Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Iowapalooza Edition)

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The TV spots are airing fast and furious in Iowa’s GOP presidential bakeoff. Here’s a handy Des Moines sampler.

Let’s start out on a positive note with this Mitt Romney ad:

 

About that “getting rid of programs” part? Romney has even gone after Big Bird, saying he’d defund PBS. That idea brought to you by the letter L, for loser.

Then there’s Ron Paul’s new ad, which labels Romney and Newt Gingrich losers:

 

Got that? Gingrich is a serial hypocrite and Romney’s a flip-flopper. Of course, Paul himself is a serial anti-Semite and a homophobe, but why get technical about it?

Moving on to Gingrich, here’s his oh-so-positive latest spot:

 

Then again, here’s the pro-Gingrich Super PAC Winning Our Future’s not-so-positive ad:

 

Via MSNBC’s First Read:

 Here’s the updated ad spending in Iowa: Perry $4.3 million, Restore Our Future $2.8 million, Paul $2.3 million, Make Us Great Again $1.6 million, Gingrich $840,000, Red, White, and Blue Fund $330,000, and Winning Our Future $263,000.

All those dollars and no sense, eh?

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Romney Wants To NASCAR Big Bird

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Mediabistro’s FishbowlDC passes along this C-Span video from this afternoon in which Mitt Romney (R-Oscar the Grouch) says that he’d defund PBS if elected president.

 “We’re not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird has to have advertisers,” he said, explaining that he plans to strip PBS of government funding.

Maybe KFC’s interested.

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We’re #1! Boston Is America’s Drunkest City

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

No more inferiority complex for Bostonians – The Daily Beast has issued its 2011 list of America’s Drunkest Cities, and Boston is the tightest of them all.

And just so you know this isn’t drunk – er, junk – science, here’s their methodology:

To compile the second annual list of the “drunkest” cities in the U.S., The Daily Beast first analyzed data from Experian Simmons, a leading market-research firm, which provided data on the average number of alcoholic drinks per month the residents of more than 200 cities across the country reported to have consumed in a survey from earlier this year. As well, we considered the percent of the population that are either binge drinkers or heavy drinkers for each metro area, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control. The average number of drinks was given twice the weight of the heavy- and binge-drinking population for the final rank.

And here’s top-ranked Boston:

We must be so proud.

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That’s Rich! (GOP 75% Edition)

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Ever since Frank Rich exited the New York Times and entered the Richness Protection Program at New York magazine, the hardworking staff has worried about him dropping off the chin-strokerati radar screen.

So we’re launching our That’s Rich! series (pat.pending), starting with his latest installment in New York:

The Molotov Party

For the new GOP, conservative isn’t nearly radical enough.

Even those who loathe Karl Rove’s every word may be hard-pressed to dispute his pre-Christmas summation of the Republican circus so far: “the most unpredictable, rapidly shifting, and often downright inexplicable primary race I’ve ever witnessed.” And all this, as he adds, before a single vote has been cast. The amazing GOP race has also been indisputably entertaining, spawning a new television genre, the debate as reality show. Installment No. 12, broadcast by ABC in the prime-time ghetto of a Saturday night in early December, drew more viewers (7.6 million) than that week’s episode of The Biggest Loser. It’s escapist fun for the entire family (Hispanic and gay families excluded). Or it would be were it not for the possibility that one of the contestants could end up as president of the United States.

Rove does have one thing wrong, however. His party’s primary contest, while unpredictable, is not inexplicable. It is entirely explicable.

Because of, Rich says, the firebrand 75% of Republicans who can’t stand Mitt Romney (R-How You Like Me Now?).

Whoever ends up on the GOP ticket or in the White House, the 75 percent is no sooner going to disappear than the aggrieved 99 percenters in the blue populist camp. What Republican aristocrats in denial like Karl Rove can’t bring themselves to recognize is that “the most unpredictable, rapidly shifting, and often downright inexplicable primary race” they’ve ever seen is not just a conservative revolution but one that has them in its sights.

Circular firing squad to follow.

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Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Whac-‘Em-All Edition)

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Next week’s Iowa caucuses have turned into a daily double: Mitt Romney v. Ron Paul for win and place, everyone else for show.

Cue Rick Perry’s latest ad, which touts the Texas governor as the Congress-free hoss in the race. (Via MSNBC’s First Read.)

