A Difference Emerges

After the mess of the earlier debate, I have to say there is no question that McCain mops the floor with Obama when it comes to foreign policy.  McCain is clear, he knows his subject and he indicates that he has a plan.  Obama is just all over the shop and his rhetoric, particularly over Pakistan, is just bush league and naive.  

And he has the weirdest habit of saying that he "put out a statement" as if it indicates that he took action of some kind.  In fact, that might be the metaphor for Obama's whole political career. No actual legislation or governance, just a bunch of statements he put out.

This round goes to McCain, no question.

Pouring a "light" bourbon number four now.

Oh Come ON

Obama claimed that he is cutting more in spending than he is proposing in increases.  I'm sorry, but there is just no way that is true.  No way.  I'm sure the Obama campaign will issue some press release "proving" that it is true, but only in the most lawyerly sense, but it's just nonsense.  

Oh, by the way, Obama is going to respond to the economic crisis by expanding the Peace Corps??  WTF?

Then again, McCain may have totally undercut his message of spending control with that insane proposal to buy non-performing mortgages.  

I am into my third bourbon.  No matter who wins, it's going to be a rough four years.

I Am So Depressed

The bullshit is flying thick and fast here.

What on earth is McCain talking about with a program to have the Treasury buy non-performing mortgages??  I get the general idea, but he talks about the subject as if the problem is that home values are dropping.  What does that have to do with your ability to pay your mortgage?  It has nothing to do with it.  It's just a more palatable way of saying we are going to bail out a bunch of jackasses who borrowed too much.

My head almost exploded when he said that.

And are we really supposed to believe the new, improved Obama the Budget Hawk??  Where did this come from?  Obama promises to review the Federal Budget line by line.  Does he mention that the President has no Line Item Veto?  And that the Democrats opposed such a veto power consistently?  And we are supposed to believe that spending is going to be constrained with Obama, Reid and Pelosi in control?

Augh.

I really just hate them both now.  Neither of them has a clue.

Oooh, Pander Fest!

I am going to vote for the candidate who promises me a free iPhone and a $1,000 check.

Seriously, this debate has turned depressing very fast.

Yes, It Can Get Worse

Pretty crazy day on Wall Street.  Can it get worse?

Yes.  There is going to be a very large wave of hedge fund failures off of this and when those guys need to start winding down, the selling could get intense.  The fact is that there are just too many hedge funds and they can't all beat the market.  Too many of them have been taking on more risk than they admit in an attempt to generate excess return.  Their world is crumbling.

It is going to be very, very ugly soon.

Asleep at the Switch

The general consensus on the debate last night was that Palin cleared the lowered bar of expectations and, therefore, generated more political value than Biden.

I don't love the way Sarah Palin talks.  She was talking too fast and often got ahead of herself, leading to some extremely tortured syntax.  I don't think she is a dumb woman and I think her record in Alaska shows she is a skilled politician and can work the process.  That being said, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that she has not been engaged in national and international issues long enough to have a fully-developed worldview.  She is a quick study and I was surprised at some of the details she came up with, but we have to be realistic.  She is absorbing a lot, but that is not the same as having been focused on these issues long enough to have a coherent, well thought-out point of view.  In this respect, I do wish that she had been Governor for a bit longer.  So, at its core, you have to take it on faith that she will bring the same skills to the issues of the country as a whole that she brought to Alaska.  That's not a terribly compelling argument, but I think this image that she is some kind of blithering idiot is ridiculous.  She's also a weird contrast with Obama.  She actually has a record of governing but little engagement with national issues.  Obama has no record of governing, but he is clearly very intelligent and has been engaged with national issues.  They both have a big hole in their arguments.

On the other hand, I am absolutely dumbfounded as to how Joe Biden continues to get such a free pass from the media.  As I said below, he is very smooth and articulate and it is pleasing to listen to, especially when compared with the halting speech pattern from Palin.

But, my GOD, the guy just makes things up out of whole cloth and nobody says a word.

There was the usual political bloviating, like his reference to the people at Katie's restaurant in Wilmington, where the regular folk can be found.  Sadly, Katie's has, apparently been closed for almost two decades.  I don't begrudge him the bullshit populism, but, Joe, come on, at least reference something that existed some time recently.

That's just bad political style.   His policy comments were more bizarre and more fabricated.

For example, his comment that we spend more in a month in Iraq than we have spent in Afghanistan in seven years.  My ears perked up when I heard this because it sounds incredibly damning, even taking into account that Afghanistan is a more international conflict.  The problem is, it is totally untrue.  In fact, he is off by a couple of orders of magnitude.  Now, seriously, can you imagine the derision that Palin would have had rained down on her for saying such a thing.  How can the press not call him on such an outright falsehood?

And for a guy who is a 36 year Senator and a lawyer, he sure needs to re-read the Constitution.  Virtually everything he asserted last night about what the Constitution says about the office of the VP is wrong.  And his point, which was to bash the Cheney's interpretation of the role of the VP, didn't even make sense.

But the absolute jaw-dropper was his comment about how the U.S. and France chased Hezbollah out of Lebanon.  And that Obama, who had been a Senator for about three days when this happened, had called for sending NATO troops in to fill the power vacuum.  Can somebody tell me in what version of reality any of this actually happened??  It will certainly come as news to Hezbollah's leaders.  His defenders are saying that he meant Syria, but the problem is that it still doesn't make any of this true.  And are we now meant to understand that the candidates who feel we are overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan were in favor of opening up another conflict in the Middle East by sending in NATO (which, we all know, means US) troops?  Especially from Obama, who couldn't even bother to call his Senate subcommittee, which has oversight over NATO, into session once in his less than one term as Senator?  

How does he get away with this?  I was listening to the debate in the kitchen when he shoveled this out and I actually ran into the living room to make sure I was still watching the actual debate.

Will the media call him on this? Nope.  In fact, I have been reading about Biden's "mastery of the facts" all day.

Please.

Gotta Say

Of all the candidates, the one whose speech pattern doesn't drive me crazy is Joe Biden.  I don't agree with everything he's saying in the debate and he's peddling some pretty specious arguments, but I can stand to listen him talk.  I honesty can't stand listening to the other three.

I have a weird soft spot for Biden. I don't think he should be VP (or, God forbid, President), but he's probably a pretty decent guy and he manages to talk in more than soundbites.  Sure, that leads him into some goofy monologues, but there is a weird charm to him.  Of all of them, he's the one I am sure would be the most fun to just get shitfaced drunk with at some dive bar.

If McCain Knows What's Good for Him

There is a huge opportunity waiting out there for the smart candidate.  Obama is in the lucky position of having Pelosi, who must now surely ranks as the worst Speaker of the House in American history, do his dirty work for him by making it seem as if the Republicans, the minority party, somehow spiked the bailout.  Pelosi doesn't have the strength to get her majority party into line to pass the bill?  She's just so mind-bogglingly incompetent that it is hard to believe she is a national figure.  She's basically the Bush of the Congress, even though he has a higher approval rating.

McCain could really regain some of the momentum in this race if he stepped up with an easy-to-understand emergency plan of his own and then guided it through the House and Senate.  If he did it right, he would expose Obama as the do-nothing he really is.  Doing it right would be to offer a simple, 4 or 5 point plan that gave a little to all side, Wall Street and Main Street.  If he came up with the plan that passed, he would win the election in a walk.  If he doesn't, I'd say Obama is 80% likely to be the next President.

Will McCain grab this last opportunity to save his candidacy?  I don't know, but if he continues to allow Pelosi to play games he is going to drown with this millstone around his neck.

Debate

You guys enjoying this "foreign policy" debate?

Right now Obama is talking about bringing high-speed Internet to rural communities.  Huh?

The weirdest thing about this debate is the way both of these guys talk.  They are both Senators and it sounds like this is a debate for a Senate seat.  It's on both sides, but it is a curious feature.

Rat. Bar. Pellet. Pain.

Last night I went to see a triple bill of Meat Puppets, Dinosaur, Jr. and Built to Spill at Terminal 5.  I was really only going for the latter two bands, but I decided to check out the Meat Puppets set as I was not familiar.  They were okay, but not particularly memorable.  No offense intended to anybody who was a fan in their heyday.  I can see how it would have been fun when you were 19, but the music isn't interesting enough to hold up.

