Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

I don't care that this post has no content. I don't care that my throat is shot. I don't care that I won't do jack shit for my classes tomorrow, and even if called on I won't have a voice.

That was so worth it. Sports bars are awesome.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law.

Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.

Shall we follow the rule of law and do our constitutional duty no matter unpleasant, or shall we follow the path of least resistance, close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking, forgive and forget, move on and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system? No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country." - Tom Delay, 1998

(Thanks to DailyKos for the tag.)

Posted by Terry McMahon at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"It's more fun to argue about sports, but it's more interesting to argue about music. When someone argues about music, you can usually get a remarkably clear portrait of their personality -- you can get an idea of how they view authority, or if they have an adversarial relationship with mainstream culture, or if they are extremely worried about being cool. You can deduce which subcultures they experienced in high school, and you can figure out how much they are engaged with modernity. Of course, the downside is that people who always want to talk about music tend to be profoundly annoying (and often unshaven). Which is probably why it's more fun to talk about sports." - Chuck Klosterman, from his chat with Bill Simmons.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just got a hot tip from the "What Did You Expect" department here at TMAB. (Note: this branch differs from the Department of Redundancy Department in which my high-school friends will eventually be given cushy jobs.) Anyway, you may remember my treatise on the trouble with interest-group politics when pro-choice advocacy organization NARAL went ahead and endorsed Lincoln Chafee in the RI Senate race, despite the fact that both Democratic candidates are firmly pro-choice. Here's the latest news:

Some national abortion-rights activists have sharply criticized Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee's decision to support the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States.

[NARAL]'s former president, Kate Michelman, pronounced herself "deeply disturbed and disappointed" by Chafee's support for Roberts. "As a women's rights leader, I must say it does raise an enormous amount of questions about whether women can depend on Senator Chafee to stand on principle," she said.

Because of Chafee's legislative record, Michelman said, she has counted on Chafee as an abortion-rights supporter "who'll never flinch at a threat to women's rights -- and he flinched this time."

NARAL should not be surprised: they tried to play politics, endorsing Chafee to try to get the Democrats to stop promoting pro-lifers in their ranks, and now they look like idiots. If NARAL takes away their endorsement, as it looks like they might, that would be a great sign that they've decided to stop fucking around.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK, first up, I'll assume you all read New Hampshire political news as vigorously as I do, but just as a refresher, from the Concord Monitor's political-notes column:

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "We've come a long way from Amos and Andy." - State Sen. Jack Barnes (R) laments the loss of old-fashioned values at a meeting of the legislative panel studying same-sex marriage.

Next, I wouldn't be able to go to sleep tonight without commenting on something else from that ridiculous column I eviscerated earlier. You'll remember this quote:

Why did Democrats led by Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., bitterly oppose the nomination of Thurgood Marshall, Clarence Thomas and Janice Rogers Brown?

Robert Byrd was actually a member of the KKK in the early 1940s. He chalks it up to overambition, and has apologized for it in two separate books.

Granted, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott and even George Wallace entered politics as products of their day and culture; but these men, by the grace of "Almighty God," had the scales removed from their eyes.

OK, so we have three Republican and one long-retired Democrat (Wallace, who last ran in 1984) who, fortunately enough, have been redeemed with God at their sides. Awesome! Contrast with this:

That all Dixiecrats became Republicans shortly after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is another big lie. Richard Russell, Mendell Rivers, [Bill] Clinton's mentor William Fullbright, Robert Byrd, Fritz Hollings and Al Gore Sr. remained Democrats till their dying day.

Man, why didn't THEY get God on their side? Fucking Democrats. It'd be neither productive nor interesting to go through why all of these guys are less racist than the guys who were saved, apparently, solely because they were either Republicans or Democratic pariahs. But I thought this one would be fun:

Gore [Sr.] fended off this primary challenge, but he was ultimately unseated in the 1970 general election by Republican Congressman William E. Brock III. In this Senate race, Brock was widely perceived to have won by playing on white voters' fears of civil rights and desegregation for blacks. In fact, Gore was one of the key targets in the Nixon/Agnew "Southern strategy."

Don't forget: this column was titled "The Lie That Keeps On Living." Stopped clock, it's your time of day.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to the hotties at Feministe for finding this awesome column about how the Republicans have never been racist. My friends over there - ok, this girl I know in my lawyering class - astutely point out that, uh, what about the southern strategy, but this is the kind of comment that really deserves an explanation. So I have two solid points here, just to show once and for all that Republicans, indeed, have been racist.

1. First off, they admitted it! Minor detail, I know. Here's the Washington Post story (from just this past July!) in which current Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman apologized for the Republican Party's 1968 strategy of winning over southern Democrats with racial appeals, as well as future trangressions in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It was a pretty crappy apology (claiming the GOP mostly didn't "reach out,") but Mehlman did use the exact words "trying to benefit politically from racial polarization." And three lines his boss seems not to understand: "we were wrong."

2. What do you know about Philadelphia, Mississippi? It's a small town, population 7303, that has been the site of two major events in our country's history. The later event was in 1980, when Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Right in that small town! So you'd have to think, if only one other big event had ever happened there, you'd have to believe Reagan wanted you to connect his event with the old one. Right? So what could it be? If you guessed "the 1964 slayings of three political activists during the Civil Rights Movement," you might have what it takes to be a Republican!

3. I know I said I had two points, but I said I had two solid points, and now I'm just ranting. But do you remember the "Hands" ad Jesse Helms ran in his 1990 North Carolina Senate race, the one depicting a white man losing his job to "a minority," when Helms was running against a black guy? (Watch it online, it's much worse than I'm implying.) Why are Democrats so fucking racist?

Really though, I'm just warming up. This guy's column is so ludicrous that it deserves a point-by-point rebuttal. That's right, if Fire Joe Morgan can do it with baseball, I can do it with politics. Here we go:

Common sense questions would be: If Southern bigots fled the Democrat Party to the Republican Party during 1964 and following, why was it the Republicans who fought for civil rights? Why was a Republican president (Richard Nixon) responsible for affirmative action?

I actually had to plead ignorance on the first question, until I looked it up. Here's the party breakdown of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the Senate:
* Democratic Party: 46-22
* Republican Party: 27-6
Here it is for the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
* Democrats: 49-17
* Republicans: 30-2
So, in direct response to the first question, actually, Democrats voted for it too. Sean Hannity loves to quote that Republicans voted for this bill in a higher percentage (it's all he's got on this issue), but that's easy: in 1964 and 1965, southern racists were all Democrats! Remember? They didn't start voting Republican until the Republican Party's 1968 southern strategy! (The one your party chair just apologized for?)

