As the campaign ends
The dirty work of politics and the media happen when no one is looking. Unpopular studies and required disclosures get dumped on Fridays so that they can be swallowed by the weekend. The news cycle turns on a dime when too much thinking becomes required. The Bernie Sanders campaign received almost no media coverage in this past week's run up to the South Carolina primary. It was a return to the near-blackout that occurred throughout 2015. And the results are the results. The mad Socialist was flying too close to the sun.
His race against Hillary Clinton was already being treated as if it was over this week even though the delegate count was dead even. Meanwhile, the Republican race is still being treated as a three-man race, even though Donald Trump has 81 delegates to Cruz and Rubio's 17 a piece. Now, after South Carolina, Clinton leads Sanders by 25 delegates, though that's still not many when you consider there are more than 200 delegates in play this coming Tuesday alone. Have the cards been stacked against Sanders from the beginning? Of course. But members of the news media betray their consumers when they refuse to spend time talking about the method in which votes are actually counted. They obsess, instead, over the "momentum" of the candidates, simultaneously never acknowledging that, as the media, they are the "momentum."
They have been looking for the very first excuse to write Sanders' presidential obituary because Clinton-- again-- is the candidate of the political establishment. Meanwhile, Cruz and Rubio are getting their heads handed to them by the rebel Trump, and we're still being fed a narrative of a "three man race."
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We have been profoundly failed by our news media in this electoral cycle. Seeing Trump play the careerists so effectively and reduce their establishment figures to nothingness has caused some perverse thrills on my part. Think of how unusual this year has been. There's a Republican candidate, attacked by the Koch brothers, that refuses to cooperate with FOX News. There's a Republican that has blasted George W. Bush and the war on Iraq in debate after debate-- and been rewarded for it. It's as if Trump has given many Republicans the cover to stop bullshitting the rest of us. It's actually a relief. For years, I thought to myself,
you guys really can't see what a clusterfuck this war is? This president is? It's never easy for a person to admit that he or she has been taken for a ride. I sympathize with these people even though their base instinct to exclude and to wall themselves up inside a false image of the country are so pathetic. They are true believing American patriots, but smothered now by hopelessness and powerlessness, dwelling within a collapsing empire. It happened to the British too, and today, further removed than we are from the end of their folly, they can laugh at themselves much more easily than we can.
I don't blame them for fearing the future. They
should be fearful. And I definitely don't blame them for their decision to vote against the establishment of their party. I've personally been voting against the establishment of their party since I was 18. Emotionally, the nation has returned to the 1930s. It's not, formally, an economic "depression," but it is a depression. Poverty and suffering were worse then, but there was more hope, thanks to a strong labor movement and active third party political forces. There were a few Donald Trumps in the U.S. in those days too-- men such as Father Couglin. (Of course, there was an even more terrifying form of xenophobia and nationalism in Europe.) It's a tumor that can be excised. Bernie Sanders, alone among the candidates of the duopoly, recognizes what the tumor is, and his message has been alternately muted or distorted by the citizenry's primary media sources.
In an interview this week, Noam Chomsky pointed out that we're seeing something unprecedented in American life. Despite vast wealth and scientific advancements, mortality rates are increasing. Health is deteriorating most rapidly and unusually among poorly-educated white men, and it's not diabetes and heart disease that serves as the usual culprit. It's suicide, alcoholism, overdoses on heroin and prescription drugs. "No war, no catastrophe," Chomsky identifies, "Just the impact of policies over a generation that have left them, it seems, angry, without hope, frustrated, causing self-destructive behavior."
Hillary is right that there is a similar strain in the campaigns of Sanders and Trump. Politics are so broken that the two men can be linked together simply by both pointing out how untenable the establishment's grasp on the nation's institutions really is. But the candidates are on opposite ends when it comes to advocating solutions. Sanders believes that people at the top of the social stratosphere are swinging the club. Trump strangely implies to these justifiably-angry voters that the threats come from the other powerless people at the bottom.
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How important has Bernie been to the world? If only one thing results from his presidential run, I will deem it an overwhelming success: If I never again hear somebody call Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton a Socialist.
That's been driving Socialists crazy for ten years.
