Iyow - in your own words

First, Gary Coleman got the plug pulled on him after one day, and now Rue McClanahan ? Say it ain’t so…

Now that all the excitement from the historic 2008 U.S. Presidential election has died down, Yuval Levin’s ‘The Meaning of Sarah Palin’ is the best analysis I’ve read yet on Sarah Palin and her symbolism, and why people reacted as they did to her. (And I’ve read a lot of them.)

It’s a fair and sober piece that understands the depth of Palin’s strengths – a stubborn belief in the importance of ethical government and the redeeming virtues of fair competition – as well as her (and more centrally McCain’s) electorally fatal deficiency in painting a full vision of why their beliefs would make Americans better off: “Palin’s potent combination of cultural populism and social conservatism might provide the roadmap a Republican politician will need in the future to make headway against the Democratic tide. But that roadmap will only take that Republican politician so far. The rest of the journey requires the articulation of a broader vision for American families, American prosperity and freedom, and American security; a vision of conservatism, not only a nimbus of populism.”

September 18th, 2008.

“It’s going down!” my buddy Chardmo yells.

I am awake.

“What’s going down?”

“The shit is hitting the fan!”

“When?” I mumble.

“Right fucking now! Let’s go! Move, Bitch! NYC for life!!”

I arise from my single bed that I have been sharing with Chardmo. My body comes alive. I can hear CNN rolling on our hotel’s Samsung TV set. I have no idea what the reporter is talking about. However, I can tell by his tone that the economic
excitement that kicked off this week is still in full effect.

“Let’s move!”

“Jesus. Alright. What’s the rush?” I mutter walking to the shower.

“Lehman Brothers. Wall Street. Now.”

...

Lehman Brothers was the same as the days before. Police barriers, reporters, camera crews littered the entrance of their corporate lobby. We walked by, making stupid comments, “Nice one guys.” We stood there for a minute; it felt a little strange. I thought maybe we should lay down some flowers.

It’s especially hard to quantify feelings and conversations in social science, but kudos to Pew Excellence in Journalism for taking an excellent stab at it. Full article here.

The current presidential election is on OpenSecrets.org, this election has already surpassed the entire 2004 presidential cycle in total money raised—$895 million compared to $864 million. And we’re just getting started.

Barack Obama has raised a whopping $235 million to date. Hillary Clinton has pulled in $189 million and Republican John McCain has surged to nearly $100 million since becoming the nominee. The vast majority of these contributions have come from individuals like you and me. And so, my question for those thousands of generous and passionate donors out there is this: Which part of the election have you liked best so far?

Was it the fact that the Democratic primary gave us our first televised debate in history that treated name calling and character assassination as virtually the only worthy topic of conversation? Maybe it was Hillary Clinton’s revival of the infamous Southern Strategy, relying on not-so-veiled appeals to racial prejudice to win. Or maybe it was the spectacle of an Obama adviser whispering in the ear of a concerned Canadian official something to the effect of, “Don’t worry about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric. That’s just the stuff we have to say to win elections.” Or maybe it’s McCain’s public delousing to remove evangelists that somehow got embedded in the skin of his campaign, including Texan John Hagee, author of the notion that God sent Hitler to help the Jews reach the promise land.

This sort of stuff sent me straight to the Land of Nod in college, but it looks like political markets may be more accurate predictors than the entertaining-but-often-wrong talking heads on TV.

Justin Wolfers at the Wall Street Journal
reminds readers that the political markets figured out the Democratic takeover of Congress during the midterm elections an hour before the talking heads assimilated all the data coming.

Some fun ones to watch:

Hillary Clinton’s going price/chances for the 2008 Democratic nomination.
Barack Obama’s for same.

Hillary’s chances of winning the CA Democratic primary.
Obama’s for same.

Rosie O’ Donnell’s recent tanking of her own prospective show deal with MSNBC probably didn’t hurt her none. She continues to get top billing for every outrageous thing she says, and she’s already as rich as Midas.

It’s such a weird thing with modern media – the hype about an event that hasn’t happened yet (or won’t) can eclipse the actual event.

Why get tied into a boring old regular TV show with a boring old format when you can get blogged about for shooting off your mouth or just being yourself?

Just last night, I caught a segment of Alive Day Memories, a documentary of ten soldiers and Marines who survived severe trauma accidents in Iraq – and lived to tell the tale of their ‘Alive Days.’

Regardless of one’s feelings about the Iraq War, “Alive Day Memories” brings into sharp relief the human cost of the war – the most jarring thing is seeing the videos of the young men and women prior to trauma, intact, confident, horsing around in their barracks; and after, missing multiple limbs, eyes, scarred faces. At the same time one is weighing the cost in lives – both American and Iraqi – the film elicits a contradictory feeling of pride in the committment and strength of the soldiers and their matter-of-fact optimism in the face of devastation.

The film also is visual reminder that though it’s reported troop survival rate in Iraq is higher than 90%, the injury and amputation rate are also higher because military surgery is doing a better job of saving people with deadly injuries.

The subject doesn’t need any added drama, but it’s produced and hosted by Tony Soprano! aka James Gandolfini, who does a fine, understated job giving center stage to the people who matter – the soldiers who fought for their country and survived.

When it’s still got gusto for taking on controversial, real issues – even in its 37th year. More yet, when it uses its forum to provide a voice for true stories from the front lines of the Iraq War – as Doonesbury has been doing with an open invitation to military personnel to post letters.

I’ve been a fan of Doonesbury since high school. I must say, at that time a lot of his sly humor went over my head – not least because of its wordiness. Nevertheless, I’ve always admired author G.B. Trudeau’s willingness to really use his forum – even when it occasionally landed him in the Editorial pages instead of the Cartoons.

Anyway, the from-the-front dispatches from Iraq are worth a look. Not least because it appears the editor took a light hand to them. I wonder though how frank most military personnel can (or want) to be while still in active duty.

We’re just cleaning up server startups and such where I work on 2nd St. in SF, where we were just hit by an hour-long-ish wave of power outage.

Amazingly, there are rumors that there may have been a malicious or drunken human event causing server outage at 365 Main, one of the city’s main server hubs!

Is this true??!? Or just the fantasy of disgruntled workers everywhere, bubbling to the surface?

Valleywag reports, awesomely, that A drunk employee kills all the websites you care about.

Potential victims would include Craigslist, Six Apart’s TypePad and LiveJournal blogging sites, local listings site Yelp, and blog search engine Technorati. Hmm, sites I care about… sites I care about… thinking, thinking… sites I care about….