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Deepak Chopra does Windows commercials? Classy, Chop. Reeeeeal classy.
Rachel Maddow is getting giant ratings on MSNBC. Well, giant ratings for MSNBC. I’m sure they would be giant on a network people watched. Her show is exposing the cable-viewing public to a variety of great guests. A few more shows like this, and I won’t be able to bitch about the media anymore. Still think she shouldn’t be quite as sarcastic or Olbermannesque, though.
The experts have weighed in (here and here), and they say it all comes down to Colorado. Except for Jerome, who is always a God Damn contrarian. Anyway, because of Colorado’s demographics — the mixture of Californian ex-pats, lots of Hispanics, eco-friendly westerners for the Dems, and die-hard social conservatives for the Right — it will probably be the deciding state. Which is to say, if Obama barely wins, Colorado will be the state that put him over the top. If he wins by a lot, it won’t be without winning Colorado. And if he loses, you might want to cancel any vacation plans to Iran. Or Russia. Or Spain.
Also, we own 80 percent of AIG now.
September 19th, 2008
Most cable news programming is less informative than your average episode of the Daily Show, so it is refreshing to see MSNBC premiering a much more promising vehicle for news, tonight at 9. Rachel Maddow. Tell your friends. We will also be hosting a guest blogger here at FTP. I don’t want to give it away, but his first name rhymes with “snark”.
Update: Steve Benen, formerly of Obsidian Wings and now blogging for Washington Monthly (both links here at FTP) was one of her first guests. Good sign. Can’t say the show is wowing me so far, though. I like her way better than Olbermann, but stylistically she is still aping him too much.
September 8th, 2008
Clearly, I was completely wrong about the Palin pick. I guess that means my political savvy and 35 bucks will get you parking at a Red Sox game.
It seems that when the McCain campaign said they “vetted†her, they meant they googled her name. Evidently, Google didn’t turn up her initial support for the Bridge To Nowhere, her chumminess with Ted Stevens, the inappropriate and illegal sacking of her ex brother-in-law and the person who refused to sack him, and her lack of experience or interest in all things not Alaskan.
There are more women in this country than men, and yet women have made it on to the ticket of each major party just once, both times in the supporting role. I still think picking a woman was a great idea, he just should have picked Condi Rice, Olympia Snowe, Christine Todd Whitman or Kay Bailey Hutchison. You know, someone qualified. Or Liddy Dole, if he needed a pro-lifer.
I love the new Republican talking point that because Palin was the mayor of a small town, and America is made up of a lot of small towns, she is more than qualified for VP. I was vice president of my grade school, so maybe I could be VP in real life, too.
September 3rd, 2008
Obama’s VP is supposed to be announced today. Seems like it is mostly going to be Biden, and if not him, Clinton. Or it could be Kaine or Bayh. Or Sebelius. But really, I’m hopingbutnotexpecting that it’s none of the above. They might have announced the pick sooner, but they didn’t want to squash the story of McCain and his seven houses.
I’d also like to quickly push back on all this talk about how Obama is underperforming against a generic Democrat. In other words, the Democratic brand is stronger than the Obama brand. Well, obviously. I think almost any Democratic candidate would underperform against an amorphous Democrat who lacked all the downsides of having a personality and a history (and millions in attack ads highlighting them), but had the advantage of being on the right side (or slightly better side, depending on you level of cynicism) of most policy disputes. Obama brings a lot of enthusiastic supporters to the table, but he also has a lot of folks suspecting he may possibly be black and also a Muslim. Or radical lefty. Or does it matter which? And I don’t want to hear about how his low polling is a symptom of his recent flip-floppery, because while that hasn’t helped, he’s been underperforming against your average bear since before you were in diapers. I guess I’m not pushing back on this notion, so much as saying that I don’t think it is a surprise, or a phenomenon unique to Obama and no other Democrats.
Similarly, McCain is outperforming a generic Republican because right now that is about as difficult as outacting Keanu Reeves. All that qualifying out of the way, Obama really should be ahead by a lot more right now.
McCain is scheduled to announce his pick on the 29th. If not Romney, one commenter on Atrios speculated about a McCain-Lieberman ticket, sponsored by Werther’s Originals.
VP picks are probably much less significant than we think (present face-shooters excluded), but I guess I’ve been obsessing over this one as some sort of indicator as to how bold Obie is going to be. Will he choose some empty suit who promises no kind of change at all, some surprise fighter who reinvigorates the campaign, or some inbetweener, who is less than exciting but seen as a reasonable choice by the base, and we’re back where we started. As a complete sidenote, if anyone has any hobbies they’re not using, that they might like to trade for my hobby of observing the ass backwards world of politics, let me know.
August 22nd, 2008
Previously, I wondered if I had been too hard on John Edwards. A lot of my criticism was based on less-than-credible hunches that he was overly ambitious; even for a presidential hopeful, and insincere to boot. Well, I guess it was also based on his abysmal voting record, meek performance in the VP debate, and his semi-public whining about Kerry’s strategic decisions after the fact.
Maybe we shouldn’t judge a politician’s private life– and at the very least we should view his legacy as the sum of its parts, not just the scandals we’re left reading about. But Edwards cheated on his wife while she was battling cancer and then tried to qualify the cheating in a vain (every sense of the word) attempt to save his future in politics. I’m glad he’s out of a job.
