Jacob Weisburg raises the possibility that maybe the Democrats shouldn't want to capture one or both houses of Congress, before scotching the notion entirely. The view that it's actually a good thing not to win the next election is pretty common, particularly with ideologues, and is usually based on the false premise that once things get worse, as they surely will, the people will hold the party that wins accountable. This mid-term may not be as important as winning the Presidency in 2008, or even winning the mid-term in 2010, but a Democratic win this November would have positive historic implications, even if it lessens our chances of victory two years from now.

Remember when Stephen Colbert was actually...funny?

Actually, it wasn't that long ago. The Colbert Report was still airing episodes with humor and wit as recently as late-August; it's just that his post-Labor Day efforts have been the comedic counterpart to the Oakland Raiders offense.

This is an interesting way for the top law enforcement officer in the country to be spending his weekend: with Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell, before an organization that shares its mailing list with David Duke.

An interesting summary on the instititutional reasons military lawyers oppose the Bushies' efforts to "clarify" the Geneva Conventions, here.

Even Nixon's doodles seem over-programmed....

One of my favorite liberal bloggers, Brendan Nyhan, gets canned because he refused to kiss enough liberal ass in the blogosphere, less than a week after he attacked the use of an urban legend for anti-Bush purposes at Eschaton. Having someone like Nyhan around calling bullshit can be very frustrating, but it's worth it if it forces you to show greater discipline when blogging, and being more attentive to the facts. It's the easiest thing in the world to find something on the internet that proves conclusively whatever preconceived notions you might have are correct. What's hard is double-checking your link to see if it's true. Mau-mauing Nyhan means Atrios and friends never have to challenge their own preconceptions, or take any care in what they post. They can go back to calling other people "wankers" or "liars", and be content in their own version of reality, freed from the constraints of building a reasoned case in support of their ideals. In fact, it's not unlike a certain occupant of the White House.

"HABEUS CORPUS MATTERS" The "twisted priorities" of Roger Waters.

Dodgers 11, San Diego 10: Unfreakingbelievable.

The always fun-to-observe Rasmussen numbers now have St. Joseph up by only two over Ned Lamont. Rasmussen has consistently had this race closer than other polls, so take this with a grain of salt.

UPDATE [9/20]: An ARG poll has the same margin. Lieberman is losing slightly among independents. The Republican candidate is drawing less than 5%, so any improvement at his end can only help Lamont.

Huh?

Angelenos and news-crits: Before you rush to agree with LAT columnist Tim Rutten's self-satisfiedly righteous denunciation of the evil, greedy absentee-owning Tribune Company: 1) Do you really think Dean Baquet couldn't put out a high-quality Los Angeles newspaper with a mere 800 editorial employees (instead of the current 940)? The Washington Post operates with about 800 editorial employees. It's pretty good! 2) If you are a reporter at the LAT, do you really want to work at a paper owned by Eli Broad, Ron Burkle, or David Geffen--three of the local billionaires you should be covering? They aren't known as people who like bad press. ...

P.S.: The LAT has become a much better paper under Baquet--better than it ever was under the Chandlers--while it's cut back staff. Does that bolster the argument against cutting?

--Mickey Kaus

Wow, where does one start? First, the metropolitan area of Los Angeles has a population of almost 18 million people, making it more than twice the size of the D.C.-Baltimore metropolitan area. Besides the fact that the Post isn't half the newspaper it was in the '70's, a good newspaper in Los Angeles should have quite a bit more editorial employees than one in D.C., especially one whose circulation is almost 20% higher.

Second, having a local billionaire sign your paychecks is going to represent no more of a potential conflict of interest than having a publicly-traded corporation do so, and its interest in the bottom line uber alles. At least having Eli Burke or Ron Burkle running things at Times-Mirror decreases the likelihood of having advertisers trying to censor unfavorable articles, an inevitable result of having a publicly-traded corporation in charge, where everything is constantly and monomaniacally geared towards maximizing profits for the shareholders. If the trade-off is not aggressively investigating your billionaire patron, I'll live with that.

Lastly, that the LA Times is better now than it was in the Chandler Era (and thus, the best that it's ever been; the pre-Otis Chandler Times was a joke) is not only news to those who continue to subscribe to it, and have to read the bare-bones sports and metro sections, but it's also news to regular readers of Mickey Kaus, who has been unsparing in his attacks on the paper the past few years (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), both before and after the promotion of Baquet in July, 2005.

