"Community organizers are the heart beat of America, no matter what the Republicans think."
--annotation to a Daily Show link
Clarification: This was the comment a friend wrote to accompany that link. The same friend now has, as a status message, "Republicans must understand that Obama doesn't lean toward Marxism or Socialism. He leans toward common sense. Right now, common sense means activist government."
Things I love about this quote:
1. Not just a heartbeat, but the heartbeat.
2. Honestly, before Obama, I'd never heard "community organizer" used as a formal job title. I might have naively asked, "Is that like an event planner?"
3. The "no matter what the Republicans think" shows a guileless (or super-convenient) misunderstanding of the point that Rudy Giuliani et al were making. (To be sure, Rudy was cherry-picking just as conveniently when he focused so much on "community organizer" rather than "senator for 18 months" or even "constitutional law professor.") Community organizers are swell and all that, just not necessarily presidential without also accomplishing something else.
The only catch is that you have to fill out a request form. Of course the form requires you to answer a few pressing questions. Such as, "What do you want the Song Girls to do?" I'm sure you can manage that. In fact, there's a good chance you were thinking of what you'd like the Song Girls to do, before you knew you could get the Song Girls to do anything at all.
My cow orker is listening to a mashup mix, wherein one particular part sums up the '70s quite nicely with just a two-song combo.
The former is of course the transcript of McCain's acceptance speech. With the caveat that Barack Obama's own acceptance speech galvanized me into seeing his presidency as a threat*, McCain's lost me somewhere around when he dedicated paragraphs to [person's name] of [place name].
*- Not the probability that Obama would win (Nate Silver says almost 70%, I say more like 75%) but rather the likely harm inflicted from his doing so, unless you assume that his worst ideas wouldn't actually pass Congress.
If you were wondering, I passed up BOTH the NFL opener AND the McCain acceptance speech to be productive at work, with a baseball doubleheader (and quite a dismal one at that!) as my accompaniment.
One of my friends posted a link to this Jezebel entry on Facebook, with the rather unsettling annotation that it was the best analysis he'd seen of Sarah Palin's speech.
The passage that particularly caught my eye:
"I want to point out to the Jezebel readership that on September 11, McCain and Obama are scheduled to appear at a forum on community service and volunteerism. Call their organizers. Let em know what McCain thinks about them" ("contact us" hyperlink removed from original)
There seems to be a lot of this tactic going around, in part by the Obama campaign itself.
Back in the 1990s, conservatives would light up Capitol Hill switchboards calling their Congresspeople about whatever issue outraged them, as encouraged by their favorite radio talk show hosts. (N.B. as I recall, Rush Limbaugh fervently denies ever giving out specific phone numbers to call; but Limbaugh's competitors apparently did/do this a lot.)
The tactic has spread, and certainly neither side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on it (Fark took one of the most egregious examples of this and turned it on its head (scroll to "Hallmark")), but I think there's a sharp partisan slant to one particular shade of it, namely lefties trying to intimidate forum sponsors away from righty guests/panelists.
The reduction to absurdity of all this is if you ever see private citizens harassed for their public endorsements: John Smith, an employee of Amalgamated Widgets, recently endorsed the Jones/Johnson ticket. Call Amalgamated Widgets and tell them what you think!
Given that we've already seen British newspapers direct letter-writing campaigns at specific voters, my worst-case scenario isn't completely implausible.
With the usual apathy caveats. 4 teams, 68 roster spots. Six Pittsburgh Steelers (five distinct, none of them Roethlisberger); four each of Bears, Broncos, Colts, and Texans; no Patriots, Chargers, or Ravens.
Players on more than one team:
Chris Johnson (RB-TEN) (3 - apparently I believe the hype)
Matt Ryan (QB-ATL)
Willie Parker (RB-PIT)
Matt Forte (RB-CHI)
Maurice Morris (RB-SEA)
Reggie Wayne (WR-IND)
Andre Johnson (WR-HOU)
Isaac Bruce (WR-SF)
Eddie Royal (WR-DEN)
James Hardy (WR-BUF)
Mason Crosby (K-GB)
The 10-team league teams feel stacked until one remembers that those are 10-team leagues. The 14-team league team has an epic WR bounty, but two of these teams have almost comical QB issues.
