It's Not What You Say, Its How You Say It.

The attack ads have fully engulfed the 2008 campaign, but if what they say is trite, overblown, contradictory, or just plain wrong, then what does matter?

Hillary as VP? No Thanks!

A lot of people are asking whether Obama should name Hillary as his running mate. I ask a different question.

The Edge of the Democratic Platform

I visit one of the many community meetings regarding the Democratic Platform and got some surprizes along the way

The Forced Move

Want to have somebody to blame for the Obama FISA vote? You may not like the answer.

My Obama Dream Team

The Huffington Post requested contributors to name their dream team cabinet so I did my as a video just for fun.

Buying a Legacy

Aired 12/03/06 Buying a Legacy

week the news came out that Bush was preparing to start fundraising for his presidental library and was planning on raising five hundred million dollars. The announcement is astounding both in how early it is beginning and how huge the number is. It is orders of magnitude larger than any other recent presidential library.

The two facts are related. The president has two more years of presidential favor to trade for the 10 to 25 million dollar 'mega-donations' that will make most of the fundraising. Note that unlike ordinary political contributions these are unlimited in size and do not have to be named.

The reason why the fundraising is so huge is not that the library is going to be many times larger but because it is going to include the endowment of an institute. The purpose of the institute? To study the positive effect of the Bush Presidency on American History. In other words Bush is going to fight historians concluding that Bush was the worst president ever by paying historians to say nice things about him. Well, it goes right along with paying reporters to write fake news, doesn't it? But I guess there are plenty of wealthy folks who have a financial or personal stake in not having the Bush policies be regarded as a disaster and are willing to help pay to keep it from happening.

Tags: Bush, Media, Library, Iraq, Politics, Podcast

What is it?

Aired 12/01/06 What is it?

This week NBC became the first major media channel in the US to make an editorial decision to call the situation in Iraq a civil war. (Fox by comparison on Friday issued an official memo saying that they are to absolutely not call it a civil war.) You might think of this as simply a battle of semantics, of spinning the situation more positively or negatively. It is in fact more than that, and Bush will fight adopting the designation tooth and nail. The situation inn Lebanon under Reagan and in Somalia under Clinton (as in the movie Black Hawk Down) were both blamed on putting US forces in the middle of a civil war. Thus congress has questioned the Pentagon, and the Pentagon's top generals have agreed in testimony to congress, that US forces would not be put in the middle of a civil war in Iraq. So agree that it a civil war and you are also agreeing that the troops have to leave. That is why the term will be opposed so strongly.

Tags: Bush, Media, Bush, Civil War, Iraq, Politics, Podcast

A Big Week

Aired 11/27/06 A Big Week

On Sunday the War in Iraq passed the duration of our involvement in World War 2. And the first week past that threshold looks to be a very significant one, with reports, summits, and new developments on the ground.

Tags: Bush, Media, Maliki, James Baker, Al-Sadr, Iraq, Politics, Podcast

Public and Private

Aired 11/24/06 Public and Private

The Decision by Rupert Murdoch's media empire to drop the OJ Simpson hypothetical-tell-all book and interview was seen as his finally having pushed the envelope of taste too far. But I am not so sure. On their own enough people would have still tuned it to make it a ratings win for Fox in the time period, which was the whole point of it. They might not have admitted seeing it to anybody afterword, but they would have looked at it anyway.

The sequence of events told a slightly different story. it was an advertizer abandonment of the show that started the ball rolling. Compared to watching a show having your ad appear during it is a public act. You can't pretend that you weren't there the next day.

Tags: OJ Simpson, Media, Rupert Murdoch, Politics, Podcast

The Imp of the Perverse

Aired 11/17/06 The Imp of the Perverse

What on earth is OJ thinking? What makes him want to give what clearly everybody is going to regard as a detailed confession? It reminded me of a short story from Edgar Allen Poe, sort of a more intellectual version of The Telltale Heart. called The Imp of the Perverse.

In the meantime there are just so many great possibilities for this new genre, the Hypothetical Tell-All Expose. And there are a lot of other recent newsmakers with potential hypothetical blockbusters in the making.

Tags: OJ Simpson, Media, Mark Foley, Jack Abramhoff, Ted Haggard, Podcast
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Catching the Car

Aired 11/17/06 Catching the Car

While the War in Iraq is certainly the big picture issue of the midterm elections there will certainly be no easy solution and no obviously good one. So I believe that an important thing will be for the Democrats to quickly validate to voters that things are different because they were voted in. That is not so easy because there are still President Bush's veto and the Republicans' veto power to get around. In this podcast I suggest three things that the Democrats could possibly pass in the first hundred days after being sworn in that would validate themselves to the voters.

