the sole basis for raising or lowering taxes. Paul Simon, a good student of human nature like most songwriters, responded to this (unbecoming, for a Republican) timorousness with these lines in The Boxer: "Still a man hears / What he wants to hear / And disregards the rest. / La-la-lai-lai-lai-la-lai-la-la-lai-lia-lai." Besides, it's such a good campaign theme.

The following instructive tale from Bloomberg. The logic for keeping the '01 and '03 federal tax cuts was that small business owners would return their personal tax cuts to the economy by investing in their businesses. The thinking is hard to refute, the authors observe, but it doesn't seem ever to have happened.

The Congressional Research Service, an analysis group run by the Library of Congress, looked at 60 years of economic growth and changes to the top marginal tax rates both for personal income and capital gains. "The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth," the analysts concluded.

Similarly, Martin Feldstein, Ronald Reagan's chief economic adviser, co-wrote a paper in 1989 that concluded the 1983-84 economic recovery had been caused mainly by an expansionary monetary policy rather than the administration's personal income tax reductions.

Business tax reductions, as well, are probably overrated as economic stimuli—because they're so low on the expense totem pole.

For most businesses, the cost of labor is probably 15 times the cost of all state and local taxes, said Timothy J. Bartik, senior economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Just the same, state corporate income taxes, which were nearly 10% of all state tax revenue in the late '70s, accounted for only 5.4% as of 2010.

So then, are the chickens coming home to roost? Well, yes, that does sound like clucking.

New Jersey's credit rating was recently lowered one step to A+ by Fitch due to an $807 million revenue shortfall and the governor's likely use of one-time measures to plug the gap. Most of the shortfall is attributed to a $700 million drop in income-tax collections.
(Bloomberg)

In Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is dealing with a budget deficit of more than $1 billion. Critics say tax cuts the governor pushed through the Republican-dominated legislature are to blame.
(Washington Post.)

North Carolina faces a $445 million revenue shortfall when the fiscal year ends June 30, state budget analysts estimate. Analysts downgraded collections by $191 million compared to what was predicted when the legislature assembled a two-year budget last summer.
(Charlotte News and Observer)

Wisconsin: 2014 revenues slipping BEFORE new tax cuts
Income taxes- DOWN 6.9%
Sales taxes- UP 1.8%
Corporate taxes- DOWN 8.4%
Excise taxes- UP 1.5%
(Jake Hasa blog)
Note: Wisconsin has a healthy reserve.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback secured sizable individual and small business tax cuts in 2012, which conservatives nationally hailed as a model for economic policy. The forecast now is Kansas will collect $700 million less in revenue in fiscal year 2014 than in '13. Legislative staff foresee a $295 million shortfall even after using up all of a $470 million 2013 reserve. (April revenue collections were $92 million short, earning a downgrade by Moody's.)
Pew Charitable Trusts

Missouri's Legislature, with an anti-tax Republican super majority, has overruled Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon's veto of a $620 million income tax cut. The lawmakers made clear that similar cuts by Kansas were a motivating factor in dropping Missouri's rates. Critics are howling (including Nixon), and outside observers are in full snicker, figuring it's only a matter of time before the "Show Me" state gets shown that sometimes a rising tide swamps all boats.
Citizens for Tax Justice

You may as well say money equals sex. Or money equals food. It will buy you either. It will buy you just about anything, including fame, privilege or power. Or even more money.

It actually won't buy you speech. But it will buy you something better: an audience. Someone to convey a message to, or if you don't have one, to drown out someone else's message.

Because the audience is more important than the speech, that's what politicians are really buying when they spend the campaign money supporters contribute to them: an audience.

We call this advertising. And a lot of pretty humdrum politicians, with no original thoughts and nothing much to say beyond some static, shallow, predictable cant, have gotten elected on their ability to buy an audience while simultaneously drowning out the opposition. Talking louder, longer and more emotively.

It was an inevitable progression. From long before the age of advertising, people have shown themselves inordinately disposed to yielding to emotion, believing nonsense and getting confused over what passes for governance.

John Roberts may have a long future ahead of him as a judge, but probably not much of one as a linguist. The Supreme Court's recent McCutcheon v. FEC decision follows in the logical footsteps of Citizens United (2010), which introduced the then-novel notion that money is speech, and no doubt it precurses decisions yet to come framed along the same line of reasoning.

But all this is just idle philosophical musing, no? Mere prattle. The stuff that preoccupies pointy-headed intellectuals. What do changing contribution limitations in the political arena really mean in practical terms? In the long run? Does McCutcheon push us closer to the day when a handful of rich men can buy the presidency? That's what we want to know.

