‘Rare for an incumbent to be trailing any named opponent at this early stage’ – Gallup

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll taken Feb. 16-17 indicates that if the election were held today, Kerry would be chosen by 55% of likely voters over 43% for Bush. Edwards beats Bush 54%-44%.

Of course, it’s February not November and the Democrats have been getting most of the attention. But, as NewMexiKen posted last week:

Gallup has a long history of asking presidential trial-heat questions in election years. There are comparable data from as far back as 1948 for elections in which an incumbent president was pitted against his eventual challenger in January or February of the election year. While it is not clear at this point who the Democratic nominee will be, Gallup’s historical polling shows it is rare for an incumbent to be trailing any named opponent at this early stage in the election year.

Humor me

Opinions You Should Have is The Onion of blogs. Among recent stories:

White House Budget Contains Gatefold, 12-page “Emperor’s Clothes” Pictorial of Bush

Intern Says Kerry And Matt Drudge Having Affair

White House Concerned Obsession With Lying About National Guard Could Distract Nation From Current Lies

Ex-American Airlines Pilot Hired To Fly Airforce One

Senate Offices Closed Due To Botox Scare

Capture Of Bin Laden In Preproduction; Slated For October Release

Norah #2

Reported by Blogcritics.org:

Norah Jones’ “Feels Like Home,” the follow-up to her multiplatinum, Grammy-winning debut album, has sold over 1 million copies in its first week, the highest sales debut for an album since 2001.

NewMexiKen’s copy among them.

It seems from NewMexiKen’s reading that the critics aren’t sure about “Feels Like Home.” The songs aren’t as good is one consistent complaint.

Hey, it’s the voice. She could sing the phone book and sell a million CDs.

Sports flicks

San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Betting Fool liked the movie Miracle:

I saw the movie “Miracle” over the weekend and it immediately jumps into my top sports movies of all time. Great stuff. Also on the Fool’s list are: “Hoosiers,” “Rocky,” “Bull Durham,” “Slapshot” and, of course, “Kansas City Bomber.”

Wallace Stegner

In 1999 San Francisco Chronicle readers ranked the best non-fiction and fiction books of the 20th century written in, about, or by an author from the Western United States.

NewMexiKen mentioned this in one of the earliest posts last August, but repeats it here — because the lists are interesting, but primarily to honor Wallace Stegner, who was born on this date in 1909.

First in fiction, second in non-fiction; now that’s a writer.

TOP 10 FICTION
1. “Angle of Repose,” by Wallace Stegner
2. “The Grapes of Wrath,” by John Steinbeck
3. “Sometimes a Great Notion,” by Ken Kesey
4. “The Call of the Wild,” by Jack London
5. “The Big Sleep,” by Raymond Chandler
6. “Animal Dreams,” by Barbara Kingsolver
7. “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” by Willa Cather
8. “The Day of the Locust,” by Nathanael West
9. “Blood Meridian,” by Cormac McCarthy
10. “The Maltese Falcon,” by Dashiell Hammett

TOP 10 NON-FICTION
1. “Land of Little Rain,” Mary Austin
2. “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian,” Wallace Stegner
3. “Desert Solitaire,” Edward Abbey
4. “This House of Sky,” Ivan Doig
5. “Son of the Morning Star,” Evan S. Connell
6. Western trilogy, Bernard DeVoto
7. “Assembling California,” John McPhee
8. “My First Summer in the Sierra,” John Muir
9. “The White Album,” Joan Didion
10. “City of Quartz,” Mike Davis

More on Toni Morrison

The Writer’s Almanac, as they often do, has some insight about Toni Morrison:

She didn’t start writing fiction until she was in her thirties. She wasn’t happy with her marriage, and writing helped her escape her daily troubles. She later said, “It was as though I had nothing left but my imagination. . . . I wrote like someone with a dirty habit. Secretly. Compulsively. Slyly.” She joined a small writing group, and one day she didn’t have anything to bring to the group meeting, so she jotted down a story about a black girl who wants blue eyes. The story later became her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1969). She wrote most of it in the mornings and on weekends while she was working as an editor for Random House and raising her children on her own. …

Morrison said, “[Writing] stretches you . . . [and] makes you stay in touch with yourself. . . . It’s like going under water for me, the danger. Yet I’m certain I’m going to come up.”