Tags: Guest Workers, Media, Minimum Wage, Stem Cell, Podcast

Clark or Melvin

Aired 11/10/06 Clark or Melvin

The resignation of Donald Rumsfeld was a big story, but perhaps the real question is what does Bush expect from his successor? I example this question using the two men who held the position of Secretary of Defense in the later days of the Vietnam War.

Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, media, Clark Clifford, Melvin Laird, podcast

Riding the Swing

Aired 11/10/06 Riding the Swing
What to make of the Democratic takeover in the midterm election? There will undoubtedly be as many answers as there are pundits. My initial take; It shows that despite all the massive efforts to force them into extinction the swing voter still exists.
Tags: Swing Voter, media, 2006 Election, Democrats, podcast

Sin

Aired 11/3/06 Sin

The story of Ted Haggard captures the media and audiences because nothing quite grabs the public like an ironic comeuppance. But the whole coverage, and people's reaction, maked it sound like his big sin is homosexuality. I disagree.

Tags: Ted Haggard, media, Sin, Homosexuality, podcast

What I'm Tired Of.

Aired 11/3/06 What I'm Tired Of

As this midterm election drags itself toward a 2.6 billion dollar finish line I thought I would sum up with a bit of a rant about what I find most annoying about the entire state of american politics.

Tags: Idiot, media, fear, Election, podcast

Voting your Basolateral Amygdala

Aired 10/30/06 Voting your Basolateral Amygdala
One of the latest ads by the Republican National Committee doesn't try to tell you why they will be better or the Democrats worse. It doesn't actually tell you anything. It just scares you. That is all. The presumption is that if you are scared you will vote Republican. After five years (or longer) playing on our fears maybe they are right.

The title of this peice refers to the part of the brain where conditioned responses to fear are processed

Tags: Amygdala, media, fear, Election, Republican, podcast

Stay the Stay

Aired 10/27/06 Stay the Stay
In a month where over one hundred US soldiers will be killed the huge political debate this month is over the words "Stay the Course". But "Stay the Course" isn't a strategy. It isn't a policy or even a fully fleshed out idea. It is a Slogan.

One hundred people are dying and we are arguing over which election year slogan we should be using?

Is the administration really that shallow? Are WE really that shallow?

Tags: Iraq, media, Stay the Course, Bush, Rumsfeld, podcast

Deja-Vu All Over Again

Aired 10/13/06 Deja-Vu All Over Again (with apologies to Yogi Bera)Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, perhaps intentionally so.

Sometimes a proposition, like a law or even a constitutional ammendment, isn't proposed so much so that it will pass as it will get atention. So California is voting on a Parental Notificaton law just after rejecting a virtually identical one in the last election. It makes no more sense that constantly having your flag burning ammendment stop short of passage again and again.

Tags: California, media, Ballot, Kelo, Parental Notificantion, Abortion, podcast

Shooting for the Moon

Aired 10/13/06 Shooting for the Moon Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, perhaps intentionally so.

The response to Kelo vs. New London has spawned a proposition in California to increase landowner rights. However when getting a chance to write the law that they always wanted there is a tendency to over reach, this time in the case of what is called regulatory takings.

Tags: California, media, Ballot, Kelo, Emminent Domain, Regulatory Takings, podcast

Tax and Spend

Aired 10/13/06 Tax and Spend

Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, perhaps intentionally so.

California loves causes but hates taxes, So there has been a trend to come up with specific special tax measures with a specific tax of an unpopular group or activity with the funds reserved for a specific popular cause. There are more than a few of them on this November's ballot and that's the subject of this item.

Tags: California, media, Ballot, Tax, podcast

Running Up the Credit Card

Aired 10/13/06 Running up the Credit Card

Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, perhaps intentionally so.

In the second of the pair of pieces on the debt proposals we look ath the specific items on the ballot.

Tags: California, media, Ballot, Debt, podcast

The California Credit Card

Aired 10/6/06 The California Credit Card

Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, perhaps intentionally so.

I know this may be a little dull to those outside of California, but remember that a great many national trends began as California ballot measures.

This election there is an exceptionally large number of Bond measures, so I start off with some general thoughts about state indebtedness.

Tags: California, media, Ballot, Debt, podcast

Studds

Aired 10/16/06 The Original Page Scandal

Recently former Massacheusets representative Gerry Studds died. Ironically in the week just before his death his name was again all over the news as conservative commentators tried to say 'hey look what democrats did', event though it was nearly three decades ago. I beleive though that if they had looked deeper they would have seen why this one is going so out of control on them yet Studds kept getting re-elected.

Tags: Foley, media, Studds, Page Scandal, podcast