Tour ten stages in, Cavendish makes it three

Cavendish won yet another bunch sprint to take his third stage of the Tour. What an amazing sprinter.

The last three stages have made little difference in the GC. I have to consider everyone but Contador and Armstrong a long shot though. I had A. Schleck up there with them, but on further consideration, he’s behind already and he’s weak in time trials, so he actually needs to put about 4 to 5 minutes into both Contador and Armstrong in the Alps to make up for the current deficit plus the time he’ll likely lose in the final time trial.

Other updates: Pereiro dropped out of the Tour. Added Nibali to dark horses. Again, Leipheimer and Kloden are longer shots than their performances suggest because they look to be riding on behalf of Contador and Armstrong rather than trying to beat them.

Top contenders:
Contador, Armstrong

Long shots:
A. Schleck, F. Schleck, Vande Velde, Sastre, Evans

Really long shots:
Kloden, Leipheimer, Kirchen

Forget about it:
Menchov

Dark horses:
Martin, Wiggins, Nibali (consider them really long shots, but they've been impressive so far)

Tour hits the mountains

Stage 7 of the Tour de France was today and the Astana team continued their dominance, finishing the stage with four of the top six riders overall. They have so much talent that an Astana sweep of the podium in Paris is not out of the question.

Armstrong and Contador are now just two seconds apart in 2nd and 3rd place. First place has six seconds on Contador, but is not a General Classification (GC) contender, so we can expect him to drop in the coming stages.

Armstrong did exactly what he said he would do before stage 7: “I know Alberto wants to assert himself in the race. I don’t need a team meeting to tell me that. I know he’s ready to go. If he does – and no one can go with him – I will just hang back and stay with the other leaders.”

Contador attacked near the end of the stage. Evans looked like he might follow and Armstrong got on his wheel. When it quickly became clear that Evans wouldn’t be able to keep up with Contador, Armstrong stuck with Evans and other top GC contenders. Wiggins even thought it looked like Armstrong might have had the legs to follow, but chose to block for his teammate instead. Interesting. I can't imagine Armstrong has given up his own hopes for a Tour win just yet, but he might be planning to make a go of it late in the race if he's still close to the yellow jersey.

Here's how I see the chances of the top contenders coming into the Tour after the first mountain stage:

I rank Leipheimer and Kloden lower than perhaps their times would suggest. That’s because they would have to beat their teammates Contador and Armstrong to win and not only would that be very difficult, but so far it looks more likely that they will work for the top two instead. As for all but Armstrong, Contador, and Andy Schleck being long shots or worse, I'm just saying it's going to be very difficult to put time into Contador and Armstrong and that's what all the other contenders have to do now. Andy Schleck is a great climber and is rapidly maturing as a rider. Two years ago at the age of 22 he was runner up at the Giro. I give him the best shot of getting a break on the Astana pair.

Top contenders:
Contador, Armstrong, A. Schleck

Long shots:
Vande Velde, Leipheimer, F. Schleck, Sastre, Evans

Really long shots:
Kloden, Kirchen

Forget about it:
Menchov, Pereiro

Dark horses:
Martin, Wiggins (consider them really long shots, but they've been impressive so far)

Today's facepalm

Keith Olbermann just mocked, justifiably, a state congresswoman who when talking about uranium mining in her state that "the earth has been here for 6,000 years". Olbermann went on to point out that one of the reasons we know the earth is billions of years old is because of dating using uranium decay rates. So far so good, Keith. But then he added that this was "carbon dating", blah blah blah...

*facepalm*

Really, Keith? We use uranium to do carbon dating? Guess again. To do carbon dating, we use... wait for it........ carbon! sigh.

Stage 3 of the Tour de France – Armstrong steals time!

First, here's a link to the stage results from Velonews.com.

It’s amazing to me that in a flat stage the peloton let a general classification contender get away in the break and gain time. Other than the time trials, the mountain stages are all that were expected to matter for the GC. That makes today a really big day for Armstrong. If it took more energy than he’d expect to spend on a flat stage, that should be alright. As long as he holds up well in tomorrow’s team time trail, more flat stages to come will give him time to recover in the peloton without much chance of losing time so he’ll be ready when the Tour reaches the mountains.

