Mastercard Commercial I'd Like to See

Karl Rove and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales found to be involved in a cover up of the U.S. attorney firings by the Senate Judiciary Committee?

Nice.




Valerie Plame to take CIA leak lawsuit to Supreme Court?
Sweet.




A democratic-controlled White House, Senate and Congress?

Priceless.

Grant Park Rally Report

It wasn't like a celebration after a Bulls victory or a Pistons victory in Detroit.

It wasn't like a Taste of Chicago or a Blues Fest.

It didn't lure hooligans or Obama-haters looking for trouble. They weren't in the neighborhoods either.

It wasn't a "complete mess" or any of the things some people said it would be. It was a gathering whose core was made of people deeply involved in the outcome of the election.

What it was, was an evening of watching CNN on a Jumbotron and then hearing McCain's concession and Obama's victory speech. And then it was time to go home. The Chicago Tribune has a time lapse photography video of the entire event in 3 minutes.

There were two high points for me. First, when at 10pm CDT, CNN announced a projected Obama win from Virginia, immediately followed by their projection of Obama winning the Presidency. The jubilation of that moment is something I will never forget. Next, and this is a funny one, was seeing Biden come out with that smile and his sky-blue tie. I like that guy.

The Chicago Tribune caught a pic of me in the crowd at one of the moments of jubilation. (It's pic #56 of this slideshow.)

The appearance of Obama himself was a bit anti-climactic. His energy level was not like the best we've seen from him, and his speech was more humility than jubilation. I was prepared for this by watching one of his campaign speeches earlier that day on the internet, where it seemed that fatigue from the final push was starting to get to him. Also, I already sensed a Barack Obama changed by his new responsibility. He knows his words aren't just for the purpose of bathing supporters and Democratic faithful in a warm glow. He's now on a higher plane, talking to all of America, the Congress and Senate, the World.

The majority demographic there seemed to be post-college people in mid to late 20's. One reporter described them as "poly-sci nerds." Plenty of people in their 30's, 40's and 50's too though.

There were a few negatives. The Chicago Tribune advised us to bring stuff to eat, but both our water and snacks were confiscated at one of the checkpoints. What's up, Tribune? The second is the standing and the waiting, which comes with the territory of course, but always requires some endurance. The third was the lack of cellphone signal (which everyone warned would be the case) so I couldn't do the Twittering I was hoping to do.

As previously announced, there was no live music (save for a solo singing of the National Anthem), but the choice of recorded music was very nice. Good mix of rock, blues, soul, funk and country, quality songs, but with none of the pieces being tired, worn-out overexposed classics. The African-American artist who sang the National Anthem sang in "the key of soul," but it wasn't one of those over-the-top, love-to-hear-my-voice Whitney-Houston kinds of renditions. The music that followed the Obama speech was of the same cinematic-sounding orchestral variety that was played after Obama's acceptance speech in Denver: a bit manipulative, yes, but not nearly as clicheic as actual movie music and not transparently patriotic sounding. I have good feelings about the music that will be associated with this Presidency.

For the walk back to our train, we were corralled by the police to go west on Jackson (although I needed to go north on Wabash). There the crowd really let some energy loose, whooping and hollering, where the echo from the canyon of skyscrapers was deafening.

Today, I can't find a copy of the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times...they were all bought up before 9am!

Congratulations to President-elect Obama and all his supporters!

Obama Election Night Rally in Chicago

For my friends outside of Chicago, you may or may not know that Barack Obama's campaign has organized an Election Night rally on the lakefront in Chicago. If Barack wins, this may be the most televised event of the evening, and the likely location of his acceptance speech.

If you're watching TV that night scan the crowd for me, since as you can see, I was able to get a ticket! (Sorry, I've blurred the bar code, so you can't make a counterfit.) There was a less than 24-hour window before they all got snapped up, but all you had to do was fill out a form on a website. To get a feel for how hot an item this ticket is, see these Craig's List ads, and these items on eBay.

If you use Twitter, follow 'gregsandell' and I will try to make updates throughout the evening. I think you can also read my Twitters from my facebook page.

Sarah Palin jazz singing?

Youtube user sailingandmusic must have heard something really different than the rest of us when he listened to Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric. Check this out.

Sarah Palin in Ten Years

If the polls keep going in the direction they are, knock on wood, we won't have to endure a McCain-Palin presidency, and our country will have a fighting chance of reversing the disastrous last eight years. But even if it were to head towards a landslide outcome, it probably continue to be one of the most interesting election years all the way to November anyway. And that's due not just to Obama being the right guy at the right time, but Sarah Palin as well.

