Last night at dinner we were talking about Cher's Swarthy Trilogy, but I could only remember Half-Breed (above) and Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves.
I had the lyrics to the third one in my head, but the saki bombs hit before I got the title.
Duh, Dark Lady.
We talked about this, too.
Semi-related: I had this song stuck in my head this afternoon.
I wrote a column about Mother's Day a few years ago, calling it "that bastard child of Hallmark and Freud."
You can read it here.
How Pat McCrory pulled off "a winning statewide campaign with unprecedented speed for modern N.C. politics. He won the GOP nomination Tuesday by a convincing margin, blowing by three established rivals 16 weeks after he declared his candidacy."
Weak opponents, media savvy, and lots of money all helped. North Carolina is now said to be one of the most competitive gubernatorial races for the GOP in '08, although Perdue's drubbing of Moore makes her look pretty strong in my book.
Binker trashes Broder's "singularly jerky and condescending" remarks about North Carolina's irrelevance to the nominating process.
Broder's take on the substance of the Obama and Clinton campaigns in NC is pretty good, but I think he's wrong to dismiss North Carolina as a contested state in November, and I don't buy the argument that November defines the relevance of a primary state.
(Broder also answers Glenn Reynolds' musing that Kentucky should count as much as North Carolina; he includes it on the list of remaining primary states that have "small populations and are notably lacking in the kind of political prestige that would magnify their influence on the uncommitted superdelegates." Kentucky has about half North Carolina's population, and has 8 electoral votes to NC's 15.)
As Jack Bass writes, Obama's big win here made a strong statement about the viability of his campaign. The rest of the article, which argues that the Republican tide in the south has crested, is pretty interesting, too.
There are reasons to view Greensboro's bicentennial as an underwhelming occasion, starting with the fact that it commemorates an underwhelming occasion...we're marking the 200th birthday of a bureaucratic event: the incorporation of a town. Hurray, the papers have been filed! Our bicentennial mascot should be a notary.
My newspaper column is about the GSO bicentennial. You can read the whole thing after the jump.
Hagan essentially even with Dole in new Rasmussen poll.
More important than the numbers themselves is the national attention they generate, which Hagan needs in order to raise the big bucks.
Swing State Project has moved NC from "Safe Republican" to "Likely Republican."
The picture at far left is the view forward from row 11 on this evening's 6:50 United flight from Chicago to GSO (I missed my original connection). The picture next to it is the view to the rear of row 11. (Click images to enlarge)
What's going on? An industry that has forgotten about customer service.
Almost nobody opted to pay $30 bucks extra to sit in "economy plus," which promises a few inches of extra legroom. When it became clear that the flight would be packed six across from row 11 back while row after row sat empty in the front, people asked if they could move up. The flight attendants said no, you have to pay for those seats. Not very customer-friendly or situationally aware, but comprehensible.
So a guy asks if he could pay on the spot. Nope. People were laughing at the United's cluelessness, but it wasn't very friendly laughter.
When the drink cart came by I bought myself $5 worth of stress relief and asked the flight attendant (politely) why she could sell me a drink but not a seat. She looked at me like I had two heads and said they are in no way set up to take reservations, you have to do that with a service representative.
I started to say I didn't want a reservation, I wanted to hand her $30 and move up one freaking row, but it felt like I was on the phone with Bangalore and couldn't get a supervisor, so I just shut up and drank.
To recap: They don't know how to allocate their seating categories, they aren't going to let people spread out across a half-empty plane as a courtesy, and they turn down the chance to upsell on the spot, even though they do commerce in the aisles all the time.
What a stupid industry.
Anyway, I'm home. The dog seems glad to see me.
Yglesias: "[W]e need to ditch the mindset that says 'cred' on national security is composed of being hawkish even when that means being wrong."
A scenic drive to SFO and then into the maw of the air travel system. Gate reassigned. Reassurance that we're still heading out. An old man sits beside me. He unwraps a turkey sandwich at 8:10 AM local time and masticates it slowly. Then he sneezes wet pieces of it all over my laptop screen, an event to which he seems oblivious. Then he flosses his teeth. Then our plane is declared hors de combat for mechanical reasons. People are agitated. Those with international connections are sent to another place for reassignment. Announcements are made; we are in limbo. I contact my travel guy. He says we're scheduled for a 10 AM departure. I tell the gate agent this; news to him. 10 minutes later he announces that we've commandeered an inbound-from-LA plane are scheduled for a 10 AM departure. Perhaps this will happen. I am centered down into that grim detached-but-watchful travel mode that keeps one sane in airports. Did I mention that I won closest-to-the-pin contest on the Old Course yesterday?