Publishing, Hillary, and O.J.
Chris Rock is back hosting the Oscars this Sunday night. I’ve been advocating for that decision to be made since the night he debuted 11 years ago. Here’s
my recap of his earlier performance. The linked item appeared roughly three months into the run of this blog. (Have I mentioned recently that chrismoeller.blogspot.com is older than both Huffington Post and YouTube?) This Oscars recap from February of '05 has also been chosen for selection in a book of these blog entries that I plan to self-publish later this year. Roughly 100 of the 1,743 overall postings will be included in the publication.
If I haven’t been posting a lot recently, it’s because I’ve been busy in the editing room--
editing, but not changing. In the book, we’ll recap my professional career in journalism, my unsuccessful run for state representative in 2008, my brief career in film, my personal journeys-- both physical and metaphysical, my occasional creative writing exercises, your favorite rants and mine on the St. Louis Cardinals, the royal family, and the Clintons. And, of course... for the kids, celebrity obituaries.
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Speaking of the Clintons, I don't get how I'm supposed to believe the claims of Hillary supporters that she is the
most qualified candidate for the presidency in the history of that office. (Granted, her team has a lot of experience covering up history.) She has one term and change under her belt as a lawmaker (eight years, to Bernie Sanders' 26, for example), and an additional four years as a cabinet official. We're not really going to count her years as First Lady, are we? Beyond that, I'm pretty sure her only qualification is a law degree. Sorry, does that make me a "Bernie Bro" to point that out? I was never one of her mutually-alleged "Obama Bros" so maybe I'm safe from the Clinton mud machine.
Hillary only "got things done" as a Senator if you're counting her voting support for the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq War Resolution (based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution she admits she didn't read), the Keystone Pipeline, and the Patriot Act. And she should have been fired from her cabinet post after WikiLeaks documents revealed that the State Department, under her leadership, was employing our ambassadors to spy on their contacts on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency. That offense may have also warranted prison time, but for some reason, hardly raised an eyebrow. I guess it got covered in the mountain of exposed U.S. criminal activity around that time.
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Have you been enjoying the 10-part mini-series
American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson on FX? I have. Episode four of ten is on tonight. The dynamic between the attorneys is the most enjoyable part. Shapiro, Cochran, Bailey, Kardashian, Scheck, Dershowitz, Clark, Garcetti, and Darden were heavyweight personalities for sure, but true heavyweights on this planet are John Travolta, Courtney B. Vance, Nathan Lane, David Schwimmer, Rob Morrow, Evan Handler, Sarah Paulson, Bruce Greenwood, and Sterling K. Brown.
They’ve been laying it on pretty thick with the Kardashians angle though. To say the least, Robert Kardashian’s daughters were very peripheral to the story of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but we’ve seen several scenes in the series designed to remind you that the daughters of O.J.’s best friend would later become mega-celebrities in their own right. The most blatantly exploitative scene was a week ago when Robert K (played by Schwimmer) is recognized by O.J. media gawkers in a Hollywood restaurant, and then attempts to explain to his enraptured daughters why celebrity is not an end in life unto itself. “But why, Daddy?” they reply, collectively. The wrong word for scenes like this in
American Crime Story is “cheesy.” But the right one, for sure, is “campy.”
The wedding dance
Hillary Clinton says she won in Nevada because America is more than a “one issue” country. Actually, right now it’s not. The issue of the legalized bribery of our public officials shadows all other electoral issues, and Clinton would give anything for you to believe that her acceptance of large contributions from Wall Street does not affect the way she does her job. These bloodsuckers of the Financial District are confidence men that do everything within the law-- and sometimes outside of it-- to maximize their profit margins. Still, she expects us to believe that they give money to her just for the hell of it? And more maddening still, she makes comments such as this that suggest she thinks she’s the only adult at the table.
This year’s presidential race is shaping up to be more of the same, thanks to lies, distortion, and institutional delegate malfeasance on the Democratic side, and more of the same fear and loathing from the Grand Old Party. Oh, you thought this year was different? The overheated rhetoric? The bad manners? The supposed rejection of establishment candidates? Not in the slightest. Less than a month from now, the stage will be formally set for a match-up of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and just like 1992, and ’96, and 2000, and ’04, and ’08, and ’12, the choice will be between two heads of the same corporate monster.