In fact, as recently as last May, Kaus approvingly cited this reaction from one of his readers:

Alert and anguished L.A. reader "G"--not me! And not Brady Westwater neither!--writes:

Two more Pulitzers are going on the wall at the L.A. Times, which means the editors at Spring St. can delude themselves, for at least another year, with the belief they are putting out a decent newspaper.

Prizes, which award either prestige or cash, are meant to reward, and thereby encourage, good behavior. ... And, at their best, the Pulitzer Prizes encourage papers to pursue serious journalism. The possibility of a Pulitzer is a good reason for an editor at a small paper with a limited budget to let a reporter spend a lot of time investigating a local scandal. ... But at large papers ... the Pulitzers are reinforcing bad behavior. At the LA Times, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and every other large paper in the country, editors year in and year out mount big projects with Pulitzers in mind ... (Did you make your way through even one of the NYT's Pulitzer-winning Race in America series? I didn't think so.) Typically these projects are snoozes which have their largest readership among Pulitzer judges. ... But at the WSJ and NYT, that's okay. Both papers are excellent despite their Pulitzer pursuits.

But by continuing to hand out prizes to the LAT, the Pulitzer committee is complicit in the journalistic disaster in Los Angeles. This is not to say that it's King/Drew series or Kim Murphy's reporting from Russia weren't excellent. ... Or that the four Pulitzers it brought in last year were undeserved. Under [John] Carroll and [Dean] Baquet, the LAT does national politics and foreign reporting about as well as anyone out there.

But for some reason that high quality journalism seems to stop at the Los Angeles County line. Local coverage (that is the daily stuff that isn't in a prize-bait series) is shoddy. Anyone who actually lives in L.A. and is dependent on the local paper for news and analysis of L.A. will be sorely disappointed.

There's every reason to pop champagne bottles and give self-congratulatory speeches in the newsroom today. But tomorrow, please mull this thought over: winning Pulitzers may be the thing that the LA Times does best. Which is a kinder way of saying, no matter how many Pulitzers go up on the wall each year, from the vantage of your local readers, you still put out a lousy paper. [Emph. added]

I suspect declining circulation numbers and heat from the Chicago boys at Tribune Co. may get the message to Carroll & Baquet through the celebratory haze.

If Kaus' opinion of the Times has changed in the brief period since Baquet took over, it hasn't been evident in his writing. Is a front-page that now includes profiles of the Cannibis Babe Attorney really such an improvement? Since when has he liked the paper?

FWIW: The Encyclopedia Brittanica's entry on Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus of Byzantium, cited last week by Pope Benedict as an authority on the evils of Islam. He doesn't appear to have a particularly important leader; the Byzantine Empire was on its last legs, kept alive only by internal divisions in the Ottoman Empire, and would ultimately disappear from the world stage during the reign of his son. The writings cited by the Pope were likely written for the purpose of fomenting anti-Muslim feelings in the West at the end of the Fourteenth Century, when Manuel's empire was besieged, but he also played his cards well for a time with certain factions among the Turks, and remained in power for well over three decades as a vassal. Why the pope was inspired to cite him as an authority on any theological points staggers the imagination.

Very unusual choreography. And not lip-sync'd !!!

Did Gareth Keenan come up with this?

I guess you can be too thin, even in the fashion industry. Frankly, with all the attention Congress and the media pay to the use of steroids and HGH by athletes, I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more play. People being starved for the sake of commerce, then selling that look as ideal, is not that different from hyping athletes who bulk up to get ahead.

Oriana Fallaci, who went from being an anti-Fascist soldier at the end of WWII to being the Euro version of Louis Farrakhan at the end of her life, has died. I suppose just as college Trotskyites become the intellectual shills for reflexive militarism in their prime, so too is it a short step from fighting Mussolini to adopting his ideals later in life.

"Appear" to receive money? I plan on writing a little more about this over at Condredge's Acolytes, but I can't imagine a less interesting story than how much money Reggie Bush made in college. Strip SC of the '04 Title? Take away his Heisman Trophy? Sorry, can't be done: those honors have already been awarded. This ain't like taking the Tour de France from a juiced champion, where there is a direct link between the cheating and the championship. You can punish USC all you want, but they still kicked Sooners' ass in the '05 Orange Bowl, and they still beat Michigan to win the '04 title. And Reggie Bush was still the best player during the 2005 season. Even if the NCAA was motivated to send a message to the Trojans, the Sooners are still going to trail by five touchdowns.

