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MUSIC: list.in.to.chicago this week: 03.08.2010

Yeah, late again this week, but I included what happened last night because I had already written it. If you have a friend ask you to help move "a few things, just a couple of boxes," get it in writing. Also, ow.

SOCCER: Premiership Picks By The Numbers

As some of you know, I've been playing in a predictions pool for the English Premier League this year. After a couple of tough weeks, I've decided to see if I could turn my subjective decision factors into an algorithm that would just spit out my picks for me. I was using a little bit of math already, but the other bits of information I was using seemed consistent enough that I could build it all into an actual equation.

So, anyway, I won't reveal the formula itself, but here's what it gave me for this round's matches:

Arsenal 4-0 Burnley
West Ham 3-1 Bolton
Wolves 0-2 Man Utd
Everton 3-0 Hull City
Wigan 0-2 Liverpool
Pompey 1-1 Birmingham
Sunderland 2-1 Bolton

We'll see after Tuesday how this all worked out. If I go 7-for-7, I'm taking it to Vegas.

MAIN: Speculation Or News?

There's a lot of talk today about a piece in the Washington Post that indicates Khalid Sheikh Mohammed might get tried in military courts after all.

Except, of course, that it doesn't. What the article says is that some of President Obama's advisers are set to make a recommendation that the plan for a civilian trial be scrapped. One would assume Attorney General Eric Holder disagrees, and still has the President's ear on this, and the article does not say that Obama has made any kind of decision.

The left is predictably up in arms over this, which makes me wonder what happens if Obama rejects this recommendation and stands by Holder. The article cleverly puts the words "likely" and "Obama accepts the recommendation" in the same sentence, but does it in Cheney-esque fashion, giving the illusion that Obama is likely to accept, rather than that his advisers are likely to make the recommendation.

On the other hand, this is coming from more than one source, and part of the story is that the switch may be necessary to get Congress to agree to shut down Guantanamo Bay. So, I'm not sure if this might actually happen. Of course, neither are Anne E. Kornblut and Peter Finn, who wrote the piece, but that's not going to stop the blogs and the news networks from talking about this like it was an announcement that the decision has been made, which is why it makes me mad.

MAIN: Expert By Association

Me, talking about health care, two weeks ago:

Last night, I watched Howard Dean on Olbermann, and his comment about it was that the best way to pass a public option through reconciliation would be via an expansion of Medicare. My question is, if the current reform package can make it through as it stands right now -- which, admittedly, is still an open question -- what's to stop an effort to expand Medicare down the road?

Ezra Klein, widely considered one of the most knowledgeable writers on health care issues, yesterday:

I've long wondered why Obama didn't promise this a while ago. A bill offering a public option and Medicare buy-in to age 55 would be a popular bill, and a good bill, and could be done after health-care reform had passed. The administration and others like to say that the Senate legislation is just a start, and they should begin acting on that belief. Pass the start, and then begin trying to make it better with smaller, discrete bills that are easier to message and pass.

Now, I don't read Klein as much as I read other people who read Klein, so maybe he's said this before. But I take arriving at the same conclusion as a good sign that my critical faculties are still working.

SOCCER: Going Dutch

Quick thoughts on what we learned from the loss in Amsterdam:

It's really easy to blame Jonathan Bornstein for the stupid penalty in the first half, but if you watch the play develop, you'll notice Landon Donovan flat-out refusing to play defense. This forces Bornstein to push forward, which makes him vulnerable to the give-and-go from the Netherlands, which then leads to his bad decision. Donovan was somewhere else entirely for most of this match.
I think Jose Torres is out of the picture for the World Cup. He had some flashes, particularly that nice shot in the first half, but was way too inconsistent for this level of competition. Beckerman is probably a better choice is there's still a spot left, and Edu showed in the second half that he's a lock. Great play from Mo.
The DaMarcus Beasley resurgence is for real. While I'm not at all happy to see Stuart Holden leave due to injury -- he looked good through thirty minutes -- I really liked what we saw from Beasley, particularly when he flipped over to the left side to start the second half.
Speaking of that switch, some combination of Beasley to the left, Edu replacing Torres, and Bedoya taking over the right side and pushing Donovan up top woke up the American attack in a major way. At this point, I think Donovan or Dempsey has to pair with Altidore.
Jozy had two absolutely world-class moves in this match -- the backheel on the endline in the first half and the splitting move that freed him up for a shot in the dying moments of the game. That may not seem like a lot, but it was against the Dutch and he's only 20 years old.
Bornstein was clearly having a rough night, so it might be premature to bury the kid based on this performance. On the other hand, neither outside back looked very good, at least until Heath Pearce entered the match. Pearce is looking like a serious contender at left back, which will make things interesting if Onyewu fully recovers in time for South Africa.
It will make things interesting because Bocanegra and DeMerit played really well together, and along with Michael Bradley, formed a pretty solid spine for the U.S. defense. If Onyewu comes back, do you go with Bocanegra on the left, or Pearce? My money is still on Bocanegra, but I want DeMerit on the field.
Gotta love the Chicago Fire connection with Beasley hitting Carlos for the goal.