The video in Gawker's recent post Palin's Failed Cute, although intended to make democrats cringe, is in fact a compelling portrait of Palin's skills. Watching how she paved the way for the corny line of "Say it ain't so Joe" with asking Joe Biden up front if "do you mind if I call you Joe", and then getting a 1000 watt smile out of Joe Biden with it, was both canny and charming. It was using charm to win minds. And although we can poke fun of her Beauty Pageant past and her Fargo-like accent, she demonstrated an incredible degree of control and finesse over a challenging situation. That's a gift on a JFK and Bill Clinton level. And don't forget that twice now she's surprised us, in the Republican convention and the Vice Presidential debate, in far exceeding our expectations. I even lost $17 on Intrade on the Sarah Palin to Be Withdrawn as VP Candidate Nominee Before the Election prediction market.

So I'll say it, hate me for it if you will, but Sarah Palin is not only a force to be reckoned with, but maybe even a positive one. Who's to say what she'll be doing ten years from now? How do we know that this role she's playing now, of appeasing the social conservative base of the GOP, isn't just a role? Maybe in reality she's only just to the right of center. The fact that she hunts and brought a Downs syndrome child to term may be a hallmark for social conservatism, but it's not necessarily a slam dunk.

I had a conversation recently with a conservative whose voting choices are driven by taxes more than any other issue. He said: "Obama, wow, what a great guy, fantastic speaker and inspiring. I say, God Bless 'im, give that guy a job. Just don't make it President of the United States." That's what I say about Palin. I'd like to see what she's doing in ten years. I'd just rather see her do something positive with those skills than give service in an administration that would most likely wreck the US beyond repair.

Top 150 Words during Palin-Biden debate

See the original post here on flickr: Top 150 words spoken at the Biden-Palin vice-presidential candidate debate

Bush economics: how many ways can you show it?

'Clearing Things Up' Post

This is a widely circulated post on the internet right now. I'm not sure if the original author is known. It's a brilliant statement on the lies & hypocracy going on in the 2008 Presidential Election right now. Enjoy! - Greg

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track; you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council, 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, and 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

[ In another version I've seen of the letter, these lines are added. - Greg ]

Black teen pregnancies? A 'crisis' in black America.
White teen pregnancies? A 'blessed event.'

If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you're 'reckless.'
A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a 'maverick.'

If you are a Demoratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people you are an 'arrogant celebrity'.
If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are 'energizing the base'.

If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions you are 'presumptuous'.
If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a 'shoot from the hip' maverick.

If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an 'empty suit'.
If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an 'experienced executive'.

If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are 'extremist'.
If you believe in creationism and don't believe gobal warming is man made, you are 'strongly principled'.

If you're a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you're an irresponsible parent, endangering the life of your unborn child.
But if you're a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you're spunky.

If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you 'First dog.'
If you're a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the right-wing press calls you 'beautiful' and 'courageous.'

If you kill an endangered species, you're an excellent hunter.
If you have an abortion you're not a christian, you're a murderer ( forget about if it happened while being date raped)

If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.
If you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

No Hypocrite Left Behind

On Tuesday, two of McCain's surrogates bashed Obama's work in the community. Then, as if it never happened, John McCain himself made an impassioned plea on Thursday for Americans to contribute to their communities. Yes! He did! (See the quotes below.)

How can the Republicans do something so blatantly hypocritical? Easy, it's their theme! Bald -face lies make Republicans feel so good, they can't hold back their cheers of "USA! USA!" and "Drill baby, drill!" Now McCain is taking a page from GW Bush's "education president" strategy, and telling us soulfully that "education is the civil rights issue of this century."

Here's what Rudy, Sarah and John said in the last few days:

"On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? He worked — I said — I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume. He worked as a community organizer."

- Rudy Guiliani, address to Republican National Convention, 9/3/08

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities. ... My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery.' This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer."

- Sarah Palin, address to Republican National Convention, 9/3/08

"My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you’re disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist…enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an — an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier, because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself."

- John McCain, address to Republican National Convention, 9/4/08

McCain's gifts

In the 2004 Presidential election, Republicans took a quote from John Kerry about his vote on Iraq war funding and rode it all the way to a Bush win. Karl Rove described it as "the gift that kept on giving".

Well, it's Christmas for the Democrats at last. Besides the video above, we've got a lot of nuggets from the senator:

1. You're not rich until you have $5 million
2. His expectations for more wars and a 50-year stay in Iraq, that he disagrees with the majority of American people, and admitting that he flip-flopped on an issue for political expediency in this video.
3. Unable to recall how many homes he own. If the senator wants to learn, he could take this Google Earth tour of his homes.
4. Predicting a swift and decisive victory in Iraq, then later claiming "we all knew it would be a long, hard effort"
5. Recalling the Beach Boy's song Barbara Ann with the modified lyric "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran". When he later says he's proud of this, did he think this would produce a landslide of votes from undecided hawks?
6. Saying he doesn't know much about economics, then later denying he ever said it, and claiming economics is a strong point for him.
   
