The fabulous and prescient Michael Pahre has won the fabulous Seamus Sweepstakes, guessing that today would be the day New York Times columnist Gail Collins would mention Mitt Romney without attaching his family dog Seamus to the roof of the family car.
Congratulations, Mike!
This is entirely a result of my writing off your chances two days ago, of course.
See you at lunch.
Headline in a national newspaper ad:
YOU WORK FOR THE BEST FIRM IN THE CITY. YOU MAKE SEVEN FIGURES. YOU SPEND LESS TIME OUTSIDE THAN PRISONERS ON RIKERS ISLAND.
The solution?
FIND BALANCE. FIND ULTIMAT.
Vodka, that is.
Translation: Drinking alcohol trumps all.
Good luck with that.
P.S. Absolut did it a lot better.
Well the Missus and I trundled down to the Big Town yesterday and here’s what we saw (sorry, no links or graphics – I’m iPadlocked):
* Silver Screen/Silver Prints at the Grolier Club (through 11/12/11), “vintage Hollywood photography tracing the careers of the leading photographers and many of the great stars of the ‘Golden Age’ of motion pictures.” A smart, sharply focused exhibit.
* Picasso’s Drawings,1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition at the Frick Collection (through 1/8/12). A fabulous assembly of Pablo Picasso’s works on paper (and cardboard) from the first thirty years of his artistic activity. Well worth the trip.
* Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through tomorrow – hurry!). A knockout show of the New York-born artist who spent most of his life in Germany producing “romantic, crystalline depictions of architecture and seascapes.” And so much more. The Missus and I have seen Feininger’s work in bits and pieces, but this exhibit is absolutely eye-popping. Special bonus: The Whitney’s tour guides are consistently compelling, mostly because they don’t ask questions of the tour takers. Don’t get us started.
Once around Zuccotti Park, James, and don’t spare the horses:
• NPR’s All Things Considered chin-stroker on the media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests
• Media Research Center’s protest that “the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) news networks . . . used their airtime to publicize and promote the aggressively leftist movement” (tip o’ the pixel: Politico’s On Media)
• Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham’s assertion that what the OWS crowd is saying “isn’t especially radical”
• Matt Labash’s unabashed portrait of “Spooky the anarchist, Amy the gender-bender, Sid the Nazi, and other occupiers of Wall Street” in the Weekly Standard
As they say at Boston Fashion Weak:
Enjoy!
Bad news on the political advertising front from Thursday’s News York Times:
Democratic Senator’s Ads May Break New Ground
WASHINGTON — A new series of political advertisements on behalf of an embattled Nebraska senator could open the door to a flood of similar ads financed by outside groups and even businesses working directly with political candidates — a sharp departure from past practice.
The ads are innocuous enough on their face: Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat up for re-election next year, is featured on television and radio commercials discussing Social Security, the national debt, war veterans and other hot-button issues. What is remarkable, campaign finance lawyers and political operatives say, is that the ads were produced and paid for by Democratic Party officials in Nebraska and Washington — with the senator’s close involvement as their star.
The ad in question:
That’s technically a violation of the Federal Election Commission rules “restrict[ing] politicians from ‘coordinating’ their advertisements with outside groups.” But the FEC hasn’t taken any action to squelch the Nelson/Nebraska Democratic Party’s $600,000 (so far) ad campaign.
Republican groups, interestingly, aren’t asking the FEC to stop Nelson; they’re asking if they can join him:
Indeed, American Crossroads — the powerful and well-financed Republican group formed with the help of the former White House aide Karl Rove — filed a request on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission asking for a formal ruling on whether it could “adopt the tactics” of Mr. Nelson in coordinating footage of politicians up for re-election.
That decision could make the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling look like tinkering around the edges.
Not good, splendid readers. Not good at all.
The always-readable Jason Gay broke this news in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal:
LeTR fROm thE RaLLy SQuiRRel AtTornEY
DEaR PEEpLE of SAiNT LOuIs,
My NaMe is RiChaRD FLuFFYTAIL, III, EsQ. I am A SQuiRReL AttornEY with the FiRm of ACoRN, ChEStNUT and PINECone, LLP. I am LICsenSED To pRaCTicE SQuiRReL LaW IN the STaTe of MissOUri as WEll as CAliForNia, New YORK anD aLL FOREsTS.
iT haS ComE To MY aTTenSHUN That ThE SAiNT LOuis CaRDiNaLs haVe Been UsinG the LikENess of My CLienT, “RaLLY SQuiRReL,” In TEEM maTERiALs dURinG tHe NaTIONAl LeAgUe ChaMPEENshup SeeeRiES.
ThiS SAiNT LOuis SquiRREL obSESSION is REpoRTEdLY FuELLED by a SigHTing of My CLIiENT rUNNing past Home Plate iN a DIvisinAL Playoff GamE WhErE the CaRDs BEet THE PhiLADelPHia FiLLies.
The offending materials: “TherE are ‘rALLy SQuiRReL’ toWELs aNd TEE sHirtz tHaT SAy ‘GOT SQuiRReL?’ WorsE of All, The Cards aRe selling StuFFed RaLLy SQuiRReLs.”