I've seen Dinosaur, Jr. a few times now and I cannot understand why I keep making the mistake of getting up close to the stage in front of J. Mascis without earplugs.  His rig last night was three Marshall stacks (i.e., three 4 x 12 cabs) and a small Fender pointed directly at him.  It's not a rhetorical question when I ask how he can possibly have any hearing left after playing 4 feet in front of that set up night after night.  I really don't understand how he can continue to hear with that much abuse.  I was probably about 15 feet away from the setup and my ears are still in pain this morning.  It's not just the loudness, it's the fullness of the sound.  I suspect he has each stack working a different frequency range (high, low, mid) so he can really tweak the sound.  The result is the kind of guitar sound that makes you weep, but it also causes permanent hearing loss.  If I go again tonight, I will be watching from the back of the hall with earplugs.

Dinosaur, Jr. are specialists at those kind of triumphal loud guitar moments that make your chest feel like it is filled with helium and the Mascis guitar sound is a major component.  I have to say that he was not on last night as far as soloing was concerned.  Maybe it's because I've been listening to so many jazz guitarists lately, where a tight rhythmic sense is essential to playing good lines, but I was really disappointed in how sloppy Mascis' playing was.  It was almost as if there were no drums.  He's always been a bit of a college rock Dickie Betts to my ears, but once he ventures out of smooth, straight eighth note patterns his sense of rhythm gets awfully shaky.  Maybe he was just having a bad night, but every triplet was too fast and every trill was unstable.  Weird, because I'd always enjoyed his playing.

After that sonic assault, Built to Spill hit the stage to play Perfect from Now On which is something of a masterpiece.  After the massive loudness of Dino, it was hard for BtS to establish a lower level for their intricate arrangements.  Unfortunately, the sound was a mess for the first two or three songs, which is a shame because the first two songs on the record are absolutely fantastic.  And the long breaks to tune between songs were pretty annoying and broke up the pacing of the set.  What is it with these guys?  I like to make sure that I am in tune, but I don't understand what is wrong with their gear if they are getting so far out of tune after one song that they need five minutes to tune up again.  It was very frustrating as there was a lot of waffling about on stage when the show should have moved forward.  On this front, the whole indie rock amateur hour aesthetic really gets on your nerves.  After the first song, one of the guitarists broke a string.  Instead of just switching to a back-up guitar, he started to fix it one stage while we all sat there bored.  Halfway through this, he decided to get his back-up.  I mean, you guys are supposedly professionals.  Have a clue.  This isn't playing in a basement in Idaho.

Ultimately, the sound got better and the band slotted into a groove with shorter breaks between songs.  By the encore, they had achieved some really gorgeous sounds and the audience of hard core fans was entranced in a beam of very positive energy.

Sadly, the band then squandered that moment with an excruciatingly long noise jam at the end where members of the Meat Puppets came on stage to swap instruments and join in the mayhem.  It's the kind of thing that probably seemed fun to the band, but after the beautiful songs that had come before, it was like stepping out into a cold winter day after having been sitting by the fireplace with a whiskey for an hour.  In a word, it sucked.  I really don't know why they did it.

Goldman Sachs Does Biotech-Style Financing

The deal that Warren Buffet struck with my old employer, Goldman, Sachs & Co made a lot of old biotech hands like me break out into a knowing grin.  Buffet just did a $5BB deal with the cream of the crop of Wall Street firms on terms that would normally only be found in a PIPE (private investment in public equity) in a crappy small-cap biotechnology firm.

For his $5BB, Buffet got a perpetual preferred stock with a 10% yield and 100% 5-year warrant coverage with an exercise price that was already in the money by over $10/share.  On a Black-Scholes valuation basis, that warrant alone is worth between $1.5BB and $2BB.  It's an incredibly rich deal.  In fact, I know a lot of small biotech companies with less than two years of cash burn who would have balked at such terms in recent months.  

Of course, the brilliance of Buffet's move is that he knows his investment is going to be protected by the U.S. Treasury with Paulson at the tiller.

When Goldman Sachs does financings on worse terms than a sub-$250MM market cap, money-losing, cash-burning, high-risk biotech would accept, you know that things are really bad down there.

I'm still shaking my head in disbelief.

Built to Spill/Dinosaur Jr.

The Misanthrope has an extra ticket for tomorrow night's show at Terminal 5.  BtS will be playing their album "Perfect From Now On" in its entirety.

Send me a comment or email if you are interested in the extra ticket.

You've Got To Love Him

I actually kind of like Joe Biden.  He's a little like a slightly crazy uncle who is not terribly bright but has convinced himself he is a genius.

Joe's latest hit is his contention that FDR got on television right after the Crash and soothed the shattered nerves of the country.

This one follows hard upon other hits like "Hillary would have been a better choice," "my helicopter was forced down over Afghanistan and "We should never have run that ad claiming McCain couldn't use a computer."

Just love this guy.  Can you imagine the coverage if either Palin or McCain had said anything so stupid?

This Is About Right

Brilliant.

Random Musings on a Sunny Sunday

1) I had planned to go flying today, but the U.N. General Assembly is in town starting tomorrow so the FAA has put up all kinds of temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) around Manhattan.  I was doing my best to interpret them this morning when I just said, "Screw this."  If you want to know why dealing with the FAA is so maddening, try to decipher the text of the NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that lays out the TFR.

2) The crisis on Wall Street has barely begun to filter through the system.  I would expect a large number of hedge funds to go under in the next few weeks.  Some of these guys are holding ridiculous exposure in derivatives and they are going to get killed when the mark-to-market accounting they are required to use starts to spiral down.  I can't say that I feel bad for any of them.

3) I've gotten fat and it is disturbing.

4) Spent part of the week down in DC at a joint FDA/NiH conference on treatment for Acute Radiation Syndrome (i.e., getting nuked).  I really enjoyed the level and tenor of the discussion between the scientists.  While there are some egos, the whole thing is a pleasure to watch.  It's really amazing how much work goes into even the most basic questions in research.  I listened to one woman discuss the measurement of water consumption by mice when the water had antibiotics in it.  You'd be amazed at how much work they had to do just to ensure that it was not affecting their experiments.  Amazing stuff.

5) Haven't played guitar much lately, but finally started to break through on the jazz stuff.  The key was finding a player who thinks in the way I think.   Turns out that guy is Joe Pass.  He does a lot of solo arrangements of jazz standards, so I bought a book of transcriptions.  Working through them slowly, I could finally see the whole picture as he was playing bass, harmony and melody.  It's the same approach as classical guitar, so it all clicked for me.  I continue to be awed by jazz players, but I am starting to see where some of the basics are coming from.

6) Seriously, I need to lose some weight.  Those martinis are starting to add up.

Good Site

For those of you who dig polling data and Monte Carlo simulations, FiveThirtyEight.com is the place to check out.  They update their simulations of the Electoral College daily with new data from statewide polls.  With Ohio and Virginia moving into the "McCain column and Pennsylvania starting to wobble, the map is starting to look like 2004 redux.

The Great Gig in the Sky

Richard Wright of Pink Floyd has died at the age of 65.

What He Said

Gerard Baker gets it right in today's Times (London).

An interesting side note.  The other day I was over at the Obama campaign website looking through some of his positions.  I scrolled through line after line of things Obama says he is going to do.  At the bottom of the page was a section headed "Obama's Record."  This is supposed to be the section of the web page where he shows that his record supports his ability to get these things done.

There were only 3 or 4 bullet points and some of them were references to legislation that passed the Senate unanimously and was not authored by Obama.  What does that tell you?

Like Clockwork

Obama gives in to the myth.

There is certainly nothing wrong with pointing out that McCain has been in Washington for a long time and this undermines his claim to the "change" mantle.  And McCain has not made this easier by courting the right-wing side of the Republicans in this election cycle so as to secure the nomination.  I liked the 2000 McCain a lot more. (Also, this opens the door to point out that Joe Biden has been in Washington since 1972, when Keith Moon was still alive.)

But making fun of the fact that he doesn't use email?  Weak.  This supposedly "new" and more "aggressive" approach looks more like a blindfolded Obama flailing at the Republican pinata.  I really do not think the McCain=Bush approach is the right one for Obama's campaign.  He was at his best when he was talking about how powerful he is as an agent for change.  When he was positioning himself to rise above the fray, he seemed strong and in control.  When he attacks he seems off-balance and defensive.

The problem is that his BIG IMPORTANT SPEECH schtick is too stale to deploy again.  

He's in a pickle.

UPDATE:  Jake Tapper at ABC's The Note makes the same observation.  (I love "Barack 'Isotoner' Obama."  Priceless.)

History Repeats

Here we go again.

I was sifting through a raft of articles today about how the Obama campaign is, among other things, taking on water, on its heels, like a tech stock bubble that has burst, etc., etc.  This is the result, according to the pundits, of the electrifying choice of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP.   While this is partially true, it is not the real problem.