There's something curiously intimate about a text message, or at least about text messages from one's kids when you are 2,500 miles apart. The compressed language, the tiny screen, the speed of communication, the unpredictable timing of the chime announcing you're in touch -- I don't know what goes into it, but it's nice. Long travel day home.
The battle for local video news heats up in New York. Newspapers are using video to compete with local teevee (as long expected).
Somebody is going to emerge as the dominant media brand in Guilford County. The established players have high costs and seem more interested in their desperate rearguard fight to shore up margins than in investing and expanding. I bet a credible web-based contender could be launched for less than $1 million. My phone number is listed if you want to talk.
United Guaranty reports a Q1 loss of $352 million as AIG swoons.
In February I said it will be morbidly fascinating to total up UG's losses this year. The GSO mortgage insurer lost $563 million in the second half of '08, so the running tally since last July is $915 million.
This is painful stuff for Greensboro. The company was founded here and is headquartered here, and a large amount of local wealth is tied up in AIG stock. It's also a lens on a much larger story. You'd think it might get some meaningful media coverage.
Joel Gillespie: "As a Christian pastor I have often said to my congregation that if Christians in the United States were to hear and listen to their own Scriptures the nation would almost certainly enter into recession. Our economy is built upon the foundational principle of normal everyday people being discontent with what they have and thus spending money on what they don’t need."
Jonathan Zittrain says tethered appliances will stifle innovation on the internet.
Previously: Apple vs Apple users.
iPhone SDK page.
Governments worse than our own: "Aid shipments to storm-ravaged Burma remained largely stalled for another day Thursday, awaiting approval from the government's military junta despite a worsening humanitarian crisis that already has claimed upwards of 100,000 lives."
Mistakes of the Clinton campaign. This stuff is always clear in hindsight, but some of it should have been pretty obvious ahead of time, too.
I think this mindset was part of the problem. Hillary is a strong candidate (although I don't like the idea of Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton succession) but I never felt like she was really asking for my vote until she got to New Hampshire, at which point the flawed strategery made it hard to come back.
Maybe I missed it, but has the N&R mentioned John Hart's big win last week?
RIP Lewis Morris.
One of the good guys.
Erik Huey blogged his school-board campaign. He didn't win, but he's still online with Guilford School Watch, where he launches this smoker about the school bonds and their opponents.
"Amos, Deena & Co., do your damn jobs! Start putting our children first."
These days you don't need a seat on a public board to have a public voice.
My partner PJ tees off on the Ocean Course in Half Moon Bay, a couple of hours ago.
Good news: "U.S. productivity started the year on surprisingly firm footing thanks to a big jump in manufacturing productivity."
Bad news: The jump suggests that "U.S. firms [...] adjusted quickly to the economic slowdown by shedding workers and cutting back on hours worked."
Story here.
Doug Clark says, "six months out, that North Carolina is in play in this year's presidential race."
The math is interesting, and Doug says it "would be similar in the Perdue-McCrory and Dole-Hagan races."
Best campaign ad of the season.
I had dinner with Paul Begala just after he received this beat-down from Donna Brazile. He seemed cheerful about having done good teevee. It's pretty much over for Hillary, he concedes, given the squeaker in Indiana and the non-squeaker in NC.
Senate Guru says Kay Hagan is a contender:
Given that Dole is presumably at maximum name ID and that she rarely touches 50% in any approval poll (that isn't commissioned by her campaign or her partisans), she has little room to grow. On the other hand, Hagan is still expanding her name ID beyond her State Senate district. And polling indicates that her paid media campaign is incredibly effective. This won't turn into a Tier 1 race overnight, but every indication is that this is a strong Tier 2 race with much potential.
Hagan's going to need national money to win this thing.
Some notes on election day:
Obama takes Guilford with 68% of the vote, versus 56% statewide. Who were the 557 local folks voting for Mike Gravel?
Huckabee gets more than twice as many votes as Ron Paul, who got fewer votes than the combined totals for Alan Keyes and No Preference. Huck whipped Paul statewide, too.
In case the baseball vote a few years didn't convince you: Guilford County is not going to vote itself a sales tax increase.
Freedom Fries Jones held off his primary challenger. There's your public sentiment on Iraq in a nutshell: eastern NC supports the guy who went from cheerleader to critic.
Democrats across the state have to be disappointed that it's McCrory instead of Smith for the GOP; on the other hand, Perdue's blowout of Moore makes her look formidable.
