Author: Glenn Hauman

Take this for what you will:

I was just at my local supermarket getting food for dinner, and Rep. Robert Menendez (D) was out there shaking hands. No big signs, just him and a few workers with him.

I spoke with him and asked if he’d been seeing the big numbers on CNN. He said that he’d getting reports on his Blackberry, and the numbers looked really good.

Then he said something shocking.

I asked if he needed anybody driven to the polls with two hours to go. He said, “No, I think we’re good. But thanks.”

You heard it here first– a politician turning away last minute offers of help to GOTV.

I think the numbers are going to be really big, folks.

Down the street from me is my town library, which also happens to be my voting place– and from the steps of that I saw the results of the a very important hijacking– my photo of what it looked like is at right. And four years earlier when I voted here, there was another important hijacking, this was of a presidential election. And much to my surprise, 45% of the country agrees with me.

So when I go to vote today, I’ll be reminded of both those events.

And you should be too.

If you think the current administration has done a horrible job of tracking down the people responsible for that day, the guy who released a video last week, or are pulled a bait and switch of targets with Iraq that has cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives, or if you think that Bush should have at least stopped reading to kids when he heard about the plane crashing into the Twin Towers, or if you think that the current administration has done all it can for its corporate contributors and damn little for anybody else, or if you happen to think the President is a liar and a buffoon, or if you’re terrified about the judges that would get appointed and everything else that would happen in a second Bush term, or if you just don’t want to see what happened to Jesus Castillo happen to anybody else, or– God, this list is far too long.

Remember– you can’t complain about the Supreme Court taking away your vote in the last election if you don’t vote in this one.

So go vote!

And to the folks who stole the last election, I leave you with this quote from Alice Miller, by way of Arthur Silber: “The unconscious compulsion to revenge repressed injuries is more powerful than all reason.”

You repressed a plurality of voters last time. And they are very motivated to vote you out this time.

That’s all I want you to remember when you see people talking about the new Osama video and whether or not that means he wants Bush of Kerry to win.

Iocane powder.

I know who I want to win– hint: it’s not the guy who’s let Osama run around for the past three years. Nor is it the guy who fell for one of the classic blunders.

Keith Olbermann has made an amazing offer:

Harvey Levin, who created and hosts “Celebrity Justice,” and with whom I happily worked at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles in the late ’80s, came on Countdown last night and said that the tapes are Mackris�s only leverage against O’Reilly, that the preliminary expenses of the twin law cases are hurting her, and that despite the report early in the week that the Fox side had made a two million dollar settlement offer to her, that O’Reilly had in fact offered twice that, weeks ago.

The two provisos on O’Reilly’s end: the tapes must be destroyed, and the settlement must include an automatic clause that if copies turn up at any point in the future, O’Reilly gets his hush money back.

I believe the Time-Life Record Library has a similar money-back guarantee.

I’ve testified in many sexual harassment cases in my days at ESPN and the process is still inevitably stacked against the accuser, so, I understand if she has to do what she has to. And, hell, when they took me off the air in 2001, I took $800,000 from Fox just to not say anything about what idiots they were – until the contract was over eight months later (I think I’ve done another $800,000 worth of damage to them since, because nowhere in the deal did it say I couldn’t start saying what idiots they were once the contract ran out – and they are idiots, by the way – there’s another $17 right there).

So from two viewpoints, I appreciate Ms. Mackris’s position. But I am speaking on behalf of history. I am pleading for the CD listeners as yet unborn. I am thinking of the boxed DVD sets and the orders from Amazon and the dance-mix versions of O’Reilly talking about loofas and falafels, counterpointed with his radio statement from this week: “I just made a decision that I’m just going to ride it out, and I’m going to fight them.”

Fight them. For four days. Yeah, like the Yankees fought the Red Sox.

But, as I said, I am not asking Andrea Mackris to do this alone. The NewsCorp smear machine, known by its colloquial title “The New York Post,” reports she’s exactly $99,000 in debt due to credit card bills and student loans (thus making her about $5,000 more in debt than the average 33-year old in television who has college and grad school loans). She’s selling the tapes and her case to O’Reilly to avoid financial calamity.

