CARDINALS, GOLFERS, RECOUNT CARVILLE

The ST. LOUIS CARDINALS' plan for a new baseball stadium is the subject of this week's chamber of commerce First Friday Coffee at 7:30 a.m. Friday at the Show Me Center.

Cardinal president MARK LAMPING will make the informational sales presentation with (I hope) artist's renderings of the project and estimated costs and benefits.

Southeast Missouri embodies the Show Me conservative philosophy, but it needs to be better informed than the information received to date.

The $370 million stadium plan is only approximately 50 percent of the total residential, retail, office and entertainment complex proposed to bolster downtown St. Louis at a total projected investment of $700 million.

I've seen part of this presentation and went from a big NO to a let's-hear-and-see-more status.

It's worth your time to attend, hear, see and ask questions ... and reach your own unfiltered conclusions.

---

I don't play golf, but I'm around golfers enough to enjoy the following:

If your divot continuously travels farther than your ball, consider reading as a pastime.

Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle.

The best wood in most amateurs' bags is the pencil. (Chi Chi Rodriquez)

If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball. (Jack Lemon)

To some golfers, the greatest handicap is the ability to add correctly.

Some golfers believe overclubbing can be corrected by overlooking or undercounting. When using a caddie it can also be corrected by overtipping.

Tee your ball high ... air offers less resistance than dirt. (Jack Nicklaus)

It's not whether you win or lose ... it's whether I win or lose.

---

Review finds Bush won despite Miami recount: If Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris had let South Florida counties complete manual recounts before certifying the results of last November's election, George W. Bush likely would have won the presidency outright, without weeks of indecision and political warfare, a review of Miami-Dade County's undervote ballots shows.

Al Gore would have netted no more than 49 votes if a manual recount of Miami-Dade's ballots had been completed, according to the review, which was sponsored by the Miami Herald and its parent company, Knight Ridder.

That would have been 140 too few to overcome Bush's lead, even when joined with Gore's gains in Volusia, Palm Beach and Broward counties -- the three other counties in which the Democratic candidate had requested manual recounts.

Of 10,644 punch-card ballots that the Miami-Dade elections office identified as undervotes -- ballots bearing no machine-readable vote for president -- the review found that 1,555 bore some kind of marking that might be interpreted as a vote for Gore. An additional 1,506 bore a marking that might be interpreted as a vote for Bush. There were 106 markings for other candidates.

No markings for president were found on 4,892 ballots, and 2,058 ballots bore markings in spaces that had been assigned to no candidate. An additional 527 ballots were deemed to have markings for more than one presidential candidate.

A large number of ballots -- 1,912 -- contained clean punches. But 1,840 of those were in ballot positions that corresponded to no candidate, including 1,667 ballots where the voter cleanly punched the positions just below the numbers corresponding to Bush or Gore.

Republicans called the results of the review further proof that Bush was the legitimate winner all along. ...

Democrats maintained that the ballot review reveals that neither side could have known how the recounts would turn out.

"This underscores how unpredictable the whole recount strategy was, on both sides," said Doug Hattaway, former Gore campaign spokesman. "This shows Bush's tactics of delaying and blocking vote counts didn't really benefit him." -- The Washington Post

---

No. 10 adds a war room': Call it "A Cajun liberal in King Blair's Court." The Sunday Times reports that James Carville -- still complaining that "Al Gore won Florida" and licking his wounds from major defeats in Mexico and Israel -- is on his way to No. 10 Downing Street. That's right, British Prime Minister and New Labor leader Tony Blair has employed the notorious "Ragin' Cajun," and pals Bob Schrum and Stanley Greenberg to help him slay William Hague and the Tories in the next general election. This sort of cross-pollination is nothing new. Clinton pollster and Carville partner Greenberg has been consulting the Blair government since 1995, and New Yorker writer and Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal is a frequent visitor to No. 10. One would think by now a Tony Blair would know to be careful about what happens to politicians who sign up with this bunch, but far be it from us to deter him from Mr. Carville's tender mercies. -- The Wall Street Journal

---

Daffynitions:

Allege: A rocky platform on a mountain.

Arbitrator: A cook that leaves Arby's to work at McDonald's.

Arson: Our daughter's brother.

Autobiography: A history of cars.

Avoidable: What a bullfighter tries to do.

Backward: Patient rooms at the rear of a hospital.

Baloney: Where some hemlines fall.

Bassinet: What every fisherman wants.

Belong: To take your time.

Bernadette: The act of torching a mortgage.

Book: A utensil used to pass time while waiting for the computer repairman.

Budget: A method for going broke methodically.

Bureaucracy: A method of turning energy into solid waste.

Burglarize: What a crook sees with.

Carpet: A dog that enjoys riding in an automobile.

Circular Definition: see Definition, Circular.

Coffee: Break fluid.

Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

Condescending: A prisoner escaping down the wall using a rope.

Gary Rust is chairman of Rust Communications.