That's the big problem with enforcing the malum prohibitum regulations of the NCAA; if the crime doesn't directly relate to the essence of the sport, the winning-and-losing on the field, the fans, alums and boosters aren't going to give a rat's ass about whether or not "cheating" takes place. The issue isn't whether SC "cheats" to win; it's why other programs (are you listening, CAL?) aren't trying hard enough to match them.
[link via LA Observed]

It's about time the local newspaper of record showed some sack. There is an inherent contradiction between publishing a quality paper and running a publicly-traded business, and the sooner Tribune Corp. sells the LA Times, the sooner the people there can get back to turning out a good newspaper again.

Dog Bites Man: Kaus Endorses G.O.P. Dominance of Congress.

Bad News for Pessimists: Far from constituting a pro-reconquista fifth column in our midst, only 7% of Latino immigrants have any fluency in Spanish after the second generation, according to a Princeton/UC Irvine study. It won't stop nativists and bigots from demanding we throw up the barricades at the border, unfortunately, but it does provide proof that the melting pot is alive and cooking.

The phrase "some good news for pessimists", as used here, can hardly be construed as racist, as some bloggers have accused (btw, isn't reading comprehension supposed to be one of the areas evaluated by the SAT?) . Clearly, a "pessimist" in this context is someone who fears that our political system can never be truly representative of non-whites, and the fact that whites will continue to wield disproportionate influence and power in California, in spite of being a minority of the population, is a validation of that worldview (and hence, "good news").

Best use of sports by a Democratic politician EVER !!!

Air America's going double touthpicks. Other than Al Franken's show, which airs out here in the morning, I can't say that I listen to the programming that often. Reading between the lines, it sounds more like a bad business plan than anything to do with crummy ratings.

My side of the blogosphere seems to attract assholes, or at least create an environment that allows their Inner Asshole to bloom.

UPDATE: The above reference was originally intended to note the nasty, over-the-top reaction by certain bloggers to the criticism from Brendan Nyhan, and not any sort of reference to the underlying post, which concerned an alleged suicide by an airlines ticket counter who gave Mohammed Atta his boarding pass on 9/11. But it now appears that story is an urban legend as well. Another triumph for the blogosphere.

Chafee wins in Rhode Island, and less narrowly than expected. Still, even with a huge GOTV effort by the national GOP, the total number of votes cast in the Republican primary was less than the vote total achieved by Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic nominee, in an uncontested primary. Since Chafee's margin encompassed a large independend and Democratic crossover vote, that bodes well for the Democrats.

Another poll has Lieberman with a comfortable lead in Connecticut. As I've said before, unless Ned Lamont can make a case for why non-Democrats should vote for him, he won't deserve to win. And right now, he clearly hasn't....

The Mark of Quality: Turns out much of that lame 9/11 miniseries was shot in Toronto. Nothing gives a film that touch of realism and versimilitude, or shows a commitment to class, more than location shooting in Canada.

Whatever happened to Bridget Fonda?

Some nice pics of the Seipp Roast yesterday, incl. one of your correspondent's failed attempt to avoid being photographically linked to Luke Ford, here.

UPDATE [10/24]: My own pics, which are late due to my inability to figure how to download photos taken on my cellphone:

Five years ago today, I awoke shortly after the first plane hit, and noticed the scrawl on the AOL screen that a plane had struck the WTC. My initial thought was the same as the President's: that some jackass had misflown a private plane into one of the skyscrapers, and that the damage was minor. So I left the computer, poured myself a bowl of cereal, and prepared to do an appearance in bankruptcy court. When I finished breakfast, I went back to the computer, and saw that the WTC had collapsed, dramatically changing the complexion of the story.

For some reason, I left for court, even though I knew it was highly likely that this was the work of terrorists and that the federal buildings would be closed. The whole day was surreal, lethal events swirling into a miasma of shock. Indeed, the federal courts were closed, with U.S. Marshals blocking entry, and the rest of the morning was spent at my office. In the early afternoon, I just had to get out of there, and I went to my watering hole at the time, Joxer Daly's, for the rest of the day.

The appropriately-named Dick Pound is upset that Marion Jones' backup test turned up negative for performance-enhancing drugs...damn it, someone's gotten away with not cheating.