The real problem, as I have discussed here before, is that Obama is falling into the trap of believing of one the Democratic Party's most enduring and cherished myths about its miserable record in winning Presidential elections.  That myth goes something like this:  The reason we never win the Presidency despite the fact that our ideas are so powerful and good is that we don't play as dirty or fight as hard as the Republicans (bonus portion: because we are so noble that we won't do that).

Barack, buddy, don't fall into this trap.  For one thing, it's just not true.  You know it and I know it.  Democrats play hardball just as much as Republicans.  Politics is a tough business and anybody who is honest knows that elections are won by swaying the opinions of masses of voters who are not reading your position papers.  So, please, just drop this silly notion.

The reason it is killing you is because your attempts to sound tough and fight back are drawing you into the biggest rope-a-dope this election season.  It's making you sound angry and confused and it is making you spend wayyyyyy too much time going after the VP pick on the Republican ticket.  You sound like Palin got in your head and rattled your cage but you are running against McCain. 

(Side note: You need to drop the McCain=Bush thing.  It just isn't working and running against Bush is a terrible strategy.  Running against somebody who isn't in the race is always a bad strategy.)

I was thinking about Bill Clinton.  Remember him?  The Democrat who won twice?  His brilliance was in playing just as dirty as the next guy, but always showing up with a smile on his face and his charm on full.  THAT is how you fight in a political campaign.  You can pick up some tips on this by watching Sarah Palin.  She's able to stick the knife in you and wriggle it around because she's smiling the whole time.  It makes it seem like she's saying, "Barack Obama?  Ha!  Come on.  Why would he worry me?"

By contrast, Barack, you sound like you are on the floor having a tantrum and screaming, "Why are they being so mean!!"

Shift gears.  Don't be Dukakis (too many to count)/Gore (Mr. Sigh)/Kerry (They're SwiftBoating ME!).  Those guys lost.

That being said, there is some hilarity in watching Obama flail about for a way to attack Palin and/or get back on message.  If he's elected, I hope he does a better job dealing with actual dangerous people, like Putin.

This Is The Issue

Federal Spending.  It has been out of control over the last 8 years.  The first six of those are the result of Republican malfeasance and absolute piggery.  Unfortunately, the Democrats have not fared any better, despite their promises.  

There is no bigger issue for me than this out of control spending.  As a taxpayer, I am appalled at the amount of money I am giving to the Federal government to waste on pet projects that have absolutely no place being funded anywhere other than the state level.

Whoever is the next Presdient needs to take on this issue first and foremost.  It is a rot that is destroying the government.

Wooing Women

Been doing a bit of reading about the impact of Palin on women voters in the campaign.  Obviously she has had a significant impact on the polls, closing quite a bit of the woman voter gap between McCain and Obama.  And the GOP base is now enthusiastic about McCain, somebody for whom they had not previously had much in the way of affection.  Many of them looked upon a McCain loss in 08 as positive thing for the party, forcing it into the wilderness for some purification.  Palin changes that dynamic substantially.

One argument that seems to be making the rounds is that Palin doesn't pick off Hillary voters because she is far more conservative than Hillary.  On its face, it sounds compelling and there is no doubt that hardcore Hillaryites are never going to vote for a Republican, pro-life NRA member.  But my sense from the polls is that Hillary had a lot of support from center-right women who were energized at the prospect of her becoming the first female President, just as many people will vote for Obama just because he is the first African-American president regardless of his politics.  They may have made up a small proportion of the 18 million who voted for her in the primaries, but I suspect that they are a more substantial percentage of the general electorate.  It's those voters who are likely to migrate to a McCain-Palin ticket.  Even a minority of these voters significantly changes the race.  What's more, women vote.  They actually show up on Election Day, middle-aged, middle class women in particular.  Since this election is really going to boil down to get out the vote, they are a big asset.

Chapter Five, in Which Misanthrope Gets His Oats

The Misanthrope has been emailing with a good friend who is a huge Obama supporter for the past few days.  He is a very intelligent guy and he made a reasonable case for why he is supporting Obama.  We've actually been talking about Obama for a long time.  Before he declared his candidacy, I was more neutral on him and thought that he could be an interesting choice if he just paid his dues and ran for, say, Governor of Illinois before going after the Oval Office.  Imagine if Obama were running with a record as Governor that he could point to.  It would make him unbeatable (assuming it was a good record, of course).

As I have gotten to know Obama more, I have been far less neutral on him and I really do not want him to be President.  That being said, my irritation with him has subsided substantially now that the ridiculous Messiah act has finally started to wane.

Unfortunately, what is left in its place is an Obama who is getting suckered into a horrible rope-a-dope by the Republicans.  He is responding to the electric Palin effect in a very short-sighted way.  Why on earth is the top of the Democratic ticket spending any time at all attacking the bottom of the Republican ticket?  He should just ignore her and stay on his own message.  Attacking her just makes it look like the race is Obama-Palin and all that does is diminish him.

What's more, Obama is showing his inexperience badly at this stage.  The interview in the link above is a case in point.  Don't get on the political talk shows and start talking about how you wish you had said something different a month ago.  It looks weak.  And the line about considering joining the military?  Come on, Barack.  We all know politicians pander, but good ones are not so ham-fisted about it.  The fact is you didn't join the military, so just move on and go to places where you are stronger.

Another bizarre strategic blunder is sending out Hillary Clinton to attack Palin.  All that does is remind people that you probably could have sewn this thing up if you had picked her, but you went with Joe Biden because you were insecure about your foreign policy experience.  I still cannot understand the Biden choice.  All it does is imply weakness for Obama, both in foreign policy and with white working class voters.  If Obama loses, this will be high on the list of bad choices.  And the notion that Biden, the 36-year Senator, is going to appeal to Joe Six-pack over Palin is looking awfully weak now.

I think we are starting to see the soft underbelly of Obama the Candidate; the man is very, very thin-skinned.  Steve Schmidt in the McCain campaign has managed to get deep inside Obama's head and Obama is starting to flail.  On Friday, Obama was at a fundraiser at Bon Jovi's house in New Jersey and he blustered that he would not be "bullied."  This is the kind of talk that gets donors fired up, but it is also the kind of talk that telegraphs "we are on the defensive" and Obama is at his best when he is on offense.  

As a side note, the Bon Jovi fund raiser also highlights one of the big downsides to Obama's reversal on accepting public campaign funds.  He is going to have to take time off from campaigning to raise money during the final stretch.  McCain is done with that and the RNC coffers are full, especially as the Palin pick has electrified a base that had not previous donated much.  There will be no money gap.  Obama made a bad choice on that front.  He gained nothing and handed his opponents a charge that he goes back on his word.  A bad decision driven by hubris.

The race is very close and the result will come down to ground organization in battleground states.  Obama is way ahead on this front and that is a tribute to some very smart strategic thinking early on.  Until Palin, McCain was probably stuffed on that front as the base was not very enthusiastic.  Palin changes that and, what's more, the excitement over her pick will still be fresh on Election Day.  Obamania, by contrast, has been going for a long time and, people being people, they tend to get a little bored.

It's going to be a very interesting two months.

Links We Didn't Bother to Follow

From Drudge: "Obama-backer Annette Bening pillories Palin."

First Impression

Wow, this woman is good.  She sounds fresh and doesn't come across as fake.  Her folksy talk is actually folksy, not a bullshit put on like it is with Hillary.

The speech was brilliant.  She digs at Obama by saying she never planned to run for this office.  She then lists her actual achievements, which is something Obama never does because he can't.  She hits what will surely be the major themes of the GE for McCain and she can point to things she has actually done.

She will absolutely destroy Biden.

Some Thoughts on Palin

1) Obama opened the door to this choice by going with Biden.  Once McCain knew that Obama had gone with a safe Washington insider over Hillary, he knew he had the opportunity to take the risk on Palin.

2) Unlike Obama's choice of Biden, McCain's choice of Palin doesn't point out any weakness that McCain needs to shore up.  Sure, there is the age issue, but that pales in comparison to "I've got absolutely no foreign policy experience, so I need to get somebody who covers me."

3) There's been a lot of talk about taxes in this campaign, but the real problem is spending.  The number one issue for me is the amount of ludicrous spending increases under Bush.  McCain has long been an opponent, even at the cost of popularity with colleagues in the Senate, of out of control spending.  Palin has the same missionary zeal about cutting pork.  She's the female John Kasich!  Neither Obama or  Biden have anything to point to on this issue.  McCain has his record and Palin has hers.  This is a major advantage and one they should hammer home for the next two months.  Not only is it good sense, it will appeal to the party base who have been appalled at the Republican pigfest in Congress.

4) Biden will have to tread lightly in the debates.  He's such an unbelievable pompous blowhard that he will almost certainly fall into the trap of looking like he is being a jerk to a woman.  That being said, I am concerned that Palin could be weak in the debates.  Then again, there is only one VP debate and it is not as well watched as the three Presidential debates.

