Conservative Rumblings

While I don’t think I can replicate the dead-on pick I made last year, I’m saying Arizona is the team to beat.

The Steelers are better in every statistical category…but the Cardinals are hot and on a roll, and there ain’t much that can stop that kind of momentum. The spirit of the Steel Curtain might, but hey.

Despite the rumors flying around this week (see Michelle Malkin’s post about it), an Obama campaign spokesman has stated that Obama will not be sponsoring a car in NASCAR.

BAM Racing has presented Barack Obama’s presidential campaign with a potential sponsorship deal in the Sprint Cup series later this year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean an Obama car will be burning rubber on the track sometime soon.

BAM team spokesman Rhett Vandiver told The Associated Press on Friday that the team has made a sponsorship proposal to the Democratic presidential hopeful’s campaign, and has made similar proposals to the campaign of Republican John McCain and at least one third-party candidate.

I’m not sure which would be funnier, hearing the crowd cheer when the car got wrecked or hearing the crowd boo when the car got introduced.

NASCAR, in the midst of an insane $225 million dollar lawsuit that threatens to ruin all the good PR they have built up the past few years, decided that the sportswriters needed something else to write about, and so they just handed Dale Earnhardt Jr. (just coincidentally the most popular driver in NASCAR in the midst of a 70+ race winless streak) a victory at Michigan.

Junior was stretching his fuel mileage by shutting his car off and coasting under the caution laps, but he did this by speeding past the pace car, shutting it off and coasting until the pace car caught up to him. This is against the rules in a major way; after doing it once he should have been penalized. Instead, NASCAR waited until he did it MULTIPLE TIMES, and then only warned him to stop! Junior even admitted that he knew he broke the rules, and next week, NASCAR made it a point to remind drivers that it was against the rules. Of course, that is only if you are NOT the most popular driver.

NASCAR’s giggling baby of a chairman, Brian France, must be tickled pink tonight that the media can focus on Junior breaking the winless streak instead of the ugly accusations in that lawsuit. The way they see it, 60% of NASCAR fans are Junior fans, so if they fix it for Junior to win, more people will be happy than mad.

And they say they don’t play favorites. Absolutely pathetic.

Enjoy the win Ralph. It’ll be a long time until NASCAR can fix a race for you again, and you sure ain’t going to win any on your own merits.

The former Formula 1 racer won his first ARCA race today.

I give kudos to the guy, because he is trying to transition to NASCAR the correct way, by working up through the ranks, instead of the standard open wheel racer strategy of jumping into the Cup series with zero experience and driving around like pre-schoolers on Big Wheels.

Congrats to her and the whole Andretti Green Racing team, but one fuel mileage win a legend does not make. Fuel mileage wins are more the crew than the driver, and any driver will tell you that, especially in the Indy Car series where there is not a lot of manual feathering of the throttle like there is in NASCAR. There wasn’t much racing to be done on her end after that pit stop, and she even said that in her post-race.

I really congratulate her team though, because they’ve been put through a rough time trying to get her to victory lane. It’s one thing when you put a bad driver in bad equipment, or a good driver in bad equipment, because either way, the results are going to be based on what the team puts into it.

But put a bad driver in good equipment (the case here), and you have probably one of the most frustrating situations in motorsports. I really feel for her team, for how many times she has hammered them and they’ve been blasted by the media, so my hat is off to them for getting it done today.

Now the challenge will be to avoid the Jamie McMurray Syndrome (McMurray won in his second NASCAR Winston Cup start, on fuel mileage, and then failed to win a race for five years). I still think she’s overrated. I hope for her sake she wins again this year.

Now that she has win under her belt, it will be interesting to see if her childish antics when she loses continue (no one wants a repeat of her temper tantrum at Michigan in 2006 where she stomped her feet like a little kid and threw her hands up in the air because she ran out of fuel).

I wish the media would focus on a female racer that really has talent AND a good attitude: Chrissy Wallace.

It’s about time. We’ve been waiting for this for two years now…it comes at the expense of Petty Enterprises, who may lose the driver of the 43 (Bobby Labonte) as well, but maybe this is the wakeup call Richard and Kyle need to turn the company around and stop riding around 8 laps down every race.

WELCOME, N.C. — Richard Childress Racing and General Mills have agreed to terms on a multi-year partnership for the world’s sixth-largest food company to sponsor the No. 33 Cheerios/Hamburger Helper Chevrolet beginning with the 2009 Sprint Cup Series season.
Doug Benc/Getty Images
Childress

The driver for the new ride will be announced at a later date.

My Diamondbacks win 4-2; Webb goes 6, Qualls/Pena/Lyon were electric and shut down the Reds’ potentially powerful lineup in the back three (0 H, 0 BB, 1 HBP). Hudson and Reynolds both made fantastic defensive plays and Young, Byrnes and Salazar all went long…it’s obviously early, but that looks like a good start to the year to me.

In other baseball news, Kerry Wood gave up three runs in the top of the ninth for the Cubs, breaking a 0-0 tie with their division rival Brewers. I’ve been telling Cubs fans for months that this wasn’t the job for Kerry Wood…in fact, his job isn’t even on an MLB roster. I find it amazing that one 20 K game 10 years ago can be milked into a career. Only with the Cubs.

However, with victory in their grasp, the Brewers decided they didn’t really need a win, and gave the ball to the 2nd worst closer in the game, Eric Gagne, who promptly gave up a three-run homer to Japanese import Fukudome. Then, Bob Howry gave up a sac fly in the 10th to Milwaukee and sealed the deal for a Cubs loss. Hilariously, Gagne got the win.

The NL Central works so hard to be the worst division in baseball that they almost deserve an award for it. Almost.

Other notables:

• Washington hammered Phillies closer Tom Gordon for 5 ER in 1/3 of an inning to win 11-6.
• Tampa Bay, who many have picked as the sleeper of the year ala the ‘07 D’Backs, slapped around Baltimore starter Jeremy Guthrie for 5 ER in 5 1/3, while James Shields went 7 with 2 ER on the mound for the newly renamed “Rays.” Maybe they just needed to get that devil off their backs and they’ll mount a challenge on the elusive .500 mark.
• Kansas City took down Detroit 5-4 in 11, an interesting David-Goliath match. Keep an eye on KC DH Billy Butler; the kid is going to be some kind of hitter.
• The Johan Santana Era has begun in New York. The 2006 Cy Young winner gave up just 3 hits and 2 earned runs in 7 innings of work, leading the Mets to victory over the Marlins.

Darrell Waltrip has a man crush on Kyle Busch. It is upsetting.

4:42 pm EST - I still love the Dale Jr. AMP Gorilla commercial. “Sweet mother!”

4:38 pm EST - “Gentlemen, start your UAW engines?” Are you kidding me? It’s going to be tough to for anyone to get worse than that, but I imagine before this year is out someone will do it. Although they won’t come close to the all time worst by that one football guy at that one NBS race in ‘05…”Drivers, crank it up!”

Right, so I never got through all of them. I spent too much time writing about illegal immigration over break, so that’s the way it goes.

Stay tuned next week as the race summaries make a return.

Unless Congress starts passing more shamnesty bills, then I’ll be back on my Conservative Rumblings blog.

You heard it here first.

Brady throws an interception in the end zone as time expires.

I laugh for a week, and then NASCAR season starts and I rejoice.