1st general election ad

check out obama's first general election ad.



i must say, i am excited about this. he is finally doing in this ad what he has needed to do for a while now. the biggest thing about him being a post-racial candidate is that he can really work toward uniting people on economic lines. the jewish family who busts their hump to giver their kids opportunity is no different than the black family that does. the latino family that sacrifices vacations and lavish clothes so that they can send their daughter/son to a better high school is no different than the irish-catholic family who does the same thing.

this ad, much like tim russert's recent passing touches on a familiar vein in the american story. you have some at the bottom who cheat the system by not putting good-faith efforts for self-reliance in and live off of government handouts. and some at the top cheat the rest of the country with smoke-filled-room deals and white collar crimes that go unpunished. however, most of us are in the middle, hardworking people who are willing to make the necessary sacrifices for our ambitions. and that's what barack needs to touch on, that's what he has over mccain and that's what will make him win in november. it screams, "he's one of us" but not in that pretenious, xenophobic-motivated sort of way.

-lx

calm down, they were supposed to win

cut it out. ok the lakers lost. i admit that boston was the better team, the superior team, the scrappier team, the more mature team. but the problem with things like this is what you don't hear by the bandwagon jumping sports media:

• phil didn't get outcoached, he was always overrrated. nobody likes to say it, but mike/scottie, kobe/shaq, who couldn't have won 9 rings. but the thing is, this series showed his flaws. phil went zen when the lakers needed scrappy, hardwork an unerstanding of the urgency of the moment
• the lakers front office dropped the ball. how do you expect to win a championship with no player over 30. danny ainge did the right thing, get pj brown, get cassell to teach rondo. get players like posey who will do anything for the possesion
• paul pierce is now officially overrated. the bottom line is while the sports media annoints pierce the next mike...smh...he's not. he didn't outplay lebron or kobe. lebron and kobe faced triple teams from the best defense the nba has seen since the 1990 pistons. paul pierce was at best the second thought on los angeles's defensive mind. he busted radmanovich and walton one-on-one and through picks, that is hardly mike, kobe or lebronesque. don't get me wrong, he played very well and deserved the nba finals mvp. but don't get it twisted, without kg and ray the celtics are watching the finals on their couch. and throw paul pierce on this lakers team without kobe and the lakers are an 8th seed (at best).
• kevin garnett is underrated. kg one game 6 for them. the lakers made one good push early on that kg stopped by himself scoring 10 points in a row. he has been the ocnsistent player for boston all year. kg's screens allow paul the one-on-one matchups and ray the open 3s.
• kobe still has some maturing to do but played this one right. kobe had the right idea, team team team. kg, ray and paul are three perineal all-stars, you can't beat them alone, mike wouldn't have been able to do that. so in that respect he played his cards right, the lakers just weren't ready. however, he is still in some ways too in love with himself. he took jumpshots all series and the 1st quarters when he got hot were just fool's gold. his game is taking it to the rack and getting people in foul trouble. if he doesn't get to the line 10 times, the lakers can't win. and guess what...mike was the same way. how many real basketball fans remember mike consistently would have 20 points at half on 6 of 18 shooting. all the time! it's because he got to the line.
• pau gasol was overrated. the sportscasters don't like to say it because they jumped on his bandwagaon (like they always do). but you could see pau's weaknesses in the utah and denver series. he is not physical enough. his 12 foot jumper is unreliable. he gets flustered too easily. any defense worth it's weight in rice would have realized this. consequently, boston exploited it. pau got outplayed by perkins. PERKINS!
• lamar odom is not scottie pippen...yet. one of the things that basketball heads who don't really know basketball like to do is undervalue scottie. but scottie was one of the 50 greatest for a reason. he wouldn't have put the ball on the floor on a wide open 16 footer like the ones lamar had this series. he could at 6 foot 8 run the point effectively. he knew when mike was triple teamed what was expected of him, ultimately causing teams not to triple team mike (like they presently do to kobe and lebron). but lamar is young and he can get there. during the offseason he just needs to work on turning himself into a small forward. that means he needs to hit a consistent 20-footer, give his body when going to the rack and command the soldiers on the floor.
• lastly, the celtics were supposed to win! they had 3 all-stars, 2 of which were bonafide superstars. they had desperation on their side (kg, ray and paul are old and were ringless) and homecourt advantage from being in a far weaker conference. the lakers had kobe (the best palyer in the game/world) and that's it. we always knew lamar still had another year to relaly blossom. pau gasol is good but not even an all-star yet. calm down people. the lakers didn't play under expectations, they played over expectations. don't be fooled by the pundits who kept saying this would be a 'series-for-the-ages', that was aspirational not reality.
  

all said, cograts to the celtics. congrats to kg, the hardest working big man in the game. but to the laker/kobe haters, get-a-life. this wasn't a win for you, this was a loss for you. the lakers came within one game of a nba championship without one of their big men (bynum), with no one over 30 and with a newly acquired second scorer (gasol). if this is the lakers now, you are going to hate next year (and so will the rest of the nba).