5) This may not prove anything, but take a moment to compare and contrast the running of the VP rollout for Obama and McCain.  Obama put on that silly striptease for weeks on end.  Then the name just leaked out anyway on the Friday before the announcement.  The famous text message plan was a disaster - most people got theirs in the middle of the night after Biden's name had already leaked anyway.  And ultimately, the pick was Biden, a boring white guy who has been a Washington insider since the Nixon Administration.

By contrast, McCain kept a tight lid on the choice, prevented it from leaking during Obama's speech to avoid looking like an asshole and managed to throw everybody off completely so that Palin, who is an exciting choice anyway, was a complete surprise.  The Democrats don't even have her name on their "The Next Cheney" website (hat-tip - Jim Geraghty).  That's a pretty phenomenal job of blind-siding the opposition.  Does this prove anything?  Maybe, maybe not.  The contrast is pretty stark though.

Ever since Obama's Europe trip, the McCain campaign has been run brilliantly.  They took Obama's greatest strength, his celebrity, and hung it around his neck like an albatross.  They hammered him relentlessly about his lack of experience.  Obama took the bait and changed his game from the soaring speeches to the pedestrian effort from last night.  He got so concerned that he was exposed on experience that he chose Biden over Hillary, pissing off a great many and making all of us wonder just how smart he could be.  JFK and Reagan had the good sense to name their biggest opponents as their VPs and it worked.  It's the winning strategy.  Obama whiffed on that.

Palin is still an unknown quantity.  She could turn out to be a superstar or she could turn into a Dan Quayle gaffe-o-matic.  For now, though, McCain has just crushed Obama.

Hmmmm....

The Misanthrope really can't stand to watch political speeches.  There's just something about them, the silly language, the ludicrous exaggerations and oversimplifications, that just drives him crazy.  This goes for both sides of the aisle.  I can't stand watching either side give political speeches.

Knowing that I could certainly never stomach the annoying earnestness of Obama's speech in real time, I decided to read the text.  Truth is, it's not that interesting a speech.  I was pretty surprised at how much of it could have been said by any Democratic nominee for the last 20 years.

Obama certainly came out swinging against Bush.   Based on what I read, I am confident that Bush will drop out of the race  almost immediately.

As for McCain, it's hard to tell if Obama's attacks came off as strong or angry from reading the text.

But one thing really stood out for me.  When Obama says that he is ready to have the debate about whether or not he is ready to be President "any time," it struck me as very odd.  Obviously it's a little chest-puffing to make him look strong, but it seems to me that the final night of your nominating convention in front of a large crowd and uninterrupted national television coverage is probably the time to lay out your case for why you are ready.  The whole campaign is a big debate and Obama just had a huge chance to stage his rebuttal.  Instead, he simply said, "Aw, dude, this case for why I am ready is SOO sweet and you are going to be blown away when we debate it...someday."

The election is less than 70 days away, Obama.  The debate is already happening.

Also, is it just me or was telling McCain that you are ready to debate any time a bit of a silly move given that you turned down constant offers from McCain for town hall-style debates all summer?

Then again, the magic is in the image with these things, so I wonder how people thought it played on TV.  Did he look strong or angry?  Did he sound confident or shrill?  The speech is so boring on paper, it could really go either way.

Great Moments from Past Acceptances

I think we can all agree that John Kerry pretty much lost the election when he allowed "Dreams" by Van Hagar to be the song following his acceptance speech.  All the balloons in the world can't fix that.

If Obama accepts and then walks off to the intro to "Mean Streets" followed by "I'm the One,"  he wins in a landslide.

This Stuff Just Writes Itself

Obama to deliver acceptance speech in front of a faux Greek temple set?  He will step on a podium that will elevate him to where he is speaking?

Are the Dems going to just start sending the scripts of the ads over to the McCain campaign?  It would save a lot of effort.

UPDATE:  Advance video of the acceptance speech here.

A Bad Pick

I thought about writing a long post about the poor judgment in going with Biden, but Hell must have frozen over because Kos beat me to it and wrote exactly what I would have written.  (This may be the last time in my life I link to the looney bin over at DailyKos.)

I totally agree with him.  The Biden pick is a story that will be written with the same lead over and over and over: "In an effort to shore up his gaps on experience and foreign policy, Barack Obama chose Senator Joe Biden of Delaware..."

All That Buildup for...BIDEN???

Seriously, that was possibly the silliest VP announcement watch in Presidential history.  All the hype would have been worth it if Obama had chosen somebody outside the box, somebody who was a real surprise.  But Biden?

Obama has chosen a guy who is only six years younger than McCain, so forget attacks on McCain's senior citizenship.   A guy who last year said that he didn't think Obama was ready and the Presidency is not a position for learning on the job.  A guy who has launched numerous Presidential bids that have gone nowhere.  A guy who ranks sixth in Senate seniority and has been in Washington for 35 years, so forget the "we need to change the way things work in Washington" angle.  A guy who is a bit of an egotistical gasbag and has a long record of bizarre off-the-cuff comments.  I mean, the Republican ads just write themselves.  Less than 12 hours after the announcement, McCain puts up an absolutely devastating ad in a campaign that is almost entirely about whether Obama is prepared to be President.

I had been impressed with Obama's campaign in the primaries, but it seems like the whole thing is running off the rails lately.  They have burned a record amount of money to achieve a tie in a year when Democrats are massively favored.  They have lost control of the message and seem off-balance follwing McCain's rather tame ads.  And they choose the most uninspiring VP candidate imaginable.

Is There a Point to This?

What is the point of all this delaying and delaying and winking over the Obama VP pick?  It was cute for a while, but it's becoming ridiculously childish.  Just make the damned announcement already.  I've never seen such an over-the-top journalistic circle-jerk over a VP selection.

When this most precious of secrets is finally revealed to the world we've still got 70+ days to think about it and get to know the pick.

So, enough already.

(FWIW, I don't think the story about the Obama-Bayh bumper stickers necessarily means anything.  In the past, campaigns have printed up a lot of phony posters and other stuff to throw people off the scent.  It costs very little.  Now, if you told me they were painting the campaign plane...)

It Went a Bit Better Than This

The Microdot show was a low-key affair and seemed to go off well.

It could have been much worse.

So Worth It

The Misanthrope was up until midnight last night despite having an early start this morning.  The cause was the 4 x 100m Men's Freestyle race in Beijing.  Having tried to get my fat little body to move faster through the water for triathlons, I have a real appreciation of just how incredible world-class swimmers really are.  And I like the excitement of watching Phelps go for eight gold medals.  Even though I like rooting for the underdog, I also enjoy watching real greatness at the top of its game.  This is why I want Tiger Woods to win every tournament he enters.

At any rate, the race turned into what might have been the most exciting and shocking relay in Olympic history.  Forget the trash talking from the French.  Forget the fact that the world record was smashed by five of the teams in the pool in one race - 24 hours after it had just been broken by the USA in the prelims.  Forget that Phelps has 2 gold medals down, probably his two toughest outside of the 100m butterfly, on his road to a record 8.

The story of the race was the final leg by Jason Lezak, the US captain.  I still cannot believe what I saw.  He overtook Alain Bernard, who led by a full body length with only about 30 meters to go and won the race by swimming the fastest 100m split ever recorded.  If it were an individual event, he would have the world record for the 100m with that swim by over a full second.

It's hard to really conceive how incredible his feat was.  Under any normal circumstances, Bernard's lead with so little pool left would have been totally insurmountable.  I can't even conceive how Lezak made himself a full body length faster over 30M than the world record holder in the 100M.  It shouldn't be possible, but it was.  The headlines have all been about Phelps and his 2nd gold, but the real man of the hour was Lezak.  I am in awe.

If you haven't seen it, go to the NBC website and watch it.  It was truly one of the greatest US Olympic moments.

Wow.

Please God

Let this be Bob Costas' last Olympics.  The man is a disgrace.  His patronizing comments about the athletes from smaller countries during the opening ceremonies are embarrassing as hell for NBC and America.  

The man is an idiot. 

Please, fire him, NBC.

Well, duh.

Edwards admits he had the affair.  This doesn't really amount to much because he has been politically dead for a while now and I doubt McCain is going to go after him given McCain's less than savory history with his first wife/current wife.

You Have Got to Be Kidding

The Obama Salute?

My God, That's One Tough Review

I was Googling the terms "German Heidegger ska band song" when I stumbled upon a remarkable piece of rock criticism.

If the review of your record starts of with a one paragraph reference to Hannah Arendt's famous observation about the banality of evil, you are in for a bad review.

