Let's Go Phillies!

Phillies and the Rays are under way here, and like so many folks out there I'm on the edge of my seat. Nice start courtesy of Chase Utley... but many innings to go!

LET'S GO PHILLIES!!!

Time Machine: Destination 2004!!!

Wow... incredible, remarkable, strange... I just don't quite know what to say about this bizarrely prescient Life Magazine cover from 2004, where they talked to various famous people about why they take voting so seriously. Among the folks they talked to were Tina Fey and John McCain, who, according to former Managing Editor, Bill Shapiro, got along famously.

Of course, we photographed John McCain and Tina Fey together. He was thrilled to meet her and they got along very well: They had lunch and he gave her an impromptu tour of the Senate building. Makes us wonder if when McCain met Palin for the first time, he said, 'You know, you remind me of someone..."

Nice discovery, Wonkette. I'm still trying to comprehend the picture, but damn if it isn't cool.

Wednesday Video Blitz (part 2)!!!

Ok... the Wednesday video blitz continues! This time with slightly more brief commentary.

Video #3 From a rally yesterday in PA, McCain can't quite stick the landing on this attack line. Not too much to say beyond that, except if you want to hop back to a previous post on slips. Thoughts?



Video #3 Citizen's Arrest! Citizen's Arrest! I, for one, love the concept of a citizen's arrest, don't you? In the video below you can see two funny things, first being a San Francisco woman attempting to execute a citizen's arrest for treason of Karl Rove. Right on lady! You rock! Meanwhile, later in the video there's a great zinger first, one John Kerry apparently had and Rove repeats, and then a beautiful dig on Rove. Check it!



Hope you enjoyed the video fun! Maybe we'll add part 3 later.

Hey Peter, watch out for your corn hole, buddy!

Salon reported earlier in the week that Office Space star Ron Livingston will hit the campaign trail for Barack Obama in Iowa this week. Livingston grew up in Iowa and will make stops all across the state. Salon said:

We hope there is enough cake to go around and that Milton will get to keep his stapler.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping that someday soon the BarackObama.com shop will feature a red Swingline stapler that simply says, "Hope" on it. C'mon, you know you want one!

Wednesday Video Blitz (part 1)!!!

Hey, come on people... it's Wednesday, hump day, that day that sits between the two that start with 'T'... ya know, it's all... wait, I have no point. Yes, wait, yes!!! I do! It's Wednesday, let's celebrate with a barrage of recent interesting videos for your enjoyment!!! What do you think!?!?!? This post will feature the first two, and I'll post another two in the early afternoon, with some other random junk in between.

Video #1 will really start us off with a bang... but sadly, it's a bang called 'really appalling and disturbing." John McCain was recently asked if he was 'proud' of an mailer the RNC is sending around with airplanes and text about terrorists on the outside, and a huge picture of Barack Obama inside. The mailer states, among other things, that Barack Obama "thinks terrorists just need a good talking to." Apparently, this sort of distorted and gut-wrenchingly disgusting crap is the kind of stuff John McCain is proud of. Ugh.



Video #2 is an interesting one that is making the rounds and something McCain really should be proud of. This is the second recent clip I've posted from the American News Project, and both have been remarkably well done glimpses into illuminating issues around and connected to the presidential race (today they've got a striking piece up about the disenfranchisement of felons). In the video below you can see a variety of different folks, eventually joined by a man who is a representative from Muslims for McCain confronting a couple who are selling bumper stickers at a McCain rally. The video starts with the sticker salesman lecturing about Islam, and the stickers contain imagery linking Obama to Islam and Communism.

The folks who confront the sticker-selling couple are pretty level headed and cool about their comments for the most part. Towards the end a guy who identified himself as a conservative Christian actually asks, "are you deliberately trying to lose us this election"?



I think the two videos provide an interesting juxtaposition of ideas swirling around how Islam and Obama's name, identity, etc. are treated in this election. To be honest, I think the issues we see swirling around the election right now represent a huge leap forward in terms of progress, by which I mean to say I think that it's progress that America is working through some of this. We've still got a lot of work to do in many quarters to realize how to live out the tolerance and liberty our nation was founded on, but I am hopeful that remarkable things are happening this fall and will continue in the months and years to come.