As for the Republican president and affirmative action, honestly, I have no idea. In fact, I'm confused by a lot of things: why is it that when a Democratic president, a southern Democrat at that, uses his legendary persuasive ability to convince senators to vote for the 1964 and 1965 civil rights bills, it's actually because of the Republican senators, but when affirmative action starts in 1968, it's actually because of the Republican president? I seriously don't get this; I guess I was just taught poorly by liberal academics.

Why do Republicans have the stellar record of meritocratic inclusion in the highest echelons of their administrations?

Man, good thing I found a letter from Terry Edmonds here, that made a couple corrections to the record:

Do the names Ron Brown, Mike Espy, Jesse Brown, Alexis Herman, Hazel O'Leary, Togo West, and Rodney Slater mean anything to you? They represent the largest number of African Americans ever appointed to Cabinet-level positions, before or after the current administration--more than all other presidents combined. Clinton's African American judicial appointments also far exceeded those of any other president in history. In addition, Clinton appointed seven African Americans to the uppermost staff level in the White House, also the largest number in history. They included Bob Nash, Thurgood Marshall Jr., Minyon Moore, Ben Johnson, Mark Lindsay, Sharon Farmer, and me, the first director of speechwriting for an American president.

These next few are easy.

Why did Democrats led by Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., bitterly oppose the nomination of Thurgood Marshall,

Southern Democrats in the 60s were racists.

Clarence Thomas
Gross incompetence, sexual harassment.

and Janice Rogers Brown?
Batshit crazy.

Why did the Democrats sit silent as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Janice Rogers Brown suffered vicious ad hominem attacks based on their race?

Well, now, I can only speak for one Democrat, but the reason I never commented on the racist attacks against Rice, Powell and Brown not because I'm racist, but because those attacks didn't exist, and you just fucking made them up. Subtle distinction.

Why was it the Democrats who opposed every civil-rights bill introduced in Congress (by Republicans) from 1856 well into the 1970s?

Man, if I hadn't listed all the Democrats above who supported the civil rights bills, I sure would have nothing to say right now. Well, except that southern Democrats "from 1856 well into the 1970s" were racists. Now, granted, other people from 100 years ago who are members of the same party as me and were overt racists probably makes me a racist too, the same way being in the same party as Henry Wallace makes me a communist and being in the same party as George Bush makes you a fucking idiot. But, it happens. What can you do?

Why do Democrats today support measures that retard self-sufficiency pursuant to blacks and the so-called poor, while Republicans champion the exact opposite (President Bush's "We will rebuild New Orleans" speech notwithstanding)?

This sentence is more or less inscrutable, so I'll leave you with this: anyone who would use the phrase "so-called poor" is a horse's ass and doesn't deserve one bit of your attention.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Uh, Gawker, I'm pretty sure I invented putting semi-related video game images at the top of the post. Assholes.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I want to talk about three topics here.

First, I hope you've had the fortune to experience a shared song between you and a friend that other people may know, but not the way the two of you do. My high-school chum Brant and I both loved to devour alt-rock back then, constantly recommending, disparaging, and ditching each other to spend nights at home listening. (If this reminds any of you of High Fidelity, note, I was there first.) The only thing better than having a shared song you both love is having a shared song that you're both trying to discover, because neither of you know where it is. I got XTC's Upsy Daisy Assortment (greatest hits) for Christmas one year, and when I was finally giving it a solid listen around April, I discovered, holy shit: that "one, two, three, four, five" song Brant and I were trying to find was XTC's "Senses Working Overtime." Now it's one of my favorites. So I like XTC. (The rest of that CD ain't bad either.)

Next, the way I finally got this song is worth note. I first heard of emusic.com in 1999, when They Might Be Giants released an mp3-only album way before that was considered appropriate. (Wait, actually it still isn't.) In any case, emusic.com is not only still around, it's much, much better: pretty much all the indie music I've ever heard of is available on emusic.com. Not only can you download all the tracks you want for 25 cents, plus you get something like 25 or 50 free downloads a month, with the final added bonus of 50 free songs when you sign up, even if you immediately cancel your subscription. I took the latter option to find an awesome CD I lost (Mono Puff's 1998 classic It's Fun To Steal, worth a lengthy discussion itself), and with 36 tracks to go, had to use some creative thinking to find more songs I wanted. (I did get a couple albums from those indie bands like Spoon and the Decembrists I'm supposed to be in love with, but devouring albums has not been my strong point in the mp3 era.) Anyway, eventually I came upon this song through means you'll probably be able to discern below, but the point stands: if you're into indie music, there are much, much worse places to get it than emusic.com. that's not a suggestion, that's an order.

Finally, there's just something about XTC covers, probably the fact that XTC writes flipping awesome songs to begin with. I overcame my, shall we say, strong dislike of Mandy Moore when I discovered her cover album led off with her actually awesome take on, that's right, "Senses Working Overtime," giving me a crush to this day that neither Zach Braff, that guy from Entourage, nor the cruel taunts of Galvin's brother can shake. One of Sarah MacLachlan's best songs is her cover of XTC's "Dear God," and They Might Be Giants, per usual, did a version of "25 O'Clock" (incidentally the creepiest song ever) that's actually better than the original. Most of these songs, admittedly, come from the 1995 tribute album A Testimonial Dinner, including our current Song of the Day from one of the all-time flashes in the pan. Do you have multiple Rembrandts mp3s? In fact, if you could tell me what Rembrandts vocals really sound like, you're one up on me, but fortunately they work well here. The Rembrandts bring their turns-out-to-be distinctive vocal style to the XTC classic "Making Plans For Nigel," adding thick drums and some deliberately plucked and heavily distorted electric guitar to a song that, to give you a vague impression here, would have done just fine as a quiet acoustic. It's basically the same song, with a slightly different style for playing the guitar in the verse and a couple different notes in the vocal here and there, but this song really takes off as a cover at the end. XTC went and repeated the final word "steel" a few times near the end and hit the chorus one last time; the Rembrandts repeat the word "steel" a lot, turn the final chorus into a tempo-slowing fadeout, and then spend the last thirty seconds turning it into a doo-wop song. Now that's a cover. All told, I can't say I entirely miss these guys (or that I've listened to the Friends theme in years), but they did know how to take an awesome song and make it rock. And since they make me think of XTC, emusic.com, and good friends, that's enough to make them Song of the Day.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 1:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I met my new friend Tara (at a bar last night!) and she gave me the bright idea of putting up a list of my favorite posts on this here blog, so that new readers can discover how fantastic I am whilst waddling through "links of the day" and failed one-line left-wing catchphrases.