Box Office Mojo weighs in on the anti-Clinton propaganda film ABC/Disney is airing this weekend, in a column that comes striaght from the Karl Rove playbook. I suppose it is to be expected that grass roots protest and attacks by the minority party are going to be conflated with "fascist jackboots." Seein' as how it's airing against The Manning War Sunday night, and ESPN's MNF doubleheader on Monday, it's ratings might be more akin to prime time ice hockey or men's tennis.

Blur: I can't say which excites me more: that Tony "Yo" Blair will be leaving office in a year, or that the blogmuse of this site, Phoebe Nicholls, will portray his wife in a movie set to air later this year on British television. To paraphrase "legendary record producer" Bruce Dickinson, I got a FEVER. And the only prescription is...MORE PHOEBE !!!

If you don't subscribe to Sports Illustrated, here's the article about Pat Tillman that everyone's talking about. It may be worth subscribing just to read it.

The very intricate dance continues on Capital Hill. There's no reason for Senate Democrats to distance themselves from Joe Lieberman, at least as long as he has a double digit lead in the polls. The expectation that the incumbent would fade after losing the primary has obviously not happened, and whining about his decision to take a mulligan and fight it out again in the general election will not make the problem go away. Party primaries are not, by law, single elimination semi-finals, and treating them as such effectively disenfranchises independents and moderates in the general election. If Lamont wants to earn his position, he must go before the entire electorate in Connecticut(even Republicans), and build his case. Expecting entrenched incumbents in Washington to kowtow to the "netroots" ain't gonna happen unless you first win elections in November.

The King is dead but he's not forgotten:



As iconic a 70's moment as Syd Barrett's performance on the Pat Boone Show was in the '60's.

Some thoughts on SprezzaturaGate, from Slate and Josh Marshall (here and here). Several months ago, after Michael Hiltzik was "reassigned" by the local paper after he was caught sockpuppetting, I posted my displeasure, only to be condemned in no uncertain terms by an anally retentive blowhard on the paper's staff. He didn't have a good explanation as to what Hiltzik did wrong, either; what it comes down to is that posting under a pseudonym (whether it be on your blog or elsewhere), and using it to attack third parties while extolling your courage and wit, is embarassing to the company, not unethical per se. The comments section of a blog is supposed to be for public debate, and even the most self-glorifying sockpuppetry can add to the debate, if only to encourage the readership to respond in kind.

Nevertheless, the LA Times and the New Republic have the right to "reassign" people for the crime of "lame-assery," as Josh Marshall puts it. When you accept a paycheck from someone to write a blog, you can't be surprised when they set limits that would be unacceptable to the rest of us.

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the forward pass. I've just finished reading a book that compared the evolution of baseball in the U.S. with soccer everywhere else, and one of the important things that characterizes the sport the rest of the world calls "football"* is that it was developed by committee. Several committees, in fact; the early Football Association basically consisted of a number of gentlemen representing various towns and "public schools", each of which played their own variation of the game, and in the mid-nineteenth century, the two most popular versions included one developed at the Rugby School, which allowed players to carry the ball. The committee ultimately split, with the majority favoring no hands, and that sport became popularly known as association football ("soccer" is a bastardization of the first word), and the sport known as rugby favored by the seceding minority.

In the fullness of time, soccer became less of a "gentleman's game," while rugby continued to have strong ties to English public schools, from which the early American version of the game spread to Ivy League students in the late-19th Century. Since the forward pass is inarguably the most distinctive difference in the rules between American football and rugby, it is interesting (at least to me) how the two sports differed prior to 1906. Both sports feature running with a ball towards the other team's goal, both permit the other side to physically stop the ball carrier via tackling, and both allow for more points if you cross the goal line with the ball as opposed to kicking it through the goal posts.

The impression I have is that prior to 1906, the American version had a great deal more violence, with several college players dying every season. President Theodore Roosevelt, whose son had played the sport at Stanford, threatened to outlaw the game, and a number of schools (including my alma mater, Cal) switched to rugby at around that time. If I had to fathom a guess, I would say the big rules difference before 1906 was that the "scrum" was more open-ended in American football, and was used as the primary means of moving the ball forward, as opposed to rugby, where it seems to be used to resolve possession disputes. Today, of course, no American football fan would even notice a "scrum"; it's the routine battle that takes place during every play at the line of scrimmage. In any event, the sports seem to have evolved quite dramatically in different directions even before the forward pass was legalized in the U.S.