Toni Morrison…

winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 is 73 today. The following is the press release announcing her selection:

“who, in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”

“My work requires me to think about how free I can be as an African-American woman writer in my genderized, sexualized, wholly racialized world”. These are the words of this year’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, the American writer Toni Morrison, in her book of essays “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination” (1992). And she adds, “My project rises from delight, not disappointment…”

Toni Morrison is 62 years old, and was born in Lorain, Ohio, in the United States. Her works comprise novels and essays. In her academic career she is a professor in the humanities at the University of Princeton, New Jersey.

She has written six novels, each of them of great interest. Her oeuvre is unusually finely wrought and cohesive, yet at the same time rich in variation. One can delight in her unique narrative technique, varying from book to book and developed independently, even though its roots stem from Faulkner and American writers from further south. The lasting impression is nevertheless sympathy, humanity, of the kind which is always based on profound humour.

“Song of Solomon” (1978) with its description of the black world in life and legend, forms an excellent introduction to the work of Toni Morrison. Milkman Dead’s quest for his real self and its source reflects a basic theme in the novels. The Solomon of the title, the southern ancestor, was to be found in the songs of childhood games. His inner intensity had borne him back, like Icarus, through the air to the Africa of his roots. This insight finally becomes Milkman’s too.

“Beloved” (1987) continues to widen the themes and to weave together the places and times in the network of motifs. The combination of realistic notation and folklore paradoxically intensifies the credibility. There is enormous power in the depiction of Sethe’s action to liberate her child from the life she envisages for it, and the consequences of this action for Sethe’s own life.

In her latest novel “Jazz” (1992), Toni Morrison uses a device which is akin to the way jazz itself is played. The book’s first lines provide a synopsis, and in reading the novel one becomes aware of a narrator who varies, embellishes and intensifies. The result is a richly complex, sensuously conveyed image of the events, the characters and moods.

As the motivation for the award implies, Toni Morrison is a literary artist of the first rank. She delves into the language itself, a language she wants to liberate from the fetters of race. And she addresses us with the lustre of poetry.

Vrooming Into Yellowstone

Nicholas Kristof thinks “humans trump the bison and moose.” Two excerpts from his op-ed piece in The New York Times:

Yellowstone National Park, a wonderland at any time of year, is particularly dazzling in winter, when the geysers shoot out of snowfields and the elk wear mantles of frost. I took one of my sons to visit last year and learned two things that I don’t believe most environmentalists realize.

First, in winter Yellowstone is virtually inaccessible except by snowmobile. Cars are banned (except for one small part of the park), and Yellowstone is so big that snowshoeing and cross-country skiing offer access only to the hardiest backpackers, who can camp in snow and brutal cold for days at a time.

Second, a new generation of snowmobiles is available with four-stroke engines, not two-stroke. These machines cut hydrocarbon emissions by 90 percent — and noise by 50 percent. …

As an avid backpacker who loves the outdoors, I think the environmental movement should be trying to get more people out into the wild. That’s why I’d like to see the Bush administration’s compromise upheld, so Americans can continue to enjoy Yellowstone in winter. Cross-country skiers and snowshoers would, of course, still have all of backcountry Yellowstone for themselves, with no machines for many miles around.

Granted, snowmobiles are an intrusion. But so are cars. In the summer, we accept a trade-off: we admitted about 965,000 people last July to Yellowstone, with all the noise, garbage, public toilets and disruption that entailed, knowing that the park would be less pristine but that more people would get a chance to enjoy it. That seems a fair trade.

The philosophical question is the purpose of conservation: Do we preserve nature for its sake, or ours?

My bias is to put our interests on top. Thus I’m willing to encroach on wilderness to give Americans more of a chance to get into the wild. That’s why we build trails, for example — or why we build roads into Yellowstone.

