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Baseball Must Expand Instant Replay
Tweet Share on Facebook October 30, 2009 Comment (82)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
What will it take for baseball to expand its instant replay system? A series of umpiring blunders in the post-season? Been there: There was Joe Mauer's "foul" ball down the left field line in the ALDS ... the botched double-play benefiting the Yankees in the ALCS ... in the same series, there was Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher incorrectly called safe on a pick-off attempt and then incorrectly being called out after tagging up and scoring on a fly ball—all in the same inning. There are other examples from preliminary playoff rounds.
Blown calls potentially affecting the outcome of the World Series itself? Done that. In a tight second game on Thursday night, umpires managed a blunder double-play, killing two late-inning rallies in a tight game. In the championship series.
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Special Interest Cash Floods New York House Race
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2009 Comment (3)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Much has been written—a lot of it by me—about how the special election in New York's 23d district has become a proxy for a GOP civil war between base conservatives and more pragmatic establishment Republicans. Perhaps the starkest illustration of how this race—the only House contest in the country this year—has become about something more than the Republican candidate, the Democratic candidate and the Conservative candidate, take a look at some of the dollar figures for amounts raised and spent in the race, specifically the more than $3 million outside groups have funneled into the district.
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2012 Fault Lines in NY-23 House Special Election
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2009 Comment (8)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The special election race taking place in upstate New York has been described variably as a GOP civil war and a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. To the extent that those assertions are true (and they are, as I argue in my column), it may also be an early chance to see the contours of the 2012 presidential race. In one corner you've got Sarah "Going Rogue" Palin who has, of course, bucked the Republican establishment and endorsed Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate who seems poised to finish ahead of official GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava. No surprise there: Palin is aiming to inherit John McCain's "maverick" mantle—but as a conservative maverick (No compromises!), rather than as a centrist maverick like McCain (Let's make deals on climate change, campaign finance reform, etc).
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Will CNN go the Fox Route Like MSNBC?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 27, 2009 Comment (44)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
CNN has slipped into last place among the 24 hour cable "news" networks, the New York Times reports. And that raises this question: Will CNN follow MSNBC down the Fox road to partisan glory? Since its debut, Fox has staked a place as the conservatives' home away from perceived bias of the so-called mainstream media. (Quick aside: Doesn't the fact that it has the most viewers ipso facto put Fox in the mainstream media?) MSNBC has gained traction in the last year or two by becoming the Fox of the left. So partisans on both sides now know where they can go to find out why they're right and the other side is evil.
Take the 8 o'clock hour. Conservatives can tune in to Fox to watch Bill O'Reilly skewer the left. Liberals can flip on Keith Olbermann and watch him lambaste O'Reilly. And CNN offers up the estimable Campbell Brown who it touts as "the only non-partisan cable news anchor at 8 pm, [offering] a common sense approach to reporting the day's news." The show used to be called No Bias, No Bull—but viewers seem to prefer both bias and bull, as CNN comes in fourth place at 8pm.
So the question is: When CNN decides to get partisan will they try to out-fox Fox or bigfoot MSNBC on the left? Stay tuned.
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Conservatives v. Republicans in New York 23 Race
Tweet Share on Facebook October 27, 2009 Comment (9)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Earth to the conservative movement: Don't use a defeated conservative to argue the winning value of conservatism at the ballot box.
I have been watching with great interest and some glee the Republican civil war being fought in and around the Adirondack Mountains in next week's special election to succeed Rep. John McHugh, who is now the secretary of the Army. It's the only U.S. House election that will be held next week, but rather than being a referendum on President Obama, it's become an illustration of the battle for the soul of the GOP. Conservatives—including very high profile pols like Sarah Palin—don't like the Republican nominee (who is, as GOPers go, rather liberal) and have lined up behind an independent candidate. I argued in my column in our digital edition last week that the GOP can't achieve majority status if they can't get on the same page in what should be a winnable district. Today's New York Times has a passage that perfectly sums up the GOP's problem:
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Biden on Cheney Criticism: 'Who Cares?'
