Author Archives: Brendan

8th annual LRT Bowl Pick ’em Contest!

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Above: Me at LSU-North Texas with Ross Lancaster, and at Washington-Colorado with David Kreutz. It’s college football bowl season, and that means it’s time for the 8th annual Living Room Times Bowl Pick ‘em Contest! The contest is now underway. If you entered my 2010 or 2011 Bowl Pick ’em contest(s), you can log in with the OfficeFootballPool.com username &… Read more »

The Elf on the Shelf

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Our “Elf on the Shelf,” Gatito (name explained here), re-emerged over the weekend after 11 months in a drawer at my office at the North Pole with Santa, and has begun his daily Christmas-season routine of observing the girls, flying to north each night to give a naughty-or-nice report to the Big Guy (little Orwellian surveillance tool that he is),… Read more »

Notre Dame 22, Southern California 13 — Undefeated Irish to Play for Title!

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Notre Dame beat USC, 22-13 Saturday night, in what may prove to have been a best-case scenario for me: the #1-ranked Irish are headed for the BCS championship game in Miami, and USC’s Lane Kiffin might have gotten himself fired — Pat Haden’s previous assurances notwithstanding — thanks to a pair of utterly catastrophic goal-line sequences that cost the Trojans… Read more »

Goooooo Irish, Beeeeeeat Trojans?!?!?

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listen to ‘Go Irish, beat Trojans’ on Audioboo Back in 2004, when I enrolled at Notre Dame Law School and became an “Irish Trojan,” I wasn’t sure initially whether I would become a fan of Notre Dame’s sports teams. After all, my undergrad alma mater was USC, archrival of the Irish. I figured I’d wait and see how I felt… Read more »

Jonathan Sickinger is apparent winner of Electoral Contest; 6 perfect maps

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Jonathan Sickinger of South Hadley, MA, a Democrat and Obama supporter who started following me due to my Pajamas Media Weather Nerd blog coverage of Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy, appears to have won the 3rd quadrennial Living Room Times Electoral College Contest with 538 points and a perfect prediction map. This “call” of the contest winner — “RIGHT NOW!” as… Read more »

Best. Election. Ever.

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Barack Obama re-elected, and by a comfortable margin both electorally and popularly. Nate Silver, and the concept of objective facts, vindicated against the Right’s ritual denialists. The Democratic Senate majority, which seemed doomed a year ago, expanded. Marijuana legalized in Colorado. Gay marriage legalized at the ballot box in Maine, Maryland and Washington (and an anti-gay marriage amendment defeated in… Read more »

Election Night Liveblog & Livechat!

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My Election Day live-blog, live-chat & live results page is online and underway! Alternatively, you can view a less “conversational” version of the page — not “chat,” no @mentions, just Becky’s and my tweets & RTs. That’s the “live-tweeting only” page. Both pages will have live Electoral College Contest results alongside the live blog/chat window, like 4 years ago, assuming… Read more »

Hurricane Sandy: The ultimate October surprise?

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It’s too early to be remotely certain, but Hurricane Sandy has the potential to become a big f***in’ deal for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, transitioning into an epic storm of historic proportions — not a major hurricane per se, but a monster warm-core/cold-core hybrid, possibly a “subtropical hurricane” (a category which isn’t even supposed to exist) — and slamming the… Read more »

Obama’s Midwestern Firewall

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This is fascinating. Obama’s re-election next month is guaranteed if he can hold on and win the five contiguous states outlined in orange below, all of which, even after his precipitous decline since the Denver debate, he still leads by between 2.4% and 5.0% in the Real Clear Politics averages: That map gives Obama exactly 270 electoral votes. It assumes… Read more »