I take no responsibility for the following list of eight names, other than that they’re in a notebook I own. His fault.
The media that has convinced many people that John Kerry is a dull and boring campaigner is the exact same media that convinced a lot of people that Dean was a dangerous scary angry man. Kerry did not win Iowa by accident; he won Iowa by having a kick-ass machine on the ground and by campaigning his heart out and by attracting people on his own merits.
It wasn’t media. The media wrote him off as dead. The media storyline challenger for Dean was Clark.
Bush is raising lots of money? Eeek. Didn’t someone just prove that the money leader doesn’t always win elections? Oh, yeah, that was Kerry.
Me, I liked Dean better than Kerry, but right now? I wouldn’t put money on Bush against Carol Mosley Braun. The funniest thing in the world is watching the Democrats maneuver Bush into bragging about job growth, cause every time Bush says there are more jobs, another few unemployed people get pissed off. Kofi Annan is carefully setting Bush up: you think he doesn’t know that the Iraqi Shi’ites aren’t going to tolerate anything other than direct elections? The next step is a UN recommendation that we wait until December or so to hand over power.
The National Guard story tested really well, and now it’s going to go back to sleep until someone trundles it back out in August or so. Plame may yet be an issue. Some of Bush’s base is losing faith with every day Bush fails to call for a DOMA Constitutional amendment, while a quiet plurality of Americans are wondering why they should care if two guys want to get married. The Senate document theft thing isn’t going away just yet. And the White House press briefings are getting brutal.
It’s going to be a very rough 2004 for the President.
The Apprentice has been pretty much enh for a couple of weeks — one team was clearly better, and they were destroying the other team. There was some amusement value from watching Jessie stab Kristi, and then get fired the next week. (Kristi: “What should I do?” Jessie: “Oh, don’t say anything until Mr. Trump talks to you.” Kristi: “OK!” Later, Trump: “You’re not very assertive, Kristi. You’re fired.”)
Oh, and the bit where Troy carefully manipulated the Fab Five into giving him a good item for a charity auction? That was great. He told the camera what he was gonna do and say, he did it, and it worked like a charm. But there weren’t a lot of good moments like that.
This week, on the other hand, ruled. It was a nice simple contest; the two project leaders negotiated for their choice of two apartments, each team renovated the apartment they wound up with, and the side that got the best percentage increase over the base lease price for the apartment won. For the first time, you had two contestants negotiating with each other, and Troy destroyed Katrina. In the end he got what he wanted by the flip of a coin, but I’d say he still wound up with an advantage because Katrina was seriously pissed off about it. If he’d lost, he would have shrugged it off.
Side note: the real question was not which apartment looked nicer, but which apartment had a lower base lease price. A hundred dollar increase over the base price means a lot more if the base lease price is low. Because the show isn’t really about business, nobody mentioned that.
Tammy sucked down the loss for being disloyal, which is a recurring theme. Also because she’s been startlingly non-effective in general, but mostly because she wasn’t loyal to her team.
It’s getting down to the smart people. Right now I’m betting on Troy and Amy, or perhaps Nick. Most likely winner is Troy, because he’s a very good manipulator. He had a better chance before Amy wound up on his team, though; he was going to slip right through till the end but now he has real competition on his team.
Saith Rex Hammock, upon meeting the President:
He is definitely not a wonk, but he knows clearly what he believes needs to happen for the country and its eocnomy to prosper. I don’t think the circular arguments regarding “what ifs” and “what abouts” interest him.
Rexblog is kind of neat, actually — he’s a small business owner in the magazine industry. I like the focused special interest blogs that never get any attention most of the time. And I like publishing.
Gotta say, though. Bush doesn’t like what ifs and what abouts, huh? Who’d’ve guessed?
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