BRIAN NOGGLE: Two weekends to reshape Hollywood?
Archive for 2008
September 27, 2008
BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of Apple Computer, iPhone, and iPod news. Including hints about the new Macbook.
But, if I were writing the SNL skit, I would have the two candidates engage in a sympathy-for-veteran-families-and-other-noble-causes “Jewelry-off” playing on the “I have a bracelet too” comment from Obama.
“Oh yeah? I have this earing and two bangles….”
“Well, my nipple ring proves I care more about ….”
Probably funnier than what will actually appear.
ERIC POSNER: Do economists know what they’re talking about?
MORE ON THE MISSOURI GOON SQUADS.
YEAH, I DON’T THINK THAT this Sarah Palin swimsuit video is going to do the campaign any harm.
Now, a Joe Biden swimsuit video . . . well, best not even think of it.
September 26, 2008
JERRY POURNELLE: “As I surmised, the bailout — good idea or poor — can’t be made to happen until Barney Frank and Senator Dodd are allowed to wet their beaks. . . . There isn’t a hell of a lot of leadership being shown here. The Senators who are running for office seem more bent on that than on being part of the Senate. Everyone seems agreed that something must be done, but that his or her team won’t get enough out of it, so we need more negotiations. That is probably not going to work. I sure hope something does before it’s too late and nothing will work.”
A POST-DEBATE INSTA-POLL:
UPDATE: Compare the results at the Drudge poll.
KATIE GRANJU ASKS WASHINGTON POST REPORTER KARL VICK SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS REPORTING ON SARAH PALIN, and isn’t happy with his answers.
ANN ALTHOUSE WILL BE LIVEBLOGGING THE DEBATE. So will Jason Pye.
Also, Stephen Green is drunkblogging, and the back-injured Bruce Carroll is Vicodin-blogging.
UPDATE: Oh, what the hell. You liveblog too. I’m opening comments. Please try to wait a minute or two in between refreshing.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm. Doesn’t seem to be working. Something in the site move seems to have screwed things up.
MORE: Extreme Mortman isn’t impressed with the debate so far: “Drunk blogging? Vicodin blogging? Heck, any instapundit readers up for Ambien blogging?”
And can we get rid of that lame Main Street / Wall Street dichotomy now that both of them have used it more than once? Please?
TigerHawk is liveblogging, too.
Speaking on behalf of PorkBusters, I’m glad to see the earmark issue getting so much attention.
But neither Obama nor McCain is on top of their game — they kind of sound like an SNL parody of themselves.
Jeff Garzik emails: “Both are floundering. The debate format is brilliant, primarily at drawing out the
soundbite-driven nature of both candidates.”
Heh: “I can’t stand this ‘main street’ rhetoric. I thought that there was no main street any more since Walmart spelled the death of it . . .”
More liveblogging from Jules Crittenden.
So is John Althouse Cohen, and it’s hard to argue with this observation:
“I’ve got a bracelet.” “I’ve got a bracelet too!” Are these serious adults running for president, or is this summer camp?
Yeah, McCain and Obama aren’t bad guys, but it’s hard to believe that these two are the best that a country of 300 million can produce.
More liveblogging at Gateway Pundit.
Wow, the debate isn’t even over and the McCain folks already have this video out.
Bob Owens: “Frankly, I think everyone, right and left, was expecting something far different than we saw here tonight.”
And reader Peter Sibley emails: “Strangest line of the night: From Obama: ‘I never objected to nuclear waste.'”
FABIUS MAXIMUS looks at the profusion of debt in the post-World War Two economy. Some troubling graphs. People have been predicting problems from this for decades. Of course, you could have said the same kind of thing before the Fannie Mae collapse . . . .
PLANS TO quake-proof Cal Stadium.
ROSE THE workaholic border collie.
If Obama supported gun rights, many pro-gun people, even Republicans, would support him, because many pro-gun people are single-issue voters on this topic and Obama’s opponent has a spotty record on gun rights. (The NRA and pro-gun rights voters have supported pro-gun Democrats in many elections.) Also, if Obama really supported the right to arms, it’s likely that many additional Republican, libertarian and independent voters would support him because conservatives and libertarians often interpret a politician’s support for the right to arms as a reliable proxy for that politician’s support of other individual rights. This point seems especially strong now, since many Republican voters distrust Obama’s opponent on free speech, business regulation and other big-govt-vs-individual-rights issues.
So on the one hand we have single-issue pro-gun people opposing Obama on guns, and on the other hand we have people who are primarily Obama partisans, not gun people, arguing that pro-gun people should trust Obama on guns. Who should we believe?
Who, indeed?
BARACKROLLED: Best political video of the season so far.
DAMON ROOT on D.C. v. Heller and the failures of conservative judicial restraint. “What we need is a principled form of judicial activism, one that consistently upholds individual liberty while strictly limiting state power. Too bad neither the right nor the left seem very interested in that.”
MICHAEL SILENCE: Hey Congressman Frank, what happened in five years?
PARTY LIKE IT’S 1929: “Some 258 parties, a number of them hosted by lobbyists for the finance, insurance, and real estate industries, have been thrown for members of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee this year, according to an investigation by the Sunlight Foundation’s Party Time project.” (Via Taxing Tennessee).
PATTERICO sees a pattern of intimidation leading up to the Obama campaign’s latest threats: “In 2006, when ABC ran ‘The Path to 9/11,’ Harry Reid & Co. wrote a mafia-style letter threatening ABC’s broadcast license. In 2004, a group of Democrat lawmakers wrote Rupert Murdoch and threatened Fox News’s broadcast license over what they believed was skewed reporting. And the DNC threatened Sinclair Broadcasting’s broadcast license over an anti-Kerry documentary called ‘Stolen Honor.’ Kerry spokesthug Chad Clanton was quoted as saying: ‘I think they’re going to regret doing this, and they better hope we don’t win.’ He hastened to add that it wasn’t a threat.”
Meanwhile, Ted Stevens is doing the same kind of thing. An old-fashioned corrupt politician using lawyers to silence critics? Is that the kind of image Obama wants to foster?
AXING THE “renewable diesel” tax credit.
TEN HIGH-TECHNOLOGY QUESTIONS that McCain and Obama should be debating.
THE BEST OF THE “BAD” MOVIES. No fair nominating Plan Nine from Outer Space. Besides, that’s probably the worst of the bad . . . .
KATIE GRANJU: Don’t give up on the idea of home ownership for the masses. I agree, but it needs to be homes that people can actually afford.
HOW DO YOU throw fire on flames?