Sometimes, the "D" stands for Dork
I saw that this was going to happen last night, but forgot about it until loyal reader E. Nelson of Baltimore, MD brought it to my attention. John Kerry (D-MA) rode a borrowed Harley onto the set of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It is sadly not atypical for Presidential candidates to pander to the lowest common denominator. But let's look at it objectively:

How does Kerry's stunt help his campaign, aside from mere name recognition? (which is probably a big help.) Do more people care what he thinks about Iraq? NO. Are more people intrigued by his health care proposal? NO. Is John Kerry even cooler today than he was yesterday? NO.

To be fair, though, Kerry's campaign is all but over, and beating up on him feels like kicking a corpse. Because it's both fun and easy

Tony

Iowa Caucuses 6, Florida Straw Polls 1
A Manchester Double-A baseball team decided not to go with the name "New Hampshire Primaries".

Lame. Listen to these marketing ideas:

A possible logo: the state outline with an image of "Uncle Sam," a character based on Samuel Wilson of Mason. The team fan club: the Lobbyists. Team gift certificates: campaign dollars.

Marc

Leon Award Winner -- College Edition
You probably know Kellen Winslow Jr. as the Miami tight-end and son of San Diego Charger great Kellen Winslow Sr. You might also remember him as striking a Heismann pose after catching a touchdown pass in the first game of the year. He makes waves again this week, due to his post-game tirade after Miami's 10-6 loss to Tennessee. He called football a "war" and referred to himself as a "soldier." He also claimed his unsportsmanlike penalty (an activity that got him "benched" for next week's game) was due to refs gunning for him.

Tony

Senator Muskie Predicts Victory

The Kerry campaign continues its slow-motion collapse. After the firing of the campaign manager, Jim Jordan, two more top staffers quit in protest. Here is an amazing conference call quote from the NYT piece:

"We know and you know that Jim wasn't the problem," one aide said in recounting what one staff member told Mr. Kerry. "We want to know that you know that the problem was not Jim: You need to understand that there needs to be fundamental changes in this campaign."

If you want to know how the Dean campaign is going to destroy everyone, read the cover story profiling his manager, Joe Trippi, in this weeks' TNR (subscription required to read online). Here's a taste:

"In Washington state, God help any of the other candidates," he says. "We have such an organization up there." According to Trippi, somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 people have historically turned out for the state's presidential caucuses. This past August, 15,000 people turned out to see Dean stop by a Seattle Meetup during his "Sleepless Summer Tour." "I'm standing there going like, 'Shit, we'd win the caucus today," Trippi recalls. "We'd win the statewide caucus with how many people are standing here."

Keep in mind that all this stuff happened BEFORE Dean got the endorsements of two huge, motivated unions.

Marc

Smooth Or Crunchy?... Nah... Wait, I've Got It!
Macs or PCs? That was the idiot question asked by an idiot young person at the 'Rock The Vote' presidential event last week. Or was it?

Howard Kurtz says the whole thing was a setup by CNN producers:

Alexandra Trustman said yesterday that a CNN producer called her on the morning of the Boston forum and suggested she ask about the Democratic presidential candidates' computer preferences. Puzzled by the request, she writes in Brown University's Daily Herald, she drafted a more complicated question about how the candidates would use technology.

But in Boston, Trustman said, she was handed a notecard with the digital-age equivalent of the boxers-or-briefs choice put to Bill Clinton. She wrote that she told the producer "I didn't see the question's relevance," but that he rejected her proposed query "because it wasn't light-hearted enough and they wanted to modulate the event with various types of questions."

Marc

TMQ In Tha Hizzo
Easterbrook makes a guest TMQ appearance on Football Outsiders this week. He has some uniform gripes:

Bad Unis Update: While the Oakland coaches, and especially the Oakland cheerleaders, were wearing too much, the Jets came out in green pants that were in their own way too much. First Jersey/B went retro to the 1960s with its Namath-era look; now Jersey/B goes retro to the 1950s. Seriously, Jets, it's 2003. Do something about those uniforms.

And Jacksonville -- black pants, dark jerseys? No wonder your own stadium was half-empty by the time you scored your improbable winning comeback touchdown.