Happy Birthday!

… to the woman who broke up the Beatles. She’s 71 today. In 2003 Time Asia published an informative profile of the complex artist Yoko Ono.

… to Vinnie Barbarino. He’s 50 today. So are Vincent Vega, Chili Palmer, Michael, Buford ‘Bud’ Uan Davis, Tod Lubitch, Danny Zuko and Tony Manero. And so is John Travolta.

… to the letter turner. Vanna White is 47 today.

… to Jack Palance (83 or 84 or 85), Cybill Shepherd (54), and Matt Dillon (40).

Tuesday’s important election

The significant election Tuesday wasn’t the Wisconsin primary, though it got interestingly close. Rather it was the election to fill a vacant Congressional seat in Kentucky — an election won by the Democrat Ben Chandler. It was the first time the Democrats have won a special election for the House since 1991.

Josh Marshall sums it up:

Oh, how sweet it is. We’ve been telling you for some time about the 6th congressional district special election in Kentucky, pitting former state Attorney GeneralBen Chandler against Alice Forgy Kerr.

This was the first federal election of the 2004 cycle. Kerr based her campaign almost exclusively on her strong support for the Bush agenda. And the AP is now reporting that Chandler has beaten Kerr decisively. That marks the first time since 1991 that a Democrat has won a Republican seat in a special election.

This is a big deal for a number of reasons.

The first is the shot in the arm it’ll give to Democrats around the country.

But another part of the story is Internet fundraising. As you’ll notice there on the left, the Chandler campaign has been advertising for about the last two weeks on this and a number of other blogs. The campaign budgeted about two grand for blog advertising. And my understanding is that by today they had raised close to $100,000 from contributors who linked through from those blogs on which the campaign was advertising.

In other words, they got roughly a 50-fold turnaround on their investment in the final two weeks of the campaign. And in case you’re wondering one hundred grand is a lot of money in a House race.

Now, obviously that’s exciting news for proprietors of blogs looking to open up revenue streams from advertisers. But the bigger story here is about the Democrats and the Internet, and the way this technology seems to click, shall we say, for the Democratic demographic.

Democrats have always lamented how Republicans just have far better direct-mail lists than they do, and how the Republicans are just plain better at it. And they do have better lists and they are better at it. But I’ve always thought that it wouldn’t really matter all that much if the Democrats had high quality lists too. The truth is that direct-mail, for whatever reason, just works with folks who are apt to give money to Republican campaigns. And it just doesn’t with Dems, or at least not nearly as well. It’s a different demographic. For whatever social or cultural reasons, the technology or mechanism — in this case fundraising by mail — is just particularly well suited to one demographic and not to the other.

But the Internet does seem to work for Democrats. That was clear in the spectacular early success of the Dean campaign and now you’re seeing it in smaller ways in individual House races. That doesn’t mean that it won’t work equally well for Republicans; we just don’t know yet. But for the first time in a long time Democrats have a technology, a mechanism that is allowing them to raise large sums of money, not from a few well-heeled givers but from large numbers of energized Democrats giving $10, $50 or $100 a shot. It’s already starting to make a difference.

And as long as we’re at it, there’s another special election coming up in which a Democrat has a good chance to pick up a seat currently held by a Republican. That’s the June 1st special election for South Dakota’s single House seat. The Democrat is Stephanie Herseth.

Journalism-related program activities

From Body and Soul:

This morning I skimmed through this article in the New York Times on Arab-Americans who are raising large amounts of money for George Bush thinking it was a little flimsy. The headline — Arabs in U.S. Raising Money to Back Bush — is technically true, but the few examples cited hardly suggest any significant trend, and a figure mentioned in the article — Bush’s approval rating amont Arab-Americans is down to 38 percent — suggests a trend toward large-scale Arab-American financial support would be surprising.

I read the article too fast, and missed the obvious: Most of the Arabs the Times mentions aren’t Arabs.

Ah, the high journalistic standards of our paper of record.

Indeed, as Abu Aardvark points out, of the three principals in the article, one is Iranian, one is Pakistani and the third is an Arab, but a Lebanese Christian.

