Category: 2008 election
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Will, Fully Obtuse
On the NY Times site yesterday, William Safire complained about a line in (President!) Obama’s speech: He skirted the controversy about harsh interrogations with a facile “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” — when there are times when that painful choice cannot be “rejected.”…
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Comedy in a Post-Bush World
Just as 9/11 killed comedy, apparently so will the Obama administration. The NY Times interviewed a bunch of comedy writers on how they planned to cope with the apparent upcoming comedy drought. (Full disclosure: I would totally watch Letterman do household safety demonstrations.) I particularly liked the point made by an Onion editor: Too many…
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Senator Stuart Smalley!
It is with great glee that I note that Al Franken has officially won his senate race. Not only will C-SPAN2 be more entertaining, but this is the final bit of proof that we live in our own alternate universe. I think a switch got flipped back in 1998 or so, giving us, among other…
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Sometimes, putting family first means putting it off
This article on red state and blue state attitudes towards sex didn’t really tell me anything new. But this jumped out at me: Maybe these choices weren’t originally about values—maybe they were about maximizing education and careers—yet the result is a more stable family system. Not only do couples who marry later stay married longer;…
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Change (is) how the story ends
Right now we’re all excited and hopeful that things will go well on Tuesday, and that Barack Obama will be elected president. But before we get too complacent, let’s look at what we said in 2004 before the election:Vinay (via email) said: It’s very 4:56 in the AM, I’m about to leave for my 1st…
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The Shining Rays
I don’t want to jinx anything (too late!) but the Rays prevailing over the Red Sox has given me hope about Obama’s prospects… Let me explain. For tracking the polls, the best place by far is fivethirtyeight.com, which uses some hardcore statistics to combine polling and demographic data to forecast the election results. The guy…
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The Climate of Fake America
Until last December, I had lived my entire life in the Upper Midwest (Michigan and Ohio) and the mid-Atlantic (Pennsylvania). When I was getting ready to move to California, lots of people — friends, family, and strangers alike — made all sorts of denigrating comments about California and Californians. I was warned against becoming a…
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Ohio will always haunt me
Right now, I am so mortified to be from a small town in Northeast Ohio. Strongsville is a mere 12 miles up the road from where I grew up, and I haven’t watched the video, because I’m afraid I’ll recognize someone. This is no exaggeration — I am not surprised at all by what people…
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The Game Would Just Be Redundant
Like many people, I’ve been gleefully looking forward to the VP debate. I was going to make a drinking game of it, but realized it was nigh-on impossible for two reasons: If you drink every time Sarah Palin says something incoherent, or every time Joe Biden is historically inaccurate, you’ll be hammered in fifteen minutes.…
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Signs of the times
The Obama campaign is all but ignoring lawn signs in some battleground states — so they can focus on silly things like voter registration — and it’s starting to backfire in Virginia. From my anecdotal survey of two voters, it’s also starting to piss off Ohio supporters, too. I think the campaign is underestimating how…