So, anyway, it's in the left column, near the bottom. Thanks Tara!

Posted by Terry McMahon at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No, not what the hell they were thinking with TimesSelect. From an article on the Spin Doctors:

The album went on to sell an astonishing five million copies, reaching triple platinum.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the Washington Post:

Two soldiers and an officer with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have told a human rights organization of systemic detainee abuse and human rights violations at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, recounting beatings, forced physical exertion and psychological torture of prisoners, the group said.
...
"Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid," an unidentified sergeant who worked at the base from August 2003 to April 2004 told Human Rights Watch. "This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement."
...
"They were directed to get intel from them so we had to set the conditions by banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling," the soldier was quoted as saying. Later he described how he and others beat the detainees. "But you gotta understand, this was the norm. Everyone would just sweep it under the rug."

Look, I don't want to minimize the seriousness of the subject here. I hope, somehow, American POWs don't become victims of "fraternity hazing" like this. Hopefully al-Qaeda's media monitors slept late today.

But how are we still surprised? Why is it going to be news every time it turns out the administration has fudged scientific data that contradicts their paleoconservativism, or underfunded some safety precaution that only might save thousands of lives, or treated enemy prisoners in a way we thought only other countries did? This is simply how our government operates, and it's what we've got for the next three years. At least.

So thanks to our friends in Ohio and Florida for correctly prioritizing; now we don't have to worry about whether John Kerry was actually in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 35 years ago. Go team!

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Actually, I've found that falling behind the Yankees doesn't necessarily mean anything."

Posted by Terry McMahon at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the Seattle P-I:

A message King County elections workers found scrawled on a yellow Post-it note and mailed with an absentee ballot left little doubt about what was at stake in Tuesday's otherwise ho-hum primary election.

"Please count my vote this time you Marxist morons. Have a nice day."

Posted by Terry McMahon at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm sorry, this is the funniest Onion headline in a long time:
"Bush Braces As Cindy Sheehan's Other Son Drowns In New Orleans" [The Onion]

All right, segueing ever so slowly back into reality, which story is the joke, and which is real?
"Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades" By James M. Kilts, CEO and President, The Gillette Company
"Gillette Unveils 5-Bladed Razor" Associated Press, 9/14/05

We're good? Next, staying with entertainment, see how you can find a Tivo easter egg to give yourself a 30-second skip. That's right, commercials ain't shit when you steal links from Bill Simmons.

I want to make two points with this political link, concerning Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher's imploding political career. First, the quote, originally from crappy Louisville TV network WHAS but brought to you by Bluegrass Report:

Republican Party insiders tell WHAS11 News Fletcher’s support in his own party is eroding, and they claim Republican U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell is in a not-so-private fight with Fletcher. The governor denies this, saying that he has been hurt politically, but he’s nowhere close to dead.

The other point I'd like to make is more of a question. I apparently was visiting Bluegrass Report for the first time, because I had no idea it was fully owned and operated by native San Franciscan, horse racing enthusiast and onetime Tony Miller for Congress general consultant Mark Nickolas. Is there a general etiquette for saying hello to someone who you haven't spoken with in a year once you discover their blog? I shouldn't just post in the comments, right?

Also, I found this piece to be pretty compelling. I think the author went to my high school and/or is the sister of one of my favorite random new Friendster friends of the past week.

Finally, please find the SNL transcript of the day under the fold.

The Sarcastic Clapping Family of Southhampton

Jeffrey.....Phil Hartman
Cosima.....Jan Hooks
Colin.....Kevin Bacon
Blake.....Mike Myers
Meg.....Victoria Jackson
Chris.....Chris Farley

[ open on interior, family library, as members of the Sarcastic Clapping Family enter and sit ]

Jeffrey: Now that we're all here, I'd just like to say one thing: I know that some of you would like to challenge Father's will! After all, Meg and I did to rather well.. and maybe Blake and Cosima think that's unfair! Of course, I certainly respect your right to do whatever you feel you have to do - but! For God's sakes.. before we start getting lawyers in here, and fighting each other like greedy rats! Let's remember one thing: we're a family, dammit! A family!! Because there's a lot more at stake here than mere dollars and cents! There's the memory of a man we all loved. The man we called.. "Father".

[ Cosima claps sarcastically ]

Cosima: Quite a performance, Jeffrey. Oh.. quite a performance, indeed. Considering the fact that you.. hated Father! No, no, no - don't act so shocked, Jeffrey. We all know that you were just waiting for Father to die, so you could get oyur filthy hands on all his money..!! [ sobs ]

[ Colin claps sarcastically ]

Colin: Nice speech, Cosima. Very nice. Considering you hadn't seen Father in almost two years!

[ Blake claps sarcastically ]

Blake: Nice cutting observation, Colin.

[ Meg claps sarcastically ]

Meg: Nice sentence, Blake.

[ Chris claps sarcastically ]

Chris: Nice clapping, Meg!

[ Jeffrey claps sarcastically ]

Jeffrey: Nice.

[ they all clap sarcastically ]

[ dissolve to title card ]

Announcer: And now, a scene from the next episode of.. "The Sarcastic Clapping Family of Southhampton".

[ dissolve to Blake and Cosima sitting around their proud Little Girl ]

Little Girl: Mommy! Daddy! Look at my picture!

[ Blake and Cosima clap sarcastically ]

[ dissolve to title card ]

Announcer: Next week, on.. "The Sarcastic Clapping Family of Southhampton".

[ fade ]

Posted by Terry McMahon at 2:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

John Kerry and John Edwards, through coincidence I assume, both delivered speeches knocking Bush on Katrina. Supposedly JRE had more of a proactive vision; he wants a WPA-like rebuilding agency that will employ the displaced people themselves to rebuild the city. Which isn't a bad idea, but I have to say, having never been to New Orleans, that I kind of have a Hastertian view of the whole thing. Is there any way to rebuild New Orleans and make it a lot safer than it was before? Higher levees? Hoverboards?

Anyway, as noted in Political Wire, Kerry got the line of the day:

Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.'

In a clue to his instinctive understanding of poverty, Edwards's summary of first principles includes the central concept (I first heard it from Hubert Humphrey on the subject of civil rights some 40 years ago) that confronting poverty is not something ''we" do for ''them."