But this year is different? you say,
Trump has damaged our politics. Right.
Five years ago, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were exactly the same, politically. Donald was a Clinton Democrat, a free-trader, pro-choice, a critic of a war in Iraq that he didn’t start criticizing until the situation had become catastrophic. Clinton was, of course,
literally a Clinton Democrat, a free-trader, pro-choice, a critic of a war in Iraq that she
voted for, but turned against as soon as the situation had become catastrophic, and also such a corporate shill that a Manhattan billionaire developer could publicly support her role in government without fear of having his financial hustle disrupted. Bill Clinton brags now on the stump about how Donald called and offered his support when the Republicans were being mean during his presidency. The Clintons even attended Trump’s wedding to Melania Knauss in Florida in 2005. Like anybody else that wants to curry real favor with the Clintons, Trump gave to their foundation-- as recently as 2014. The only difference between the two candidates now, unless you’re pretty gullible to believe more, is that Trump began playing a character on stage that would allow him to successfully navigate the traveling big top that is the Republican primaries. (For purposes of full disclosure, Clinton has also been presenting herself to primary voters as something she’s not.)
I seem to personally know a lot of mushy liberals that were warmed by reports last week of the largely-unknown, close personal relationship between Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the late Antonin Scalia. The two diametrically-opposed Supreme Court Justices put their work aside, we’re told, and came to be great friends-- a throwback concept to an earlier era, we’re also told. Ok, so now I’m asking this question to those liberals very seriously: What is the difference between the Ginsberg/Scalia relationship and the relationship between Clinton and Trump? They socialize away from work, living in the same city, and they were publicly complimenting each other up until the last presidential election cycle.
Yes, you say,
but Trump is a racist and a xenophobe. He has coarsened American political culture with his rude behavior. To that I offer that Scalia is a bigot and a homophobe who believes that racism no longer exists in America and that homosexuals should be thrown in prison for having consensual sex-. The honorable justice was coarsening American political culture (his favored attack: "Get over it") long before Trump entered the sphere of government.
Here we go again. We have a Democrat and a Republican who are expert at drawing personality distinctions between one another during the campaign, but have no intention of governing any differently from one another if elected. Wall Street has vetted both parties' choices and given its approval. The rest is just window treatments. We know what Trump would do in office because his kind are all the same. The caricature was well-drawn and specific even before he performed it for us on television for eleven seasons. If there was no Donald Trump in a city like New York, there would be another Donald Trump. And we know how Clinton would govern because her husband was already there. She would continue reading one script of promises and deeply-held beliefs in front of an audience of the Black Congressional Caucus, and then an entirely different one behind closed doors to investment bank executives. (For what it's worth, I would like to see the transcripts of
Bill's speeches as well.) Unless a third party candidate gets into the race to disrupt American political business as usual, there’s going to be nothing more of substance here to see. Remember that if this is indeed “the most important presidential election of your lifetime,” as you will soon be told, that makes it the fourth one in a row.
People's History of the Moeller Television Festival (14th year)
We discovered these comments on index cards after we emptied the Comment Box two weekends ago. (Sorry for the delay). The comments are, as always, anonymous, sic'd, and lacking context.
First TV Fest to start with a commercial. This fest is sponsored by Finger Blasters.
We start the festival with children's programs like this. We call the family hour.
Anybody see Trainwreck?
Did everyone see the Jon Hamm bobblehead?
Did you remember to turn off your pagers and cellphones?
I would ask/take Tim Daly to prom for my celebrity date. Who would you ask?
Be on the lookout for presidential candidates that might stop by this year.
Thanks to everyone who came-- especially from out of state- Jamie from Chicago and Tim from Peoria.
R.I.P Chuckles (includes drawing of elephant stomping a clown dressed as a peanut)
There's a Mary statue in downtown Minneapolis, throwing her hat.
Sue Ann (Betty White) it sounds like would take Robert Redford as a celebrity prom date.
Mary's body be bangin' in her 70s pant suits.
