A radio talk show host asks humor-deficient former HP CEO Carly Fiorina if Sarah Palin is qualified to be CEO of HP.
Carly's answer: no.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Mr. Cellophane
Dramatis Personae
Richard Gere as Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager
Renee Zellweger as Sarah Palin
John C. Reilly as John McCain
Richard Gere as Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager
Renee Zellweger as Sarah Palin
John C. Reilly as John McCain
MoveOn Hits One out of the Park
I love this: it hits McCain twice, once politically and once personally--which I think is the secret of all effective attack ads. Politically, on his lobbyist pals/his puppeteers. Personally, on his mockable "my friends" tic--which even his own campaign can't stand to hear him use.
Barack 101
There are only a few more weeks of voter registration in most states.
That means, by the beginning of October, the entire universe of voters will be set. That's it. No more.
What this means is: once October begins, there are only two ways for Obama to increase his support:
As November draws closer, I'll talk more about about the way to make sure everyone votes. But for now, the focus has to be on persuasion.
The Obama campaign will be focused on persuasion through their advertising, debate performance and their attempts to control their message through the media. This is the effort that will be coming from the top, down to the people. This is what all of your donations are financing.
However, there is an even bigger and more important persuasion effort raging right now. Every single Obama supporter in the country is a surrogate for the campaign.
You are trying to convert your friends, or your sister-in-law in a swing state, or a friend at work that may be listening to a little too much conservative AM radio.
The only way this is going to work is if everyone contributes to this effort non-stop for the next 49 days.
The only way we are going to be effective surrogates for the campaign is if we can frame the issues effectively and confidently make the clear distinctions with John McCain and his policies.
The only way to do that is to be informed.
Welcome to Barack 101.
Every one of you has an assignment this week. Mandatory. No exceptions.
You must read this Daily Kos diary.
You can print it out and read it. But then you must read it online. And you must click on at least a few of the links.
Bookmark it. Go back to it. You don't have to cram Palin-style, but make yourself as familiar with the details as possible.
Your final exam will be November 4th.
The good news is that it's Pass/Fail.
The bad news is that it will not be offered again.
That means, by the beginning of October, the entire universe of voters will be set. That's it. No more.
What this means is: once October begins, there are only two ways for Obama to increase his support:
- Persuading undecided voters and converting wavering Republican voters.
- Making sure that every single voter who supports Obama votes on election day.
As November draws closer, I'll talk more about about the way to make sure everyone votes. But for now, the focus has to be on persuasion.
The Obama campaign will be focused on persuasion through their advertising, debate performance and their attempts to control their message through the media. This is the effort that will be coming from the top, down to the people. This is what all of your donations are financing.
However, there is an even bigger and more important persuasion effort raging right now. Every single Obama supporter in the country is a surrogate for the campaign.
You are trying to convert your friends, or your sister-in-law in a swing state, or a friend at work that may be listening to a little too much conservative AM radio.
The only way this is going to work is if everyone contributes to this effort non-stop for the next 49 days.
The only way we are going to be effective surrogates for the campaign is if we can frame the issues effectively and confidently make the clear distinctions with John McCain and his policies.
The only way to do that is to be informed.
Welcome to Barack 101.
Every one of you has an assignment this week. Mandatory. No exceptions.
You must read this Daily Kos diary.
You can print it out and read it. But then you must read it online. And you must click on at least a few of the links.
Bookmark it. Go back to it. You don't have to cram Palin-style, but make yourself as familiar with the details as possible.
Your final exam will be November 4th.
The good news is that it's Pass/Fail.
The bad news is that it will not be offered again.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Your Move, John
After getting called out by his previous supporters in the real media, Fox News, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and even Karl Rove himself, John McCain--already running against his own party who has been the incumbent power for the past 8 years--may have only one option left:
McCain must denounce the slimy tactics of his campaign and start running against himself.
McCain must denounce the slimy tactics of his campaign and start running against himself.
Muahahahahahahahaha
The incompetent former HP CEO and current McCain advisor Carly Fiorina takes the bait:
Tina Fey 1, Republicans 0
"I think of course [Tina Fey's] portrait was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin,” Fiorina argued, calling it “totally superficial,” “disrespectful in the extreme,” and “sexist.”
Tina Fey 1, Republicans 0
Aww, Poor Baby...
Johnny McCain forgot to bring his shiny new bicycle to school today...and now no one wants to play with him.
Did Charlie and Tina Do Their Jobs?
Palin fading?
Kos:
Kos:
Here are Sarah Palin's daily approval numbers from the Daily Kos/Research 2000 tracking poll:
[...]