Well, first of all, by whatever tortuous logic it was arrived at, McCutcheon v. FEC basically removes only one rather specific restriction on the monetary largesse one donor can shower on candidates for federal office.

The maximum an individual can give to a single candidate remains at $5,200, for the moment ($2,600 for the primary, $2,600 for the general election). But the aggregate limit an individual can spend on all candidates in a federal election cycle, which was $122,600 ($48,600 to federal candidates, $74,000 to political party committees and "connected" PACs), is now the opposite of a bottomless pit.

Just 591 donors reached the aggregate limit on giving to federal candidates in the 2012 election, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Will McCutcheon goad their enthusiasms?

During oral arguments Justice Kagan estimated that individuals would be able to contribute as much as $3.5 million if they supported every possible federal candidate and cause.

Justice Scalia observed as how that didn't seem like so much money. He may have a point. Or he may be playing fast and loose with other people's money. As the kleptocratically rich super-villain Ivan Tretiak complains to a different bureaucrat in Val Kilmer's The Saint, "Do you think it comes so easy?"

Congressional Campaign Financing

2012 Presidential Election

Obama Campaign	Romney Campaign
RAISED: $715,677,692 Sm Indiv Contrib. $233,215,440 Lg Indiv. Contrib. $489,660,089 PAC contributions $0 Self-financing $5,000 Federal Funds $0 Other $522,529	RAISED: $433,281,516 Sm Indiv. Contrib. $79,806,091 Lg Indiv. Contrib. $366,336,696 PAC contributions $1,076,496 Self-financing $52,500 Federal Funds $0 Other $1,643,991

Democrats: Spending Breakdown
Candidate - $683,546,548
National Party - $292,264,802
Outside - $131,303,114
Total Spending - $1,107,114,464

Republicans: Spending Breakdown
Candidate - $433,281,516
National Party - $386,180,565
Outside - $418,635,080
Total Spending - $1,238,097,161

A second consideration: which rich men? Not all Republicans are rich and even more important, not all rich people are Republicans.

"Money isn't everwything. I know because I have money, and I also have evewything."
(Gussie Mausheimer: An American Tale)

Barack Obama countered that advantage with his own sophisticated web-based fund-raising in the 2007-08 election cycle. Obama outraised McCain (again by tapping into a bigger universe of smaller donors).

In the 2012 election cycle Republicans took in $807 million in campaign contributions for Federal contests while the Democrats raised $806 million. (And admittedly, big money carried the day.)

Finally, there is the law of unintended consequences, because God does have a sense of humor.

In 1912, with William McKinley, an avowed big-business Republican, running for reelection, party leaders thought it would be a good idea to give him Teddy Roosevelt, for a running mate. Party bosses were beginning to regard Roosevelt, a reform-minded, trust-busting kind of guy and then New York's Governor, nervously.

The office of vice president would serve to quarantine him and any reform schemes he might dream up that might derail the sustained boom the business sector had been enjoying. The vice president really didn't do anything back then, and the office didn't put you in line for anything either. But then McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt assumed the presidency for the next eight years. Roosevelt's reform ideas soon enough got loose, to his party's chagrin.

As Fats Waller observed, "One never knows, do one?" All we know about the future is that it probably isn't going to be what we expect.

McCutcheon could have the effect of buttressing the influence of direct individual donations. But will it be new money, or will donors be inclined to scale back their other donation options? And which party will be more motivated? And which one will come up with the better ideas for using their new options?

Over the last several election cycles direct individual donations were being eclipsed by other options, like bundlers, interest groups, issue PACs and Super PACs. That $5,200 direct individual donation limit? It is to laugh. Sheldon Adelson and his wife pumped $30 million into the Romney campaign through Super PAC contributions. And that after they burned through $20 million for a Super PAC promoting Newt Gingich's primary campaign.

Super PAC donations are supposed to be strategically independent of the candidate's campaign, but that's turning into little more than a kabuki dance. No one in the press gave even a thought to the distinction between the two forms of contributing, and nobody believed for a moment the Adelsons' money wasn't identical in effect and direction to the spending efforts of the Romney campaign itself.

The principal Super PAC behind Romney's 2012 effort, Restore Our Future, was founded in 2010 by Romney aides. Charles Spies, the group's treasurer, was former general counsel for Romney's 2008 Presidential campaign.