[Cross-posted at Condredge's Acolytes]

*Except the U.S. and Canada, which favor "soccer", and Italy, which inexplicably calls the game "calcio." Since they're the champs, who's to argue?

College football fans call this sort of catfight a "Meteor Bowl" (as in, you hate both teams so much you'd rather see a meteor crash the field than see either win), but "Battle of the Blowhards" will do just as well.

Beating a Dead Horse: It's now been three days since his career came to a fizzling conclusion, and the LA Times is still publishing articles about the "greatness" of Andre Agassi. Jesus, enough already. This isn't Jack Nicklaus we're talking about here. The American people long ago reached a verdict on men's tennis, and pretending it's a major sport tantamount to baseball, football and golf isn't going to cut it, particularly when the Times is slashing its budget for the sports section. If it must insist on publishing articles about the sport, provide more coverage (and pics) of women's tennis, where the top athletes actually possess personalities.

Vice Paying Tribute to Virtue: In spite of making his opponent's alleged "ties" to Hollywood (itself a banal use of code) a major theme in his campaign, George "Macaca" Allen turns out to be one of the leading recipients of contributions from The Industry. I can see why Allen is sucking at the trough, but what do the studios get out of a relationship with the Senate's most unreconstructed racist? Something to think about the next time some exec or agent whines about Mel Gibson....

L'chaim, Tawana? Speaking of sockpuppetry, do the e-mails referenced here read like legit hate mail? As anti-Semites go, the "authors" seem to have all the authenticity of the "hippies" that occasionally appeared on late-60's episodes of Dragnet.

Mystery Solved?

I was tugging his shirt, he said to me 'if you want my shirt so much I'll give it to you afterwards,' I answered that I'd prefer his sister. It's not a particularly nice thing to say, I recognise that. But loads of players say worse things. I didn't even know he had a sister before all this happened.

--Marco Materazzi, on what he said to Zinedine Zidane that got him so riled up.

Proving once again that immigration is the GOP's version of HillaryCare, Congressional leaders conceded today that they do not have the votes to proceed with any action on the issue before the election.

Hopefully, my hometown's 225th birthday will be a bit more sedate than our bicentennial. [link via LAist]

Okay, Sitemeter is telling me I'm getting a lot of hits from Zurich, Switzerland, and Lambeth, London. A kind e-mail explaining from my many adoring fans in those locales would be appreciated, if it's not too much too ask.

The man who coined the term, "blogofascism" has apparently joined Michael Hiltzik and Glenn Greenwald in the ranks of sockpuppeteers, and his blog has vanished down the memory hole. Kos has a classic example of his handiwork. No word yet as to whether "Steve Gilliard" was one of his nom de puppets.

Greece 101, U.S.A. 95: Setting off a national celebration, a Greek team with no current NBA players, and without its best player, Nikos Zisis, bested this most recent incarnation of the Dream Team, and advanced to the finals of the World Basketball Championships. Although Team U.S.A. will not have a "Miracle on Hardwood", the defeat was tempered by the knowledge that a scrappy team of red-white-and-blue overachievers led by Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James were able to push superstars like Vassilis Spanoulis, Sofoklis "Baby Shaq" Schortsianitis and Theodoros Papaloukas to the limit, and may have attracted the attention of top teams like Olimpiakos and Panathinaikos Athens. The U.S. can still win a bronze medal tomorrow against defending Olympic champion Argentina, who lost to Spain, 75-74.

The decline of American sports during the Bush Administration has become a national travesty.

Another Senate incumbent looks at the future, stares into the abyss.

DYK that this song was banned by the BBC because of the word "bum"? That's right, the "B-word."

The Wall Street Journal examines one of the bigger scams in the blogosphere, the use of substitute posters at a number of the uberblogs when one of the Kewl Kidz goes on "vacation." It perpetrates a fraud on the public, and defeats the whole purpose of this medium, which is to provide unmediated access to the mind of the individual creator. Advertising pings shouldn't be more important than our integrity.

Reductio ad Hitlerum: Is there a version of Godwin's Law that pertains to the use of the term "appeasement?" Charles Krauthammer is the most embarassing Pulitzer laureate since Walter Duranty.