UPDATE: Some nice maps and stats from NYT.
This is a very large country and it takes a while to fly across it.
Then again, one can have breakfast with the kids in Greensboro and still make it to California in time to hit the putting green before dinner.
Lisa Scheer took this pic recently in Myrtle Beach.
Free markets are always best, except when they aren't, says Bernanke: "As the House prepared to take aggressive steps to stem the wave of home foreclosures, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on Monday night endorsed the need for government intervention, saying that letting markets take their own course could 'destabilize communities, reduce the property values of nearby homes and lower municipal tax revenues.'"
The Journal says he's "inching closer" to Barney Frank's position.
Here's the speech.
Lots of reasons to want home prices to stabilize, including the ones Bernanke cited. Oh, and this one: "As home prices continue their free fall and banks shy away from lending, Washington officials have increasingly relied on two giant mortgage companies — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — to keep the housing market afloat.
"But with mortgage defaults and foreclosures rising, Bush administration officials, regulators and lawmakers are nervously asking whether these two companies, would-be saviors of the housing market, will soon need saving themselves."
I wonder if Hillary disdains elite financial advisers when it's time to invest all that money?
Mrs. McCain's portfolio would be interesting to see, too, should it ever be made public.
Bissinger rethinks his blog-bashing performance on Costas: "It was also abundantly clear that I had disappointed people who had been fans of my work. That hurt terribly. They were also right."
Extra points for saying it on a sports blog.
"June 7 marks the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut. This was the first of many decisions that led to the culture of death we live in today."
Thus, Protest the Pill Day.
The fateful decision in Griswold said states couldn't forbid married couples to use contraceptives. Real culture of death stuff, that.
The American Life League, which is sponsoring PPD, says "birth control leads to a state of mind that treats sexual activity as if it has nothing to do with babies; babies are treated as 'accidents,' as a burden to be eliminated. In this way, contraception is clearly linked to abortion."
That said, Atrios is overstating things by claiming "the anti-choice movement has little do with abortion." Not that the anti-contraception movement is irrelevant, I just don't see evidence that it's driving the bus.
Underqualified, incompetent, and having an affair with an employee...but not gonna quit (to the delight of the Ohio GOP, and thus the national GOP).
Just 16 months into his four-year-term, Ohio's attorney general admitted he was in over his head as he acknowledged an affair with a subordinate and his failure to stop problems that led to a sexual harassment investigation that brought down three of his aides.
Marc Dann apologized to his wife and supporters but insisted he would not step down. He took responsibility for the scandal, saying he was not prepared for the office or to run such a large agency.
Dr. Wharton will vote for the greenway (Parks & Rec) bond tomorrow, because the greenway "will continue to re-weave the urban fabric that was so ripped and tattered by mid century misunderstandings of how good cities work, and make Murrow Boulevard (among other streets) work for the city dwellers who live there rather than for commuters who just want to drive through as quickly as possible."
An explication of the point made by John McClendon about the greenway as transportation infrastructure, which is one of the many reasons that add up to a make it a worthwhile project.
What to expect from the Google farm that North Carolina bought so dear: growth, but no boom.
Krugman: "And now that the financial clouds have lifted a bit, the pushback against sensible regulation is in full swing. Even the Fed's very modest proposal to curb abusive mortgage lending with new standards is under fire, and there are worrying signs that the Fed may back down." He worries that "As a result, the next crisis will probably be worse than this one."
Previously: "[A]nother round of market mayhem in the not-too-distant future seem[s] almost inevitable."
Previously: "The pushback against sensible regulation will be intense."
Are modern thoroughbreds built to break down?
Sally Jenkins says "thoroughbred racing is in a moral crisis...Twice since 2006, magnificent animals have suffered catastrophic injuries on live television in Triple Crown races, and there is no explaining that away. Horses are being over-bred and over-raced, until their bodies cannot support their own ambitions, or those of the humans who race them...According to several estimates, there are 1.5 career-ending breakdowns for every 1,000 racing starts in the United States. That's an average of two per day."
I'd like to know how those stats compare to the numbers from earlier generations.
Jim Squires is more dispassionate. He points to the natural mortality rate of horses, and then says: "Still, there is something to the complaint that the horses we raise are not as sound as they used to be. The thoroughbred horse is one of the most fragile creatures on earth, an animal with a heart and a metabolism too powerful for his bones, digestive and respiratory systems, one too heavy and too strong for the structure supporting it."
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