Greetings, sports fans! Since we still have a month before the puck drops for Minnesota Wild hockey, let's talk about more recent events at Excel Energy Center. Politics doesn't lend itself to very many hockey analogies because hockey games have three periods, thus making it harder to split something down the middle and compare two alternatives. Football, on the other hand, not only has two halves, but each half also has two quarters, thus making it really easy to do one-on-one comparisons. With this in mind, let's turn it over to Warpyland, where the proverbial football game featuring the Democrats and the Republicans is down to the two minute warning.
First half recap: The Democrats take Bill Clinton to the House. Since he also enjoyed a majority in Congress during his first term, you could say that the Dems spent the entire first quarter on offense, and spent the second quarter on defense after the Reps took over possession of the congressional ball. No matter how you slice it, though, it sure was an exciting, high scoring affair (no pun intended if your name happens to contain "Monica" and/or "Lewinski").
The field was in pretty rough shape early on, due to some soggy deficits left over from the earlier Reagan and Bush Senior bowl games. As we approach halftime, though, groundskeeper Mr. Surplus has successfully dried the deficits off the field, allowing Mr. Economy to run wild and put up hall of fame numbers. Even Mr. Taxes is quietly having a good game; apparently the top bracket players who got hit hardest by Taxes earlier are now getting the last laugh, as Mr. Investments breaks free for some prodigious returns on special teams. The Republicans are going to have a tough act to follow in the second half, but locker room sources say that Bush Junior is giving a pep talk that makes anything ever uttered by Al Gore look and sound utterly boring in comparison.
Second half recap: Whatever that halftime pep talk was, it sure worked; Bush Junior gets the ball and takes it to the House for a two-termer. His Republican teammates had a congressional majority during Dubya's first term, so the Reps stayed on offense for the entire third quarter; an eerie carbon copy of the Dems' situation in the first quarter. The Dems now have possession of the congressional ball in the final quarter and put the Reps on defense, so we'll end up with virtually identical halves (and quarters) for both teams. Not even in his wildest dreams could Pete Rozelle have imagined 16 years of near perfect parity for both conferences.
This game should've been a real nail-biter, but strangely enough, the scoreboard doesn't reflect much parity at all. Despite a fine first half performance, the Reps brass decided to cut Mr. Taxes. This move looked like it would promote Mr. Investments from special teams into regular roster stardom, but Investments ended up getting thrown around for big losses in the second half, and will be playing overseas for the foreseeable future. In another strange personnel move, head coach John McCain and GM Dick Cheney ignored the advice of their own intelligence agents, and agreed to sign