1. 10-team keeper-ish league with Individual Defensive Players: QB, RB(2), WR/TE(3), K, DL, LB, DB.
QB Donovan McNabb PHI
Jon Kitna DET
RB Steven Jackson STL
Willie Parker PIT
Matt Forte CHI
Chris Johnson TEN
Ricky Williams MIA
Maurice Morris SEA
WR Roddy White ATL
Larry Fitzgerald ARI
Santonio Holmes PIT
Laveranues Coles NYJ
Isaac Bruce SF
James Hardy BUF
K Phil Dawson CLE
DL Jared Allen MIN
LB DeMeco Ryans HOU
DB Adrian Wilson ARI
Bob Sanders IND
QB Matt Schaub HOU
Matt Ryan ATL
RB Brian Westbrook PHI
Darren McFadden OAK
Matt Forte CHI
Chris Johnson TEN
Justin Fargas OAK
Kevin Jones CHI
WR Reggie Wayne IND
Andre Johnson HOU
Steve Smith CAR
Ronald Curry OAK
Isaac Bruce SF
Sidney Rice MIN
Eddie Royal DEN
TE Tony Gonzalez KC
Tony Scheffler DEN
K Mason Crosby GB
D/ST Jaguars JAX
3. 14-team keeper league (almost dynastic): QB, RB(2), RB/WR, WR(2), TE, K, Team D/ST.
QB Marc Bulger STL
Matt Ryan ATL
RB Selvin Young DEN
Willie Parker PIT
Maurice Morris SEA
DeAngelo Williams CAR
Jamaal Charles KC
WR Reggie Wayne IND
Andre Johnson HOU
Marques Colston NO
Eddie Royal DEN
James Hardy BUF
TE Heath Miller PIT
Dustin Keller NYJ
K Jeff Reed PIT
D/ST Bears CHI
4. 12-team ordinary redraft league with shallow benches.
QB Peyton Manning IND
Kurt Warner ARI
RB Clinton Portis WAS
Reggie Bush NO
Chris Perry CIN
Chris Johnson TEN
Rashard Mendenhall PIT
WR Plaxico Burress NYG
Calvin Johnson DET
Joey Galloway TB
Patrick Crayton DAL
TE Donald Lee GB
K Mason Crosby GB
D/ST Seahawks SEA
Tentatively I think ESPN has surpassed Yahoo! again, at least for football. This is mainly for the UI but also from very tentative server load observations in a so-small-it's-meaningless sample size.
As of 2007 Yahoo! was light years ahead of ESPN for baseball, though the free live scoring gave ESPN a football edge. With apologies to any employee of any other outfit, from my limited observations no other outlet even comes close to those two.
Now that the original scorer's decision has been upheld, will this be a more famous or less famous pitching performance than if he'd been charged an error in the first place (and thus ended up with a no-hitter)?
I claim that this game will have been more famous, and as evidence I ask you:
Can you name the last two pitchers to throw MLB no-hitters? You probably can't, unless you're a fan of the team they both play[ed] for.
How many of the last five can you name? (Randy Johnson's perfect game was only the sixth-most-recent.)
Before you look it up, how many of the 12 no-hitters this decade can you describe reasonably well? (Or if you prefer, 15 in the past ten years -- the David Wells perfect game would miss that cutoff by about 3.5 months.)
This article has been up for at least a week now, but I just now realized that it's the best example I've ever seen of what Whitlock was kvetching about.
(Yes, I know it was [some guy whose name I've already forgotten], not Stephen A. Smith, who set Whitlock off, but Whitlock's complaint was really about a style rather than a person.)
(To respect a well-known rivalry: I'm sure Caltech grad students are saving many lives as well, but the past two stories I've read about specific projects have both happened to involve New England beavers.)
Better evacuation routing through software.
At first blush I find it deeply amusing that political party affiliation could be scandalous. But then I'm forced to admit, to myself and anyone else, that if there were rumors that a Democratic VP candidate had [literally] once been a [capital-C] Communist...
(On the third hand, the goal of the Alaska Independence party is considerably less evil than the goals of the Communist Party.)
There's been a lot of political content in Facebook status messages lately, at least among my "friends." In response to some of that, for much of last week my status message was a snarky point about experience for a president versus experience for a VP. "(can't have the n00b attending state funerals)" was part of it.