MAIN: Looking For Clues

Daily Dish guest blogger Jonathan Bernstein has a particularly thought-provoking post about politics vs. policy, which is a meme that's been darting around the Internet a bit lately as it relates to health care. Bernstein cites a writer named Richard Neustadt, who aptly points out that even the best president doesn't really know how policy decisions are going to work in the real world, but they can look for certain indicators that give them hints. I really like the way that theory then gets applied to the health care debate:

Presidents, in order to convince others to do the things that the president wants them to do, must figure out what the people who will administer a program can actually do (which, of course, differs from what they might say they can do -- reading clues is hard). Presidents must figure out who really needs to support something so that it will pass, and know what they will accept (think public option. Who can you afford to lose -- Ben Nelson or Jane Hamsher? And will the inclusion or not of a public option really make one of them walk? What about Howard Dean and Blanche Lincoln, same questions? The answers are not obvious, nor were they at the time).

The bit in parentheses at the end is huge, in my opinion, and particularly refreshing among all the ADD-fueled second-guessing that's gone on through the process. And seeing the complexities and the interdependencies of all the different organs of the body politic that Bernstein then goes on to talk about and figuring out which buttons to push to get the desired outcome is one of those things I've always seen as a strong suit from President Obama. Consequently, it's a huge blind spot for an instant-gratification culture, and a large part of why the 24-hour news cycle can be so consistently unkind to him.

MUSIC: list.in.to.chicago this week: 03.01.2010

Yes, I took yesterday off for my birthday. I sorta needed it, but we'll get to that in the recap.

SOCCER: Ives Is Making My Head Hurt

He's seen a preseason game, and he's ready to go out on a limb:

From impressive rookies to quality international acquisitions, the 2010 Red Bulls have posted an undefeated preseason and are looking like a team that could surprise in MLS this season.

"Could surprise"? Um, Ives may want to meet the guy who wrote the second half of his post, who presumably knows what preseason results are worth, and helpfully points out:

The Red Bulls are still looking for a right back, forward, central defender and left midfielder.

So, they only have half of an attack, and half of a defense. I guess I shouldn't focus on "could" and more on "surprise," because that doesn't really mean they're going to be good. Just spectacularly bad in new and unexpected ways.

SOCCER: About That El Salvador Match

I didn't want to miss out on the fun of deciding the cosmic significance of Wednesday's U.S. match in Florida. I agree with a lot of what I've seen in terms of who helped themselves and who didn't. Heath Pearce and Brian Ching were clearly the big winners, with Clarence Goodson continuing to stay ahead of the likes of Jimmy Conrad and Chad Marshall in the central defense. I think it was Ives who said Eddie Gaven helped himself, but while I did like what he added to his attack, he wasn't tracking back at all on defense. There was a moment about five minutes into the second half where he was just walking back, forcing Brad Evans to push up late and then get beat. And Brad Evans didn't really need that kind of help to show he's not quite up to USMNT standards. Unless we need a role player off the bench, I don't see Gaven getting ahead of, say, Stuart Holden in the pool.

One guy I haven't seen singled out is Kyle Beckerman. Out of the starting four midfielders, he may have looked the best, although Brad Davis could probably stake a claim there as well, being as active as Robbie Rogers but without all the bad passes. With Beckerman, though, Bradley gets an insurance policy if one or both of Ricardo Clark and Maurice Edu aren't sufficiently in form after injury layoffs.

Speaking of Edu -- his club team, anyway -- and injury layoffs, I'm sure there are some people who are up in arms over DaMarcus Beasley getting called in for the Netherlands match, including the guy who was sitting next to me at the qualifier against Honduras at Soldier Field last year. But while he has struggled, an in-form Beasley can still be a force to be reckoned with. And no one knows that better than Bradley, his first professional coach. This may very well be the winger's last chance for this World Cup cycle, though.

Meanwhile, back in Florida, I had initially thought Conor Casey didn't help or hurt his chances of going to South Africa with a typical bulldog-like first half, but that was before Brian Ching replaced him at halftime and totally schooled him in how to play target forward on this squad. Casey looked like an orange traffic cone by comparison, and I doubt Bradley will bring two players for that role.

MAIN: Democrats and Immediate Gratification

I've seen several headlines and blog post subject lines -- which seem like they should be the same thing, but I'm not sure that they are -- opining about Jay Rockefeller pouring cold water on this effort to revive the public option now that the Democrats seem committed to passing health care reform through reconciliation. Predictably, I'm seeing a lot of wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on the left about how this is the best chance for the Democrats to get something at least close to what they really wanted all along.

Last night, I watched Howard Dean on Olbermann, and his comment about it was that the best way to pass a public option through reconciliation would be via an expansion of Medicare. My question is, if the current reform package can make it through as it stands right now -- which, admittedly, is still an open question -- what's to stop an effort to expand Medicare down the road?