Marc

Grand Old Clusterfuck
Well, just when you think the Republicans in this state can't get any dumber - there's this. Some dimwit is mounting a primary challenge to Roscoe Bartlett. So in the same cycle that Republicans are trying to unseat Mikulski, this clown and Bartlett are going to suck up a million dollars between them.

This abortion follows on the heels of a bold move by the state party to RECRUIT another candidate to run in the 3rd District. So there will be two Republicans competing for the honor of being disemboweled by Ben Cardin. What is with these people?

I'm going to start compiling a list of the Republican elected officials appointed to high-paying state jobs by Ehrlich. What a bunch of yokels. After O'Malley gets elected governor, this will all be a bad dream.

Marc

Who you callin' chicken?
In what could be described as one of the most absurd things ever, Pamela Anderson is going to urge a boycott of KFC because they refuse to meet with her so she can discuss the way they treat their chickens. She's going to be making the announcement for a boycott on her weekly radio show.
A taste:

"If they won't meet with us, we're taking our case to the children." The source says that PETA will start handing out what they're calling "Buckets of Blood" in front of KFC outlets across the country. "They'll look like KFC's buckets of chicken, and will contain things like mutilated, gory chickens," says the source. "We gave kids `Unhappy Meals' at McDonald's and Burger King crowns with animals impaled on the points when they wouldn't meet with us. After those kids started screaming, both McDonald's and Burger King got reasonable."

Now that's finger-lickin' good.

Tony

Padre Pricetag
I'm glad to see some uniform discussion back on this blog. It's been a couple of days. I like those new Padres unis, I think the sand idea for road games is fresh and I even like this new logo, surf and all. (In case you're curious, the Padres begin play in PETCO Park next year, hence the new duds.) But why not go back to the old brown and yellow and have that chubby Franciscan swinging a bat? Old School baseball uniforms and hats, particularly that Padres look, are extremely popular. I keep waiting for one of these teams to cash in on this by going retro whole hog. Then again, if that stuff is going to sell anyway, the creation of a new uniform and new logo makes for even more stuff to buy.

(By the way, did you happen to notice who's modeling those new Padres threads?)

Tony

Obligatory Redskins Post
I can't help it, they're like a gruesome car wreck. Anyway, another story in the Post with tons of quotes from people around the league talking about the running joke that is Steve Spurrier's offense. Tell it, Tre Johnson:

I'd rather, as an offensive lineman, be able to dictate tempo to the defense, and the running game does that. You're being aggressive and getting after the defense that way. You're not doing that if you throw the ball 50 times. You take the power out of your offensive line. They're just a wall instead of a vehicle of attack. There's no chance of you establishing the line of scrimmage because you're always backpedaling.

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Skins extend Vinny Cerrato's contract.

Marc

The Other Shoe
Hot on the heels of the drop in unemployment claims and the gaudy 7.2% 3Q GDP figure comes this economic news. There was a gain of 126,000 jobs in October, and a revised figure of 160,000 jobs gained in August and September.

Marc

Addendum:
Get the straight dope from a certain hardworking government agency.

Paris Says Sand Is In!
The Padres rolled out their new look today. Very clean and almost traditional except the road unis are a 'sand' color that is very nice (and they included an alternate dark jersey, but what are you gonna do?).

Marc

Go west, young man, and blog
Wow, what a blog-stravaganza yesterday. Truly blog-licious. Anyway, a quick question: Has anyone else noticed that the ads on the top of our blog are almost always either sports or politics related in some ways? Does anyone know anything about this? Does it have to do with our on-blog content?

Howard Dean looks to be picking up some major union endorsements next week. It looks like the service workers and the government workers are going to get behind him. They're among the two biggest (if not the two biggest) AFL-CIO members. I don't think it means much in terms of voters taking a cue from the endorsement, but these groups are going to have massive get-out-the-vote operations already on the ground. The impact of this will be felt largely in Iowa, where Dean is already starting to make a run at Gephardt. With the man-power this brings into Iowa, a caucus state where victory requires boots on the ground, this could be a windfall. Perhaps the beginning of the end for the other candidates?