This show is more of a sausage-fest than expected.
I love Betty White :)
They had to write this episode several minutes short to accommodate laughter.
Where's Rhonda?
This episode of Mary Tyler Moore sponsored by Finger Blasters.
Almost all of these people are alive-- but they're old.
The opening shot in the theme of Mary's face, would now be a "fashion don't" for too much powder under her eyes.
I once played a rock version of the Mary Tyler Moore theme song in a past band.
How's the aspect ration for everyone? Is it good?
Hillary Clinton won't be here but she's planning to log in from her private computer.
Georgette was just in Chicago to promote a new Broadway show about a competitive dance team of old people. She looks and sounds exactly the same.
Diaper Blow Out!
The father character was added to the last two seasons of the Bernie Mac Show to help fill the void of Bernie and his declining health.
The actress that plays the mom is Diana Ross' daughter
Dion Cole his office friend was a writer on Conan O'Brien in a million sketches
The running gag of Jeannine is great. I like that actress's other running gag of playing Meg Ryan on MAD TV.
Chris Christie wanted to be here. Because it's an entire day of just sitting.
This episode explains the disappearance of Chuck Cunningham, Richie's older Brother. He's been missing since the first season. Obviously a victim of Mork's Alien abduction plans.
"I guess the finger was just too much" Best line of the episode.
Chris, is this before or after the show jumped the shark?
Robin Williams clown joke
Mork's glove is the inspiration for smartphones. He can google bleem measurements instantaneously.
Mork shot first.
Mork makes Robin Williams seem more like Andy Kaufman than I remember
Flying saucer? that was Fonzy jumping a shark.
Do you think Robin was already on coke?
This episode scared me when I was a kid. I loved Mork & Mindy but Mork was a scary bad guy in this
Martin O'Malley is here right now. He's blending in.
This was way before Bob Loblaw ever lobbed a law bomb.
Contrary to popular belief this episode was not written for Robin Williams
Fun Fact: My mom kissed Scott Bayo
RIP Al Molinaro He died this year 96
Richie was one of my first TV crushes.
Is Richie already balding?
I wonder if my gym has as many pube situations as Abbi's gym.
"Mind my vagina" was my AOL screen name
Best line of the episode "There's a pube situation that's unprecedented" Oops this was left in the box from the Happy Days episode
Anyone else want to change their celebrity prom date answer to Ilana?
A phrase I don't want to hear in a future episode: "Thanks a lot Donald J Trump"
Jeb!
Good job, Rob
Instead of Slide & Glid, I'd like to see these girls try curling
Constipation
Most oral sex at TV Fest since that episode of Murder, She Wrote
This is the funniest episode of Girls.
Dave had mote-me for breakfast
Bring back Fear Factor.... Bullet Ants maybe...
Help! I'm trapped inside a TV Fest Comment Box.
Beth would make a fun prom date!
Maura Tierney just won a Golden Globe
Ray Romano was the original Joe on the show
This show was 10 years too early. It's for an audience of obsessives.
Words not allowed in our house Milk, juice, drink, both
We are trying to teach Ophelia how to use the phone. She is confused to see Aaron's picture and hear the voice but not see a person.
Michael Conrad (Esterhaus in roll call) died of cancer a few months after this episode
Jenn should tell her Asian foot massage story
Remember when American streets were gritty?
Nobody knew the word "hoodie" in 1982
If you needed a cop in the 80's, who would you pick? Someone from Hill Street or Cagney & Lacey?
I've never watched this show before. Why is one of the cops dressed like a Latin American dictator?
Jeb!
If Hill Street had a complaint box, I think the Hispanic officer of the year ceremony would go smoother.
Aaron, do you have a piano to play the theme song for us?
I don't normally drink more than one margarita whenver I'm receiving an award.
According to IMDB, there's 29 characters in this episode
The way Frank felt when his son was missing is the way I felt during Blackish when Royce blew out his diaper
that john at the massage parlor was awfully "crabby"
Next, on your late local news
The doctor's receptionist Laura is the real life sister of my celebrity prom date, Sarah Silverman
Ben always has mismatched socks
This show animates somebody's stories, just like Drunk History
Chris and I used to play Guess Who with our sister
Ben & Dr. Katz should try playing "Cards against humanity." Maybe invite Jon Stewart to join them
Constipation or diarrhea?