Enough! The rALLy SQuiRReL (whose real name is Chuck) wants compensation, including “aLL tHe PEeNUTS and CRACKer JacKS” and “an AUToGraPHEd Stan MUSIal jersey.”
And this:
CHuCK the Rally SQUIRReL WoulD likE To eat FRIed CHICKEN and DrINK Beer AND play VIDEO GAmes DURING GaMEs like RED Sox Pitchers.
Somewhere, Ring Lardner is smiling.
No sooner had this appeared (via Fox News):
Cain Leapfrogs Romney to Vault to Lead in Poll
What a difference a few debates can make.
Herman Cain’s star has risen steadily in the past two months, from a largely unknown CEO running for president to a top-tier candidate in the Republican field for 2012 — and now voters even rank him above the presumed front-runner, Mitt Romney, in a poll released Wednesday evening.
Than this appeared (via the Washington Post):
Herman Cain’s deceptive and unfair tax plan
REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL candidate Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan was the centerpiece of Tuesday’s Post-Bloomberg debate. Mr. Cain claims his proposal is a “bold plan to grow this economy” while getting the debt under control. His opponents warned variously that the plan would never pass (former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum) or that it would (Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann), giving Congress the “pipeline of a new revenue stream” that would inevitably be cranked higher.
Mr. Cain’s plan is problematic, but not for the reasons his fellow presidential contenders claim. Rather than putting the country on a sustainable fiscal path, it risks not producing enough revenue to fund the government’s needs. It would turn the current progressivity of the tax code upside-down, giving a windfall to the wealthy and hiking the tax burden for the least well-off.
Not to mention this (via Bloomberg Business Week):
Cain 9-9-9 Tax Code Scrap Keeps Federal Levies on Gasoline, Beer
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, who has pledged to throw out the U.S. tax code, now says he would keep excise taxes on goods such as gasoline, beer and cigarettes.
The Hermanator is about to be Hermanated.
Sic transit politics.
Today’s piece from New York Times columnist Gail Collins had the hardsweating staff wondering until the very end whether the Seamus Sweepstakes™ would finally be settled, but at the last possible moment, Collins came through.
From the beginning:
The Gift of Glib
Right now you’re probably asking yourself, how did Rick Perry do in the big Republican debate in New Hampshire this week?
He did great! It turns out that Governor Perry has a big energy plan, known as “The Plan I’m Going to Be Laying Out.” When he does, it’s going to be the answer to almost everything. We know that because no matter what Perry was asked, he talked about the plan. Which will involve “the American entrepreneurship that’s out there.” And a whole lot more. When he’s ready to tell you.
From the ending:
As things stand, the Perry camp is apparently planning to keep their guy in the background during debates and hit Romney over the head with mean commercials. That shouldn’t be too hard. Maybe they’ll include the day Mitt drove to Canada with the family dog on the car roof.
Praise the Lord! The Seamus Sweepstakes™ goes on.
It’s clearly not too late to guess when Gail Collins will write about Mitt Romney without mentioning “the day Mitt drove to Canada with the family dog on the car roof” – and win an all-expenses-paid lunch with the hardworking staff.
Don’t wait! Enter now!
(Michael Pahre, eat your heart out. Bob Gardner, you’re still in it.)
Lots of media action around Elizabeth Warren – good, bad, and . . . unattractive (ugly is such an ugly word).
The good: This largely laudatory profile in Vanity Fair.
The bad (for Tim Geithner): This flashback via techPresident.
This YouTube video plays a cameo role in the new profile of Elizabeth Warren, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau architect turned U.S. Senate candidate, that appears in November’s issue of Vanity Fair. The video, writes Suzanna Andrews, may be part of the reason why Warren never had the chance to lead the agency she built:
But with Daley and Geithner—one of Obama’s closest advisers—sharing center stage, the balance of power in the debate over Warren shifted. Geithner would never criticize Warren publicly—and indeed, as a Treasury spokesperson says, he “has expressed his support and admiration for Professor Warren many times”—but few people in Washington doubted that he remained opposed to her candidacy. To at least one person who saw them in meetings together it appeared that “he looked down on her for no apparent or justifiable reason.” As for Warren, if one mentions the video “Elizabeth Warren Makes Timmy Geithner Squirm,” she says nothing, but an impish smile crosses her face.
The unattractive: This video compliments of Mass GOP (tip o’ the pixel: @reillyadam).
Caption: “Throw Rocks” highlights the unapologetically violent rhetoric of Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, including her promise to “throw rocks” at people.
Duck!!!
Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy has lately been engaged in an effort to “remove the [Iranian] Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department list of foreign terror organizations.”
Via ThinkProgress a month ago:
Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) told ThinkProgress he was paid $25,000 to speak at a rally to remove a controversial Iranian exiled opposition group from the U.S. terrorist rolls after previously not saying if he was paid.
Kennedy wouldn’t tell Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin whether or not he was paid to speak at the rally to remove the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department list of foreign terror organizations. But asked by ThinkProgress, Kennedy replied that he had been paid $25,000 and that he wouldn’t accept the money if he didn’t believe in the cause . . .
Flash-forward to yesterday’s New York Times full-page ad:
There’s more to this than meets the FBI (former director Louis Freeh), no?
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