How far will it go now? The pace is already quickening, whether due to McCutcheon or no. (The acceleration had started before the decision was handed down.)

Through March, the two parties, PACs and outside groups have already spent close to a billion dollars on political advertising. That counts only organizations required to make disclosure (not Super PACs or 510(c)4s).

Washington Week reports big donors on both sides are lining up to write seven-figure checks to Super PACs. The Senate Majority PAC has raised $11 million this year, spending most of it bashing the Koch brothers and their Super PAC, Americans for Prosperity, which in turn is spending to bash Congressional and Senate Democrats up for election.

American Crossroads, Karl Rove's Super PAC, which had been on the fundraising sidelines following a big 2012, collected $5 million in March alone. Overall spending on the 2014 mid-terms has already reached $55 million, versus $15 million at this same point in 2010.

Whoever you are, the truth really might set you free ... eventually ... but money most probably won't. Just take a look around at rich men anywhere, abstractedly counting their pocket change and worried about which way the vote will go next time. And wondering, could they really change it?

However it turns out, it will be interesting to see what they decide it's worth, this time, to try.

This year's ballot, the first of an endless stream between now and Nov. 2016, lists 26 candidates and will likely include the following potential candidates, whether they think they're running or not.

• Sen. Ted Cruz (TX)
• Sen. Marco Rubio (FL)
• Gov. Rick Perry (TX)
• Gov. Chris Christie (NJ)
• Sen. Rand Paul (KY)
• Fmr. Gov. Sarah Palin (AK)
• Fmr. Gov. Mike Huckabee (AR)
• Gov. Nikki Haley (SC)
• Gov. Bobby Jindal (LA)
• Gov. Scott Walker (WI)
• Donald Trump
• Dr. Ben Carson
• Sen. Kelly Ayotte (NH)
• Rep. Paul Ryan (WI)
• Sen. Tim Scott (SC)
• Sen. John Thune (SD)
• Gov. Susana Martinez (NM)
• Fmr. Gov. Bob McDonnell (VA)
• Fmr. Sen. Rick Santorum (PA)
• Fmr. Gov. Jeb Bush (FL)

A matchup worth keeping an eye on will be Paul v. Cruz for the (with no intended irony) extremest vote. The group ConservativeHQ.com conducted its own independent poll among CPAC attendees in advance of the official straw poll. Yes, a pre-poll.

Paul (29%) won the first-day's results, followed by Cruz (17%), Ben Carson (10%), Marco Rubio (10%) and Chris Christie (10%). Jindal and Palin nowhere in sight.

Another highlight at this year's CPAC? The appearance by Chris Christie, the—temporarily beleaguered—Governor of New Jersey who carelessly burned some of his bridges recently.

Christie, who used to just be called pragmatic, has never been popular with the GOP's conservative base and was not invited to last year's confab. Detractors felt some of his positions were just not conservative enough.

But this year all is forgiven. Evidently controversy still sells. (Also worth noting: Christie is one Republican who polls competitively against Hillary Clinton.)

CPAC's official Straw Poll results will be posted here Sat. night as soon as available. According to realclearpolitics.com, since the straw poll began in 1976 it has been conducted four times in midterm-election years when an incumbent Republican president was not seeking re-election.

The winners of those straw polls were Jack Kemp in 1986, Steve Forbes in 1998, George Allen in 2006 and Ron Paul in 2010. None of them was a serious threat to win the GOP nomination two years later, and Allen did not even run.

Mark Twain said there never was a good war: An easy statement to take issue with. Mark Twain never met the Nazis.

Without a war we never would have gotten a Union, and without another we never would have kept it.

Yet Ben Franklin's sentiments matched Twain's exactly, even though he spent his time as Ambassador to France promoting (successfully so) the American Revolution (when not chasing la creme of French womanhood through the salons of Paris).

Barak Obama made it a point to emphasize the necessity of war in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Which had to be, at best, a little unsettling for the Awards Committee to listen to. But in his private moments, Obama would probably agree, one suspects, with Twain and Franklin. (Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham certainly think so.)

The famous newspaper sportswriter Charles Dryden famously characterized our nation's capital as "first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League." The great seal of the United States features an American Eagle clutching a bundle of arrows in its left talon and a laurel branch in its right. And the eagle is gazing to its right. (In heraldry, its "dexter" side as opposed to its left, or "sinister," side.)

The Presidential seal features a similar display, only in 1916 President Wilson changed the design so that the eagle's head faced left, towards the arrows. President Truman turned it back in 1945. The man who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan favored imagery favoring peace. Life is complex.

