5 Thoughts for February 8, 2016

1. Super Bowl: Now that's what I call an excellent upset -- that Bronco defense was bad-ass! It's not that they stopped Carolina from moving the ball, but that they stopped them from scoring, created timely turnovers, and made Cam Newton feel uncomfortable so that his passing efficiency collapsed. I made no small secret of my tremendous dislike for Cam Newton, so to see the ball stripped from him and to see him sacked 7 times, the day after his being named MVP of the year, was delicious. That Von Miller was named MVP of Super Bowl 50, was the cherry on top. It was really awesome to see Peyton Manning potentially cap his long career with a SB win, even though the king of the game was the Bronco defense. Trivia: Denver's Malik Jackson went to USC in 2008, 2009 before transferring -- that was the period when the NCAA installed what amounted to Free Agency on USC, as part of the penalties handed out in the Reggie Bush case; Carolina's Ryan Kalil is also a former Trojan.
2. Confronting Cognitive Dissonance: I somewhat enjoy confronting the cognitive dissonance of others, online. Last month I was badgering a white guy who then tried to use his Asian wife as proof of his color-blindness with African-Americans. Yesterday I was able to get this one chap to admit that he was no different than Hillary Clinton, upon which, he called the similarity an abstraction. Oh the things people do, to alleviate their cognitive dissonance. 
3. Binge Watching: I just finished watching Unbranded, a Kickstarter-funded documentary about a group of young men from Texas who rode American wild horses from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. If you know about the issues and the fallacies surrounding Ammon Bundy and his ilk down in the Malheur Refuge, you'll definitely enjoy Unbranded. Also finished BBC's Sherlock Holmes, which was an interesting take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic. Currently, I'm watching Ripper Street -- another BBC series.
4. USC Football: Last week, USC's football recruiting class started Letter of Intent signing day at the bottom or just outside of the top-25 list of various recruiting services. By the time the class was full and all signatures had been collected, they'd ended up in or just outside the top-10. They flipped three commitments, from Oregon, Florida State and Boise State.
5. Bernie Sanders Has Already Lost: The media took to the weekend airwaves to proclaim that Bernie Sanders was a mere 2 percentage points below Hillary Clinton. What they hadn't explained was that this particular Quinnipiac poll was a clear outlier. We regularly use poll aggregating to remove the influence of outliers, and it turns out three other polls (PPP, Rasmussen, Morning Consult) taken during the same period show Sanders with an average of 17.7 point deficit. Now, let's look at Iowa's caucus. It's no secret that Bernie's greatest support comes from the youth vote, but according to Iowa's caucus numbers, Bernie's youthful supporters did not come out to caucus; in fact he massively underperformed Obama in 2008. This means that all the positive poll numbers for Bernie are worthless. But there's more. Out of 44 Democratic senators, Hillary has the endorsement of 39 with the remaining 5 undeclared; of the 188 Democratic Representatives, 151 have endorsed Hillary while two have backed Bernie. Vermont's other senator, Patrick Leahy, backs Hillary. Vermont's governor also backs Hillary. While Bernie's backers suggest that this supports Bernie as the anti-Establishment candidate, what it really is, is proof that Democrats think Hillary is the party's best chances to win the White House. So here's my first prediction of the season: Bernie will be running on fumes after Super Tuesday, March 1, and will concede before the end of April.