''This is something we do for us -- for all of us. It makes us stronger; it makes us better," he said.
...
Edwards is also attentive to bad ideas. Yesterday, he spent a few moments decrying post-Katrina visions of mass trailer parks and the Bush idea of pseudo-homesteaders crammed onto federally owned land.

''If we know anything from a half-century of urban development, it is that concentrating poor people close to each other and away from jobs is a lousy idea," he said. ''If the Great Depression brought forth Hoovervilles, these trailer towns may someday be known as Bushvilles."

Does anyone at this point think John Edwards wouldn't be a fantastic president?

Posted by Terry McMahon at 1:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So liveblogging Stephen Breyer (Supreme Court justice! Live! NYU!) didn't so much as happen today, first because awesome wireless awesome bailed on me in the auditorium, and also because events suck when all you're doing is transcribing. Actually, Breyer was quite charming and witty, describing pretty well what it must be like to be a semi-normal human being who also happens to be a member of the Supreme Court. In the comedic vein, the highlight was his description of how, as the junior member of the Court, even after 11 years he has to be the one to go answer the door if someone knocks while they're in conference.

So he spent about twenty minutes disparaging John Roberts and another half hour roasting the corpse of William - actually, he didn't mention either individual, best I can recall. He did, however, make one political point I found interesting, namely that politicians flock to DC, but politicians would have a much bigger impact if they focused on state law. Breyer mentioned some obscenely high percentage of law is state law, so he concludes that state law has a greater impact.

Did I mention Breyer is awesome? He came in a pretty good-looking cream-colored suit, and I didn't even recognize him walking down the aisle. Good guy. Also, I think he's forgetting three things here:

1. Federal law affects the country, state law affects the state. So let's not forget that the much more uncommon federal law affects an average of 50 times as many people.
2. Federal law gets to cover more intellectual ground. If I cared that deeply about property taxes, I would go into state government. But there aren't a whole lot of state reps who can seriously affect intelligence or foreign policy issues, right?
3. Federal officeholders have the bully pulpit. Why, if it was a state official who brought up the issue, none of us would be eating freedom fries today!

By Breyer's rationale, political dorks like me should be headed back to state capitals to run for governor, theoretically the most important person in the most important kind of (I can't believe I'm using this word colloquially) jurisdiction. And it's not like people aren't running for governor, or that DC types don't already think that being a governor is the best preparation for the presidency. Now, I don't necessarily expect a Supreme Court justice (especially an awesome one like Breyer) not to think first of the law, but there's more than just the number of laws a politician writes, or the amount of cases it covers, that gives him political power. Just saying.

The conclusion: I am a lot smarter than a sitting Supreme Court justice. And he doesn't even have a blog!

Posted by Terry McMahon at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I tried to explain earlier why I like SurveyUSA so much as a polling firm: basically, it's cheaper and more accurate. I lamented back then, though, that I had become so convinced (as has a lot of the political establishment) based on one impossible-to-find seminal interview the SurveyUSA editor did with the Hotline political rag.

Anyway, I found it and reread it, and it was just as compelling today as it was when I first read it in February of this year. If you're interested in current trends in political polling, it's a long but extraordinarily interesting read. If you're not interested, well, that's your own damn problem, but I'll do you a favor and put the article under the fold.

02-09-2005

Hotline's Great Debate Series
THE STATE OF POLLING: Should We All Be Rethinking Our SurveyUSA Policies?

The following is an interview with SurveyUSA Editor Jay Leve. SurveyUSA has come under a great deal of criticism over the years for not using real people to conduct their polls, and use instead the recorded voice of a professional announcer. However, in the '04 election cycle, SurveyUSA had an impressive track record which can be viewed on their web site. In the wake of these results, we decided to ask the questions everyone wants to know the answers to and allow Leve to address his critics head on. We plan to invite many pollsters to respond to this interview; but any pollsters that would like to respond before we ask, email here.

You have enjoyed a great deal of success in this past election cycle. How can you explain your accuracy to your critics?

There are two ways to measure an election pollster's performance: "absolute" accuracy and "relative" accuracy. SurveyUSA keeps track of both, maintains up-to-date scorecards and, alone among pollsters, publishes the scorecards to our website for public inspection. By any measure, SurveyUSA is at the top or near the top of election pollsters - not just for 2004, but ever since SurveyUSA started polling in 1992.

Pollsters talk and write a lot about reducing "Total Survey Error," but most obsess over the mathematical sources of error. I focus more on the how the questions get written, who asks them, how the questions sound to the respondent and how the questions get answered. SurveyUSA has re-thought from scratch exactly how polls can best be conducted, given what professional voices make possible. If the cost of each additional interview is expensive, which it is for others, you think about TSE one way. If the cost of each additional interview is relatively inexpensive, which it is for SurveyUSA, you can make other choices. The amount of intellectual horsepower that gets applied to exactly how a question is asked, and exactly what the respondent hears, as a percentage of total expended intellectual energy, is greater at SurveyUSA than at other firms.

With this accuracy, what prevents any "Homer Simpson" from purchasing an auto-dialer and conducting polls from home?

SurveyUSA has spent a fortune writing software and building hardware. But even if I gave our technology away for free, to Homer or Pythagoras, they would not know what to do with it. SurveyUSA's technology is neutral. It's just a tool, neither good nor evil.

On your web site, you state that "Many media polls are ordered and completed same day. Many market research projects are ordered one day and delivered the next." How can this leave time to accurately develop the questionnaire, ensuring that the questions are unbiased?

SurveyUSA researchers do not start from scratch when a poll is commissioned. Like most pollsters, SurveyUSA asks the same questions over and again. SurveyUSA's library has thousands of poll questions. Every so often, something truly new comes up, and our writers must wrestle with constructs, language, phrasing and the range of possible answer choices. In such cases we may test multiple ways of asking the same question. Ultimately a "keeper" goes into our library. Your question implies that questionnaires must be long and complex. Not true. For others, who go into the field infrequently, questionnaires take weeks to prepare, because both pollster and client know they may not get another chance for 3 months. SurveyUSA goes into the field every day. Our questionnaires are short, by design. Some see this as a limitation. We see it as an advantage. The more questions you put in a questionnaire, the more those questions interact with each other, and the more the early questions color the answers to later questions. Others ask (ballpark) 100 questions, which take 20 minutes to answer. SurveyUSA asks (ballpark) 10 questions, which take 2 minutes to answer.

Do you feel the increased turnaround time has any negative effects (if not the above mentioned)?