Well, if she’s going to get $4,000,000 out of it, I can’t match that.

But if she really wants to fight this, and only needs seed money to keep the legal challenge going, I’m willing to stand up and help her – and help history. I’ll pay off her $99,000 in debts. All I ask is a copy of the tapes, and her agreement not to make any deals requiring their destruction. She can settle with O’Reilly; she can sue him (with the tapes remaining in the public record) from now until 2027; she can date the guy.

Just save the tapes – that’s all I ask.

More power to you, Keith.

Who in heaven’s name thought it was a good idea for George W. Bush– the brains behind a pre-emptive war costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars over non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and a man prone to running terror alerts whenever he has a dip in public opinion polls– to run a campaign ad where he’s quite literally crying wolf?

Electablog* An Imbecile in Wolves’ Clothing

Happy Go Larry – Bush’s iBulge

I’ve heard worse theories. (And by “worse”, I mean “oh dear God, if it’s true we’re in for a world of hurt”.)

From Software is too expensive to build cheaply…

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them)…

Go read the rest. Ouch.

Oh, lookie: Celsius 41.11 – The Temperature At Which The Brain Begins To Die — brought to us by the same folks responsible for DC 9/11. Won’t this be fun?

Michael Cravens notes in Comments:

And coincidentally, The Drudge Report has “suddenly” decided to run a story that indicates that the Daily Show is hemorraging viewers. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you have to give Drudge credit…his timing is impeccable, given the largely positive reaction to Jon’s appearance on Crossfire on Friday. 😉

Michael is referring to this: JON STEWART ‘DAILY SHOW’ IN SURPRISE AUDIENCE — DROP
Sun Oct 17 2004 20:30:24 ET

COMEDY CENTRAL’s ‘DAILY SHOW’ has experienced surprise audience erosion — despite a publicity push by host Jon Stewart.

Stewart, who announced last week that he plans to support John Kerry, pulled 1,040,000 total viewers for the month of September — down 7% from August, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Jumbo hype from media writers and a bestselling book apparently have failed to translate into any TV audience improvement.

MORE

CNN editors were busy this weekend cleaning up a transcript from Stewart’s Friday appearance on CROSSFIRE. One CNN executive called Stewart’s performace “belligerent.”

Now, as it happens, I happen to have access to experts in the field of TV ratings, so I asked her. Brandy…?

This is impossible to prove or disprove because he was so vague:

> Stewart, who announced last week that he plans to support
> John Kerry, pulled 1,040,000 total viewers for the month of
> September — down 7% from August, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

In what demo? Households, Men, what? And also for what airing? Just the 11pm one, or an average of all the repeats they do thru the day? The biggest problem is that 1,040,000 number… I’m not even sure where it comes from. He says ‘total viewers’ which is not a measurement we deal in. We deal in averages, not cumulatives. Hence I can’t even try to match it to prove or disprove.

Let’s assume he means only the original 11pm telecast. The 11pm telecast P25-54 average for the Nielsen month of August (7/26-8/29) was a 0.67 and the average for September (8/30-9/24) was a 0.66. If you look at the men and women breakouts all the loss comes from the female demos – men were up across the board and women were down. Why? Beats me. Women don’t like the negativity, they just want him to be funny?

Also, as you pointed out, there were lots of reruns, but I’m not sure if there were more in Sept than there were in August.

Basically by being so vague he’s insulated himself from criticism because it’s darn near impossible to figure out what he really means and prove him wrong.

But hey, why should little things like that get in the way of a Drudge exclusive?

Jon Stewart on Crossfire:

STEWART: Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.

…

STEWART: I watch your show every day. And it kills me.

CARLSON: I can tell you love it.

STEWART: It’s so — oh, it’s so painful to watch.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: You know, because we need what you do. This is such a great opportunity you have here to actually get politicians off of their marketing and strategy.

CARLSON: Is this really Jon Stewart? What is this, anyway?

STEWART: Yes, it’s someone who watches your show and cannot take it anymore.

…oh, just go read it.