With voting (or the end of voting) only a week away, and SNL, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and every other comic about to lose their free-comedy meal ticket, I thought I would post my favorite videos from this election season. I'm not including actual speeches, otherwise Obama's More Perfect Union Speech would be in here, but instead videos that I thought were alternately awesome, hilarious, touching or disturbing.
(Also, I think that if you deconstruct the Hilary For You and Me video you'll come up with a fairly comprehensive picture of why she lost the primary.)
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Awesome
See, makers of 17/20ths of the commercials out there? Being good and funny while getting your point across isn't so hard.
Martin chimes in
Roland Martin takes a solid shot at Palin for talking a lot of trash without confronting any tough questions of her own. Martin brings up her most egregious statement, that the report on troopergate cleared her of any legal or ethical wrongdoing. Pay attention, now, Sarah: the report cleared you of legal wrongdoing, but stated that you violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. I could be insane, but that's pretty much the definition of ethical wrongdoing.
Time's analysis of the troopergate report, which delves into the report in more detail, can be found here.
Time's analysis of the troopergate report, which delves into the report in more detail, can be found here.
Wackjobs
I've never really clips from al Jazeera before, but this is pretty well done, in the sense that if you watch it you get the sense that America is populated by a bunch of dumb, ignorant hicks. I can't believe I share a country with these people.
I have to give major props to the guys waving the Obama signs along the road to the rally. Given the makeup of that crowd, I don't know if I'd have the courage to do that.
I also need to give credit to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, since that's where I saw this. It's an excellent site, and he posts a lot of interesting political coverage.
I have to give major props to the guys waving the Obama signs along the road to the rally. Given the makeup of that crowd, I don't know if I'd have the courage to do that.
I also need to give credit to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, since that's where I saw this. It's an excellent site, and he posts a lot of interesting political coverage.
Electoral
First let me say I think the Electoral College is outdated and should be abolished, especially in the wake of what happened in 2000. However, I'm not surprised that it hasn't been, nor am I surprised at the lack of movement in that direction. Earlier this summer I read an article on the possibility of McCain winning the college but Obama winning the popular vote-and not by a little, like Gore did in '00, but by several million. At the time is wasn't hard to imagine: Obama winning big in the states he took and losing only by a little in the states he lost. The article quoted an anonymous campaign (McCain's, I think) source as saying that the American public could take an election like that (meaning 2000) once every hundred years, but not twice in eight. I agreed at the time, and I still do, but it's starting to look more and more like that won't happen.
On and off for the past week or two I've been fiddling with CNN's Electoral Map Calculator. It's pretty cool-it let's you assign the states to either candidate, and starts it out based one what their current poll numbers show: safe Obama/McCain, leaning Obama/McCain, or tossup. Before the market blew up I thought there were four possibilities: Obama wins big, Obama wins small, McCain wins small, or a tie, with Obama winning small being the most likely possibility. But over the last couple of weeks Obama winning with an electorally significant margin has become a greater possibility. While there's a decent bit of time left yet, and victory is by no means assured, the math is starting to look imposing for McCain.
CNN's map (again, guided by their current poll numbers) has 264 electoral votes safe or leaning Obama. This includes Maine, who gives 2 votes to the statewide winner, and then one each to the winner of the two congressional districts. I've heard McCain has a shot at one of the district votes (the 2nd, I think), so let's say 263 for Obama. This includes the western seaboard and Hawaii, NM, MN, IA, WI, MI, IL and everything north of DC (including PA). This is hardly an optimistic projection, and it means all Obama would have to do to win is take OH, FL, VA, CO, NC, IN or MO. CNN lists all of these at tossups, but you can get more detail from pollster on each one of those key races. I would be shocked if Obama didn't come away with at least one.
So the question starts becoming how many electoral votes can Obama get? Fivethirtyeight.com lists the most common Obama totals as 375, 380,383, 338 and 381. Personally, when I go through the map I end up coming out somewhere in the 330s. There's one thing in the back of my mind, though. There's been a lot of talk recently about the Bradley effect, which basically is the fear that people are saying they're going to vote for Obama out of fear of appearing racist. The race that keeps coming back to me, however, is the MN gubernatorial race in 1998, when Jesse Ventura won a three-way race because of his ability to get non-traditional voters to the polls. This meant that going into election day, polls of likely voters that had been put in the field hadn't given him much of a chance. Now, I have no idea if or how the 2008 national polls take likely vs non-likely voter into account. But since Obama's candidacy, backed by an excellent organization, turned a lot of first-time voters out to the polls in the primary, it's a good bet that they'll do so in the general (something backed up by the significant new voter registration numbers that have started to come out across the country). If this gives his election-day numbers an unexpected bump, we could see something even more remarkable than anyone expects.
On and off for the past week or two I've been fiddling with CNN's Electoral Map Calculator. It's pretty cool-it let's you assign the states to either candidate, and starts it out based one what their current poll numbers show: safe Obama/McCain, leaning Obama/McCain, or tossup. Before the market blew up I thought there were four possibilities: Obama wins big, Obama wins small, McCain wins small, or a tie, with Obama winning small being the most likely possibility. But over the last couple of weeks Obama winning with an electorally significant margin has become a greater possibility. While there's a decent bit of time left yet, and victory is by no means assured, the math is starting to look imposing for McCain.