One more thing TVs are great for: cheating to win board games
Franz (includes photo of Franz)
Royce's hats are like yarmulkes on me
Tim Conway is a good friend of me and Alex. We didn't get a Christmas card this year because we moved
Has Betty White ever had a different hairstyle?
For comedy/variety, Jamie wanted us to show Donny & Marie
This was 1978 but all these actors are still alive
I'm old enough to remember when these sketches first went viral in 1978
This was Grandma Werning's favorite show: Mama's Family in particular
Steve Martin biting his hand to stop laughing at Tim Conway
Where's the ear pull?
This episode aired five days after that Happy Days episode.
Aaron and Alex, could you bore us with a Tim Conway story?
Did anyone see Carol on Conan Wednesday night?
"Well excuse me" was Steve Martin's catch phrase.
This is the 4th to the last episode.
In most episodes, Carol takes questions from the audience
The bit with Mama's Family is that there's always a visit with a relative more sophisticated than them.
I didn't realize Betty White would be so prominent today
Seen Alec Baldwin's Tony Bennett impression?
Tracy's radioactive piranha is named Bitey, just like Homer Simpson named what?
Where is Betty White?
This is based on Tracy's real life, even before it happened
Tracy Jordan movie posters
Jane Krakowski is lying when she says Trop50 orange juice tastes good
Jon Hamm is Ellie Kemper's drama teacher at John Burroughs High School in St. Louis
Carol Kane was Woody Harrelson's girlfriend back in Cheers days
It's like an extension of 30 Rock- same rhythm and music.
Is everyone planning to watch "The People v. O.J. Simpson?" Starts this week.
The Clintons hit New Hampshire
A miscreant has been released from his cage. Bill Clinton is once again prowling the presidential campaign trail. The latest version looks pale and more corpselike than we remember, but that oily rhetoric is as disingenuous and focus group-controlled as it ever was.
Despite a rash of remarkably good fortune-- Hillary is even luckier at coin flips than she is at
cattle futures-- the Democratic Party’s establishment campaign is tipping towards Code Orange. The one and only knock against Bernie Sanders-- his supposed unelectability-- has been blown to smithereens by the latest polls, so, like his daughter before him, Bill has been sent to the stump with a script of misinformation and his work cut out for him. Just how dull have the edges become around this group of experienced political hacks that they’re retreating to the right even before the primary season has ended. The
old Bill and Hillary knew enough to pander to liberals at least through Super Tuesday.
Bill tackled historical precedent yesterday. The Clintons were among the corporate Democrats in 2000 and 2004 that demonized Ralph Nader for running an independent presidential campaign against the Democrats in the general election. Hillary said at the time, "His campaign in 2000 cost Al Gore the election. He claimed he was in it against corporate interest because he cared about the environment... and he basically deprived America of the greenest president we could have had, and someone who I don't believe would have made a lot of the mistakes that unfortunately we've had to live with from President Bush." (I wondered if she's referring to the colossal mistake of going to war against Iraq, a mistake she voted for.) Now that script must be upside-down because check out this statement by Bill on Sunday. He said that, because Sanders has been an active fundraiser for the party, having "hobnobbed with the millionaires and billionaires," he "might have to tweak" his anti-Wall Street rhetoric "or we might have to get a write-in candidate.
Wow. "A write-in candidate." He really went there. I mean I knew it would happen, but not during the first week of February. Would the Goldman Sachs wing of the Democratic party really subvert the effort by abandoning Bernie Sanders as the party’s nominee? Because if they do, a George W. Bush might be elected? Any and all wars started by the Trump White House would be the fault of these subversives. It would cost progressives the 'x' number of seats that will come up for grabs on the Supreme Court during the next four years. This is the most important election of our lifetime.
