The one thing I'd change is to put the Act 2 conversation before the press conference, not after.
I'm the only person on Earth who thinks the attention grabbing nature of the press conference remarks on Gates was utterly planned, and not a gaffe.
The press conference remarks turned a week that would have been a festival of "Obama failing on healthcare" into a week of "Obama walks the nation through racial reconciliation". Everything I know about Axelrod's M.O. tells me that was planned.
Lynn Sweet has claimed otherwise, but I'd bet the farm that the WH knew in advance the topic of her question and planned to end the press conference that way precisely so they could generate a media firestorm to distract attention away from the unpleasant status of the legislative process on healthcare.
If you watch a replay of the press conference, you can see Obama start to call on Sweet on the question before, realize there is too much time left for it to be the last question, and then call on someone else so he can come back to her for the finale.
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Also, if Biden actually runs in '16, I'm voting for Palin as a protest vote.
Nicholas Beaudrot is an accidental political observer living in Seattle, Washington. By day he writes software for Amazon.com, snowboards, and plays ultimate frisbee. By night [and morn] he posts to this blog, runs the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally, and tries to cook decent Italian cuisine. A graduate of Brown University with a joint degree in Mathematics-Computer Science, in late 2003 Nicholas felt the urge to put his knack with numbers towards a greater social purpose than winning his fantasy baseball league or taking up poker, perhaps in an act of penance for not voting in 2000. He has been spotted standing in line for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, on the Atlanta area quiz bowl program "Hi-Q", and as a young boy in national broadcasts of the Christmas Eve service at the Cathedral of Saint Philip. If you play Halo 3, Team Fortress II, Rock Band 2, Catan, or a number of other games, he's on Xbox live as niq24601.
Neil Sinhababu is a philosophy professor at the National University of Singapore. It's a tropical island with good public transit and they're very nice about not caning him. He's fond of red-state college towns like Austin, where he got his PhD. Much of his research is in ethics — hence his alias "Neil the Ethical Werewolf," which contains the name of his philosophy blog. He has also published on Nietzsche and on how to have a girlfriend in another universe. His utilitarianism shapes his goals and tactical views, and makes it impossible for him to stay away from politics. At Harvard, he won a student government election by eating fire in each dorm room in his district. He'd be happy to use this skill to help Democrats in tough races. He likes drinking with smart people and dancing in altogether ridiculous ways. At his last project, War or Car, he showed that you could buy each US household a Prius or each panda a stealth bomber for the price of the Iraq War.
2 comments:
It is quite funny.
The one thing I'd change is to put the Act 2 conversation before the press conference, not after.
I'm the only person on Earth who thinks the attention grabbing nature of the press conference remarks on Gates was utterly planned, and not a gaffe.
The press conference remarks turned a week that would have been a festival of "Obama failing on healthcare" into a week of "Obama walks the nation through racial reconciliation". Everything I know about Axelrod's M.O. tells me that was planned.
Lynn Sweet has claimed otherwise, but I'd bet the farm that the WH knew in advance the topic of her question and planned to end the press conference that way precisely so they could generate a media firestorm to distract attention away from the unpleasant status of the legislative process on healthcare.
If you watch a replay of the press conference, you can see Obama start to call on Sweet on the question before, realize there is too much time left for it to be the last question, and then call on someone else so he can come back to her for the finale.
-----
Also, if Biden actually runs in '16, I'm voting for Palin as a protest vote.
I actually wondered about the Gates remarks myself, much along the lines you do.
Petey, if a situation ever develops where you might actually vote for Sarah Palin, I'm going to talk you into writing in John Edwards.
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