The Japan that can say "Buy"

One of the interesting side effects of this whole subprime financial crisis has been the growing assertiveness of Asian economies, particularly Japan (and I don't care what you say, Japan is an Asian economy!) It's not that the Japanese economy is doing particularly well right now. However, Japanese banks are apparently fair stable and flush with cash in comparison to their American counterpoints. After the Mitsubishi deal, some people have started talking about Japan as a "white knight" nation, one who rescues South Korea and some Wall Street titans. If this comes about to pass it will be very fitting, given that Japan went through a similar problem in the 1990's. Fareed Zakaria will prarticularly love this tidbit:

Mr. Shiozaki and others are careful to point out that no one is talking about replacing Washington as guardian of the global economy. Rather, what they envision is a world where America shares oversight of the global economy with emerging powers like China and India, as well as Europe and Japan.

With all this buzz about "pro-American" and "anti-American" we would do well to remember that the buzzword for the next few decades is likely to be "post-American."

So Close? or So Far Away?

I was reading through the post yesterday from Venice and I agree with his concern about the strength of poll numbers, the chances that things will look very different in two weeks than they do today, etc. It's an interesting morning to blog about this, what with Obama leaving the campaign trail to be with "Toot," his grandmother. Andrew Sullivan describes their relationship accurately, I think, by saying that if she passes away Obama will in essence be losing, "his last parent." His mother passed a few years back, and his grandfather and father are both gone.

Here are a few of my thoughts on Obama leaving the rallys and hooplah for a couple days, and on the polls and what they mean:

1. Polls: I think there are a couple sites, Five Thirty Eight and Pollster.com in particular that do a good overlap of poll tracking and accompanying analysis. While I understand what Venice is pointing out about the fact that Obama's unprecedented support in some states doesn't necessarily translate to wins there, what I think is worth noting is that maps on both sites listed above calculate whether states are in one column or another (or somewhere between) based on composite poll numbers... hence, not comparison to past performance in a given venue. Below are some of Nate Silver from Five Thirty Eight's thoughts on Saturday's poll numbers and the talk of the race tightening:
   

Between "Joe the Plumber", "spread the wealth", "I'm not George Bush", etc., however, McCain at least now seems to have a few somewhat more constructive talking points (in that sense, the fact that the Ayers attacks went over like a lead balloon at the debate might have done him a favor). So some of those crestfallen conservatives might have moved back into the likely voter universe...

McCain's other problem is that the polls in battleground states have not really tightened at all. Obama gets good numbers today, for instance, in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Florida. Obama presently has something like a 3:1 advantage in advertising, and most of that advertising is concentrated in battleground states. As such, this may serve as a hedge against any improvements that McCain is able to make elsewhere in the country.

2. Leaving the Trail: I think that Obama's departure for Hawaii at this particular moment is a reasonable thing, something most Americans will understand, and potentially something that the campaign will benefit from. Why? Well, it would seem to me that it would be hard to hit hard at a guy who's currently going home to see his sick grandma for perhaps the last time, but based on the past couple months nothing would surprise me. Perhaps his grandma 0nce had tea with some terrorists and we'll hear about it from some Sarah Palin rally today. Meanwhile, the rallys will go on with Michelle Obama, Clinton, Biden, Richardson, and the whole Democratic support team swooshing in to help out in Barack's absence. I think this whole event will work out to a net neutral for the campaign, even in light of how late on the moment is.
   

How close- or far- is this thing?

There's a bit of chatter this week about how the presidential race is tightening. It's a fair question, but what I've really been wondering is whether Obama was ever as far ahead as he seemed. Last week I remember reading about how some people at the networks were already thinking about an early election night, one in which it would be almost immediately apparent that Obama had won. It's easy to see why. Obama is way ahead nationally and leads in pretty much every swing state. He's even threatening McCain in traditionally Red territory like North Carolina and Indiana. Seems like this thing is over and done with.

The problem with this view is that electoral votes are, generally, an all or nothing affair. Obama might do unbelievably well in North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia and Colorado, but that doesn't he'll actually beat McCain in any of these places. If he doesn't, that will bring the race back to traditonal swing states like Ohio and Florida, where things look more like a normal election. For instance, McCain has respectable, if not necessarily winning, support in Ohio. In other words, Obama's unprecedented strength in Red states could be great as fodder for political discussions and yet still be totally ineffective in terms of actually winning the election. Anyway, what do you all think? Just paranoia?