Yesterday's Broder piece adds yet another dimension to the Democratic primary contest. With the front-loading of the schedule, (an idea, Broder points out, that can be pinned on Democratic Party Chairman and your friend and mine Terry McAuliffe), and the relative low national profile of the candidates (including Dean), Dems face the probability of choosing a candidate by March that the rest of the country knows almost nothing about. Yet again, another uphill fight for the Democrats.

Read Norman Chad's take on the BCS. Why? Because I told you too, and I'd never steer you wrong, baby. What? Ah, baby, don't give me that look. You know I don't mean these things I do, just sometimes I get so crazy inside, I...I don't what to do. I'm sorry Kevin Nealon.

In local rube news, Allegany County's flirtation with gambling made news in the Post the other day. Some lawmakers are focusing on turning Rocky Gap into a full-scale casino rather than have slots at the proposed racetrack.

While you're slummin' it, check out the Times-News webpage. You'll have to register first, but once you do check out the article on the front page concerning a suspected arson at FSU. Also, if you're still in the mood, read the editorial section. Look for Tom Marsh's latest School Board tirade, and a mother infuriated that waiting periods aren't required for paintball guns. Also, check the October section for the letter to the editor from the owner of Crab Alley regarding his infamous T-Shirts.

And finally, in peaked-with-Dana-Carvey-news, Dave Matthews will be on SNL this weekend and Al Sharpton will be taking a rocket to the moon with Astronaut Jones in early December.

That's all for now,
Good Night, and Good News,
Tony

Kevin Nealon, I'm back.

Counter-Reformation
There's been a small stink over this article in the Boston Globe about the conservative Catholic conspiracy. Here's a zing from the subject of the article, Father C. John McCloskey:

There's a name for Catholics who dissent from church teachings. They're called Protestants.

This guy has baptized Bork and Novak, among others.

Marc

Jane, You Ignorant Slut
I really do have work that I have to do today, but let's face it, this is what gets my blood pumping.

First, with bad news seemingly pouring out of Iraq everyday, I think Dean may have a chance to compete on foreign policy. It will depend on his advisors and if he is able to go toe to toe with Bush on foreign policy in the fall debates. I think Dean's willingness to discuss Saudia Arabia, as Marc alluded to, is also a good first step toward making the foreign policy issue less of a give away for Bush.

(Sidebar Question: Will Bush debate anybody this year? It's not his strong suit, and he knows it. Although he performed well in 2000, he did so with very little expectation. Now, he's going to be expected to be informed, nuanced and articulate. Bush will have to prove that his four years in the White House have forged in him the gravitas that he's banking on to make him untouchable in terms of foreign policy.)

Marc, your original post today suggested that Dean was backing away from an unpopular position (in the party, at least) when he attempted to apologize and clarify his confederate flag comment. That, however, does not seem to me to be the case. Dean's campaign seems bent, wisely I think, on shifting focus away from cultural values and on to the economy. I think Dean wants poor people to vote for him because he offers a progressive economic agenda (including health care reform, job creation and education reform), despite many voters misgivings about the Democratic party's fairly liberal stance on social issues. The inherent flaw with his wording, however, was the choice of a symbol so divisive that it thrust cultural values into the forefront of the discussion, exactly where Dean didn't want them to be. I think his comment was a political gaffe, but I don't think it does any damage to his overall policy initiatives or strategy.

True, Dean is quite a bit different from the majority of southern voters, but I don't think he needs to bend his social views to their liking. Like Clinton did in 1992, Dean must prevent his social values from becoming an obstacle in the minds of those poor, white southern voters who might vote for him otherwise. Clinton did not, nor did he pretend to, share a lot of cultural values with most southern, white voters. What he did do is downplay his differences and exaggerate his similarities. And this must be the Dean strategy. Dean has a good start due to his glowing NRA record and refusal to rescind his comment that rural states do not need the same gun-control laws as urban states do, a comment many Democrats found obliquely racist.

Clinton did not win the South on cultural issues. What he did do, and what Dean must do, is refuse to lose the South on cultural issues.

Tony