Cuomo '82 "Of To We"

Check out Jon Stewart's hilarious gutting of the MSMs obsession with finding something where there is nothing regarding Obama:



If you remember, this started shortly after Hillary made accusations of media bias. At that point the media sought to find anything it could on Obama. The 'relationships' are often tangential and very, very exxagerated. Those 'relationships' were coupled with giving chain e-mails a respect they were never previosuily given.

I've compiled a list:

• Jeremiah Wright- Obama's former pastor. Since when are state and U.S. senators held accountable for what their pastors say? Especailly since, like most things in their lives, their church affiliation is political and attendance highly irregular.
• William Ayers- a 1960s radical who Obama once served on a board with and knows in passing. LOL. So, Ayers is basically a U Chicago professor who is known well in political circles. And because Obama 'served on a board with him' (read: names appeared on the same program sheet) and 'knows him in passing' (read: most likely used him for political gain); because of this, Obama can't be trusted? LMAO.
• Obama in traditional Nigerian garb. Q: Have you seen Bush in the African garb...hillarious. But no one thinks Bush is importing conflict diamonds, b/c he wore a country's garb during a visit. SMH.
  
• Pastor Pfleger- a visiting pastor to Trinity Church who made controversial comments about Hillary Clinton. So, a pastor who visits a church that Obama used to attend said something and this is a reflection on Obama....how exactly?
• Obama is a muslim. While, the MSM disputes these claims they do devote entire segments to answering the question. The saddest thing about this, is that somehow muslim has become synonymous with wrong, scary, terrorizing.

The bottom line here is that the media should not even acknowledge these claims. Especially with niche blogs to dispute the obvious absurdities, the dispution is unwarranted. Anybody who believes that a U.S. Sentator (only 100 in the most powerful country in the world) could become a U.S. Senator with any of these allegations being true is insane. What it does amount to is xenophobia and the media's obsession with proving it warranted or unwarranted. The thing with xenophobia is though, its gonna be there regardless. It doesn't come from being the Sherlock Holmes who discovered a tangential, weak relationship between a unsavory character and a U.S. Senator. Xenophobia doesn't come from there. It comes from a much simpler place--within. It comes from your mom and dad not teaching you that your problems are your doing and are not the fault of poor people with a different skin tone, accent, gender or national affiliation. It doesn't even come from organized groups like the KKK. Those groups only allow you a place to express your lunacy. It comes from thinking you can only find brotherhood/sisterhood through exclusion and not through honest, wholehearted, interdependent relationships.

So, to the media: you don't need to spend 15 minutes on the 6 o'clock news telling me that Obama is not a Louis Farrakhan. I know that, anybody with a clear head knows that. And those of us that don't won't get the message from you, they need to get the message from and for themselves.

luke russert...

...on the today show today. he was incredibly composed, well spoken and gracious. i am truly inspired by the way he is dealing with such a loss.



all this coverage on tim russert reminds me of my father and grandfathers. much like mr. russert my dad and grandfathers came from working class homes. what spoke very much to me this weekend was the repeated mention of tim russert saying that he saw his father lead by example. it's kind of loss in today's hyper-communicative society (hyper-communcicative being a good thing). my dad is almost 66 and he has been working since he was 12. not a big talker, just pretty much goes to work and like silence when he can get it. a vietnam vet, but still largely a gentle guy who admist all his shortcomings just wants the people around him to have happiness and opportunity.

similarly, my grandfather was a wwII vet and a painter. he didn't have a lot of fancy things but worked hard to move his family from a small town in north carolina to new york city. he liked things that black/native american men weren't supposed to like--like golf. most strikingly, at his old age, when so many folks become mean he just became funnier and nicer. he would make fun of my cousin's lactose intolerance and rip the cheese off of her pizza. of course, he had his vices, cigarettes being his ultimate demise. but he defied so much of what and who he was supposed to be. he valued education even though he didn't have the opportunity to have a robust one.

so, to my dad, grandpa and tim russert and all dads around the world. happy father's day! and to all the folks reading, leave something about your dad on the comment board. we can all benefit.