Twain and Franklin were most likely directionally correct, but for America war has always been like that: a touchy subject, subject to intellectual conflicts and periodic about-faces.

Just about no one in America (except McCain and Graham) has a good word for war these days. Even those who are just dying to kill generally are put off by the expense. Not to mention the cost in human lives.

But obviously the United States has, over its history, decided from time to time that the time was right to go to war. And for the most part its citizens have gone. And for the most part been honored for their sacrifice by those who stayed home.

The list of American wars is suprisingly long, but most people think in terms of 12 major conflicts and couldn't name most of the others on the list. Almost a million Americans have given their lives in those 12 conflicts.

America's costliest war measured in casualties was the one we fought against ourselves. Figures, huh? We saved our best for friends and family.

In Iraq we suffered almost 4,500 combat fatalities, while 150,000 Iraqis lost their lives. But Iraq was a free-for-all; a great many of the Iraqi dead were dispatched by their fellow citizens. We just more or less set the tone.

The official US Department of Defense figure for Vietnam is 950,765 communist forces killed from 1965 to 1974.

Still, We remain pikers in the great scheme of wars. We may blunder into things, but America's reputation as warmonger is richly undeserved. Our record as a warrior state pales when measured against the cavalcade of world history.

FindTheData.org, a fun site if you're statistically inclined (or just want to wallow in war—or myriad other subjects; if you have an interest, they have a list) says the high estimate of World War II casualties reached 84.6 million. The winner and still war champion by the way. But the Mongol Conquests in the 13^th and 14^th centuries claimed 60 million lives. About 11.5 million died in the Thirty Year's War (1618-48). That's even more than the 3 million who died in the Hundred Years' War 300 years earlier.

Ten million died in the Era of Warring States (China, 480-221 BCE). Yeah, it lasted 254 years. The history of China is awash with million-casualty wars. Robert Malthus's economically-driven population theories may have fallen out of favor (he couldn't foresee we'd turn food production into a Fortune 500-type business), but one can only imagine how large the Chinese population would be today if they hadn't stopped to decimate each other every so often.

Against this carnage, the US has not yet given up 1,000,000 war dead in 238 years? Pshaw.

Of course, wars are rarely just a matter of blood and guts and victors and vanquished. Lots of people beyond the agressors and defenders sooner or later try to get their hand in, and some do quite well, sometimes no matter who wins. But in war you never know, and there are no sure things. As Harry tells Marv about robbing candy stores in Home Alone2, there's no guarantees.

A case in point is Matthew Brady, who found fame pointing a camera at the Civil War. Today he is acknowledged as the father of photo-journalism. He employed some 23 photographers and invested over $100,000 of his own money creating more than 10,000 photographic plates documenting the people and places of the war. (He couldn't shoot battles; the early camera was too slow.)

But Brady wasn't aiming for fame, he was aiming for fortune. He had hoped the U.S. government would buy his stock when the war ended, but it demurred. And a war-weary public quickly lost interest in war photos.

Brady eventually sold his studio and was forced into bankruptcy. (Congress ultimately granted Brady $25,000 for his archives.) He died penniless in a New York hospital charity ward. His funeral was financed by veterans of the 7th New York Infantry.

Good war or bad, we'll probably always have them with us. Still just enough champions. Still just enough reasons, good and bad.

Too bad. Wars get started for the most noble—or at least high-sounding—of reasons. But the thing is, no matter how they turn out, wars rarely do what it was thought they'd do back at the start, and at the end of the day, for far too many, they're too hard to survive.

This year's College Football Championship (the last under the BCS format) went from a thrilling romp to a heart-breaking loss for a storybook team that wasn't used to being on the wrong side of late-game theatrics.

No. 2 Auburn fell to top-ranked Florida State as was predicted, but not in the way most expected. In the second quarter it was looking like a small cadre of fanatical SEC boosters had been right after all and the Seminoles were finally playing out of their league. Seven straight SEC national champions going back to 2006; not for nothing, eh?

Auburn looked superior early in every aspect of the game, on both sides of the ball. Stronger, faster, more creative, more aggressive and more points on the board. Florida State looked mostly just confused. Supposedly TV viewership tanked as the game progressed.

ESPN announcers Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit grew so excited they spent the first half fairly shouting at the viewers remaining. Some savvy assistant producer eventually spiked their water bottles with enough valium so that by halftime the boys had pretty much calmed down, and it was again possible to turn off the mute feature.

