We all know about third-party political groups, exemplified by Super PACs and other independent organizations, that spend big money to influence election outcomes.
Now say hello to third-party information resellers, who data-mine campaign websites to target potential voters . . .
Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.
As old friend Dan Kennedy noted yesterday at Media Nation, the Boston Globe has published a smashmouth endorsement of Elizabeth Warren for U.S. Senate that tunes up Scott Brown pretty good.
In Senate, Warren would lead where Brown has fallen short
Ted Kennedy has been dead for more than three years, but his shadow hangs over the battle for his old seat between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren. It’s the people’s seat, all right, and the citizens of Massachusetts deserve a senator who can represent their interests and their values . . .
After three years in office, Brown can point to a few high-profile instances when he’s bucked his party. But his longer-term priorities — the issues on which he would stake his career — aren’t easily discernible. In the Senate, he’s held back on divisive matters like repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” often making up his mind after most of his colleagues have already weighed in. By then, it’s too late for him to have a major impact. Meanwhile, vital Massachusetts needs like medical research and renewable energy aren’t properly addressed. As a political moderate, Brown has major clout in a polarized Senate — but Massachusetts has too little to show for it. The problem is less with Brown’s political skills, which are obvious, or his centrist values, than in his conception of the job. He often seems to view being a senator as an exercise in political positioning.
After issuing its full-throated endorsement of Warren, the Globe editorial wraps things up with one last swipe at Brown . . .
Read the rest at IGTLTDT.
The hardworking staff, which grew up in New York during the ’50s, never hated the Giants for moving to San Francisco in 1957. We outsourced that to our relatives in Queens, the same way we let our cousins in Brooklyn hate the Dodgers.
But this baseball postseason we’ve downright liked the Giants, not in the Facebook sense but in the real world.
Where they beat the Cincinnati Reds in the Queen City three times after dropping two at home in the NLDS.
Where they beat the St. Louis Cardinals after falling behind 3-1 in the NLCS.
And where they swept the Detroit Tigers in the World Serious.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Scutaro’s RBI hit lifts Giants to title
They say the best team does not always win the World Series. Sometimes the hottest team swoops in and flies away with the trophy.
Baseball lovers across the world can spend the months between now and spring training arguing whether the Giants were the best in 2012, or whether they merely had the hottest hand when all of the chips were in the middle of the table.
The Giants can be forgiven for not joining the debate, at least not now. They are too busy celebrating San Francisco’s second championship in three seasons, which they went overtime to clinch on a frigid Sunday night at Comerica Park.
They won 4-3 when Marco Scutaro, the little Giant whom teammates call “Blockbuster,” hit a two-out RBI single against Phil Coke. Sergio Romo struck out the side – finishing with a called third strike on Miguel Cabrera – to set off a celebration in San Francisco the likes of which the city has not seen in oh, about two years.
That’s totally Frisco, yeah?
Yeah.
So the Missus and I trundled down to the Boston Public Library to catch America Votes: Mapping the Political Landscape.
And it’s a corker.
Starter kit:
It just gets more convoluted from there. Don’t miss it.
What the hell, right?
The San Francisco Giants pitchers are doing to Detroit hitters in the World Serious what Tigers pitchers did to Yankee batters in the ALCS.
That is, shut them down.
Game 3 box score:
Oh, yes – and the pitching line:
Note especially Tim Lincecum’s stats. The Freak has submitted two commanding performances in the Serious of 2 1/3 innings with no runs and no hits.
Last night he shrugged off a walk in the 7th and an error in the 8th (by Brendan Crawford, who’d just been jinxed by the Fox announcers’ noting that he hadn’t committed an error all postseason).
Regardless, the Tigers wound up being shut out for the second time in a row. That hasn’t happened in a World Serious since 1919 – and then the White/Black Sox were in the tank.
The Tigers? Last night they just looked like their tank had run out.
Brad Pitt has generally been appealing both as an actor and as one half of the long-running Brangelina soap opera.