-lx

hillary, katie and sexism

keith olbermann recently labeled katie couric as the worst person in the world. olbermann reacted to this:



once again, sexism as a major story. the problem with this discussion is that sexism is alleged or discredited as a zero-sum gain. the conversation does not address the nuances of both clinton's inept campaign and the media's institutional sexism.

have we forgotten:

• mark penn thought california was winner-take all
• clinton's campaign didn't understand the intricacies of proportional delegates in TX
• no post-feb. 5 strat
• maybe there was no post-iowa strat
• bosnia and the sniper-fire-that-wasn't
• using SNL as the ultimate political punditry of the media (only to be clowned by SNL repeatedly afterward)
• multiple campaign slogans
• mixed messaging
• jesse jackson, rfk, caucus states not meaning much
• fox news giving a balanced shake? omg. yes, we need acronyms for that one.
  

i can go on and on. they ran a poor campaign against the most organized, efficient campaign in recent political history. hillary hosted a town hall on the hallmark channel. the hallmark channel? come on. she sounded her best we she spoke from the heart, when she told us to imagine moms and dads whispering to their little girls, "see you can be anything you want to be." that's the hillary i wanted in december, not bosnia, not "shame on you barack obama", not invoking the name of rezko (especially when it would take us HOURS to list all of her direct and tangential questionable associations/friendships/relationships.)

still, hillary faced major sexism

• commentators saying she would 'castrate' male statesmen
• see chris matthews
• no really, see chris matthews
• the hillary nutcracker doll
• 'iron my shirt' and the lackthereof media coverage/outrage on it
• the 'she sounds like my ex-wife' crap
• scrutinizing her appearance on multiple occasions, fox news even speculating her cleavage decisions. wtf
• her having to play the strong leader card and not being to take on hope as a campaign message
• bill. clinton. no really, bill clinton

so yes, she ran an inept campaign AND she faced major sexism. so, no she didn't lost because of sexism, she lost bc of barack obama.

remember, hillary wasn't 'our girl' until she saw it was in her political interest; somewhere around new hampshire. and that is the truest testament to her equality. as a female candidate she was able to be just as opportunistic and callous as all the male candidates who preceded her. ahhhh, equality! however, they nor her could weather the onslaught that was hope & change after Gov. Bush.

at the end of the day, it's a loss and victory for women. on one hand, this election cycle showed the endemic sexism of this country and the lack of outrage to it. on the other hand, hillary did break several ceilings, at least 18mm people don't care that she is a woman. lastly, women got the stronger candidate on 'women's issues' (as if all women's issues aren't human issues).

thoughts?

-lx

Moby on Clintons in PAPER

Moby offers his opinion in PAPER about the end of the Clintonian (yeah, real snobby) era. It's pretty good. My favorite line,

For years we heard the rumblings from the GOP that the Clintons were power hungry and entitled and would do anything to win, and that the public Clinton face was just a CNN-friendly Picture of Dorian Gray. And we dismissed the GOP rants as being the inbred ravings of the vast right-wing conspiracy. But now we're thinking that maybe the GOP was right about you (no pun intended).

Only thing is, he should have intended the pun!

eco 101

so cnn crunched obama and mccain's respective tax plans. they basically found that if you make under $2.9MM obama's plan saves you more. if you make over $2.9MM obama's plan costs you over $800K more than mccain's. here is what they left out, folks making over $161K represent less than 5% of the country. would there be a debate if this ratio (95 to 5) was represented in any other policy decision? it would seem that it is not in the economic interest of 95% of the country to vote for mccain. and that, is what hillary has been saying for the last 13 months, let's see if folks listen.

michelle is reduced to a "baby-mama"

if you think fox news was losing it with the "terrorist-fist jab" they have now deemed Michelle Obama, Barack's "baby-mama." do i really need to blog about the racist, nonsense in this? smh. well, at least some folks in the msm have picked up on it, and of course the niche blogs get the scoop.



this is getting our of hand.

i only sleep with democrats

if you doubt the importance and pop-culture relevance of this election, you should doubt it no more after watching this:




truththroughaction.org is something very new to the political landscape. i blogged about the colbert/stewart strategy of dealing with right-wing lunacy. this can just be seen as an extension of that. instead of addressing the policies of the fringe of the right-wing party, truthforaction makes fun of them. and they are smart for doing so. i mean really, how can you have an intellectual debate about whether or not some supreme divine being who only reveals himself to a few of us approves of two men doing the hippity dippity? the argument against is not grounded in reality, its' grounded in fear. how can you have an intellectual argument with someone about whether or not a human being should get medical treatment? again, the argument, not grounded in intellectual fortitude but minimizing financial burden (and there is barely an argument there).