 

Got that? Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum have a combined 63 years on Capitol Hill. Six decades of trillions in debt and billions in earmarks. (Most of it, of course, in the past decade. But why get technical about it.)

As opposed to Perry’s one decade of crony capitalism in Texas.

Hard to know who to whac in this bakeoff.

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Boston Globe Suffocates Boston Herald

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

When the hardworking staff fetched the Boston Herald from our front porch this morning, it was inside a plastic bag with this printed on one side:

The Boston Globe.com

Stories you take with you. Stories that stay with you.

On the other side was this:

Notjusttheheadlines.com

Ouch.

Apparently, we’re not the only ones who consider the Herald just a lively index to the Globe.

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That’s Just So Mean! (Year In Review Edition)

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Splendid reader Michael Pahre sent this along:

Check out #22, 39, and, of course, your favorite #50:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/12/the_year_in_pictures_part_iii.html

That would be photos from boston.com’s The Year in Pictures: Part III.

#22:

#39:

#50:

Questions? Comments? Bitter Recriminations?

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‘Grunts: The GI Experience’ At Boston’s Panopticon Gallery

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

If you’re around Kenmore Square this holiday week (we can say holiday now, yes?), get yourself over to the Panopticon Gallery in the Hotel Commonwealth and check out Grunts: The GI Experience.

Grunts is military vernacular for United States Army or Marine foot soldiers, the mass of devoted men and women who make up the bulk of the armed services. Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the bombing at Pearl Harbor, Panopticon Gallery presents Grunts: The G.I. Experience curated by Jim Fitts.

Fitts met a number of grunts while living in Hawaii in the early 90’s, which piqued his interest in the subject. A boxing fan, he regularly attended matches at the Scofield Barracks at Fort Shafter where he befriended several Marines. It was then that he realized his impression of what their lives were like was rather different from reality.

“Over the years, I have rarely seen what I would consider an unfiltered, real life photographic portrayal of military personnel ”…scenes of everyday life, says Fitts. “This exhibition will come as close to the reality of the grunt experience as I have ever seen.”

And a memorable one, as the always-sharp Mark Feeney details in his Boston Globe review.

Consider it your patriotic duty to go see it.

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Why The New York Times Is A Great Newspaper

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Exhibit Umpteen:

Amy Harmon’s New York Times front-page feature headlined “Navigating Love and Autism.”

Lede:

GREENFIELD, Mass. — The first night they slept entwined on his futon, Jack Robison, 19, who had since childhood thought of himself as “not like the other humans,” regarded Kirsten Lindsmith with undisguised tenderness.

She was the only girl to have ever asked questions about his obsessive interests — chemistry, libertarian politics, the small drone aircraft he was building in his kitchen — as though she actually cared to hear his answer. To Jack, who has a form of autism called Asperger syndrome, her mind was uncannily like his. She was also, he thought, beautiful.

So far they had only cuddled; Jack, who had dropped out of high school but was acing organic chemistry in continuing education classes, had hopes for something more. Yet when she smiled at him the next morning, her lips seeking his, he turned away.

“I don’t really like kissing,” he said.

A touching, touchstone piece about transcending Asperger syndrome.

And a must-read.

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Brian Lamb Gets C-Spun

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

C-Span’s Brian Lamb is the Joe Friday of TV interviewers – straight as Gibraltar, traditional as figgy pudding. So you could understand his befuddlement during an hourlong interview with Daily Caller diva Michelle Fields on last night’s Q&A. (See it here.)

Fields was on Q&A to “[share] her experiences reporting on a variety of issues for the 24-hour news site,” according to the Program Details. Furthermore:

 She talks about an early interview with actor Matt Damon and his mother [here] which was viewed over two million times on the internet. She shares video of her unanticipated involvement while covering the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations in New York City where she was knocked down by a police officer [here]. Fields takes us to the corridors of Congress where she asks participants in a “Patriotic Millionaires” press conference to donate to the US Treasury [here].

In other words, she’s good at getting coverage of her coverage. Which is fine. But Lamb was clearly gobsmacked by her approach to journalism, from getting most of her news via Twitter and Facebook to statements such as “people want bias in their news.”

The cutaways of Lamb alone are worth the price of admission.

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