As Nate points out, though:
This picture embodies what is perhaps the essential difference between the qualifications for the presidency and the qualifications for the vice presidency. In a perfect world, we would all like a president who is Ready on Day One (TM); it is not uncommon for a newly-elected president to face a major crisis almost immediately upon taking office. But more commonly, a president takes the Oath of Office under relatively calm waters, allowing them something of a learning curve.
On the other hand, when a vice president takes over for a president, the nation is necessarily undergoing a crisis, because the death (or resignation) of a president is perhaps as traumatic an event as can reasonably be imagined (in the "best" case resulting from a slowly-developing illness, and the worst, an attack by terrorists or foreign adversaries).
(emphasis added)
So yeah, point taken, snark retracted. (I probably won't go so far as to post a contrite Facebook status message, since right now my status soliciting opinions about Obama's mandatory community service thing.
This post is subtly mistitled.
My knee-jerk answer to the exact question ("How Much Would You Need to Be Paid to Give Up Your Life Vest on Your Next Flight?") was $1,000.
However, the real question is how much extra would you pay to have a life vest on your flight (if the default were that you didn't have a life vest). There my price point might be more than $1 but is definitely less than $5. (Assume for the moment that I wasn't allowed to bring my own.)
It says herethat Obama voted with Bush during the Bush era 40 percent of the time. (The study limited itself to votes which the Bush administration had taken a clear position on before the vote.)
Bonus tidbit: Obama’s party unity score during the Bush era was 96 percent (ninth highest among Democrats). McCain’s party unity score was 81 percent (the sixth lowest among Republicans).
"The Associated Press has a photo of protesters exercising their First Amendment right to smash the windows of police cars here."
--Orin Kerr (hyperlink in original)
At least that's what this article titles itself.
Nowhere is the Federal Marriage Amendment mentioned: Although the GOP platform supports it, McCain is well-known for opposing it. Assuming Palin also opposes it for all the obvious defer-to-the-states reasons, this would be a non-issue. (Though if she did support the FMA, then I couldn't blame anyone for casting a single-issue vote for Obama.)
One thing I've learned about choosing battles, that I wish I understood better ten years ago, is to understand what a given candidate plausibly can('t) accomplish. On abortion in particular, supposedly the issue with presidential candidates is what kind of Supreme Court judges* they'd appoint -- but is there some sort of Super Duper Pro-Lifer judge who'd invoke a special shortcut key to be able to cast three votes on one case? If not, then there's not any practical difference whether the VP opposes all abortions or just most of them.
*- And even at that, suppose the precedent set by Roe v. Wade were overturned (remember that there's a strong constitutional law case against it that has nothing to do with the constitutional thinker's own opinion of abortions). In the social climate of 2008 how many states do you think would sustain an abortion ban?
Getting out of the social-issue thicket, a great way for McCain to distinguish himself from Obama would be opposing the abuse of state power. His national service program in particular would require a whole lot of new bureaucratic positions to decide what does(n't) qualify as a valid community service, and to control the fate of tens of billions of dollars (not to mention tens of millions of Americans).
A Wedding: I think our mistake here was assuming that this would be the kind of movie Christopher Guest might make about a wedding, rather than remembering that this was late '70s Robert Altman (or, as one IMDBer put it, "What he did to the military in M*A*S*H he does to marriage."). Julia grew to hate it more and more (despite having Carol Burnett and Desi Arnaz Jr.), while I settled for the "it is what it is" cliche.
Wordplay (wow, the IMDB "Plot" line for this is hideously misleading!): Speaking of Christopher Guest, if you watch enough mockumentaries about hardcore activity people, it's refreshing to the kind of documentary that inspired Guest, yet about genuinely likable people. Julia was deeply impressed to learn that Jason Z. has been teammates with Will Shortz at the world Sudoku championship. Anyway this is exactly the sort of movie that will one day be made about quiz-bowl.
Undeclared: The Complete Series. Very nicely done! (What else is there to say?)
The Animal Conference would have Cats, Horses & Beasts, Birds, and Air & Sea; the Man-and-Superman Conference would have Big Bosses, Workers, Pillagers, and Other.