Of course, the outrageous pretentiousness and faux intellectualism of the reviewer makes me want to hit him in the head with a cricket bat and stab the little fucker in the heart with a salad fork.

Damned Repuglicans...Wait...

You know, they are going to try to make you scared of me.  They are going to say he isn't like us, he doesn't go to our churches.

You stay classy, Tennessee Democrats.

This is cool

A researcher at MIT has discovered a way to store power from solar cells efficiently.  

What Happened?

Over the last week, the Obama to Win contract on Intrade is down almost 8%.  The current bid is now just below $0.60.  It started the week at $0.65.

Meanwhile, the McCain to Win contract has been surging (no pun intended).  It started the week at $0.325 and is now at $0.36, up 10%.

These are significant moves in such tight markets.  I'm not sure what is going on here. McCain was clobbered in the last news cycle with the glowing coverage of Obama's made-for-TV Europe jaunt.  I think his latest round of ads have been shrill and immature.  But something is happening to Obama.  My wild ass guess is that the "Obama is already President" shtick is starting to wear a little thin.  I certainly understand why the Obama campaign is pushing this strategy, but it runs the risk of making Obama seem massively arrogant and self-absorbed.  When the Top Ten list on Letterman is "Top Ten Signs Obama is Overconfident,"  it might be time to dial back on the chin-jutting-into-history playacting and stop treating the actual election like a formality.

Economy

Good read on the Obama economic program.

The Politics of Meaning

Does this mean anything?  No, probably not.  The polls bounce around all the time and this is pretty clearly a tight race, at least in the world of polling.  And one poll means nothing.

But it does represent an opportunity for McCain.  This is the first time since the beginning of May that he has led in a national poll.  He should be out there beating the hell out of this news.

Why?  Because even though we know that this is just, as the article says, statistical noise, the public perception of this will be that Obama is not as inevitable as he has been made out to be.  Most people won't think, "It's just one poll."  They will just remember, "Wow.  McCain is ahead of Obama??"  And that's powerful.

As I said below, McCain needs to start playing Obama's game, which is a sophisticated one to manipulate public perception.  Obama's whole campaign is structured around the conceit that he is, pretty much, already President.  Call it the "Resistance is Futile" strategy.  If McCain is out there pushing this, however, it starts to make Obama look a bit weak, especially as it comes so hard on the heels of his European PR extravaganza that was supposed to be the icing on the cake.

Cynical?  Sure.  But no more cynical than speaking to 200,000 foreigners in an attempt to make it look like you are already President.

McCain can put some dents in the public perception that Obama is unbeatable.  He needs to start now.

But he won't.

In Case You Missed It

AP reports the US is winning in Iraq.

This is Hilarious

A button company mistakenly prints up Obama campaign buttons with Larry Craig (R-Idaho), He-of-the-Wide-Stance.

That would be a hell of a ticket!

This Guy is Killing Me

McCain really needs to put some energy into his campaign.  As the polls clearly show, Obama is not unbeatable.  Kerry had much bigger poll margins in 2004 and he didn't have nearly the level of concern over lack of experience that Obama faces.

McCain can whine all he wants about the fawning media coverage that Obama gets, but let's not forget that the coverage of the European trip came about largely because the Obama campaign very wisely planned huge events that attract media coverage.   Is it admirable the McCain has consistently travelled to Iraq without much fanfare when Obama hadn't been in nearly three years?  I think so, but that's just not going to beat a well-planned and well-executed media event such as the Obama trip.  And his campaign stage-managed the hell out of it by leveraging Obama's good looks and youthful athleticism.

McCain's problem is that he is defining himself as just "that other guy who is against Obama."  That's not a winner in any election.  Just ask President Kerry.  He has thrown out some policy proposals, such as renewed drilling, but there is no coherent message behind these stories.  This is partly due to McCain's general demeanor.  He hates the kind of stage-managed campaign that Obama is running.  So do I, but McCain needs to get over it.  This is how elections are won in the current day and age.

McCain's best shots at making up ground are a good VP choice and the actual debates.  This is where Obama is, surprisingly, very weak.  Obama off teleprompter has a speech pattern that is appalling.  You have never heard so many ums, uhs, and ahs.  It really is like night and day with his scripted oratory.  This is why his campaign tries hard to minimize those moments.  It's also why they ran away from McCain's townhall debate proposals; they knew Obama would not sound like such a rock star in that format.

But this is all irrelevant unless McCain takes the initiative and sculpts a positive image of why he should be President.  When he has that, he can attack the general fluffiness of Obama and his campaign.  Until then, he is just the crazy guy in the parking lot screaming about the government.

The Misanthrope Feels the Effect of Age

The Misanthrope loves the ocean.  Although he spent a lot of time on a lake in New England growing up, the ocean was always special and much more fun.  

I remember the excitement of our yearly vacation to Montauk.  Our family would rent an efficiency or a cottage at one of the hotels on Old Montauk Highway, directly across from the beach.  The drive out always culminated in a trip to the IGA in Montauk to stock up on food for the vacation.  The IGA is just over the dune from the ocean beach, so my brother and I would get out of the car and run up over the dune to get our first glimpse of the ocean and our first scent of the sea air.  It was always a very exciting moment.

That's why I return to the East End every summer.  I actually cannot stand a lot of the people out here, but the beaches are incredible.  This year, however, the beach seems to be in the process of reshaping itself in a big way.  Instead of a soft, sandy, gradually descending bottom, the shoreline has a quick drop and a lot of gravel.  In previous years, the break has been pretty consistent, so all you need to do is get out quickly, dive through a few waves and you are beyond the point where you'd get dumped by a big wave.  It's like having a net game in tennis; you've got to commit to going to the net or you get caught in no-man's land and you get crushed.

This year, the break is confused and all over the place.  Odd little sandbars pop up everywhere and make it hard to get out to a point where you are not going to be crushed.  More importantly, the rip current is much stronger than it has been in previous years.  I've never really been afraid of the current, but on Friday I went in for an evening swim and got myself to a spot where I gave myself a bit of a fright.  I managed to walk out beyond the break without getting clobbered, but in the middle of every set, there would be one or two waves where the receding water from the previous wave would suck me out towards open water with a lot of power.  I was out at a point where I could not touch bottom.  Normally, that wouldn't bother me, but I also noticed that I was having trouble getting back towards shore and I was starting to feel pretty exhausted.  

The moment passed quickly as I managed to swim onto the crest of a wave and ride it back towards the sand bar, but I was reminded that I am not 20 years old anymore and that I need to be careful with strong currents.  I haven't been doing any lap swimming recently either and those martinis are not helping my fitness.  It was frightening how quickly I got tired.  I know that if you are caught in a real riptide you should swim parallel to shore until you get out of the rip, but I was already pretty beat and the thought of having to swim downshore for a 1/4 mile or so was not appealing.

Sadly, I discovered this morning that several people along the south shore of Long Island had not been so lucky as I was.  

Is The Dam Breaking?

The Independent, a mainstream UK newspaper, is reporting on the allegations against John Edwards.  So is The Times of London.  (Coincidentally, the Times notes exactly what I noted in my earlier post:  the New York Times won't touch this, but it had no problems running thousands of words on its front page implying McCain had an affair with a lobbyist based on no facts at all.)

It seems the story is starting to seep out.  Edwards better get out on top of this or his political career is dead.  

Of course, Edwards has been a private citizen for 4 years now, mostly spending his time making a lot of money at private equity house Fortress and running another ill-fated Presidential campaign, so he has no seat to resign.  I don't really think that he was a serious contender for the VP slot with Obama.  He doesn't deliver any swing states.  He couldn't even deliver his own state for Kerry in 2004.  (Which reminds me of why Pawlenty is such a pointless choice for McCain - Minnesota hasn't gone to the Republicans in any of the last seven elections.  I doubt it will go Republican in the middle of Obamania.)  Most important of all, choosing the other Democratic candidate beside Hillary would not do much to fix Obama's problem with pissed off Hillary supporters.

So, Edwards does seem kind of politically pointless at this time and that does give the MSM some latitude to claim that there is no public interest in his private life.  Then again, we are talking about a guy who ran a competitive campaign for President and made a big deal of trotting out his wife and her medical condition for his political gain.

Dreaming of the Past

I'm still plugging away in the Presidential reading program.  Due to having a lot of work on my plate, I am a bit behind and am only now finishing Ulysses S. Grant. although I am scheduled to be on Garfield.  (Fun fact, his middle initial was not originally "s."  The clerk wrote his name down with the incorrect initial at West Point and he just decided to keep it.  The US later became synonymous with "unconditional surrender.")