But he’s sort of bottomed out with this new TV spot for Chanel No. 5:
Really. Makes him look kind of Pitseleh.
From the e-mailbag:
Yeah . . . but then there’s this from U.S. News:
The $2 Billion Presidential Race
It’s official: for the first time in history, a political candidate has raised $1 billion in one campaign. President Barack Obama and his Democratic affiliates have raised $1.03 billion this cycle with Romney and his Republican affiliates not far behind, according to U.S. News analysis of the final pre-Election Day fundraising filings from Thursday night.
The filings — which go through Oct. 17 — show Mitt Romney pulled in $112.4 million in the first half of October, slightly more than the billion dollar man himself, who raised $110.7 million. Team Romney has raised $961 million so far this cycle, and will likely cross the $1 billion threshold in the campaign’s remaining two weeks.
So, to recap: The billion-dollar Romney steamroller is whining about the billion-dollar Obama juggernaut.
Ain’t politics grand?
And she liked it so much, she made a dress out of it.
From New York magazine’s The Cut (tip o’ the pixel to The Missus):
Katy Perry Voted Early
Katy Perry wore a ballot printed on her dress to perform at a campaign rally for President Obama in Las Vegas yesterday. Guess whom she’s voting for!? (Hint: not Paul Ryan.) She accessorized with a sparkly red and white microphone.
Said dress:
Vote often and early, eh?
(Call it a representin’ democracy.)
From our Late to the Party desk
On Thursday the always readable Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay served up this ode to the baseball uniforms of the Detroit Tigers and San Francisco Giants.
A Perfect Uniform Series: Giants vs. Tigers
This is not a World Series story about managers, clean-up hitters, shortstops or bullpens. It is not a baseball breakdown, an analysis, or a tribute to the civic merits of San Francisco or Detroit. This will not tell you who will win, the Giants or the Tigers. This is not a homage to the “Fall Classic,” a fussy term that should be retired from the sport, because it’s dated and precious, and smells like an mothballed pair of corduroys. Baseball is overly obsessed with its past, to the point that any discussion of it begins to feel like drinking a sarsaparilla under a 120-year-old oak tree.
This is not that. This is old, but this also new. Classic, but current. This is about the uniforms. The Giants and Tigers uniforms. Because they are close to perfect. The 2012 World Series is a Uniform Series.
We live in an era of terrible sports uniforms, Gay asserts. They’re, well, uniformly inferior to their predecessors, as he illustrates here:
Last Sunday, the New England Patriots wore their classic red “Pat the Patriot” uniforms in a game against the New York Jets. They were, embarrassingly, 300 million times better than their current ones. The modern, silvery Patriots uniform looks like something you’d wear working at an aerobics studio on Jupiter. It’s a mistake.
Not so with the Giants and Tiger kit, he adds.
The Giants and Tigers basically do it right. For the purpose of this I’m going to skip the road uniforms, though both San Francisco and Detroit possess fairly standard nonthreatening road uniforms, gray and subdued and accomplishing the three simple objectives of a road uniform, which are to A) tell you the city the player is from B) the name of the player and C) be a little boring and not call too much attention to itself (San Francisco actually has two gray roadies—one that spells out SAN FRANCISCO, the other with an SF on the front. Both are equally ho-hum.) A road uniform should not try to be cool. A road uniform should resemble the type of practical clothing an ordinary person brings on a business trip: dull, utilitarian, easy to clean when you spill an airplane salad on your khakis. Nothing more. Don’t go crazy. You are not home. Just get to the Marriott, eat a club sandwich and fall asleep watching “Seinfeld.”
(Sorry. Gay’s just too quotable.)
The Giants home uniform, on the other hand is “glorious.” And Detroit’s? “Almost perfect. No clutter.”
Just like Jason Gay’s prose.
The Taylor Swift/Conor Kennedy bustup is of course the Main Dish in both local dailies, but as usual, the ingredients vary.
The Globe’s Namesniks are pretty tentative about the whole thing . . .
Read the rest at IGTLTDT.
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