Sunday, January 20, 2008

lord have mercy -- iraq vet commits senseless murder of mother of his children

this is the stuff folk songs are made of. you have a soldier home who senselessly murders the mother of his twins. the story is complete with the stinging emptiness of the human mind pushed to its failure limits. the inability to understand, and the insignificance of the legal system's practical conclusion. this emptiness of this story is enough to make anyone religious. the writer of this article is quite the dramatist. kudos.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Watching MSNBC's live webcast of the new hampshire primary

9:59 PM EST: MSNBC uses a moving camera to broadcast an image of a large television showing the obama / clinton results graphic.

10:00 PM EST: there was a a weird story about how huckabee granted a convicted rapist clemency in part because of a religious conversion that happened in prison and in part because of huckabee's belief in redemption. the recorded piece was cut short by a return to a live webcast. apparently the webcast control room doesn't have things totally tight.

10:06 PM EST: They say Clinton gets more votes in part because she answered questions live for 90 minutes today. that's something she hasn't done much at all. in principle it seems like a smart thing to do. i like the idea. but can a change in behavior only a few hours old radically change polling numbers? the minute by minute reportage of the campaign may give unequal weight to small events only 24 hours old.

10:14 PM EST: Pat Buchannan et al. suggest that new hampshire voters deliberately cast their votes in the opposite direction that polls and pundits were saying they would since Obama's Iowa victory. it seems like a narcissistic hypothesis.

10:27 PM EST: interesting backdrop for edward's "I'm continuing" speech. a few "middle class working male" types. attractive, retiremnt age, etc. now keith lets us know that guy is the actor who plays the plummer on desperate housewives.

10:32 PM EST: NBC news projects Hillary Clinton as the winner at 66% of precincts reporting.

10:36 PM EST: anchors can't hear interviewee in hillary's victory room. return to tim russert to suggest "gender gap", "contrarian spirit", and "people of new hampshire hate a fait accompli."

10:39 PM EST: Tom Brokaw reads a hilarious list of Hillary's Dead headlines. New York Post-- Hillary: Panic

10:41 PM EST: Terry McAuliffe sounds like an athlete or coach talking over the crowd in a post-game show. he seems a little out of breath.

10:45 PM EST: DailyKos offline, because comment archiver goes to work at an inopportune time.

10:46 PM EST: Event planners of Obama use some upbeat rock music for the approach to the stage. similar to the springsteen music edwards used.

10:51 PM EST: One stumble, but Obama is an impressive speaker.

10:56 PM EST: Obama gives a good list of 21st century challenges. Then he gives the not I but you turn.

10:58 PM EST: "There has never been anything false about hope." Obama counters Clinton. we'll see this as a sound byte. and then they go into a "yes we can" refrain. it seems like an okay refrain for a speech, but that sort of repetition has a whiff of cliche to it. but it's not bad.

11:05 PM EST: Tom Brokaw suggests trying to get ahead of the voters with "predictions" and "projections". Chris Matthews doesn't seem to like it and cuts him off. Tom jumps back in and introduces hillary. Chris stays quiet. Tom's tone is more serious and ceremonial than his younger's.

11:08 PM EST: Hillary: "Thank You New Hampshire. you spoke. I listened, and I found my voice." She just found her voice now? at this age? hmm. she gave the "politics is not a game" sentence. she delivers it well.

11:17 PM EST: one person in the "tweety, shut up" thread about msnbc broadcast said, "I'm marginally a Hillary backer, but Brokaw telling Chris Matthews to start letting the process to go forward in the way that it should and for them to stop trying to get ahead of the voters (and Matthews complaining "so what do we do before election day", to which Brokaw answered that they could analyze what the candidates are saying) was absolutely the best part of the night."

11:28 PM EST: Keith Olbermann asks if Hillary is the front-runner now. He seems stuck on his perhaps incorrect use of the term over the past months.

11:30 PM EST: Matthews asks if Hillary, really did, in an honest way, just find her voice in the last few days. It seems a fair question.

11:37 PM EST: Matthews congratulates himself for saying something smart last night.

11:38 PM EST: Scarborough defends news media from tom brokaw by saying that hillary was in fact way behind, and then in the last 24 hours everything changed. he implies that the news outlet made no mistakes, things just changed faster than they could report.