Every piece of research has a proper field period. Some SurveyUSA polls are in the field for minutes, some for weeks. SurveyUSA election polls are typically conducted over 3 consecutive days. Minutes after the first presidential debate last fall, ABC News completed one poll of 531 debate watchers. CNN completed one poll of 615 debate watchers. CBS News completed one poll of 655 debate watchers. NBC News did nothing. SurveyUSA completed 35 separate polls in 35 separate geographies, of 14,872 debate watchers. NBC affiliates in Seattle, Salt Lake and Denver had scientific SurveyUSA reaction in-hand minutes after the debate, while Tim Russert and Chris Matthews pondered how many DailyKos bloggers had stuffed the ballot box at the MSNBC website.

On the day before DIA opened in Denver in 1995, SurveyUSA took a poll for KUSA-TV. We asked whether building the new airport was good or bad. The next day, after the airport opened, we re-took the same poll. Approval for the airport went up 20 points overnight. Should we have held the story for 3 days so we could do more callbacks? We had news. Our client led with it. The other stations had nothing. We owned the story.

How do you formulate a representative sample? Do you use random digit dialing or voter lists? Which do you feel has the more accurate results? Why?

SurveyUSA purchases RDD sample from Survey Sampling of Fairfield CT. We have conducted side-by-side testing using RBS (Registration Based Sample). In the testing we have done, RBS did not outperform RDD.

On your website, you state that in order to end up with an accurate sample you use demographic breakdown to ensure you are portraying the population. However, since the questionnaire is being asked of the first person who answers the phone, how can you accurately establish a sample that is appropriate for a poll? Even with screening questions to establish the likelihood of a voter, how can you assure that a caller is actually over the age of 18? Or for that matter, how can you assure that they are citizens, or registered to vote? Is there any systematic way you can verify the accuracy of this once a poll has been completed?

You've asked 5 questions here, the first of which contains a false premise. SurveyUSA can choose to talk to the person who answers the phone, or we can ask to speak to someone else. There is nothing hard about that. By your question, you create the impression that, a) SurveyUSA doesn't understand the importance of selecting a respondent from within a household and, b) even if we did understand it, our technology prevents us from doing it. Both are false. SurveyUSA has read all of the literature on intra-household selection, and SurveyUSA has done side-by-side testing on the different ways that one might do intra-household selection. We have tested the methods that are mathematically defensible in theory, such as asking for the respondent with the most recent birthday (which has problems in practice), and methods that are mathematically indefensible, such as asking for the youngest male over the age of 18. Intra-household selection, in practice, does not make the kind of polls that SurveyUSA conducts more accurate.

2.4 percent of those who take a SurveyUSA poll tell us they are under the age of 18. We exclude them. There is no evidence that people lie to us more often than they lie to a headset operator. There is evidence to the contrary.

Some SurveyUSA competitors want you to think SurveyUSA gets an occasional election right, the way Miss Cleo occasionally gets a psychic prediction right. The facts are published and available for inspection. The odds that chance alone can explain SurveyUSA's success relative to other pollsters is 1,000,000,000:1, by many measures. To those who would like me at this point to disclose that SurveyUSA got the Newark mayor's election wrong in 2002, the San Francisco mayor's runoff wrong in 2003, and that SurveyUSA overstated Dean in the 2004 Iowa caucuses, we did. When you have as many at-bats as SurveyUSA, you are going to strike out from time to time. The question is: how does our entire body of work stand-up? By multiple objective Mosteller measures, SurveyUSA's data need take a back seat to no one's.

In 1999, a subsidiary of the research firm IPSOS wanted to see if interactive voice was a viable alternative to CATI. Senior IPSOS scientists put together a side-by-side test with 93,000 interviews. The test was deliberately designed to isolate and identify biases in interactive voice. As such, respondents were asked as diverse a collection of questions as possible. The testing was designed, carried out and paid for by the IPSOS subsidiary. After the 93,000 parallel interviews were conducted, IPSOS wrote a white paper, summarizing the research-on-research. Findings:

* "IVR produces samples that more closely mirror US demographics than does CATI ... Three demographics stand out as being the reason for these differences: education, income and ethnicity. In all three cases, IVR was much closer to the census than CATI."
* "IVR interviewing generally succeeds on all three fronts: sample projectability, accuracy and production rates. These findings suggest that IVR is a valid method for administering short questionnaires to RDD samples."
* "In the few cases where differences are noted in the data, some can be resolved by the way we ask questions and some, we believe, are already more accurate in IVR."

After this white paper was written, this IPSOS subsidiary began using SurveyUSA for data collection.

Due to the manner in which you obtain your sample, is there a differential in accuracy in general vs. primary elections?

SurveyUSA has polled on 310 general candidate elections. Our average error on the candidate is 2.33 points. SurveyUSA has polled on 167 primary elections. Our average error is 4.13 points (1.8 times greater). We do not believe we are less accurate on primary elections because of the way we obtain sample. Because no pollster has ever been asked for, nor publicly made, this kind of disclosure before, I don't know whether a 1.8 factor deterioration on primary polls is above average or below average.

Do you include "traps" in your screening process? If so, such as? Do they prove to be effective?

We have experimented with as few as 3 and as many as 8 screens for likely voters over the years. In addition to asking the obvious question, "Are you registered?", we have experimented with many different variations on the direct, "How likely are you to vote" question, including running side-by-side testing for many of our 2004 polls comparing a 4-point likely scale to a 5-point scale. We have, in past years, but not in 2004, asked people where they vote. In 2004 we asked respondents whether and how they voted in 2000. We ask people their interest on a 1-to-10 scale. In 2004, we used fewer screening questions than in past years. Our results were superior. We find no simple relationship between the number of screening questions and the accuracy of our results. When SurveyUSA consistently produces a candidate error of 0.0 on pre-election polls, we'll assume we have solved this riddle, and will stop experimenting. Until then, it's a work in progress.

Under what circumstances are your polls more beneficial than traditional telephone polls as conducted by Gallup? What makes automated polls more accurate?

Have you been to Gallup's website lately? Have you watched Frank Newport deliver the Daily Briefing? Have you been to the Gallup Brain? Have you read Gallup's blog? Do you receive the occasional introspective from David Moore? What a tour de force. No other pollster is a close second to Gallup in these areas. I aspire to run my company as openly and transparently as does Gallup, and to provide interactive real-time access to our library of questions and answers. In this regard, I have the highest respect for Gallup. Further, Gallup has a 70-year track on many important questions, which gives Gallup a 60 year head-start on SurveyUSA. That said, I would not trade data with Gallup: 42% of Gallup's final statewide polls in 2004 produced a wrong winner (5 wrong winners out of 12 state polls), compared to 3.4% of SurveyUSA's final statewide polls (2 wrong winners out of 58 state polls).