UPDATE: Richard wins the thread.
14 of the 32 NFL teams are explicitly named after animals; the Buffalo Bills would be a 15th if you treated buffaloes (as seen on their logo) as their nickname rather than just a pun on the city -- but I couldn't make this exercise work with the Bills as a "buffalo" team.
14 of the 32 NFL teams have distinctly human or super-human logos.
Of the four ambiguities, two are aerial phenomena that it makes more sense to treat as non-human; one (the aforementioned Buffalo Bills) has an animal logo but the name just as clearly pays homage to a person; and the other is a color that was adopted because of the owner's last name.
That there are five birds (not four) makes this less elegant than it would have been, but life goes on. And although you might think the Native America logos belong together, maybe we're better off categorizing them by their nature so that neither of them has to be focused on ethnic caricature.
Without further ado:
ANIMAL CONFERENCE
CATS
Carolina Panthers
Cincinnati Bengals
Detroit Lions
Jacksonville Jaguars
HORSES & BEASTS
Chicago Bears
Denver Broncos
Indianapolis Colts
St. Louis Rams
BIRDS
Arizona Cardinals
Atlanta Falcons
Baltimore Ravens
Philadelphia Eagles
AIR & SEA
Miami Dolphins
New York Jets
San Diego Chargers
Seattle Seahawks
MAN & SUPERMAN CONFERENCE
BIG BOSSES
Kansas City Chiefs
New Orleans Saints
New York Giants
Tennessee Titans
WORKERS
Dallas Cowboys
Green Bay Packers
Pittsburgh Steelers
San Francisco 49ers
PILLAGERS
Minnesota Vikings
Oakland Raiders
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Washington Redskins
OTHER
Buffalo Bills
Cleveland Browns
Houston Texans
New England Patriots
Have I ever told you about my dislike for tacked-on "this is where they are now" story endings? J.D. Rowling committed arguably the worst atrocity in this vein, though most of the time it's just printed words superimposed at the end of a movie.
(The Animal House ending is an exception because I take it to be a send-up of American Graffiti.)
Some endings are better left ambiguous, and even for those that aren't, there are some absurdly gratuitous levels of detail out there.
This set of anti-Palin talking points contrasts Palin with Obama on, among other things, educational background: University of Idaho vs. Harvard Law School.
I will readily agree that the latter is a better institution, and that other things being equal you'd expect a Harvard alumnus to do more impressive work. But the bigger you assume the difference is, the more of an elitism trap you're falling into. Don't turn college credentials into a pedigree.
Several pundits who wrote this weekend seemed to take a demonstrably false premise to an easily rebutted conclusion.
1. The faulty premise: Nobody had heard of Sarah Pain. On the contrary at least two of my GOP friends have extolled Palin's virtues for months -- one who'd supported Ron Paul in the primaries, the other a moderate whose favorite GOP presidential candidate I never knew.
2. The shaky conclusion: She owes her nomination to being female. On the contrary, ignore gender completely for a moment and ask yourself who McCain could pick to accomplish these goals:
A. Energize his base, and turn his lukewarm supporters (who might otherwise not bother to vote, much less campaign) into fervent supporters.
-yet-
B. Don't alienate moderates, nor alienate one faction over another.
This list demonstrably can't include any Bush administration figure (incidentally, would all the people ragging on Palin's foreign policy non-background be willing to claim that Condi Rice would be an obvious improvement? - I suspect they wouldn't), and McCain's primary opponents are also out: Huckabee because of his feud with Rush Limbaugh (all the more problematic given how McCain himself gets along with Limbaugh), and Romney/Giuliani/etc. because if they were really that well-liked they'd have won the nomination.
The rest of the realm of plausible candidates (basically sitting governors and ex-governors, unless I'm overlooking something -- is the world ready for a business leader to begin his political career that high up? there are military leaders, but as McCain's VP such a background would be uniquely redundant) includes a few who might be solid, but not much in the way of excitement. From what I can tell it'd basically be Palin or Jindal.
So if Palin were otherwise the best choice, imagine trying to make this case against her: "We can't pick her because everyone would think she was picked for being a woman." And she'd end up being denied the pick specifically because she was female -- which is exactly what we want to move beyond, right?