Bush economic plan

“It’s unfair to say that the president’s only plan is massive tax cuts for the wealthy,” Mr. Graham said, according to remarks distributed by the Kerry campaign. “That’s not his total economic policy. He’s got other plans, one of which is to cut overtime pay.”

Quoted in The New York Times

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe. Thomas Jefferson

From The American Prospect, Wake-Up Time by Eric Alterman and Michael Tomasky, an insightful look at the media with five prescriptions for correction. Money quote:

Are our national media — schoolyard silly during campaign 2000, by turns somnolent and sycophantic ever since — starting to rouse themselves from their long torpor? …

Don’t start dancing to the music just yet, though. Bad habits die hard, and we’ve all come to expect too little genuine journalism and far too much of what might be called “journalism-related program activity.”

Bring it on

From Ellen Dunkel on the Knight Ridder Election 2004 blog:

Wondering how we, as a country, are going to get Janet Jackson to keep her top on? Or at least keep her from undressing on TV? Evangelist Franklin Graham told Christian broadcasters on Sunday that only President Bush will see that this happens.

“If this president is not re-elected,” Graham told the National Religious Broadcasters’ convention in an unofficial endorsement of Bush, “the floodgates of this garbage is going to be open because there won’t be anyone to stand against it.”

He said the Super Bowl halftime at which Janet Jackson exposed a breast is the “tip of the iceberg” for what secularists have in store for the nation. Without mentioning names, he said the goal of “these people” is to show open sex on TV, much like what he said is shown on TV in Europe.

Ted Kennedy, Green Bay Packer?

From Jim Kuhnhennthe on the Knight Ridder Election 2004 blog:

Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who helped John Kerry draw huge crowds in Iowa, joined Kerry for a campaign stop in Green Bay, Wis., and revealed that in 1955 Kennedy was recruited by Green Bay Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn.

Kennedy, who played offensive end at Harvard, brandished a letter addressed to “Dear Sir,” with Ted penciled in, stating that Kennedy had been recommended as a possible pro football prospect.

“I’ll tell ya, I’m not going to use up my eligibility until John Kerry is president of the United States,” he bellowed to more than 1,000 Democrats at a rally at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

Before the rally, Kennedy paid special homage to Lambeau Field, the home of the Packers and a football temple to Packers fans.

“Ted Kennedy went to Mecca,” Kerry said. “He went to Lambeau field. He went all around the field. He walked out on the field before he came here. Ladies and gentlemen, Ted Kennedy came here this afternoon in a state of grace.”

As for the recruiting letter, it’s clear that football scouts in those days weren’t what they are today. In a P.S. at the bottom of the two paragraph letter, Blackbourn added: “Please list in the Offense or Defense Position You Play Section whether you play Right or Left Guard, Tackle, Halfback, etc.”

If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit

Reporting on the Democrats’ debate in Milwaukee CJR Campaign Desk says “there seems to be some confusion about the status of the Democrats’ gloves”:

According to The Boston Globe, “(John) Edwards, Who Vowed a Positive Campaign, Takes Off the Gloves.”

But Alan Borsuk of The Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel believes that the candidates “mostly kept their gloves on.”

And Michael Tackett of the Chicago Tribune tells us that “Slugging Hopefuls Put on Kid Gloves.”

If only it was funny

“Watching TV last night, I saw an interesting documentary on the ninja. You know, the Japanese soldier? According to legend, the ninjas were warriors who could make themselves invisible whenever there was a war. You know, kind of like Bush in the National Guard.”

“The White House has now released military documents that they say prove — prove George Bush met his requirements while in the National Guard. Hey, big deal. We’ve got documents that prove Al Gore won the election.”

“Bush did have an explanation. He said he did go to Alabama, but when he didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction, he went back to Texas.”

“The White House finally found one guy who says he remembers serving with President Bush on National Guard duty in Alabama. Isn’t that amazing? Now if they can find someone who remembers Bush working on an economic plan!”

–The Tonight Show with Jay Leno