   

The New Yorker Editor Responds

The editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, made the rounds of media programs this week in response to the uproar over the cover with the Obamas. For the most part I think he "gets it" in terms of way in which the cover created some outrage. In one interview he said:

I do understand why some people are upset. Some people are upset because the last seven years have been such a political disaster and they have placed so much hope, uh, hope that is embodied in Barack Obama, that they are very fearful that something will upset that, that apple cart.

But I still think there is some self-centeredness at work here, and what Remnick said only amplifies it.

People get it. People are not just smart in Manhattan, or Washington, or LA, in fact there are some people who aren't [smart] in those places.

(He might as well just have said, "there are even a few smart people in the flyover states.")

I wouldn't normally want to be in the business of explaining satire, and that may suggest that the, that this image was too...complicated, too complicated to work out for some people, I'm not looking down on it at all, but it, it is comp, complicated issue an, uh, uh, an image in some way.

I respect all people's reactions to it, or confusions, uh, about it, except for one, one kind of reaction I find, um, a little difficult to take. And that's the notion, "I get it, but of course those people out there," it, it, it...they're, they're somehow, um, they're incapable of understanding anything, and in their hands its going to be a weapon for this, that and the other thing.

Remnick acts affronted by a notion he's interpreted from the controversy, one which he takes pains to say he disagrees with, that there exists unsophisticated flyover state people on whom the satire will be lost. The problem is that he's locked into thinking that the whole world lives in the arena of magazines and media outlets. He may find it hard to fathom, but there are all sorts of people out there---voters---who are busy enough working hard at what they do, some living very rich lives or doing wonderful creative things, or some perhaps just surviving, who don't bother to parse the universe of this magazine's posture, or that tv station's political leanings, and so forth. But memes such as magazine covers do enter their sphere, and they draw their own conclusions. Usually the success or failure of satire isn't a big issue for the media. But when an image comes out that is so strong, in a scenario when the stakes are so high, perhaps the media can be mistaken in judging the impact they can have.

And let's talk about those stakes:

Look, this is a very difficult and transformative time, I think I and, uh, share, I don't only understand, but I share the feelings of a lot of people who feel that the last seven years have been a disasterous presidency, and they, and again, I share this, look to, uh, the hope for change, and, and invest a lot of hope in, uh, something new. Uh, someone intelligent, someone with integrity, uh, someone with even a different kind of background, and it's, it's a historical breakthrough, the idea of a, a, a black president, an African-American president, all of this holds out enormous promise. And at the same time people are very anxious about what may happen in the campaign, what, uh, uh, ways rumor and lies can be used against Barack Obama.

This gets to the heart of a very big question for the press. On the one hand, the writers and readers of The New Yorker may want a particular political outcome, but on the other hand none of them would want The New Yorker to become a party mouthpiece. That slightly aloof, detached, let's-have-fun-with-the-news ironic humor exactly is what readers pay the cover price for. But is there ever a point in which a political outcome is so important for the survival of our nation that one shouldn't risk anything that might give ammunition to the opposition? Is there ever a time in which matters become too serious for satire?

[ The David Remnick quotes come from two different interviews, one with Wolf Blitzer and another with Charlie Rose. ]

Why New Yorker's Obama Cover is a Mistake

Even as a dedicated reader of The New Yorker, I can't get behind their cover cartoon showing Barack and Michelle Obama as inhabitants of the White House who fulfill the worst nightmares of paranoid right-wingers. Their mistake comes out of arrogance. First, they believe that their brand is so universally known that everyone will correctly place the cartoon in the context of New Yorker's detached, ironic humor. In fact, the largest number of people who are going to end up seeing this cover probably are as familiar with The New Yorker style as I am with FHM's or Sports Illustrated's. It will end up pinned to walls of people with no awareness of The New Yorker's liberal bent, who will be thinking "wow, look what an establishment magazine says."

Their other arrogance is summed up in this letter I just sent by email:

Dear New Yorker,

When you weighed the pros and cons of publishing your cover of Michelle and Barack Obama, what audience were you thinking of when you decided it fell safely on the side of 'satire' instead of the tasteless smear it turned out to be? I know who it was. It was an old-school, insular kind of east coaster who sees things coming from the Second City as foreign, out on the fringe, and safe for irreverent humor. Sort of like Europe lampooning America's reaction to 9/11 as maudlin and self-pitying.

Greg Sandell