Professionally-voiced polls are not inherently superior to headset-operator polls, and I do not make that claim. I just rebut the assertion that professionally-voiced polls are inherently inferior. Used properly, SurveyUSA methodology can have advantages. In 1994, SurveyUSA polled California on Proposition 187 for TV stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. Prop 187 was a plan to deny benefits to illegal immigrants. When others polled, some respondents heard the 187 question this way, "Are you a bigot?" They answered in the politically correct way. "No, I would never vote to deny benefits to illegal immigrants" (before going out and doing just that). It did not matter how much confidentiality Field or LA Times interviewers promised the respondent, or how well trained those interviewers were. Both pollsters understated support for this measure. When SurveyUSA polled 187, respondents did not have to confess anything, but rather, had only to press a button on their phone, paralleling the experience the respondent would later have in the voting booth, where no one speaks his/her choice aloud. SurveyUSA said Prop 187 would pass 60% to 40%. It passed 59% to 41%.

If your only access to polling data is Hotline, you may think Arnold Schwarzenegger scored a remarkable come-from-behind win in the 2003 Gray Davis recall. The only polls Hotline reported showed Cruz Bustamante ahead early in the campaign. What SurveyUSA knows is that Cruz Bustamante never led in California. Californians may have been reluctant at first to tell other pollsters that they planned to vote for the body builder, but they had no problem telling KABC's Marc Brown this every time SurveyUSA was in the field, which was on 38 of the 59 nights of that campaign. Publications, such as Hotline, which abide by the Gentleman's Agreement not to publish SurveyUSA polls, do a terrible disservice to their subscribers on occasions such as this.

In 1998, I received a call at my house from a well known Washington DC polling firm. The interviewer eventually zeroed-in on questions about Bill Parcells, then the coach of the New York Jets, and a Cadillac spokesman. I listened carefully. Why would the interviewer want to know if I thought Bill Parcells was honest? Then I connected the dots. This was not a poll about Bill Parcells, this was a poll about Bill Pascrell, who is my Congressman, and who was running for re-election in New Jersey 8th District. The interviewer was reading the name wrong. I said to the interviewer, "Ma'am, excuse me. Stop. You are mispronouncing the gentleman's last name. It is Pas-crell. Not Par-cells." "No," she said. "It says right here, 'Bill Parcells'." How many times a day do you think something like that happens with headset operators? How many different ways can you think of for an $8/hour employee doing monotonous work to make a mistake? Does it matter how many PhDs worked to draw the sample for that survey? Does it matter how many PhDs pored over the data to write the analysis that the candidate ultimately was handed? It doesn't. The data was worthless. And this - importantly - was one of the best outfits, an outfit that actually runs its own call center. Imagine how much worse it gets at firms that just outsource their calls to a 3rd party, and who have no direct control over who asks the questions.

Now, about the word "automated." Almost all polling firms use purchased auto-dialers. The dialer automatically dials the phone, detects a connection and, once the dialer believes a human is on the line, automatically passes the call to an interviewer. In some cases, that interviewer is well-trained and articulate, sensitive without being intrusive, and in all things neutral. Perfect. But in other cases, that interviewer is an unpaid, untrained college student hoping to get a credit, or the interviewer is convicted criminal, calling from a call center located within a Canadian prison. The people who staff call centers know the dirty little secrets, and they know the kind of people they can attract to do this work. They can tell you about interviewers who come to work drunk, stoned, or hacking phlegm. They can tell you about interviewers who flirt with the respondents, deliberately, to coax answers, interviewers who coach respondents, leading them to the "right" answers, and interviewers who don't ask the questions at all, but who just make up the answers to save time. Not every headset operator is horrible, to be sure, and the majority are well-meaning, but every call center has horror stories.

In SurveyUSA's case, when our proprietary dialer detects a human, the respondent immediately hears the voice of a TV news anchor. News anchors are not paid $8/hour. In some cases they are paid $800 an hour. No one is more acutely aware of the limitations of SurveyUSA methodology than I. But the choice is not between SurveyUSA and perfection. The choice is between a news anchor, who has been on the air 30 years in some cases, and a headset operator, who, if he/she lasts a year in the job, is exceptional. I'll take the news anchor. Were Winston Churchill alive, he might say: "Many forms of data collection have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that using TV news anchors to ask the questions is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that using TV news anchors is the worst form of data collection ... except all those others that have been tried from time to time."

Because of the nature of your polling system, the types of questions that can be asked are limited. Without giving the respondent an opportunity to choose "other" and then specify what that is on more than one question, doesn't this prevent the client from being privy to the wants/needs of the sample?

"Other" can be included in any question we ask. Structured probing can be done to whatever level is appropriate. Unstructured, open-ended, iterative probing cannot be done, but if you want unstructured, open-ended iterative probing, you need a focus group. In 1992, SurveyUSA identified an opportunity to serve TV newsrooms that were not being served by Gallup and Harris. We built a better mousetrap; the world beat a path to our door. Just as the TVA brought water to small-town America, and the REA brought electricity to small-town America, SurveyUSA brought true, random-sample, extrapolatable opinion research to Wichita, Roanoke and Spokane. Our clients are delighted with the work we do. Some have been customers for 12 years now. A number are under contract through 2008.

How do you compare to Rasmussen? Do you feel you are more/less accurate when it comes to competitive races?

SurveyUSA has competed with Scott William Rasmussen on 68 occasions. We have outperformed Rasmussen using any of 8 academic measures. Our mean error and standard deviation on those 68 contests, and Rasmussen's, are posted to SurveyUSA's website.

What is your response to critics who state that while automated polls are fast, rendering them headline worthy for TV stations, they are not accurate enough to use within a campaign to determine strategy based on the reaction of the electorate to issues or events? In addition to The Hotline, a number of other news organizations have a policy of not running automated dialing polls, stating that it would be a disservice to readers to portray the results as accurate -- Roll Call and the AP to name a couple. How would you convince us of otherwise?

Campaign managers scour SurveyUSA's data, then make media-buy decisions and change strategy. I know because campaign managers call me. They tell me how eerily similar SurveyUSA's data is to their own internal polling. By any objective criteria or honest measure, SurveyUSA years ago earned the right to be included in Hotline's "Poll Track." Yet we're still blacklisted. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Here's a chance to do something.