Franken's Got Map-Skills

In my continuing effort to promote the cool idea that Al Franken may soon unseat Norm Coleman for one of Minnesota's senate seats, I bring you a video of Franken drawing the continental US free hand. I found it via Digg, and a more extensive post on geography and Franken's drawing sills is available on the blog Parenting Squad. The Parenting Squad post sources Greg Laden for the story behind the drawing skills:

This [skill] stems from a bar bet Franken made some years ago in which he claimed to be able to name all fifty states. When he got to the end, the count was only 49, and there was no way to remember which state he had accidentally skipped. So he decided to learn how to draw a map of all 48 states so he could keep track.

A few friends from my study abroad trip to Rome used to razz a friend of ours who went to Waldorf Schools growing up about the fact that his alternate education should have endowed him with innate map-skills useful in any situation. Marky did, indeed, have quite a bit of cleverness... but I don't think his map skills were quite Franken-esque.

Mom, Dad, do you have a minute? We need to talk.

My friend Evelyn sent this clever little spot my way last week and it took me a couple days to post it up, but check out a nice little bit of advertising from my friends over at MoveOn.org. Makes me think of the famous, "I learned it from watching you!" anti-drug advertisement from back in the day.

Weekend Wrap-Up: Rachel Maddow, Endorsements, etc.

I've got a deep fondness for Rachel Maddow, and as she grows a bigger name on the national stage as a political pundit/voice in the national cable news blab-o-thon my respect for her grows. I think she's an interesting, playful, powerful and smart voice from the left, but I also think she represents the best possible version of progressive politics, an often polite, rarely shrill yet still strong, passionate and clear voice driven by a strong set of values. This last piece is important to me, as someone who has always identified his liberal bias as built off a foundation of values and as someone who has struggled with the right's easy ability to seemingly own the term "values" in the national debate.

This weekend the New York Times ran a nice piece profiling the private side of Maddow. It's a nice read for anyone who seeks balance in their life, since it depicts a rising star in the chattering class who counter-balances her life on a state in NYC with a quieter weekend existence 190 miles away in the woods of Mass. Maddow is a liberal lesbian who drives a pickup, takes her dog to the dump on Saturday mornings, and seeks out odd-ball art like the squirrel statue you see on the right. The questions the NYT posed were well chosen, including the following:

Worst thing about Obama: He’s measured to a fault. He is so calm and cool and collected that sometimes I want to know what he feels.

Best thing about McCain: He’s very funny...

Obsession: Loose nukes. I literally lie awake and worry that we haven’t paid attention to some of the real national-security threats that are out there.

Favorite item in house: The house mostly reflects Susan’s style, but I have to put my stamp on things. Once, I found a sculpture of a big, fat squirrel holding a reflector. You’re supposed to put it at the end of your driveway. We have it near the kitchen table; it’s the house mascot.

Meanwhile, back out on the trail, Obama's camp was celebrating Colin Powell's endorsement. We've written a couple things about that development already so I wont' dwell on it, except to raise a sad and strange little related news bit. The McCain campaign countered Sunday's endorsement with an email blast to reporters touting an endorsement of their own:

"As a Hispanic-American, I understand how important this election is for Hispanics," said Katie Barberi, a Telenovela actress currently on Telemundo's Dona Barbara. "We need a leader who can lower taxes, protect small businesses, and increase job creation nationwide. I have no doubt that John McCain appreciates the important role Hispanics play not only in the economy, but in our nation's culture as well...

Wow... um... so there you have it folks... two little tidbits that tell you a bit about how the weekend went. Seriously, I can't muster anything to say about this Telemundo Telenovela star's endorsement... except, "wow."

Oh, and the Tampa Bay Rays won the honor of going up against the Phillies in this year's World Series. Should be a good series, although I don't know how well it will do ratings-wise.

Powell's Endorsement

By now, we all know that Powell endorsed Barack Obama on Meet the Press today. I have no idea how much this will mean in the next 16 days-- though it certainly will be welcome by the Obama camp-- but for me personally it was a very powerful moment and not only because I respect Colin Powell. I have rarely agreed so whole-heartedly with a national political figure.

I shared each one of his concerns about McCain's campaign, from the free improvisation that was his response to the financial crisis to his shameful suggestion that Obama sympathizes with terrorists. I hope that this will serve as a wake up call to McCain and the rest of the Republican party: we are sick of the politics of personal destruction and we VOTE!