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By Brendan Loy
What's missing from my revamped "politics blogroll" in the sidebar at right? What other blogs (or quasi-bloggish websites) are indispensable daily reads during this crazy election season? I don't care if they're left, right or center, just so long as they've got good/interesting/informative content, frequently updated.
By Brendan Loy
Mark Blumenthal, a.k.a. Mystery Pollster, looks at what the heck happened in New Hampshire yesterday.
By Brendan Loy
Amid all the excitement of the past few days, I never got around to posting the final standings of the 3rd annual Irish Trojan Bowl Pick 'em Contest. Of course, the final point totals are already online, but that's without tiebreakers. Full standings, with tiebreakers, are after the jump.
By Brendan Loy
Bill Richardson will drop out of the race for president -- freeing up his whopping 19 declared superdelegates. No word on whether he'll endorse anyone.
With Richardson joining Dodd and Biden in the graveyard of campaigns that never got off the ground, we've reached that odd point in every primary season where the second-tier candidates have all dropped out, leaving only the first-tier candidates and the fringe candidates. In this case, that would be Clinton, Obama, Edwards ... Kucinich and Gravel. Heh.
Meanwhile, it appears that Mitt Romney is putting all his eggs in one basket, and that basket is called Michigan. He's pulling his ads from South Carolina and Florida to focus on the Wolverine Skunkbear State. "We feel the best strategy is to focus our paid messaging in Michigan," says a spokesman. I guess he doesn't want another "silver."
By Brendan Loy
It's January, which means it's Pete-Carroll-to-the-NFL rumor season. This time, though, it sounds like there may actually be something to the rumors:
USC coach Pete Carroll is interested in the Atlanta Falcons' head coach opening and is expected to speak with Atlanta owner Arthur Blank via phone Wednesday, sources at the American Football Coaches Convention in Anaheim told ESPN's Joe Schad.
Blank is expected to offer full control of personnel decisions to Carroll and the sources said that is what intrigues Carroll most.
DAMN YOU, BOBBY PETRINO!!!
(Hat tip: BK.)
P.S. Reaction from around the Trojansphere:
Student Body Right: "Let’s face it, at some point the guy will jump back to the NFL, it seems inevitable, but… Atlanta? Maybe the single worst job in the league right now? Seems a little nutty, if you ask me."
AOL Fanhouse: "It's... interesting to speculate why Carroll would leave a gravy job at USC for a massive rebuilding project in Atlanta."
Conquest Chronicles: "I am a little shocked that the Falcons would even entertain going after another college coach, regardless of [the coach's] success, after the whole Petrino mess. I have said before that I think Pete Carroll will end up back in the NFL but I'm not sure this is right fit for him. ... [But] I think this might the time for him to go. This is an itch he really wants to scratch and you will only get so many opportunities to make the move back into the NFL. Don't get me wrong I want to keep him as long as we can but we need to be realistic that sooner or later this will probably happen."
TrojanWire: "Miami, San Diego, San Francisco, Arizona and Houston have all courted the man, but so far no team has been able to woo him back over. ... [But now Atlanta] is supposedly offering what Pete wants most: full control of all personnel decisions for the Falcons. ... Pete has been quoted saying he'll 'never return' to the NFL, but who knows...if the conditions are right, any man has his price -- even Pete."
Scott Wolf: "About two weeks ago, I spoke to Carroll about the Falcons job and he was not bullish on it or the organization." And later, a quote from the USC sports information department: "There's nothing going on, no reason to even talk about it." Yeah right -- "Nothing going on . . . except an interview with the Atlanta Falcons today," Wolf adds.
By Brendan Loy
...doesn't stay in Vegas. In fact, it could change the course of the presidential race.
Culinary Workers Local 226, the 60,000-strong union of casino and hotel workers that could hold the key to victory ni the January 19 Nevada Democratic caucuses, will announce its crucial, coveted endorsement at 2:00 PM EST today. It had been widely assumed that, out of a desire to "back the winner," Culinary would endorse Obama after his big win in New Hampshire last night. But of course, Obama didn't win New Hampshire (well, unless you're counting delegates), and now there's a lot more suspense about the union's announcement. Some sources say Obama is still likely to get the nod, but even those folks acknowledge it's not a done deal.
Whatever Culinary decides, it will have a major effect on today's media spin cycle, either boosting Hillary's newfound momentum, reviving Obama-mania, or giving Edwards an unexpected shot in the arm. The media needs a new storyline, after all; New Hampshire is so yesterday.
By the way, don't confuse the Culinary Workers with the less important SEIU Nevada chapter, which backed Obama last night. I'm sure he's very happy to have that endorsement, but in Nevada, it's the Culinary Workers union that everybody wants to have in their corner.
P.S. NRO's John Hood -- whose post has the same title as this one, though I swear I didn't see his till I'd already written mine :) -- writes: "Long ago, ... the plan was apparently for this critical union to back Edwards. ... Now, with the sentimental favorite essentially out of contention, Obama is the fall-back. This segment of the labor movement really doesn't like Hillary."
UPDATE: Politico reports that Obama is "expected" to get the Culinary endorsement.
Meanwhile, a day after the a National Review columnist hailed Hillary Clinton as an "insurgent against the liberal MSM," a Clinton adviser is joining the WTF parade by praising George W. Bush: "George Bush gets the credit [for the high turnout and interest in this election]: He has done more than anyone to get the people of this country involved again in politics. They now realize it is important who the president is." Heh. NRO praising the Clintons! The Clintons praising Bush! Cats and dogs, living together! Mass hysteria!
UPDATE 2: Obama got the nod.
By Brendan Loy
Nope. She tied Obama, 9-9.
In delegates, that is. Which, in case you forgot, are what actually matter.
But don't tell that to the media. It would interfere with the storyline. :)
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan notes that, if you include the pledged superdelegates, Obama won!
If the convention were held today, New Hampshire's turn in the roll call would go something like this: "Mr. Speaker, the great state of New Hampshire, the Granite State, proud home of the first-in-the-nation primary, led by our great Democratic governor, John Lynch; New Hampshire, home of the 2007 Canadian-American League champion Nashua Pride baseball team and the 2006-2007 AHL Atlantic Division champion Manchester Monarchs hockey team; New Hampshire, whose state motto 'live free or die' was once again embodied last year when we became the first state to legalize same-sex unions without a court order or a threatened court order; New Hampshire, which cast its four electoral votes for John Kerry in 2004, and will once again proudly support a Democrat for president in 2008; Mr. Speaker, New Hampshire casts 12 votes for Barack Obama, 11 votes for Hillary Clinton, and 4 votes for John Edwards!"
By Joe Loy
Based on various incarnations of a Newsletter published over several decades under the freedom-loving Texas physician's name, The New Republic's James Kirchick seems to think Maybe So:
...In other words, Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically--or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point--over the course of decades--he would have done something about it.
For me at least, the TNR piece requires a slow & careful reading in order to form a Tentative opinion. There's a good deal of guileful Guilt-by-Association embedded within it; and it sure doesn't sound like the guileless old GoldStandard Freemarket Isolationist Son of Liberty we all Know & Love :).
Then again...well, Y'know: smoke, fire, & So forth. / Once again, here's the whole thing. What Say ye, gentle Peace&Freedomphiles?
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