At any rate,  the program keeps reminding me of the blessed days when candidates didn't go to the convention and it was considered unseemly to be perceived as actively seeking the Presidency.  In fact, for a long time it was considered unseemly to be seen campaigning even after being nominated.  Grant spent most of the campaign hanging out in "his home" in Galena, Illinois.  (It would be pushing it to claim it was really his home.  He rarely lived in Galena, had been a failure there in business and almost nobody in town actually knew him.)

As we enter month number 1,294,567 of the 2008 campaign, I think we can all agree that such times must have been pure bliss.

An Interesting Perspective

I was surprised by this Op-Ed in the New York Times this morning by Susan Neiman of the Einstein Forum.  Based in Germany, she claims that most Europeans are not particularly wowed by Obama and much of the supposedly laudatory coverage of him is actually hard satire, not praise.  She's just one opinion, obviously, but it is certainly a departure from the coverage I have seen in the U.S., where Obama is portrayed as having won the hearts and minds of Europeans.

Neiman makes a couple of observations that do jibe with my experiences traveling, doing business and living in Europe (or, at least, the UK) over the years.

"The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide. George W. Bush made matters far worse than they ever were, but the neoconservatives who advised him were right about one thing: Europe is gripped by a world-weariness that resists American dreams."

This definitely matches my experience in talking about America and politics with Europeans over the last 8 years and more.  After igniting two World Wars and bringing us the horrors of fascism, Nazism and Stalin, Europe does feel world weary and this is part of the reason why Europe is so resistant to military adventures like Afghanistan and Iraq.  Americans are seen as naive optimists, something that is generally mocked as "unsophisticated" on the Continent and in the UK.  While Obama may be charming, his "hope" message is actually a continuation of a stereotype of Americans that is not going to change if he is elected.  And his personal popularity is highly unlikely to change European attitudes towards cooperation with the U.S. in places like Afghanistan.  

Polls consistently show that the vast majority of Germans oppose any increased German military activity in Afghanistan.  Obama is not going to change that, nor is Merkel going to risk backlash from her people to help Obama out.  Sarkozy might get more involved, but since he is pretty openly chummy with Bush, it's hard to argue that Obama is changing anything.  In the UK, I happen to know (through a close friend that worked for him when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer) that, despite some obligatory America-bashing to keep political face, Brown is an admirer of the United States and its energy.  In Italy, Berlusconi is already an ally of Bush.  So, politically speaking, what would Obama change?  The former Soviet portion of Europe is already allied with the US.

"Berlin, in particular, is in the middle of a very post-heroic moment. Its former bravado about its history now approaches indifference."

This is something I, too, have noticed in many parts of Europe.  Given the horrors of the 20th Century and the shame over 19th Century colonialism, most Europeans I have spoken to see their past (political and military, not cultural) as an embarrassment and prefer to look towards the future in a peaceful, united Europe.  This trend seemed to be particularly prevalent in the UK, where the legacy of the Empire weighs heavily.  And, again, this is a factor in why Europeans I have dealt with are so skeptical of the United States now.  Having been top dog at one point, Europeans have seen the massive destruction that power can do globally and they fear America is making the same mistakes.  I remember having lunch with a Swiss investor whose father was in the German Army and hearing him say, "I never thought I would see the day when America opened a concentration camp (i.e., Guantanamo)."  His analogy is absurd, but the mindset that sees things like Guantanamo as a step towards bigger evils is not at all irrational.

On the other hand, a large part of anti-Americanism seems to spring from a younger population, removed from the direct experience of World War II, that is sick and tired of hearing from Americans about how we saved their asses in 1944.  In Germany, this is compounded by a young population that is stuck with the shame of Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust but is too young to have any culpability.  So, I do get the impression that there is a certain joy at being able to lecture America after having been lectured to for so many years.  And having seen how often the American students brought it up when I was graduate school in the UK, I can't blame them.

Unfortunately, it also leads to some whitewashing of the actual history.  Neiman, like Obama in his speech, uses a strange interpretation of the Berlin Airlift.  In Obama's speech, he used the passive voice; the Berlin Airlift just "happened," and there is no mention of who organized and executed the actual airlift (hint: it wasn't the Europeans).  Similarly, Neiman writes:

"So when Mr. Obama reminded Berliners of their greater moments — the airlift, the destruction of the wall — he risked more scoffing."

Was the airlift a great moment by Berliners?  The Berlin Airlift is actually an example of what happens when Americans take action to protect a difficult cause.  The French declined to participate at first because they believed that Berlin was a lost cause.  They only came in later, when it was clear that it was working.  It wasn't Berliners flying those planes into hostile territory, it was the United States Air Force.  Yes, there was cooperation from Germans, but let's be real.  No USAF and Berlin would have been part of the USSR.  That Obama managed to gloss over that was not surprising.  As I said, Europeans are pretty tired of hearing how we saved their asses in the 40s. 

Neiman notes that the airlift proves you don't need to drop a bomb to be a hero, but this is a bit disingenuous.  The reason that the airlift worked was because it was backed by American military power.  If you had just sent in a bunch of French cargo planes, the Russians would have had no trouble shooting them down.

But these are minor quibbles.  The point that Neiman is making, that the divide between Europe and America is deeper than antipathy towards Bush, is an important one.  There is a pervasive myth that we had the love of the world after 9/11 and Bush squandered it.  It's total bullshit.  There was no shortage of "America had it coming" opinion in the European media the day after the attack or in the weeks to come.  I remember listening to endless hours of that line of argument when I was in Europe just after the attack.

The Obama Europe trip was only a PR stunt to make him look Presidential.  He is not going to suddenly close the very real divide in world view between America and Europe.  The difference in perspective is deep and difficult to bridge.

(Pre-emptory note: Before StinkRock cries foul over the fact that I am quoting something in the New York Times, I will remind him that this is an Op-Ed piece, not a reportage or editorial opinion.  Neiman doesn't work for the Times.)

Basketball Star, Food Poisoned Pilot, Blogger...

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar blog.

Kareem is, of course, the man, but I was blown away by this section from his biography:

Kareem also remains intellectually active, authoring six bestselling history books intended to popularize the contributions of African-Americans to American culture and history. His books include "Black Profiles in Courage: A Legacy of African-American Achievement"; "Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes"; "A Season on the Reservation," which chronicles his time teaching basketball and history on an Apache Indian reservation in White River, Ariz.; and the current New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller, "On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance."

Jesum Crow!  The guy is unstoppable!

(Found via Gawker.  Kareem used to blog for the LA Times!)

And It Gets Even Weirder

The National Enquirer has now filed a criminal complaint against the security staff at the Beverly Hilton, where they claim to have seen John Edwards on his way to a tryst with his alleged mistress, Rielle Hunter (nee Lisa Druck).

The merits of such a complaint aside, it seems probable that the Enquirer did this so that they could compel the testimony of Edwards, thereby establishing that he was at the hotel on the date and at the time they claim in their article.  How do I know this?  The kind folks at the Enquirer say it right there in the article!  My but they are so clever.

Apparently, the Enquirer is now claiming that Fox News has verified that Edwards was at the hotel by interviewing the guards.  Off course, it does seem kind of suspicious that Fox News did the corroborating.

Then again, there is a link on the page to an article about how former Apollo astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell claims that NASA is covering up knowledge of alien contact.  He says the aliens are "little people who look strange to us," kind of like jockeys.

The Mystery

UPDATE:  I didn't read the IEM winner-takes-all description carefully enough.  It only pays out if the candidate for the party (they don't switch to the actual candidate names until after the nominations) takes more than a plurality of the popular vote.  So, it is not necessarily predicting an outright victory.  The market is only saying that there is  63% chance that Obama gets more than McCain in the popular vote.  The Intrade market, however, does pay out on victory (i.e., Electoral College victory) by the actual candidate.

One of the mysteries of the current campaign is the disconnect between the polls, which are fairly consistent in showing a statistical tie between McCain and Obama, and the various presidential "futures markets," which predict a 63% chance of an Obama victory.  My business partner puts more faith in the futures markets than the polls, believing that the format of the polls makes them unreliable.  

There is something to that position.  With the futures markets, the transaction is totally anonymous and there is no interaction with a pollster to muddy the waters.  With polls, you can get unintended effects from poorly phrased questions and you risk the possibility that the respondent is telling the pollster what they think he or she wants to hear.  This is probably the root of the supposed "Bradley effect," which posits that respondents will say they want to vote for the minority candidate because they don't want to sound racist, but they vote differently once they get in the polling booth.  If you believe that theory, however, then Obama would actually be behind McCain, which makes the disconnect between the polling and the futures markets even more pronounced.