In other news, Obama and Ohio Dems are hitting McCain over the DHL deal in Ohio and Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Obie’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, thinks the DHL story is a game changer. That’s how I felt when I heard about it, and it is certainly getting lots of coverage in the Ohio papers. People always seem to think Obama isn’t throwing enough punches, but it appears to me that he just likes to pick his spots.
August 9th, 2008
Hahaha. If our lawmakers are going to abdicate their duty as, you know, one of the checks in our government, then I’m all for less constitutionally-challenged folk stepping in to fill that role. I think even Steve Martin would approve.
July 27th, 2008
Teddy has a malignant brain tumor, and the average life expectancy for someone with that is 1 to 5 years. If anyone has the grit to last longer than that, it’s Kennedy, but who knows. Teddy was able to outgrow the shadow of his brothers — John, an American icon, and Bobby, a liberal hero — to become one of the most important political figures of the last forty plus years. No small feat. Also, his early endorsement of Obama was a classy move.
Editor’s note: I forgot about RFK Jr. when I called Teddy the last great Kennedy. They’re both good guys.
May 21st, 2008
When FTP boldly announced our endorsement of Barack Obama on a cold, blustery day in the New England fall, we subscribed to much of the conventional wisdom floating around at the time. He’s the most charismatic candidate in a generation. He’s the most authentically religious Democrat in a generation. A lot of these assumptions were somewhat superficial, and tied to the belief that being black gifts a candidate a certain amount of authenticity, charisma and liberal bona-fides. That is to say, FTP subscribed to a specific strand of stereotyping.
As the harsh winter shattered our notions of good and evil (and comically dramatic prose), we came to the conclusion that we had thrown our lot in with the right candidate, for the wrong reasons. Here is a more studied, nuanced portrait of the Democratic nominee.
Many people have noted that Obama’s deliberate vagueness, coupled with his positive message, allows voters across a wide range of the political spectrum to project their values, hopes, dreams, etc. on to him, but leaves us without a clear idea of what he really stands for. I think there is a certain element of truth to that with respect to the specificity of some of the solutions he’s offered, but otherwise I completely disagree. His words and actions, especially when viewed in their totality, fit in with a very clear notion of right and wrong. His meta-disclosures on how politicians should approach politics and talk to voters provide a much more transparent ideology than most candidates are willing to offer.
I attribute part of these ethics to his admission of feeling like an outsider for much of his early adult life. Outsiders often develop a very personal and introspective (and stubborn) moral compass, absent some of the stronger societal pressures and peer-enforced values that many experience. This can be good or bad. You get the eye-for-an-eye lone soldier model, and you also get the Obamas; the folks just enough removed from a situation to render objective analysis, but still able to empathize with all the players involved.
So after a while, Obama made a concerted effort to become more fully integrated with a community. He joined Trinity Church, became a community organizer, applied for sainthood, etc. But he did so with an already strong set of ingrained beliefs.
Now, trusting yourself so fully can be problematic when you’re dead wrong. That’s how bad wars are waged, continued and rationalized. But self-assuredness is absolutely essential when going through an intense political campaign where the media is focusing on everything but what’s important, and a lot of people are giving you bad advice.
Obama frequently talks about his ability not to get rattled; to stay cool under pressure. I think he does get rattled, agitated sometimes. Like when Wright launched his most recent publicity tour, or Bush and McCain implied he was weak on foreign policy. But he doesn’t get scared. He doesn’t try and adopt a new message that might go over better. He responds with intensity and conviction, even if he has to struggle with the phrasing of his words. If he doesn’t like the way he said something, he’ll say it better.
Next Week: Chapter 2. In which we explore the alleged vagueness of Obama’s policy proposals. Oh what an exciting cliffhanger!
May 19th, 2008
I realize this may be in poor taste, but I have a couple things to say about the now deceased Charlton Heston. The Ten Commandments and Planet of the Apes were pompous, ridiculous movies, as were Heston’s performances in them. It is quite likely that he was much better in Ben-Hur, and I probably should watch that before rendering any final judgment.
In addition, while I personally am not a hunter, I see how it could be a great experience. I’m also somewhat opposed to the idea of guns in general, but absent that moral objection, gun collecting seems a perfectly compelling hobby.
What seems less reasonable to me, and perhaps entirely petty, is the idea of spending half your life stroking your own ego in 8 hour epics with thunderous scores, and the other half fighting for the right of every American to carry, shoot and wave any gun under any circumstance (not literally, that was Hestonian hyperbole). The AP is calling him a film legend, which may be true, but he was also a chronic overactor who worked really hard to keep guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Moses, here, served as an icon for the cultish libertarianism that too often stands in the way of decent policy and plain ol’ rational thought.
Of course, guns don’t kill people, bullets do. I mean, people do. Or whatever. Anyway, here is your moment of Zen.
April 6th, 2008
Obama is giving his speech now. Sends his condolences to the families who had to deal with the storms in the Tennessee and the South. Class act. Looks like he at least won half the delegates tonight, I just hope losing Cali doesn’t hurt him too much. I didn’t think he would do this well and for the first time in a while I’m liking his chances. It’s a shame my two favorite states didn’t vote for him.
February 6th, 2008
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