The obvious answer, of course, is the midterms, but while everyone seems to assume the Democrats will lose Senate seats in the fall, it's a lot less likely that they'll lose the chamber altogether. Plus, if they hold more of their seats than they expect -- a possibility if jobs start coming back by early summer -- they can spin that as a mandate to continue the work they've started.

This comes down to a fundamental difference in strategy between camps on the left. On the one hand, you've got those who think that, if we don't do it now, we may not ever have the chance for a public option. On the other hand, you've got the more pragmatic view that, if we don't do it now, we may not ever have another chance for any health care reform at all, and including the public option increases the likelihood of nothing getting done now by a number bigger than zero, so it's not worth the risk.

Which, in turn, is why 23 signatures from members of the Democratic caucus supporting the public option via reconciliation strikes me as largely irrelevant, because until you have 50 signatures, the uncertainty simply is more than I think the White House will tolerate. And I'm not a policy expert by any means, but, again, I don't see why you couldn't do something like drop the minimum age for Medicare after the fact.

SOCCER: Missed Opportunity

Rather than continuing to be so harsh on Jimmy Olsen over at the pseudo-Trib, I'll try to be a bit more constructive and help the kid out. First, I'd take a harder look at what trimming the roster down means -- like Mike Banner apparently being a better backup option at left back than Daniel Woolard. Also, while Sam -- er, Jimmy -- updates the story to note that the roster is down to 28, pointing out that one of those 28 is Collins John strikes me as burying the lede. If he's on the roster, does that mean he signed a contract? Or that the Fire are going to look elsewhere in the event that he doesn't?

And isn't this kind of early to have the roster in compliance with the rules?

Also, I would recommend making fun of the idea that Frank Klopas would ever actually say "We would like to thank Austin and Daniel for their contributions to the Chicago Fire and wish them both the best of luck in their future endeavors." If Frank is actually talking like that these days, we might have to stage an intervention.

UPDATE: I misread the roster rules on MLSNET. I thought it was 24 plus four developmental players, but that's actually including those developmental slots. Still, the big question this raises is how you might get from 28 to 24.

MUSIC: list.in.to.chicago this week: 02.22.2010

This is the last list.in.to.chicago that I'll ever write while I'm still in my 30s. I may need a moment.

MAIN: The Real Reason

Evan Bayh has an op-ed piece in today's New York Times about his decision not to run for re-election in Indiana, along with his suggestions on how to fix the legislative branch. While he makes some good points -- like his observation that "when too many of our citizens take an all-or-nothing approach, we should not be surprised when nothing is the result" -- and gives a shout-out to Indiana favorite son David Letterman early on, his first recommendation strikes me as, well, a little odd.

Let’s start with a simple proposal: why not have a monthly lunch of all 100 senators? Every week, the parties already meet for a caucus lunch. Democrats gather in one room, Republicans in another, and no bipartisan interaction takes place. With a monthly lunch of all senators, we could pick a topic and have each side make a brief presentation followed by questions and answers.

I think that what happened here is that Bayh became jealous of whatever the Republicans were having at their caucus lunches, but it wasn't enough to make him to switch parties.

MAIN: Living in the Past, Literally

For a couple of years now, I've thought my life had started bearing a striking resemblance to high school -- mostly due to social conventions at a very young company, but there have been some other markers as well. Which means that the next logical step would probably be to move back into my college dorm when it comes onto the rental market. Part of me was hoping I'd be able to buy my old room (1106) as a condo, but the real estate crash seems to have killed that dream.

MAIN: Our Data-Driven Future

If you're in digital marketing, this column is a must-read. Why?

It is about data -- data in ways we have never before fathomed. The future of advertising is not about social, not about viral videos, not about mobile, not about any new medium or any new ad unit -- but about data. Those who know what to do with this will be the new kingmakers, the new rulers of Madison Avenue -- or the creators of a new Avenue of media.
Why is this so? Because the impression by itself is becoming worthless.

What's important here is that Michael D. Andrew is not saying display advertising is worthless, but a key component in the outdated metrics for measuring display advertising. One of the biggest problems with marketing analytics, I've found, is that revealing phrase "by itself" in Andrew's formulation. Everything is connected. Looking at display as an isolated channel is becoming more and more clearly a fool's errand.

Then there's the impact of social media, which a lot people wave their arms about in ways I don't find particularly compelling, but gets nailed down here:

In this new world, the successful brands will be the ones that speak directly to you. These brands will be able to identify not that you are a likely traveler -- but that you are traveling to Atlanta next week. They will be able to tell not that you are likely to play games, but that you are a hardcore street fighter player with your own custom joystick. The brands that get you are the ones you will reward with your time, your attention, and your wallet.

Now, there's obviously the challenge of pulling this off without egregious impositions on your privacy, and the likelihood that some attempts won't meet that criterion. But the overall picture is one where synthesis of data across multiple channels will be key to successful marketing.

And, again, the key to me getting a real job sooner rather than later, but if the job leads hitting my inbox are any indication, someone's at least at the door and checking their pockets.