 

One possibility for the disconnect is that the national polls don't reflect the reality of the American Electoral College, which is, of course, the way we actually pick the President.  Most of the Electoral College tracking maps that I see have Obama with a fragile lead in electors, which could be why the futures markets give him better than coin toss odds.  But the move of one or two swing states (e.g., Ohio, with 20 electoral votes) from Obama to McCain reverses the results and McCain has recently been showing some gains in those states.  

In the Iowa Electronic Markets, this theory about the disconnect appears to be consistent with the two different contracts that trade: the vote share contract and the winner-takes-all contract.  The first is a measure of the popular vote and will pay out in cents on the dollar, the percentage of the popular vote cast for the candidate, while the second only pays based on who wins.  The vote share contract seems to reflect the current polling data, with only 4 cents separating the contracts (note: the link updates with current prices, so it may be a different price quote when you click through.)  The winner-takes-all contract, however, has the 64/36 split, indicating a market perception that McCain will pick up a lot of votes in solidly Republican states that will add to his popular count, but he will lose key battleground states and the Electoral College.

Intrade, the other major futures market, only features a winner-takes-all contract as far as I can see and the results are consistent with Iowa.  They do, however, feature a VP choice contract, which is interesting to watch.  My favorite pick for McCain, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, is trading at 10.2 on the bid.

The one result I absolutely dread is that Obama wins the popular vote by a large margin due to big turnout in solid blue states like New York and California, but loses in the electoral college.  If you think we are divided now, just imagine what it will be like if people think the electoral college "stole" the election from Obama.  Oy vey!

John 3:16

Ha.

We Are The World

This is a fantastic post about the vapidity of Obama's speeches.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Everybody's favorite checkout line read, the National Enquirer, is going with a story that John Edwards visited his mistress and love child mother at a hotel in California.  This is actually a continuation of a story that has been going on for months.  The MSM has been ignoring this one so far.

Of course, major news outlets like the New York Times would never touch a story like this.  Can you imagine a distinguished paper like that putting speculation and innuendo about a Presidential candidate and an extramarital affair on the front page without any corroborating evidence?

Oh, wait.

Speaking of Heartfelt Thanks

Many thanks to all of you for the kind words after every post on the status of Her Satanic Majesty, Maggie P Satanbeagle.  It's nice to know that she has a lot of supporters.

As an update, Maggie has bounced back totally and completely and is 100% her old self again.  She was last seen prancing around the apartment with a rawhide bone, looking for places to "bury" it.  Translation:  I will find it under my pillow later.

We took her and Wallace for a walk on the beach on Saturday and she enjoyed herself immensely.  One of our millions of nicknames for her is "HMS Determination" because of the hilariously purposeful look she gets on her face as she cruises down the beach.  Well, the Determination was at full steam again.

On the treatment front, we had minimal tumor progression again at the last check, so we will go back to the chemo regimen this week.  Her blood work actually rebounded enough last week that it was in the guidelines, but I wanted her to have a real break.

I rarely talk about my professional life here, but I will say that one of our portfolio companies has done me an incredible favor.  Their CEO gave Maggie's vet a free supply of a drug they are working on that is both a chemoprotectant (meaning it protects against some of the effects of toxic chemo) and a chemopotentiator (meaning it appears to amplify the tumor-killing effect of other chemo drugs).  I can't say that I know it will work or have an effect, but it was a gesture of incredible kindness and I can't thank him enough.  Hopefully, Maggie will experience what the human patients have, which is the ability to withstand additional cycles of chemo without the usual side-effects.

She is a fighter.  There is no doubt.  And it's a pretty nice thing to wake up in the middle of the night and have her asleep on top of my head in the bed.

Nostalgia Gone Wild - Part 2

I've had a chance to watch a bunch of the clips from the VH 1 Rock Honors Show for The Who.

It seems like poor Roger must have been suffering from some kind of throat problem or chest cold as he is really struggling in "Baba O'Riley."  I noticed from the clip that Pete seems to have finally returned to a guitar sound that has a little definition.  One thing that has driven me a bit crazy on the last few tours has been this "paper over comb" sound that he has been using that is almost impossible to hear in the mix.  He seemed to be headed that way as early as 1978 because that's the sound he uses on the Who Are You album, but the sound for this show is much, much better defined.  Makes it harder for him to mail it in, though.  In some of the early 2000s shows, he's totally whiffing on huge parts and letting the keyboards take over.  I guess he is really just totally fucking sick of playing this stuff and I can sympathize with him.

Watching Baba O'Riley from this show, however, reminded me of what is probably the greatest moment in Who history post the original band.  It was the October 20, 2001 Concert for New York.  After almost seven years, it's hard to conjure the anxious mood that pervaded New York right after September 11th.  As most of you know, I was down there on 9/11 and saw the whole thing.  I remember waking up very early the next morning and just staring at the ceiling in the morning gloom and having absolutely no idea what happens next after something like that.  I had just switched off.  The Concert for New York happened when I was still at a place where I would just sit in my office and stare blankly at the computer for long periods.

Confession:  I watched the Concert for New York on television and The Who set didn't really affect me much at the time.  I can't help but watch them and compare them to the classic Who of 1967-1973 and, well,  the post-2000 Who-on-Ice will never measure up, so I didn't grasp what had really happened there.

One of my very close friends, however, had been at the concert and he was gushing about The Who set.  He was backstage watching Townshend as The Who were waiting to go on.  Townshend was, typically, annoyed as shit and said something to the effect that the other acts were pussies and The Who needed to go and remind everybody how it was done.  And that is what they did.  When The Who did go on, he told me, it was as if they were 25 feet tall and the rest of the bands were midgets.  It was a whole other level entirely.

After a little distance and time, I went back and watched the video of the show and my friend is right.  The other acts were playing very tentatively, probably because most of us didn't really know how to act at the time.  In fact, my old band Moneyshot played a show at Mercury Lounge 11 days after the attack and we really didn't know how to approach a rock show.  I had to play on borrowed equipment because I couldn't get into my apartment, which was right across from Ground Zero. As I told our audience at the top of that show, "We don't really know how to do this, so we're going to just do this."

But Townshend was having none of it and they all rose to the challenge.  

That would have been a cool moment on its own, if it weren't for something that still breaks my heart and that is the effect The Who had on the policemen, firefighters, emergency service workers and others at the show.  To say that these people had been through hell is to understate.  Not only had they seen such devastation, they had lost so many of their own.  And when the band kicked into "Who Are You," it was probably the first time in weeks that they had been able to let go and bring some joy back in their lives.  It helps to remember that there is no question mark at the end of the album or song.  Who Are You is a statement that you and the band are one, not a question. 

When I look at those guys in the audience,  I know them.  A lot of my dad's family are and were NY firemen and those are the guys in the audience, with their out-of-style moustaches, their mullets and their crisp blue dress uniforms, who jump for joy for the first time in weeks.  When Cusack introduces the band, you can see one of them holding up a picture of his dead colleague behind him, his arm dead straight, straining with all his might to ensure that his friend is captured on video and, hopefully, never forgotten.

They love The Who's biggest hits deeply, having been raised on a steady diet of classic rock radio in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island.  Some of them were probably at Shea in 1982 when the band said goodbye for the first time.  Some of them might even have seen the band in their prime at the Garden in the 70s.  They won't talk to you about how great The Who Sell Out is; they probably haven't heard it.  The Who is the purveyor of fist-pumping FM radio rock to them.  The band's outsider punk status in the early years is of little interest.

Maybe it reminds them of when they were young and didn't have a city of millions riding on their back.  Maybe they just needed to scream in the protection of 18,000 others so they could unburden themselves.  But they almost drown out the band when they sing "teenage wasteland" in the middle of Baba O'Riley.

The Who played for them - directly to them -  and it was something truly beautiful.  There's a lovely moment on the widescreen behind "Won't Get Fooled Again" when the Stars and Stripes are linked to a Union Jack in the middle. A small graphic nod from an older brother about our common heritage, perhaps, but meaningful at a very dark and uncertain time.  When Daltrey tells them at the end that The Who couldn't follow what they had done, it's not bullshit; it's from the heart.  When Townshend tells them they are honored to be there, he means it. 

Just look at them jumping up and down with a smile on their face when the four song set is over.

I still begin to weep when I watch it.  They earned it.

Nostalgia Gone Wild

Tonight is the VH1 Honors broadcast of the recent Who tribute show in LA.  I don't have cable, so I will miss it, but I'm not that bothered.  Most of the covers are so straight up and so reverential that they are kind of pointless.  The Who sound is so singular that it's kind of silly to try to ape it straight in a cover.  I'd rather see the bands play around with the songs in their own style.