Musburger (a Medill Graduate—Northwestern's J school), was clearly in thrall of the War Eagles' mojo, but he handled the outcome with equanimity. He's a professional and can do an about-face in a timeframe so short it would give ordinary people whiplash. And, well, the valium probably helped.

When, exactly, did it turn around?

Football is not the statistics-driven game that, say, baseball is, and the stat sheet doesn't always inform, and can even misinform, those in search of first causes. Stats are important all right, in football as in any sport. Unlike in investing, past performance in sports IS an indicator of future results. Just ask Nate Silver who left the New York Times, and politics, for ESPN recently. Or any coach at the college and pro level.

But statistics don't always provide the right picture when it comes to spotting momentum changes inside a football game. Kind of like watching the tide turn. It's going out, even if your stopwatch doesn't think so.

How can they mislead? Kickoff returns aren't recorded as rushing or passing yards, so the causal stat sheet observer might think that Auburn had accumulated more yardage in the fourth quarter than Florida State, which scored on a 100 yard kick-off return to take the lead for the first time following an Auburn field goal. Of course knowledge could help overcome on that one.

But first downs, another highly regarded indicator of trending offensive primacy, wouldn't necessarily provide a clear view of what was happening on the field either. First downs, too, in the BCS final went to Auburn, even in the fourth quarter.

Time of possession? Auburn led in the game and the 4th quarter. But that can happen if one team is moving faster than the other. FSU's kickoff return burned 0 seconds off the clock (inexplicably: it should have started when the receiver touched the ball) before ending up in the end zone. Auburn then chewed up 3:12 retaking the lead, capping their drive with a 37-yard run by Heisman candidate Tre Mason, with 1:19 left in the game.

Some insight into the game's shifting tide (sorry, Alabama) could be gleaned from the third-quarter. Auburn's offense ground essentially to a halt, and the Seminoles won the numbers game in all three of the above categories: total yards, first downs and time of posession.

But, in truth, those third quarter stats were merely echoing what the score was already telling us. Florida St. was taking control. The last, lead-changing Auburn gallop surely had to be a blow. But the Seminoles just lined up and picked up right where they'd left off.

To their credit, Auburn rose to the challenge in the fourth quarter, but by then Florida St. had the momentum. It may be they had grabbed it before the third quarter started, before the disastrous second had even ended. And once theirs it never stopped building for them. The numbers that most reflected the turnaround were clear to be seen at the top of the stadium, on the scoreboard.

Musburger and Herbstreit remarked several times at the top of their telecast that Auburn fans "wanted" Florida State in the fourth quarter. The idea being Seminole regulars had never had to play deep into the last quarter during the season.

And Auburn is a team that wears opponents down, even teams from the powerhouse SEC, with speed, a punishing ground game, dizzying offensive and defensive looks, and an uptempo game that doesn't give opponents time to adjust, make substitutions or even breathe.

No one else reported on that Auburn invocation, either before or after the game, so one cannot be sure where your announcers got hold of it.

No matter. There are lots of reasons why what did happen, could happen. It's true Florida St. didn't play an SEC schedule, but they pretty much toyed with their regular season opposition, winning by an average 42.3 point margin while giving up only 12.1 points per game.

In the few instances where the team did lose its direction or poise during the season, the coaching staff had showed itself marvelously deft in restoring equilibrium and adapting their game plan on the fly to the situation on the field.

Against Boston College and Duke (don't laugh; the latter gave Johnny Manziel and the Aggies fits in the Chick-fil-A Bowl), the Seminoles had some anxious moments, but they settled down and systematically dismantled both teams, according to their custom.

And, it may play in the pantywaist ACC, but Florida State fields some really big, really fast, really athletic, really well-coached guys at just about every position. They weren't very likely to wear out. (BCS game sleeper stat. Field goals: FSU 2-2; AU 1-2.)

Finally, no team good enough to get into the national championship game, with the possible exception of Notre Dame, could play as badly as Florida State did in the first half forever.

Still, divine intervention in the BCS cannot be entirely ruled out. Posssibly that Auburn prayer, if it really was uttered, didn't fall on deaf ears. The football gods may have been listening. But when you get in the prayer business, it's important to have a very clear idea what you're praying for.

Perhaps the football gods are imbued with that same cruel and perverse humor so evident in the gods of Greek mythology. They received the prayer of the Auburn faithful ... and then answered it by granting them exactly what they had prayed for.

They should have asked for Florida State in the second quarter. That fourth quarter just killed them.