TM
Bill wasn’t done. He went on to lie that the “Bernie Bros,’ the mythical misogynists of the interwebs, were wreaking havoc online, subjecting Hillary’s supporters to "vicious trolling and attacks." What he's attempting to conjure is laughable in so many ways. First of all, arguably no American politician ever publicly disgraced a woman as much as Bill did Hillary for the duration of a long career. He is misogyny in the flesh. The 42nd President’s litany of crimes against women would be enough to make his wife a sympathetic actor if she hadn’t routinely acted as his co-conspirator in defaming the victims of the state power he exercised. In Hillary’s rhetorical world, “every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed and supported." Unless that woman is Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, or Kathleen Willey, just a few of the female stalkers that dogged Clinton's every step during his time in executive office. Clinton's supporters "trolled" Bill's employment underlings and sexual assault accusers by calling them bimbos, liars, "trailer trash," and whores. And those were not online trolls, those were the operatives in the Clinton West Wing.
I know that Bill telling manufactured stories at a campaign rally are pretty mild stuff compared with the stunt he pulled the week prior to the
1992 New Hampshire Primary-- that’s the cycle during which he flew to Arkansas to supervise the execution of a retarded African-American, Rickey Ray Rector, a victim of the state who saved the dessert from his last meal "for later"-- but it’s still enough to get one’s blood boiling.
Also, there is no such thing as a "Bernie Bro." Reptilian Clinton surrogates invented that concept sometime during a closed-door meeting last week after the campaign’s ugly polling numbers among young women started bleeding onto her polling numbers with
all women. The same condescending electoral strategy includes unleashing Gloria Steinem onto the Bill Maher show to suggest that young women are following Bernie because "where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie," and then to have Madeline Albright say explicitly to Bernie’s female supporters, while standing on stage next to Hillary, that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.” Historical legacies are being torched this year faster than poll numbers are reversing.
It’s hard to believe that these tactics, which can be called "Clintonian" with historical context, would be successful with progressive voters, but we’ve seen it before. The problem they have running against a Bernie Sanders-- or a Ralph Nader for that matter-- is that both the public records and private lives of these candidates are unimpeachable. The only avenues left are distortion and dishonesty, and those aren't off-ramps for the ethically-challenged. There have obviously been some hurried, anxious meetings in the Clinton camp in recent days. A sixteen-year personal bid for the presidency, fueled first by the public's affection for a wronged woman and then by gobs and gobs of Wall Street cash, is being permanently endangered-- and by a Socialist candidate at that. The level of frustration and anger that reality must cause for the Clinton team and its supporters is probably equal to the level of beautiful poignancy it means for true progressive revolutionaries.
The triangulators, having long ago abandoned the principles of the New Deal that Bernie champions, must be asking themselves, what can we say now to voters to stop the hemorrhaging? But there is nothing they can say. There are positive indicators now that we're on the verge of a new breed of voter. The internet has changed democracy. The echo chamber for left-wing radicalism, of which this blog has been a small part for eleven years, reverberates louder than ever. The art of political spin is no longer respected by either the right or the left. The people want truth. The news media can engage in an almost complete blackout of the Sanders campaign, and it did-- in 2015, ABC News devoted 261 minutes to the 2016 race, 81 minutes to Donald Trump and 20 seconds to Bernie, and still the revolution rises. Perhaps it’s the case-- finally-- that what you do-- and have done-- in American politics really does count for more than what you say. If that’s the case, say a final goodbye to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The Big Game's non-story
It is completely bewildering to me as to why Peyton Manning doesn’t get the Mark McGwire media treatment. The “ageless wonder” is not a wonder at all, if you buy into the narrative that he used Human Growth Hormone. And why wouldn’t you buy into it? The NFL's model citizen is 39, he’s two and half years removed from major neck surgery, and an employee at a medical clinic in Indianapolis, under secret surveillance, has him just this year ordering packages of HGH to his mansion under his wife’s name.
The National Football League schedules 13 days off between the two league championship games and the Super Bowl, six thousand “journalists” have media passes for the Super Bowl and its adjoining events/parties, and nary a soul is talking or writing about this. Nobody in the Associated Press is nosing through Manning’s locker. Could it be that members of our Fourth Estate are more interested in access to power than the delivery of information? One of the NFL’s two biggest stars got caught cheating red-handed this year, and the other one is Tom Brady.