Tweet Share on Facebook October 24, 2009 Comment (33)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Kudos to Vice President Biden for putting Dick Cheney in his place. According to today's New York Times, Biden was asked about Cheney's criticism that President Obama is "dithering" over whether to send more troops to Afghanistan and had made a "strategic blunder" in ditching the Bush administration's missile defense plan. "Who cares what—" Biden apparently said, before catching himself. He went on to give a political answer about circumstances changing in Afghanistan and blah blah, so on and so forth. (OK, he did say Cheney was "irrelevant" too.)
But his first instinct was correct: Who cares what Cheney says? If the last eight years have taught us anything it's that Cheney is reliably wrong, especially on foreign policy. He is, to use the expression that Dwight Eisenhower coined, a gloom-doggler. Sure the news media has to take him seriously because he is a former vice president of the United States; and sure, Democrats stand to gain by taking him seriously because it keeps him in the public eye as a face of the GOP.
But Biden was right about his views: Who cares?
Update: Mea culpa—it seems that Biden's specific quotes referred to a report left behind by the Bush-Cheney administration, but he was broadly dismissive of Cheney's comments. He was correct to dismiss Cheney, whose views are irrelevant.
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Democrats More Likely to Get H1N1 Vaccine Than Republicans
Tweet Share on Facebook October 16, 2009 Comment (3)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I wrote yesterday about a new Pew poll showing that Americans are evenly divided (47 percent to 47 percent) about whether they would get the H1N1 vaccine. But there was one other data tidbit from the poll that was so striking that I thought it merits its own blog post. According to Pew, there is a partisan split on the vaccine. To wit, 60 percent of Democratic respondents said that they would get the vaccine and 34 percent said they would not. Conversely, only 41 percent of Republicans said they would take the vaccine while 54 percent said that they would not. (Warning for Democrats: Independents have the same 41-54 split.)
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Whether to Get the H1N1 Vaccine
Tweet Share on Facebook October 15, 2009 Comment (50)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog
Mary Kate wrote last week about the mystifying trend of people debating whether or not to get the swine flu vaccine. Now Pew has some startling new poll results that add numbers to the anecdotal evidence. According to Pew (h/t pollster.com), Americans are evenly split on getting the H1N1 vaccine, with 47 percent saying they would get it and 47 percent saying they would take a pass on it. The reasons given are a classic mix of hubris and misinformation.
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Are Palin and Bachmann Hot Because They're Attractive?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 15, 2009 Comment (26)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
With today's New York Times fronting a piece comparing Minnesota's nutty House member, Michele Bachmann, with Alaska's flighty ex-governor, Sarah Palin, the looks debate was bound to come up again (remember the study this past spring purporting to show that Palin's looks undermined her candidacy?). As in, to quote one blogger:
C'mon folks, admit it. If Sarah Palin had all the same qualities but wasn't pretty you think she'd be a sensation?
What is somewhat surprising is that this comment comes from Christian Broadcasting Network blogger David Brody (who GOP 12, which first flagged the item, describes as a "leading evangelical reporter.")
The main reason Sarah Palin gets so much attention of course is because she was the first female GOP vice presidential nominee. Beyond that she and Bachmann both get pub because of their propensity for saying things that—take your pick—stir controversy or are simply flat-out dumb (often both).
So how do their looks factor in? Weigh in below with your thoughts: Would they get as much attention if they bloviated in the same crazy way but had less visual appeal? What about if they were men? Post your take in the comments section.
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Don’t Blame Liberals When Limbaugh Can’t Buy the Rams, Blame the Free Market
Tweet Share on Facebook October 14, 2009 Comment (31)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When Rush Limbaugh's bid to buy the St. Louis Rams falls incomplete, he and the Ditto Heads will undoubtedly blame some number of their favorite targets: the liberal media, the angry blacks, the Democrats, the Obama administration. And he'll probably miss or ignore the main obstacle to his joining the NFL owners' huddle: The free market.
