Bush’s Memoir

Steve Benen says that publishers aren’t too excited about getting Bush’s memoir. I find this curious. Just because a public figure is unpopular doesn’t necessarily mean people won’t want to read that public figure’s memoir, does it? Bush may have been a horrendous president, but he’s still a fascinating guy, in my view.

Palin Prank Call

Sarah Palin chats with “Nicolas Sarkozy.”

The Rev. Wright Ad

TPM notes that a GOP group ran an attack ad on Sunday Night Football featuring everyone’s favorite crazy preacher, Jeremiah Wright. I can report that the ad ran on the NBC affiliate in Washington, DC.

It was about what you would expect, including the well-worn sound bites like “God damn America.” I find it curious that they bleeped both the words “God” and “damn” in the ad. It’s presumably OK to say “God” and “damn” on their own, but turn them into a compound word and they become a curse phrase somehow–this has always puzzled me.

Uh, Zogby?

Over at Technorati, I noticed that a bunch of right-wing blogs were all excited that McCain had a one-point lead in Friday’s Zogby daily tracking poll. Well, the Saturday poll is now out, and it gives Obama a nearly six-point lead. In his message explaining how this happened, Mr. Zogby writes:

Remember, as I said yesterday, one day does not make a trend. This is a three-day rolling average and no changes have been tectonic. A special note to blogger friends: calm it down. Lay off the cable television noise and look at your baseball cards in your spare time. It is better for your (and everyone else’s) health.

Not that I know a damn thing about polling, but why it seems like having your poll fluctuate like that would be indicative of some sort of a flaw in the poll’s methodology…

Senator David Vitter, Family Man

TPM Cafe has posted video of David Vitter’s family values-centric campaign ads, filmed after Vitter patronized a prostitute in Washington, DC. It’s not quite a Mark Foley level of hypocrisy, but still pretty high.

By the way, TPM has a sweet redesign that they unveiled today.

Mitt Romney, Dog Torturer

Ana Marie Cox extracts a nugget from the Boston Globe series on Romney’s life.

The Metropolitan Opera Wing Can Go to Hell!

John Edwards’s rural advisor sure knows how to start a friendly dialogue on Time’s blog, doesn’t he? He has since apologized for that incredibly awful initial post, which read like a parody.

Has Kos Responded to Chait?

The Jon Chait netroots article in TNR generated a lot of commentary and blog responses last week, and I was excitedly awaiting the big Daily Kos smackdown on account of the fact that Chait labels Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the Daily Kos founder, as “almost comically lacking in phlosophical depth.”

The ideology of the netroots is, indeed, somewhat amorphous, as liberal bloggers themselves often point out. A major source of the ideological confusion is Moulitsas himself, who is almost comically lacking in philosophical depth. In one oft- discussed blog post, he described himself as a “libertarian Democrat” and proceeded immediately to outline a philosophy that was pure traditional liberalism. (“A Libertarian Dem believes that people should have the freedom to make a living without being unduly exploited by employers. … A Libertarian Dem gets that no one is truly free if they fear for their health, so social net programs are important to allow individuals to continue to live happily into their old age.”)

Granted, that’s kind of embarrassing, but Chait freely notes in the article that there’s been no love lost between Daily Kos and TNR in the past, and this feels like a cheap shot. When you blog a lot, some things you write are going to end up looking kind of stupid, inevitably. Chait should know this because some of his past writings are rather dumb in retrospect (on the Iraq War, for example, or his desperation to prevent Howard Dean from winning the Democratic nomination in 2004).

I am still a little surprised at the radio silence from Kos on this subject (here are his posts for the last few weeks), who isn’t exactly shy about going after his critics (such as dissing TNR in February). Perhaps he feels that TNR just deserves to be ignored. He may have a point there, though it’s too bad I didn’t get a laugh out of his would-be vitriolic response.

Unlike Either Fighter, Video Taken Down

By reading MJD’s post at Deadspin on Sunday, I learned that the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight was on YouTube and so I rewatched some of it on account of not having seen some of it that well the first time around. Now comes the inevitable news that HBO had YouTube pull the video as of 4pm Monday due to a copyright complaint. This is why MJD, in providing the link to the bout, wrote, “I suggest you enjoy it as soon as you possibly can.”

I’m not here to bash copyright law, though it would be nice if boxing could get away from the pay-per-view model and have title fights on network TV or basic cable (I know, not going to happen). What strikes me about this episode and various other recent events is that it was predictable this would get on YouTube, be watched by lots of people, then be removed. It’s an easy way to avoid paying the $55 for the fight if you’re willing to wait until someone posts it the next day.

I can’t help but think that copyright holders will get wise to this recurrent pattern and crack down on the YouTubes of the world more effectively in the future. We might remember this as the golden age of free web video, much like Napster circa 2000.

Also see the Bill Simmons rant about the “business arrangement” between the boxers and hilarious recap of Floyd Mayweather Sr’s interview.

Bill Donohue Wants More Catholics on the Court

That darling of the liberal blogosphere Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, is at it again, criticizing those who dare wonder about the all-Catholic five-justice majority in last week’s Supreme Court decision on partial birth abortion (the four dissenting justices were all non-Catholics). Here’s Donohue’s view on religion’s role in the legal system.

The pushback from conservative Catholics was immediate, even pre-emptive. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, declared, “We need more, not fewer, Catholics on the Supreme Court.”

I still subscribe to the quaint idea that judges should uphold the laws and the Constitution, rather than the tenets of any particular religious faith.