That being said, this clip reminded me that, although I never was too crazy about Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder has one seriously great rock voice.  He nails this one and it is not an easy song to cover for a singer.  I just wish Pearl Jam weren't so crushingly earnest so I could listen to it more.

The Trials of the MagDog

Things have been going well for the MagDog lately, but we had a bit of a scare yesterday.  I had serious bout of insomnia, so I got up at 3:45 AM and stayed up all day.  When I got up, I noticed that she was looking a bit sluggish.  By the mid-morning, she was looking very worn down and hard hardly moved all day.  I went to lunch with an old friend and came back to discover that her snout had swollen up so much that she looked like Jimmy Durante.  So we took her to the vet.

At first, it seemed like she might have had a reaction to an insect bite, but this morning the vet called to say that her blood work had come back and her white cell count had crashed below a critical level.  This immunosuppression is the result of the chemo she is taking.  The upshot is that we have her on a short course of antibiotics until her immune system bounces back.  More importantly, we're going to have to give her a short break from the chemo.   Unfortunately, fibrosarcomas are extremely fast-growing tumors, so we are running the risk that this will allow significant tumor growth.  The whole situation is a maddening mix of costs and benefits, so it is very difficult to know what the right course is.  She's rebounded somewhat with rest and with the help of the antibiotics, but she's not nearly 100%.

This is why cancer is such a maddening disease.  The drugs we use can be effectively, but the way they work creates so many side effects that it is as if we were trying to kill a bunch of bank robbers by spraying machine gun fire into a group of them and their hostages and hope we don't hit too many hostages.  Obviously I want to have the MagDog around as long as possible, but I also don't want her days to be spent feeling low or sick.  As  I said in a previous post, the biggest challenge is recognizing when the chemo stops being for her and start being for me.

A Note On Comments

StinkRock and I have been going back and forth in the comment section quite a bit.  For reasons I don't understand, he finds it bothersome that I respond.  The vast majority of comments here are just friendly back and forths about music and other things, but politics always brings out a much more intense reaction.  So, let me clarify some things about comments and this blog:

1) This is my blog.  If you want to disagree with something I write, that's what the comments are for and I welcome them.  I'm interested in hearing facts or solid arguments that contradict or support what I've written.  That's the benefit of this kind of forum.  One of the reasons I like talking to people on the other side of the political spectrum is that it makes me constantly review what I am thinking and hold it up against good arguments.  As a relatively conservative person (at least about the role of government) who lives in the relatively liberal Northeast and went to very liberal schools, I am very, very used to talking politics with people who don't agree with me. 

2) Don't be surprised, however, if I respond.  If you erect a bunch of straw men arguments (i.e., you post a comment arguing against something I didn't say), you should expect that I will point out that I didn't say what you claim I said.  This kind of argument is something I find intensely irritating as I don't like having words put in my mouth.  If you are posting on my blog, engage something that I actually said, not some argument you think I would make because I tend to be on the right side of the political spectrum.  We all have a tendency to say, "Person A believes in political view X, which party of this Party's view, so he must believe Y and I am going to call him on that."  I do it too and I try to be vigilant about stopping myself from doing it.

3) Don't be surprised if I try to poke holes in your comment if I perceive that it is not logical or doesn't respond to anything I actually said.  Presumably, that's what you are doing with your comments, especially if you say something like, 'I call bullshit.'  If I don't think you pointed out a flaw, I may respond and lay out my case.

4) Don't attack me for responding.  If you are posting here and get upset if I respond, don't post.  In debating, the use of ad hominem arguments is generally considered to be a sure sign that you cannot defend your position with real arguments.

5) Don't tell me how to run my blog.  It's my blog.  I can a do what I want.  If it bothers you that I reply, you shouldn't be posting in the first place.  I'm opening my arguments up to scrutiny by posting.  So are you.  That's the deal.  If you don't want responses, don't comment.

Global Warming

I could be mistaken, but wasn't there also a Frank Zappa album with this title?

Oh the Guilt

I just got an email that The Who are touring this fall in the US.  There's no reason to go.  Moon and Entwistle are dead.  The new record was okay but not great.  Townshend doesn't seem interested in playing any lead that doesn't involve abuse of the tremolo bar or a lot of pull-offs to open strings.  And their new video isn't so great either.

Fuck, I know I'll go anyway.  Townshend is my only hero.

What is wrong with me?

Flags at 3/4 Mast

The Indonesian penis-lengthening woman is dead.

Il Retorno di Microdotto

Looks like the Via Skyway show at Rose on Monday, August 18th is going to feature a set from Microdot.  Given that all three of us are going to be there on stage with our equipment set-up and ready, it seemed like a good idea.  Not sure how long of a set to expect, but we will be doing a bunch of songs we never released, including "Paper Airplane Crash."

Should be fun.

A Foam Olive Branch

I believe that StinkRock and I can at least agree on the importance of beer in history.

This article reminded me of something I read in The Great Bridge by David McCullough.  It's a history of the design and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and I am a huge enough dork that I not only read it in just about one sitting (on a flight to London) but I thought it was an excellent book.  It is certainly an example of McCullough's work before he started writing these annoying history-as-grand-opera biographies.  (Here's a fun game - read one of McCullough's later books, like John Adams or 1776, and drink a shot of gin every time you find a description of somebody structured like this: "Although (historical figure) was (short, fat, bald, diminuitive, or some other negative), he was the greatest (orator, general, statesman or other achievement) of his day."  Bonus points if you can find two people who happen to be the same "greatest" of the day.  I guarantee you they are in there.)

Anyhoo, one of the fascinating parts of the book was the description of the daily life of the men who actually labored on the bridge.  I had instant indigestion when I learned that most of them started the day with something called "beer soup," which was a mixture of beer, eggs and some other stuff warmed up.  It's a wonder anything got done because those guys must have been hammered from dawn to dusk.

Amazing Journey

This is a pretty remarkable video.  Dr. Jill Taylor, a brain researcher at Harvard, describes what it is like to have a cerebral hemorrhage from the inside.  It takes a bit to get going and does suffer from a bit of New Age-y mumbo jumbo talk, but it is pretty fascinating to hear what it is like to have your left hemisphere detach from the right hemisphere.  It's also an interesting discussion for any of us who have been involved in a creative enterprise such as painting, writing music, etc., where we are frequently trying to get away from our conscious selves, turn off our internal critic and tap into something that creates our best works of art.  Takes a bit of time, but worth the time.

(Note:  I realized that I am being a bit imprecise here.  The left and right cerebral hemispheres are separate already but they are connected by the corpus callosum.  What she is describing is the effects of a hemorrhage that effectively shut down that communication.)

Pander Bears

StinkRock and I were talking about disillusionment with the political process below when I came across this article in the Washington Post today mocking both McCain and Obama for their pandering to Hispanic voters.  It makes for some stomach-turning reading.

It's Almost Impressive

The approval rating for Congress is in the single digits for the first time in history.  That's a pretty mind-boggling achievement.  It would be fun and easy to jab at the incompetence of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (and point out that they have approval ratings below President Bush), but the truth is that the Democrats only finished the job the Republicans started in 2002 with their outrageous pork pigout.  Our national legislature has become an embarrassment, but what is more worrying is the sense of fatalism that an approval rating this low suggests.  The idea that politicians suck no matter what so it's not worth caring is a dangerous one.

For the Misanthrope

Oh yes...

Muy Polvo

For le StinkRock.

Black Gold

So, I was out in the back yard today killing a baby mole with my fireplace irons...let me go back.

The WMDs have discovered a mole nest near the house and seem to delight in driving the little blind critters out and then killing them...or nearly killing them.   Today I found a blind baby mole lying in the grass,  still breathing but clearly injured.  It was a pretty sad sight, so I decided to put the poor thing out of its misery with a swift blow to the skull.

Anyhoo, it got me to thinking about oil again and I saw this article in Forbes which expands on the earlier post I made on the subject.  Enjoy.

The New York Times Channels Johnny Rotten

Ever get the feeling that you've been cheated?

Cassette Tech Bleg

I was talking to Superfly, aka The Misanthrope Mom, about my interest in jazz and she mentioned to me that she had a recording of my late Uncle Ray playing jazz piano with his quartet.  I just got it in the mail and it is pretty eye opening.  I didn't really know Uncle Ray very well.  He and my Aunt Phyllis (Superfly's sister), lived in Rochester, NY and we didn't get up there much.  

It turns out that Ray was a pretty accomplished musician.  He trained at the Eastman School of Music and his chops show on the cassette tape my Mom sent me.

Hence, this bleg.  Do any of my audio-engineering readers know how to get a cassette-to-CD transfer done?  I'd like to have this transferred to a more modern and more durable medium

Thanks ahead of time.  While we wait, please enjoy these photos of the WMDs.