July 30th, 2008
If I had a boat, I’d go out on the ocean. And if I had a pony, I’d ride it on my boat.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-_W18CWypE]
Archive for July, 2008
July 30th, 2008
links for 2008-07-30
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The author of Ender’s Game is a homophobe?! WTF?!
July 30th, 2008
Good news for the blogosphere.
The wonderful Ta-Nehisi Coates will be taking over for Yglesias blogging at The Atlantic. This is wonderful because it means that Yglesias will basically be the same at a different URL, and Ta-Nehisi will now, by contractual obligation, write a lot more than he is. More Ta-Nehisi=good.
I suppose the only downside is that we probably won’t be able to convince him to also keep writing for us at TPMCafe.
July 29th, 2008
Ted Stevens used to have an awesome mustache.
July 29th, 2008
This guy’s gotta be fucking kidding.
The always bafoonish Mark Penn:
Wouldn’t you know it, but former Hillary chief strategist Mark Penn now thinks Barack Obama has a good shot at winning the general election — after spending months bad-mouthing his chances.
Penn arrived at this conclusion in a fairly novel way, however: He says that the key to the election will be a group of people he describes as “active grannies.”
“In the coming months, the big viewers of cable television, the conventions and the debates will be the active grannies,” Penn writes in a new column for the Politico, “and they will be torn between wanting to vote for the kind of change they voted for in 1992 and wondering whether Obama has cleared the experience hurdle they are concerned about.”
Whenever I’m annoyed at Obama, I remind myself that I can now happily read this and laugh without simultaneously crying.
July 29th, 2008
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
July 28th, 2008
When two of my favorite TV shows collide.
July 28th, 2008
links for 2008-07-28
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Great piece by Chris about MoveOn transitioning between organizing models and out of opposition.
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An interesting video on generational divides in media consumption.
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Not surprising, but nice to have the numbers to back it up.
July 28th, 2008
I’m featured on predictify.com.
The guys from predictify.com asked me to be their “VIP” this week. Essentially, that means my mug is featured on their homepage with the question I’m posing to the community:
With the help of an email list estimated to have over 5 million addresses, Barack Obama has shattered fundraising records, mounted an unprecedented offline organizing effort, and stayed in almost daily contact with his most fervent supporters. By election day in November, that list could easily double or triple in size.
If he wins, will Obama take the list with him to the White House to activate his base; hand it over to the DNC; or, as did Howard Dean in 2004, spin the group off into an independent grassroots organizing effort?
Micah Sifry’s brilliant essay, “Obama’s Organization, and the Future of American Politics,” was the inspiration. If for some reason you didn’t read it when I fawned over it in my del.icio.us links, do it now. It’s simple an essential piece of movement analysis to understand the political moment in which we find ourselves.
I’ll be fascinated to watch their community hash this out. I did, after all, in a past life design and help build a political prediction site of my own.
What’s your prediction? What will Obama do with that list?
July 27th, 2008
My musical guilty pleasures.
I’ve been tagged by Spencer with a meme: top five most embarrassing songs on my iPod. It’s an easier one for him to do than most of us. After all, he writes about music fairly regularly and has well-established punk cred. I have no such cred (outside of my own mind). So let me preference this list with the assurance to you that I do have decent taste in music. Really. I swear.
That out of the way…
1. Rockapella – Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdzyuJJZMCI"]
In some sense, this isn’t that guilty of a pleasure. After all, WITWICS? was a fucking awesome show that I make no apologies for having watched as a kid. But I still listen to this song. Relatively regularly. And, to make matters worse, I have other Rockapella songs. So I can’t even claim it’s just a WITWICS? thing. So ya, I like acapella. I said it. (Bonus Rockapella clip)
2. Dierks Bentley – Lot Of Leavin’ Left To Do
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4ihUR6hgs]
My friend Matt and I traveled around the country for a summer. We covered 37 states in 6 weeks. We were on a mission to see America. One of the things we learned is that pop country radio is all you can get in most places between New York and San Francisco. And it’s kind of awesome.
This song became something of an anthem for us. Not because we were hooking up with ladies and then hittin’ the road (we wished). But because we were literally getting up and going to a new state, sometimes two, every day of the trip. We always had a lotta leavin’ left to do.
3. John Mayer – Why Georgia
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs8dsERsal8"]
I was convinced for about 2 months while I was in high school that John Mayer was gonna be the next big folk rock hero. He didn’t have an album yet but everywhere Napster library I invaded looking for Dave Matthews live music I was seeing his acoustic stuff. So I downloaded all of it, and I was into it.
Needless to say, once his first studio album came out, I realized that I’d been listening to N’Sync with a guitar and just didn’t know it. That was really depressing. I’m still convinved, though, that all that would be required to turn the man into a really quality song writer is a couple of years of a heroin problem.
4. Tiffany – I Think We’re Alone Now
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0CF-mdfrk0"]
It’s a summer camp thing. I believe that is explanation enough.
5. Britney Spears – Toxic
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkIytHD5v9c"]
I spent a week in Puerto Rico in a very classicly Spring Breaky trip while I was in college. Our hotel room on had a few channels, and one of them was CNN Espanol. As a good citizen, I tried to check in with the world to stay in touch with current events so would turn the channel on once or twice a day. Without fail, every four or five minutes, this song would come on. There was no explanation, no news person kicking to it saying “now for a nice break!” No reason that the video itself (other than the fact of its existence) constituted news in any way.
After a few listens, I was totally hooked. You could say I was addicted to it, though it knew it was toxic.