The Hotline

Posted by Terry McMahon at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First off, Political Wire is apparently desperate for more attention, and, hell, I'm up for it. They're not quite a blog, but if you're looking for interesting political news updates throughout the day, you can't do better.

Second, I have worked on three campaigns during which, for most of my tenure, the campaign didn't really get a whole lot of respect or attention. This is somewhat frustrating when your argument could go either way, but it's much worse when you're completely right and no one even cares. Perhaps there's no better example than when we were running against Craig Benson for governor of New Hampshire in 2002. Not only were we pretty confident that Benson himself was a crook, one of his finance chairmen ACTUALLY WAS

Dennis Kozlowski! How good does it get? Our opponent's campaign was being run by Lex Luthor! And yet nothing. All we got from the New Hampshire press that fall was Mark Fernald's attempt to institute an income tax. Well, and all of Craig Benson's convictions. Of course sexual discrimination sounds bad if you remember it. I digress.

Anyway, I mention it because Kozlowski, convicted of a felony in the workplace just like Craig Benson, is going up the river for at least eight years. Now all we have to do is get Ken Lay and we're back in business.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the spirit of making nonsensical, ranting posts on Hurricane Katrina, a friend of mine asked me recently what I thought would be the political fallout of Katrina and I thought I'd post my reply. This was written before the president said he would spend more money on Gulf Coast reconstruction than on the Iraq war, and pay for it by cutting federal spending. (Looks like there won't be money for Social Security after all!) Anyway, here's what I said:

anyway, you asked what I thought about the political fallout of katrina. I think it hit Bush and the Republicans immediately for about seven points in approval, and I suspect long-term it further erodes the idea that the Republicans in Washington can do anything right. (I think democrats running for congress should be saying stuff like, "look, I don't think they're bad people, they're just not any good at this.") unfortunately, I suspect democrats are getting nowhere on this, much like they get nowhere with every GOP fuckup from iraq to tom delay. for some reason, and I'm not sure what it is, the DC establishment filters certain things through the lens of "things democrats and liberals whine about," and it seems like every time the democrats try to make a new issue, within about a week no one takes them seriously. I mean, they're completely right to go after republicans on the terrible response to katrina, but now it just sounds like whining. is it because DC republicans are so much better at muddying the waters to make it a he-said/she-said deal? I suspect democrats need to get better at picking two or three clear, unassailable points, and not really talking about anything else. like the state-federal government issues of who needed whose permission to do what and where is complicated. how about, "george bush sealed the fate of new orleans when he made michael brown FEMA director" or "I don't care if there were limits on what the federal government could do, if they saw what was going on down there - and we could all see it on TV - they should have gone in, saved lives, and gotten permission later." wouldn't that be two great messages? I don't know why we can't go with that. we're right here; we just have to explain why.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

These days, it seems every time Nintendo comes out with a new product or idea, the typical reaction goes the same way. The first reaction is shock, disappointment and amazement that Nintendo has just made the most outrageously terrible decision in the company's history. After thought, reflection, and trying out the idea in full, then you realize: wait a second, this is incredible. It was true of the analog stick on the N64 controller, it was true of the Wind Waker cel-shading, and it was true of the dual-screen touch-pad DS handheld.

And it's totally true of the controller for the upcoming Nintendo Revolution, unveiled yesterday in Japan. Believe it or not, it looks and plays like a remote control. Seriously:

If you're anything like me, you're thinking, oh my god, what on earth are they trying to prove. There were plenty of ridiculous-looking controllers in the early days of home video gaming, and it was actually Nintendo whose NES controller was the first to fit well in your hands. And now this?

But that's the funny thing: there are actually three ways to use this new Nintendo Revolution controller, and the first is exactly like the NES controller itself. Look back up at the new controller, and look at the direction-pad at the top, and the lower-case b and a buttons at the bottom. Now imagine the controller turned around sideways. Best I can tell, the only reason those buttons are there is so you can play like you were using the original NES controller. How hot is that?

But if you're sharp and with it (in which case. incidentally, you've probably seen the controller already), you're probably thinking, "Terry, that's great, but for video games today you need an analog stick." True. That's why the Revolution controller has a plug-in they actually do call "nunchuk style."

Now, this looks like a major innovation, and it is, but it's not as big a difference from the current Gamecube controller as it might appear. Analog stick on your left, buttons on your right. The difference is that the Revolution controller has split them up, so now you have your hands separated. Not a bad idea, right? (Also, please note: if the next part blows your mind too much, you can actually plug your old Gamecube controllers into the Revolution and they'll probably work fine.)

So if you're really sharp, then you're wondering, "well what about the second analog stick? How am I supposed to change camera angles in Zelda?" Well, here's the really amazing part. Forget about the plug-in analog stick for a second. The remote control actually comes with gyroscopes in it, meaning the system will be able to detect motion and shifting angles in the controller itself. As a result, for a lot of games you'll be able to play with just the remote control: when you want to move right, you move the controller right. When you want to move down, you move the controller down. Here, take a second to let that sink in: you're actually moving the controller around to move the characters on screen.

That's when I started to realize Nintendo has really thought this through. Now imagine the left-hand analog stick combined with the moving remote controller, which now can function as the right-hand analog stick. For an example, consider the Metroid Prime game they're working on for Revolution. With your left hand you've got the analog stick, with which you make Samus run around, and with your right, you've got your gun: you point with the controller, which now detects your angle, direction and hand movement, and you use the right-hand buttons to shoot. I know I, personally, have always had trouble with first-person shooters, because I never got the hang of controllers moving in two directions at once. Now, I'm pretty psyched: this looks genuinely intuitive.

That said, there's a lot I don't know about this new controller. As best I can tell, you've only got access to two buttons at once, and for a game like, say, Zelda, where you generally can deploy three or four different items with the touch of a button, I'm not sure how it'll work. Maybe one item will be the B button, another item will be up+B, and another one will be down+B? I say it might even be a superior approach to force distinctive movements into different items. Unfortunately, at this point, who knows.

