Is it just me, or does this page on MSN look like all the graphics were done by Billy the Intern? I am, by no means, an artistic type, but even I can do better than a continual reliance on the same graphic treatment over and over and over and over and over and over…
Archive for: October, 2006
I Love To Say I Told You So…
Call it a modern day tale of the ant and the grasshopper. You remember that story, right? The ant spends all summer foraging for food and making a stockpile while the grasshopper plays and plays. When winter comes, the ant has enough food to get through to spring but the grasshopper starves.
Well, the Democrat party is trying to teach us that lesson all over again and the LA Times has covered it for us.
So far, there is little indication that the incumbents are heeding the call from the activists. Some of those with large accounts are considering bids for higher office. But the activists argue that they should be focused less on their personal aspirations and more on the broader party interests.”We just don’t want to see anyone hoarding at a time when there is a need for the greater good,” said Eli Pariser, executive director of the MoveOn PAC.
For most of the last two years, these same activists have been praising Howard Dean for his “50 State Strategy” and talking about the huge payout they would get. But in the end, it comes down to a handful of targeted races (all but one or two of which were known two years ago).
The DNC, whose only function is to provide for the “greater good” of the party, has squandered tens of millions of dollars in places like Utah where they have no chance to make gains. Now the Democrats are having to take out loans to compete in the places in which they knew, as early as January of 2005, they would need to compete.
Thanks, MyDD, for teaching the country a lesson that most of us learned in the second grade. Spending everything as soon as you get it is a mistake, and saving for a rainy day is always a good idea.
For the Republicans, have good cheer. The financial advantage our candidates enjoy should pay rewards in two weeks.
Barron’s Predictions
A lot has been made about Barron’s prediction the GOP will hold the House and Senate in November. While I am not as confident as they are, I think they’re very, very close to dead on. In private conversations with friends, I have expressed my belief that we’ll hold the Senate by one seat and probably lose the House by one or maybe two.
I do not, by any stretch, believe my Democrat friends who claim their internal numbers show them picking up 26-30 seats. It’s just not realistic. That would require a near total sweep of every race that’s anywhere near competitive. For that to happen, the GOP base would have to stay home…. Not part of the GOP base, but the entire GOP base…
Barron’s makes one very good point in all of this.
We studied every single race — all 435 House seats and 33 in the Senate — and based our predictions about the outcome in almost every race on which candidate had the largest campaign war chest, a sign of superior grass-roots support. We ignore the polls. Thus, our conclusions about individual races often differ from the conventional wisdom. Pollsters, for instance, have upstate New York Republican Rep. Tom Reynolds trailing Democratic challenger Jack Davis, who owns a manufacturing plant. But Reynolds raised $3.3 million in campaign contributions versus $1.6 million for Davis, so we score him the winner.
Money in politics is success in almost every case. While there are certainly exceptions to that rule, in the overwhelming majority of races, being out spent 2, 3, 4 or 5 to 1 means you’re losing. It would be a major paradigm shift if the party with a huge financial advantage, and candidates who were better funded almost across the board, lost everything.
So buck up, little campers. This thing is ugly, but it is far from over.
Bloody Monday
NBC Universal is changing it’s name to “All Game Shows, All The Time” as it prepares to lay off 5% of its staff, shutter offices and consolidate programming, according to this little post from the Wall Street Journal.
The steps, announced today, are part of an overhaul that also affects movie production and other operations at the entertainment conglomerate owned by General Electric Co. NBC Universal aims to cut operating expenses by $750 million by the end of next year, in large part by eliminating 5% of its global work force, or about 700 jobs, in coming months.
Apparently they’re unable to continue making television dramas that nobody watches at a cost of $2 million plus per episode. Honestly, I would fear for the future of television if HBO and others weren’t doing better TV than the networks anyway. Let NBC crank out game shows hosted by 80s comedy has-beens as long as HBO keeps cranking out shows like Entourage and The Sopranos.
Now we just need to move Studio 60 and Heroes to cable since those two shows deserve to survive, but would be so much better on a channel free from FEC regulations.