It remains to be seen if Armstrong can truly contend for the top spot in the mountains at almost 38 years old. He didn't quite have the juice in Italy, but the goal of his training has once again been to peak in France. Nevertheless, an incredible four riders on team Astana are considered capable of winning the Tour (Contador, Armstrong, Kloden, and Leipheimer) and it's surprising the peloton would let him get away in the flats.

Cancellara and Tony Martin are not considered GC threats. That effectively gives Armstrong the early lead among GC threats now.

I can't decide if the press is making too much of a possible Astana inter-team rivalry or not. The way the Astana team is so incredibly stacked with top riders came as a big surprise to me given Armstrong’s stated goal of winning the Tour de France. Yet then he joined a team that has four Tour contenders including the man, Contador, many think is the favorite to win. Armstrong won all of his previous tours as the clear team leader on teams that were built around him. This year’s Astana is rather a bizarre way to build the team.

If Armstrong can't hang at the top in the mountains and Tour favorite Contador can, it won't matter. They'll talk about how they're focused on the team and they'll push to give Contador the yellow. Yet if Armstrong is strong in the mountains, stronger than he was in Italy, things could get messy. He said he was coming out of retirement to win the Tour and I can’t imagine him taking a back seat to Contador if he thinks he has a chance of winning it all. What happens if we get through a couple mountain stages and Armstrong and Contador are 1 and 2?

What are Armstrong’s chances? Well, it's going to come down to whether at almost 38 years old he can still do it. When he won his seventh Tour, he was the oldest man to win the Tour de France since 1948. That was four years ago. In the mountain stages in Italy he was often one of the top ten or fifteen climbers, but he was consistently not one of the top three. He will have to be stronger. If anyone can win at his age, it's Armstrong, but aside from maybe his first win coming back from cancer, it will easily be the most miraculous of his Tour wins.

As for today's stage winner, Cavendish may well be the best sprinter in the world.

Teabagging sheep

The right wing only cares about excessive government spending when Democrats are the ones doing the spending. Where were they when the Bush administration and the Republican congress (for six of the eight years of Bush) were doubling the national debt in eight years?

It comes down to this: the Republican party leadership only oppose government spending when the Democrats are doing the spending. Most of the people protesting today only oppose government spending when Republican leaders, radio blowhards, and Fox News tell them to care about it. People are sheep. Today some of the sheep went teabagging.

Moreover, many have no idea what they're really protesting. They're complaining about high taxes when the current taxes are the rates set by the Bush tax cuts. They're complaining about Obama's tax plan when the vast majority of them will get a further tax cut under his plan. Only the highest tax bracket will pay more, and they'll stay pay substantially less than the highest tax rate for most of Reagan's presidency. Ignorance reigns supreme.

Safety vs. Ideals

As for our common defence, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

-- Barack Obama, 2009 Inaugural Address

Echoes of Nixon

If you've watched much television at all lately, you've probably seen the advertisements for the movie "Frost Nixon". Included is the following famous exchange:
Frost: Are you really saying the President can do something illegal?
Nixon: I'm saying that when the President does it, that means it's not illegal.

It's a chilling statement of Nixon's megalomania, of his blatant disregard for rule of law.

Well today we have echoes of Richard Nixon from the mouth of Vice-President Dick Cheney in his interview with Chris Wallace.

Wallace: This is at the core of the controversies that I want to get to with you in a moment. If the president during war decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?

Cheney: General proposition, I'd say yes.

Cheney goes on to defend the administration's actions in the war on terror and point out that the President doesn't need to check with anyone to launch a nuclear assault. Shortly thereafter he claims that the War Powers Act, which provides for some measure of Congressional oversight of the executive branch's use of the military, is unconstitutional. The full transcript is here.

Vice-President Dick Cheney continues to have a gross disregard for the checks and balances of our three branch system of government. He is unrepentant and even proud of violations of the law, the Constitution, and international treaty as evidenced by his continued defense of such abuses as warrantless wiretaps and torture. He should be prosecuted in a US court of law and if found guilty, imprisoned. Our nation suffers every day that Dick Cheney and people like him remain in power. We can at least be thankful that his time in office ends soon.