The other downside is that this new controller makes third-party support much more difficult, though this may be what Nintendo was planning all along. EA Sports is going to be making games for the X-Box 360 and the Playstation 3 based on their standard controllers, and this is, you know, not going to translate. If third-party game publishers really, really tried, I bet they could make awesome Revolution versions of their games. Will they try? I doubt it, which I suspect Nintendo knows too. Nintendo has been saying for a while now that the current direction of video games - coming up with slightly better graphics to appeal to a narrower and narrower selection of 12- to 25-year-old guys - is not a long-term strategy. Nintendo has talked a lot about creating intuitive, creative, and widely appealing games, and they're backing it up with a lot of weird-but-fun stuff recently like the Nintendo DS, Wario Ware, and this Nintendogs thing. The real surprise from yesterday is that we thought, previously, that Nintendo was still going to give lip service to Madden, Mortal Kombat and even probably most of their own games as currently structured. Now it seems Nintendo is completely dismissing video games as we know them. Again, I don't expect Revolution games, once we get used to the controller, will be that much more awkward to play, but I suspect from here on out we're no longer going to think of Nntendo as a conventional console manufacturer. In other words, I'm not sure Microsoft and Sony are even in the same industry anymore.

So, bottom line: there are a lot of people saying this may mark the beginning of the end for Nintendo. They may be right, but I don't believe it. This controller is fucking awesome.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So how long until conservatives start using Katrina as an example of how the federal government can't do anything right?

Posted by Terry McMahon at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think it goes without saying that my linking ability is such that you should assume these are entertaining, fascinating and personally illuminating sites. This will be quite the magical journey, promise.

• First off, apparently Greenwich Village has like the world's awesomest Halloween parade. Please look at the official site and help me come up with an idea. You may say I've got a month and a half left, but you know as well as I do I'm going to wake up on October 29th (happy birthday, Mom!) with no idea what to do.

• Good thing America's such a conservative country: with two Supreme Court vacancies, we'll finally be able to overturn Roe v. Wade and pass state and federal laws banning abortion, finally living up to the will of the people. Except, minor detail, America turns out to be pro-choice by about 56-38. [SurveyUSA]

• Turns out last year the New Yorker took a long look at Al Gore's life these days, and it's pretty interesting. The article, I mean, though Al Gore seems to be doing okay. [New Yorker] And check out the song linked from the story.

• Rush Holt, Matt's former congressman in New Jersey, is awesome. How awesome? Well, not only was he a research scientist at Princeton before running off to Congress, but he is the legislative branch's only five-time Jeopardy! champion. So when he tells you what's wrong with teaching intelligent design, you know it's good. My favorite scene goes like this:
  

  Sure, evolution is a theory, just as gravitation is a theory. The mechanisms of evolution are indeed up for debate, just as the details of gravitation and its mathematical relationship with other forces of nature are up for debate. Some people once believed that we are held on the ground by invisible angels above us beating their wings and pushing us against the earth.[TPM Cafe]

• Mike Myers' reaction to the Kanye West Incident a few weeks ago was priceless, not least because this exact kind of incident was the subject of an SNL sketch he did in 1994. Read the transcript.

• You tried so hard to get the suit, only to be so disappointed. Now, finally, a use for Hammer Mario.

• Snopes today is pretty funny: what happens when a company like Experts Exchange wants to register its name as a .com? [Snopes]

• The dumber of the Hurricane Katrina quotes, just so you have them all in one place. [About.com]
  [Side note: Is anyone else a little unnerved by how much original content is on about.com, given how little role they seem to play in the national consciousness? It's all Google/eBay/Yahoo/Amazon, but these guys have been around forever and apparently they write a ton of stuff. What gives?]

• The imminently pay-to-play New York Times Op-Edster John Tierney has a weird yet pretty funny column on what Senate Democrats should ask John Roberts to get him out of his comfort zone. The funniest by far is this:
  

  How would you edit this sentence to make it grammatically correct?: "I swear I ain't never gonna overturn Roe v. Wade." [New York Times]

  Good times.

  Posted by Terry McMahon at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No comment necessary.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Red Sox lost again today, putting them three games up on the Yankees with a little under a month of baseball and three more Sox-Yankees games to go. As we've been telling each other all year, though, no matter what happens, we won last year. We won last year. We can die in peace.

Hence the title of Bill Simmons' upcoming book, Now I Can Die in Peace : How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, with a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, and the 2004 Red Sox. Astute cultural observers will know Bill Simmons already, partially through his frequent and trenchant observations of the sports world and life in general, but chiefly through the one time I mentioned him on my blog. (Really, I checked, it was only once.) Since I seem not to have given him proper credit, real quick, Bill Simmons realized early on that while we have a million sports columns written about being an athlete, we didn't have any about being a fan. Plus, he's fascinating and insightful; his recent column on the WNBA sets a standard for honest sports commentary.

But the title of his book reminds me of the weird connection between the Red Sox, secular northeasterners and religion. I've already discussed how people in the northeast tend not to think of religion as a go-out-and-convert-your-neighbors kind of thing. Honestly, though, I think group faith isn't absent from New England; it's just been transferred. When the Sox finally won in 2004, I remember thinking the perfect way to describe the experience was using religious terms: the past 86 seasons, specifically the playoffs in 1946, 1967, 1975, 1978, 1986, both series in 1999, and both series in 2003, had been too much of a coincidence, too many times, to pretend any more that there's not a higher power controlling baseball. So we already knew that God exists, and in 2004 we learned that he loves us too. That's what we were waiting for.

So, as crackpot as that sounds, I don't think it's that far off. Again, Now I Can Die in Peace : How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, with a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, and the 2004 Red Sox. What do we have here? A reference to salvation, a reference to shoving off this mortal coil with inner peace, and a one-word reference to a two-word movie whose other word is "redemption." And you're telling me this isn't religious? I'm not going to imply that Johnny Damon is actually Jesus here (remember, it was Schilling who fell in the playoffs, only to rise again), but I hope this helps clarify for the jerks out there (i.e. non-New Englanders) why we're so nuts about the Red Sox. Besides the fact that we're still three games up.

Also, song of the day is "Soulful Strut." No separate column needed.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

funny how videos sometimes turn out differently than you expect.

first watch this one.

then watch this one.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AP:

Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey on Thursday said he would run against fellow Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee in the 2006 race for Senate, expected to be the most expensive in state history.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have said this over and over, but Robert Novak, for all his evils, consistently writes interesting columns. Read this:

In August, the American Family Business Institute sent letters to all of McCain's supporters recorded as giving him $1,000 or more, requesting their help in changing his vote to support repeal. [link]

Also, if you want an example of something you don't want to happen to you as a politician, read this. "Just what was the councilor paying for? And why?"

Posted by Terry McMahon at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From the paleoliberals at the Boston Herald, about our super-awesome FEMA head Michael Brown:

Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for