Breaking out my crystal ball

I'm the least psychic person on the planet, but sometimes inspiration strikes:

It bugs me that everyone from the national press to "Saturday Night Live" have Gov. Sarah Palin running for the REpublican nomination for president in 2012, like they think she's going to quietly go back to Alaska and hunt moose for the next four years. No one's pointed out the obvious: Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens was convicted on corruption charges last week, but the ennormously popular Stevens might still win tomorrow. This is what I see happening: Stevens wins, and sometime in the next few months bows to pressure to resign his seat. Guess who Alaska's governor appoints to complete his term? Now Palin gets a few years of national experience and exposure under her belt before trying to climb Mount White House again. Hey, it (almost) worked for Hillary Clinton...

Last week when I went to the Panthers-Cardinals game with my step-dad, we had to have a talk about how sports jinxes work. Basically, he was going down the Panthers' remaining schedule trying to figure out who could possibly beat us, other than maybe Denver - who lost to Kansas City, who then got crushed by the Panthers. He specifically mentioned the upcoming game against the Detroit Lions as a "gimme." Now, setting aside my cats' nasty habit of losing horribly to teams that my nephew's peewee team could beat, there's this. So here's my prediction: Culpepper will indeed start in the Panthers-Lions game Nov. 16, and given both Culpepper's revenge motive (it was the Panthers who killed his knee, and therefore his career) and the Panthers historically bad luck in drawing new QBs on which our defense has no film (see Romo, Tony, and Garcia, Jeff about 14 different times), I don't think that's a gimme.

But the good news is that the Panthers almost never lose to the same team twice in one season (including playoffs). So that means when Tampa Bay comes to town in December, we should get an exact opposite version of the pathetic show the Panthers put in a few weeks ago. The Falcons might be a little friskier, but I still think the cats will win the division.