i have always been an independent because i have always subscribed to the belief that there is never a right side in a two-sided argument. inevitably there is nuance that makes pieces of both arguments correct. and even those pieces that are incorrect (if you can call them that) are incorrect only because they are placed in the context of the times, not because they have no intellectual base. but, the republican party has been hijacked (kudos Arianna) by lunatics who think that xenophobia, discrimination and disbelief in scientific reality is the most effective way to govern. they are not statesmen, they are salesmen. this is why i agree with Arianna Huffington calling it the lunatic fringe. at the end of the day, republican values are built on fiscal solvency, individual responsibility and limited government. unfortunately, the republican party today surely does not represent fiscal responsibility (see: Iraq War, Gas Prices, etc...). they don't represent individual responsibility, they just pervert that value to many get the illegal immigrants outta here and let poor people pay higher taxes (relative to income) than the top 0.1% of the country. and limited government? puhhllleeeeeeze! big brother anyone (Orwell, not the tv show) so therefore, i drop my independence and proclaim, I WILL ONLY SLEEP WITH DEMOCRATS!

the merging of broadcast and digital

as the internet represents a larger portion of entertainment consumption broadcast has suffered. most notably, the news. the news is a non-loyal consumer business. meaning, people are pretty much willing to get their news from anywhere. there is nothing irreducibly special about one broadcast over another. the same content, for the most part, is presented, just by different folks. furthermore, the news is a utility for people, much more than a way to be entertained.

this has made the inroads for online news that much easier to cultivate. however, because online news is immediate an on-demand, the eyeballs are spread across the entire day as opposed to being concentrated on one hour. that makes the advertising relationship a lot different than broadcast. an as the advertisement relationship changes often does the business model for any for-profit, ad-based rev company.

breaking news has been the big enchilada in news for decades. kennedy/martin assassinations, berlin wall, clinton's statement on lewinsky all came over breaking news, "interrupting scheduled programming." therefore, there has been much debate over whether breaking news should be released on broadcast news sites or held until the 5pm/6pm broadcasts. for a while, that debate was business-based credible. now it's not, because of all the niche sites/blogs (tpm, politico, huffpo) and aggregators (drudge, google news) who will happily break the story before broadcast.

this diatribe on the news broadcast/digi relationship is only because i saw something real interesting today. msnbc, has a new nbc news/wsj poll on the obama/mccain showdown. they are holding it ot the broadcasts and 'teasing' on their site. really interesting. check it out, what'cha think?

respond to satire with satire

a few days ago, i told you about fox news insinuating that the barack/michelle fist-bump was a "terrorist fist-jab." as happens often here, my words were short. when something so incredulous and preposterous is suggested, a thoughtful, intelligent, grounded response is unnecessary. for that reason, i usually limit my thoughts to a few words. however, i forgot the Stewart/Colbert way of dealing with such silliness.



you see. a long time ago, colbert and to a lesser extent stewart realized that so much of what happens in the MSM is so preposterous that it is not worthy of a credible response. not only is dealing with the nonsense this way therapeutic, but it is also disarming to people who would otherwise entertain much of the MSMs insanity. the best part about it is that politicians cannot respond to colbert/stewart as right/left wing operatives because their delivery is completely satirical. maybe the only time in present-day media can we find some unadulterated truth. oh the comedy.

-lx

terrorist fist jab

if you didn't have a reason already to loathe fox news...



...you do now

you've check-mated my teenage cynicism

in honor of the 3G iPhone

it holds over 150 kabillion contacts...



..iGenie, you rub it and it grants you three iWishes. iPhone anthing you will ever need. How much battery life does it have? 20 minutes.

lmao.

-lx

this is myspace, this is my computer

the hidden message

an 'old' snl clip...



...still hillarious

imagination

J.K. Rowling at Harvard's commencement...

"Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it."

...

"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared."

beautiful.

-lx

spinning

we have officially found a thursday spin class. last night was amazing. the instructor graduated west point and she played the best music. so, got me to the thinking, what do you need for a good spin class:

-instructor who is engaged we had one lady who just watched us for the 45 mins.
-music that is timed with the class music often serves as that drug that keeps you going around minute 35
-instructor who pushes you if the instructor slacks, i end up slacking
- a good heart rate monitor there is nothing like knowing exactly who hard your heart is exerting itself and how many cals you have burned

you don't say?

a congressman has suggested that the clinton campaign purposely engaged in racially divisive campaign tactics...

get outta here!



as if!

-lx

the chi

oprah has released a statement concerning obama's nom...