In the span of five days, Palin has gone from +17 to +4 -- a statistically significant shift. This includes the Gibson interview as well as the media's sudden focus late last week on the Palin/McCain lies. In comparison, Biden is at 48/32/20, Obama is at 54/38/8, and McCain is at 51/45/4.
So Palin may not be the least popular of the four -- McCain is, but she is certainly the least liked of the four candidates, and given that both Obama and Biden are at +16 favorability, McCain's +6 and and Palin's +4 point to a fundamental weakness that will likely play a role moving forward.
Is Rasmussen Also Cooking the Polls?
How else can you explain this?
Clearly Rasmussen oversamples mouth breathers.
A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds that while 31% of adults want CBS’s Two and a Half Men to win the Emmy for best comedy, only 27% think the show actually will win. Instead, 33% believe The Office will win that Emmy, even though slightly fewer adults (28%) want it to take home the coveted award.
Only 11% want last year’s winner for the best comedy series, 30 Rock, to be a repeat awardee.
Clearly Rasmussen oversamples mouth breathers.
Today's Classic Rock Ponderable
Are Bad Company's "Feel Like Making Love" and Crosby, Stills and Nash's "Southern Cross" exactly the same song?
If not, why not?
If not, why not?
Your Family Reunion Will Suck
Sweet Johnny McCain's Cousin:
So, where is the straight-talking, commonsense John McCain of 2000? I'm afraid he is long gone, replaced by a desperate version of himself who seems to contradict nearly everything he once stood for.
What becomes apparent in his ideological about-face is just how out of touch McCain really is with America's working families.
In a time when the country is facing the worst housing crisis in the memory of most Americans, McCain couldn't even recall how many homes he owns. When asked how many homes my side of the family owns, I can answer you pretty quickly. Zero.
Cassius Obama
I think Obama has waited until the sheer weight of lies and smears hit a critical mass. Now he has complete license (and in fact, encouragement) from the press to hit McCain as hard as he wants to.
This is a good start:
This is, of course, essentially what he did in the primaries. Hillary hit and hit and hit and hit. Then the public decided she was running a crazy negative, slander-filled campaign. The net result was her favorables went down and Obama's went up--even when he counterpunched.
Obama did the same thing over the summer. McCain attacked, and attacked, and attacked, and attacked. Obama didn't seem to retaliate very effectively.
Until the convention.
With a litany of scurrilous McCain attacks having piled up (by the way, that's an ablative absolute, for those of you scoring at home), the rhetorical power of Obama's acceptance speech was greatly magnified in a way that would not have been possible had McCain's attacks been rebutted more fervently.
"Enough!" anyone?
It feels to me that Obama is repeating this strategy a third time. Yes, it's been muddied by the uncertainty on how to respond to Palin. But the facts are McCain has unloaded his cannons--hurt Obama, but permanently ruined his previously untouchable reputation with the refs. Obama has survived this onslaught and now is the sentimental favorite again--a role that he plays exceptionally well. When he seems wronged, his supporters rally, his fundraising spikes and his volunteer numbers swell.
If the Obama campaign has learned anything over the course of this brutal election cycle, it's that being the frontrunner kind of sucks. The pundits and the comedians turn against you. Your base gets complacent. You are a marked man.
In some ways, being the underdog in the polls (no matter how dubious) is the best thing that could happen to Obama coming into the first debate from a media narrative perspective. I think that David Plouffe, et al. are cool, calm and collected because they geniunely don't think the polls are that important--especially the daily tracking polls. I think they believe in the mathematical reality of the polity and the advantages they have in organization and field work.
As an aside, I think that there is a neat parallel between the 527 and the ground game. Obama is trying to quickly rectify his mistake in defunding the independent 527 organizations. McCain is trying to quickly rectify his lack of ground game deficit with his Palin-energized based. My sense is both of these efforts will come too late for both candidates to close the gap with the other. Both 527s and GOTV efforts require months and months of preparation, and while last minute infusions of energy and capital can help, with fifty days to go, as a great man once said, "time is a luxury you don't have."
This is a good start:
This is, of course, essentially what he did in the primaries. Hillary hit and hit and hit and hit. Then the public decided she was running a crazy negative, slander-filled campaign. The net result was her favorables went down and Obama's went up--even when he counterpunched.
Obama did the same thing over the summer. McCain attacked, and attacked, and attacked, and attacked. Obama didn't seem to retaliate very effectively.
Until the convention.
With a litany of scurrilous McCain attacks having piled up (by the way, that's an ablative absolute, for those of you scoring at home), the rhetorical power of Obama's acceptance speech was greatly magnified in a way that would not have been possible had McCain's attacks been rebutted more fervently.
"Enough!" anyone?