CNN's map (again, guided by their current poll numbers) has 264 electoral votes safe or leaning Obama. This includes Maine, who gives 2 votes to the statewide winner, and then one each to the winner of the two congressional districts. I've heard McCain has a shot at one of the district votes (the 2nd, I think), so let's say 263 for Obama. This includes the western seaboard and Hawaii, NM, MN, IA, WI, MI, IL and everything north of DC (including PA). This is hardly an optimistic projection, and it means all Obama would have to do to win is take OH, FL, VA, CO, NC, IN or MO. CNN lists all of these at tossups, but you can get more detail from pollster on each one of those key races. I would be shocked if Obama didn't come away with at least one.
So the question starts becoming how many electoral votes can Obama get? Fivethirtyeight.com lists the most common Obama totals as 375, 380,383, 338 and 381. Personally, when I go through the map I end up coming out somewhere in the 330s. There's one thing in the back of my mind, though. There's been a lot of talk recently about the Bradley effect, which basically is the fear that people are saying they're going to vote for Obama out of fear of appearing racist. The race that keeps coming back to me, however, is the MN gubernatorial race in 1998, when Jesse Ventura won a three-way race because of his ability to get non-traditional voters to the polls. This meant that going into election day, polls of likely voters that had been put in the field hadn't given him much of a chance. Now, I have no idea if or how the 2008 national polls take likely vs non-likely voter into account. But since Obama's candidacy, backed by an excellent organization, turned a lot of first-time voters out to the polls in the primary, it's a good bet that they'll do so in the general (something backed up by the significant new voter registration numbers that have started to come out across the country). If this gives his election-day numbers an unexpected bump, we could see something even more remarkable than anyone expects.
Monday, October 13, 2008
"More fun than Shark Week!"
I've liked Nathan Fillion ever since I saw the first episode of Firefly, so I'm pretty psyched about this new cop show that's coming out on ABC. Granted, it looks a little like Bones, but since Fillion's last show got canned before I could start watching it, I'm hoping this one is good enough to hang around. It certainly looks like it.
RS article
If you have 15-20 minutes, take some time and read this article about McCain that's coming out in the latest Rolling Stone. It's long-10 web pages-but it's in-depth and an important look at McCain's behavior during his life. Essentially it's closer look at the biographical story the GOP has made so much of during the campaign. It's a damning article, but well-supported and thoroughly researched. I wasn't voting for McCain before, so it didn't change my vote, but it did change my opinion of him as a public servant. I recommend reading it.
Scary as hell
If you've been paying any attention to election news over the last week, you've heard about some of the stuff McCain supporters have been shouting during his (and Palin's) rallies. Someone will wait for him to pause, then shout "terrorist", "traitor", "off with his head", and other completely insane comments. If you need to see some of the wackjobs I'm talking about, you can check out this, this and this.
For me, the scary part was that the last clip was from a town hall meeting that McCain held in Lakeville, MN, just a few miles north of Carleton, where I went to college. The crazies have invaded my own state. Damn it. Not only that, but this Star Tribune article quoted the Obama-is-an-Arab lady as saying after the meeting
"You can't trust Barack Hussein Obama because he is a Muslim and a terrorist."
Now, I'm a big Obama guy. I have no problem with people supporting McCain, but my hope would be that they do so because of some policy stance he takes or some conception of his leadership skills, despite the fact that I may disagree with them about said policies or skills. However, I am seriously disturbed by these morons who are so willfully ignorant that they believe Obama is an Arab, a Muslim, a terrorist or whatever other totally false, loony charges they level against him. And now, on election day, my vote for Obama will be cancelled out by this crazy woman's vote for McCain. My only hope is that her inability to discern truth from fiction will cause her to spend election day hiding in a field after hearing a rebroadcast of War of the Worlds.
For me, the scary part was that the last clip was from a town hall meeting that McCain held in Lakeville, MN, just a few miles north of Carleton, where I went to college. The crazies have invaded my own state. Damn it. Not only that, but this Star Tribune article quoted the Obama-is-an-Arab lady as saying after the meeting
"You can't trust Barack Hussein Obama because he is a Muslim and a terrorist."
Now, I'm a big Obama guy. I have no problem with people supporting McCain, but my hope would be that they do so because of some policy stance he takes or some conception of his leadership skills, despite the fact that I may disagree with them about said policies or skills. However, I am seriously disturbed by these morons who are so willfully ignorant that they believe Obama is an Arab, a Muslim, a terrorist or whatever other totally false, loony charges they level against him. And now, on election day, my vote for Obama will be cancelled out by this crazy woman's vote for McCain. My only hope is that her inability to discern truth from fiction will cause her to spend election day hiding in a field after hearing a rebroadcast of War of the Worlds.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Skyscraper times a billion
I don't know how many man-made objects can be seen from space, mostly because I've never been there. I'm pretty sure the Great Wall of China is the only one, because the other possibilities have involved someone calling the person who said it an idiot. But I'm pretty sure that this could be seen from space, since it would actually go from earth to space. If they could pull this off it would probably be one of the greatest feats of human engineering of all time, and just the possibility of seeing it happen in our lifetimes is kinda cool.
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