If and when you choose to listen to Jim Nantz on CBS tonight, don't expect him to bring up the topic. He's already avoided it in two other televised Broncos games. Nantz teamed with Manning on a commercial for Sony television years ago, and when asked why he and his broadcast partner didn't broach the subject of Al Jazeera's HGH report on a Broncos/Chargers game last month, he said firmly, ""No, why would we? If we talk about it, we would only continue to breathe life into a story that on all levels is a non-story. Why add another layer to it?"
Why would he? There's a game on.
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When prominent St. Louis businessmen pitched the NFL a new riverfront stadium proposal for their city, the financing plan called for $300 million to be contributed towards construction by the league. At the ownership meeting last month, commissioner Roger Goodell told the collected owners before their vote on Los Angeles relocation that said plan was unacceptable by league standards. The NFL had a hard and fast rule, he warned, that permits no more than $200 million in league money to go towards new team facilities. Goodell told the owners that the proposal should
not be taken seriously, and then Rams owner Stan Kroenke said bluntly a day after that the stadium plan-- as well as the entire financial situation in St. Louis-- would be ruinous not only for the Rams if they were forced to stay, but for any other franchise that might think of relocating there.
Last week, under the cover of the Super Bowl's media glare, the NFL agreed to provide the city of San Diego $300 million towards a potential new stadium for the Chargers.
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Stan Kroenke is a bald asshole.
The aftermath
I don’t think outsiders can fully understand the dynamics of the Iowa Caucus-- the sheer accessibility of the candidates to Iowans. From where I live, on the edge of downtown Des Moines, the circus drops by on a daily basis. Nearly all of the televised debates took place within 10 blocks of us, either at Drake University to our north and west, or at the Events Center downtown, to our east. The television producers set up their local studios at downtown locations like Java Joes coffeehouse on 6th street. The local CBS-TV affiliate is four blocks to our east, the NBC affiliate four blocks to our south. Nobody watches the ABC affiliate.
The star-watching is unlike Hollywood or Manhattan Island in the sense that these are famous people that are not going out of their way to avoid you. The candidates
want to meet you. They need you. There were more than 15 Republican and Democratic candidates this year, and unlike past cycles, none of this year's candidates
skipped Iowa. Virtually all of the candidate parties on caucus night were held downtown. Not only could you see every candidate if you lived here, but you could
meet a majority of them, and you could do so without owning a car.
I skipped it all though. And I stayed home during the caucus to make sure that no national party hacks from either side broke into the other condominium units.
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It’s the biggest party on Iowa’s social calendar over a 48-month period, I'm right in the middle of it, and I still wish I was in New Orleans right now for Carnival.
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An anti-Wall Street political
independent just scored a tie in Iowa for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, and he did so running against one of the three party standard-bearers of our time (Clinton, Clinton, Obama-- he was kind of running against all three). This extraordinary moment has many parents and grandparents, but here are two groups that will go largely unheralded for their major contributions, and they shouldn’t-- 1) the Occupy movement, and 2) Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. The Tea Partiers have their political victories, and now the Occupy activists have theirs. The group never allowed itself to be co-opted by corporatists, or Democrats, and today, despite America's embarrassingly-short term memory, they are winners.
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Word comes today that the voting was so close, six tie-breaking coin flips, each in different precincts, made the difference in which candidate got the majority of the delegates. Pundits say Clinton may hold the advantage ultimately because she has the support of the "super-delegates."
I know what you're thinking. Coin flips and delegates that have more power than other delegates so they get to be called "super"-- these Iowa Caucuses just get more and more fascinating!
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The probability of Clinton winning all six coin flips-- as she did-- is 1.563%.
Yep. That's the probability of that.
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Bernie carried the youth vote by 70%! Now let's keep watching and see if Democrats are capable of reading political and cultural trends.
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The New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton the day before the Iowa Caucuses. I don't understand the timing. New Yorkers won't vote for weeks. But of course they endorsed her-- both the candidate and the paper endorsed the War on Iraq. Fat lot of good the endorsement did last night, by the way, and today,
some idiot of theirs attempts to explain why the tie is somehow a win for the woman that led the polls by more than sixty percent a year ago.