It feels to me that Obama is repeating this strategy a third time. Yes, it's been muddied by the uncertainty on how to respond to Palin. But the facts are McCain has unloaded his cannons--hurt Obama, but permanently ruined his previously untouchable reputation with the refs. Obama has survived this onslaught and now is the sentimental favorite again--a role that he plays exceptionally well. When he seems wronged, his supporters rally, his fundraising spikes and his volunteer numbers swell.
If the Obama campaign has learned anything over the course of this brutal election cycle, it's that being the frontrunner kind of sucks. The pundits and the comedians turn against you. Your base gets complacent. You are a marked man.
In some ways, being the underdog in the polls (no matter how dubious) is the best thing that could happen to Obama coming into the first debate from a media narrative perspective. I think that David Plouffe, et al. are cool, calm and collected because they geniunely don't think the polls are that important--especially the daily tracking polls. I think they believe in the mathematical reality of the polity and the advantages they have in organization and field work.
As an aside, I think that there is a neat parallel between the 527 and the ground game. Obama is trying to quickly rectify his mistake in defunding the independent 527 organizations. McCain is trying to quickly rectify his lack of ground game deficit with his Palin-energized based. My sense is both of these efforts will come too late for both candidates to close the gap with the other. Both 527s and GOTV efforts require months and months of preparation, and while last minute infusions of energy and capital can help, with fifty days to go, as a great man once said, "time is a luxury you don't have."
Gallup's Wilful Deception
Remember when I said this?:
Yeah, it's pretty much confirmed:
While McCain is definitely getting a bounce in the polls, pollsters seem to be--at the same time--increasing the number of Republicans that they poll and decreasing the number of Democrats.
Now weighting polls is standard operating procedure, but making this change, while McCain is getting his convention bounce is amplifying the magnitude of this bounce. What is less than clear is if this is a real effect, or artificial.
Yeah, it's pretty much confirmed:
In other words, Gallup is admitting the following:
- At the time it released the September 8th poll (showing McCain up by 10), it believed institutionally that likely voter results were less accurate than registered voter results.
- Likely voter results have only occasionally diverged from the registered voter results.
- Despite these facts, Gallup deliberately chose to release, to the widest fanfare possible, a poll using an admittedly less accurate method (the likely voter method) at the time of McCain's maximum convention bounce, knowing that it would show a large divergence (+10 for McCain vs. only +4 with registered voters) based on the likely voter method, even though such a divergence is not often present.
- In short, they combined all possible factors in McCain's favor to make his lead seem as big as possible -- and the media went wild with it.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Why John McCain = Microsoft
(this is not a compliment)
Daniel Eran:
Highlights:
Daniel Eran:
Highlights:
- Pretending to play the role of an underdog outsider while actually being an authority with monopoly control.
- Appeals to uninformed audiences who don’t even realize that what they’re celebrating is not in their own best interests.
- Can’t function on the web.
Delicious Irony
Skin cancer survivor John McCain's VP pick Sarah Palin installed a tanning bed in the Alaskan Governor's mansion.
“The governor did have a tanning bed put in the Governor’s Mansion,” Roger Wetherell, chief communications officer of Alaska’s Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, confirmed to this newspaper. “It was done shortly after she took office [in early 2007] and moved into the mansion.”
Seattle Sports Fans and Democrats
The top ten similarities:
1. You never seem to win in the playoffs (but you do really well during the regular season.)
2. You're accused of being too nice and lacking a killer instinct.
3. You suffer from extreme media bias against you.
4. The Superbowl XL refs were clearly working for the Ohio Secretary of State in 2004, and Katherine Harris in 2000.
5. You feel like your team is always playing not to lose.
6. Mike Holmgren runs on 3rd and 12 about as effectively as Democrats run attack ads.
7. Your biggest hero turns out to be kind of a douche.
8. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth screw you over.
9. You hate your former players with a dark, eternal thirst for revenge that can never be slaked.
10. You've had your heart broken too many times.
1. You never seem to win in the playoffs (but you do really well during the regular season.)
2. You're accused of being too nice and lacking a killer instinct.
3. You suffer from extreme media bias against you.
4. The Superbowl XL refs were clearly working for the Ohio Secretary of State in 2004, and Katherine Harris in 2000.
5. You feel like your team is always playing not to lose.
6. Mike Holmgren runs on 3rd and 12 about as effectively as Democrats run attack ads.
7. Your biggest hero turns out to be kind of a douche.
8. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth screw you over.
9. You hate your former players with a dark, eternal thirst for revenge that can never be slaked.
10. You've had your heart broken too many times.
Defining Palin
The three most important women in America standing between Sarah Palin and the old Naval Observatory.
1. Tina Fey
2. Gwen Ifill
3. (distant) Hillary Rodham Clinton
1. Tina Fey
2. Gwen Ifill
3. (distant) Hillary Rodham Clinton
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