Kos has a rundown of the polling for the California governor's race. Ahnold Ziffel has a comfortable lead; as is so typical throughout the country, there is a decided preference at the state level for the minority party to have control of the governor's mansion. In a state that is effectively a one-party contest in Presidential elections, the dominant power becomes corrupt and atrophied, and the Democratic majority in the state legislature is as entrenched as any Soviet-era Politburo. California's Democrats aren't that much different, in that regard, than Republicans in Kansas or Wyoming.

And besides, Schwarzenegger learned a hard lesson last year. He tried to push the state to the right via the initiative, and discovered, to his horror, that California is a progressive state. So he's using what appears to be a winning formula this year, that of an anti-tax liberal, and he's breezing ahead of his colorless opponent. Since 2010 is the important election in this state, and Mayor Villaraigosa, who's wielding the Golden Silence in this election, is the heir apparent (Ahnold is termlimited after this election), as well as the Republicans having such a thin bench, Democrats are just not going to be that vexed with the likely result. There are bigger fish to fry.

L.A.'s best, most fearless sportswriter (and arguably the Times' best columnist, now that Hiltzik was made to disappear), is profiled here. To wit, on witnessing a meeting between John Wooden and Mr. October:

It's the Yankees' turn after he leaves the Angels, but first the media grab him, Wooden surprising them with an unsolicited defense of A-Rod.

"It's unjustified criticism because of the money he's making," he tells reporters — many of them from New York.

Reggie Jackson interrupts the confab to let everyone know he's Reggie Jackson, while referring to Wooden as the "Wizard," a name Wooden detests. Jackson mentions something about young women and angels, somehow concluding "Wooden is our angel," and there's never a cameraman around when you'd like to freeze the look of horror on someone's face.

(link via Deadspin)

It's not Pat Boone introducing Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd to a bemused America (ie., the "Holy Grail" of 60's TV rock), but it will have to do:

There is one silver lining on this story: we're free to go back to accusing the parents again.

A man identifying himself as a HUD official announced that the Bush Administration would reverse its policies, and begin to focus on providing affordable housing and relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Alas, it was but a cruel hoax....

One of things I was wondering about when I was posting about "Jumpergate" (here and here, with a related post here) is why someone had never examined the issue of how important a "star" really is in determining the box office for a film. If one wanted to figure out the importance of casting a specific name for a movie, there are a lot of numbers in the public domain that can be examined to make an accurate determination, so why doesn't Hollywood have its own version of Bill James, or a studio have a top executive like Billy Beane? Since there's so much more cash floating around motion pictures than there is with Major League Baseball, you'd think that this sort of numbers-crunching would be absolutely de rigueur. To put it another way, how can studios justify not performing that sort of analysis to the shareholders of their corporate patrons?

Well, it turns out that someone has looked behind the numbers, according to the New York Times, and come to some conclusions that may be highly unsettling to Hollywood agents:

Anita Elberse, an associate professor at the Harvard Business School, tried to measure the average effect of a star by analyzing casting announcements on the price of stocks on the Hollywood Exchange, a simulated market where hundreds of thousands of users trade stocks in individual movies based on their expected box-office revenue. Prices on this exchange have been found to be fairly good predictors of a film’s box-office success.

Ms. Elberse found, for instance, that the announcement in 2002 that Mr. Cruise had dropped out of Cold Mountain — he had been expected to play the lead — reduced the movie’s expected gross by $10 million. The announcement that Mr. Cruise was in talks to play a leading role in The Last Samurai lifted the movie’s expected gross by $28 million.

Combing through 12,000 casting announcements between November of 2001 and December of 2004, related to 600 movie stars and 500 movies, Ms. Elberse found stars, on average, were worth $3 million in theatrical revenue.

Still, Ms. Elberse and other academics suspect that the box-office power of movie stars might be somewhat of a mirage. Ms. Elberse found that, even when casting announcements had an impact on the expected financial outcome of a given film, they had no discernible effect on the share price of the media companies that owned the movie studio — indicating that the participation of a star had no impact on the expected profitability of the studio.

Moreover, even if a star-studded movie does well, it does not necessarily mean that the stars are causing higher ticket sales. In fact, it seems to move the other way around: stars select what they believe are promising projects. And studios prefer to put stars in movies that they expect to be a success.

“Movies with stars are successful not because of the star, but because the star chooses projects that people tend to like,” said Arthur S. De Vany, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of California, Irvine, who has written extensively about the economics of moviemaking. “It’s a movie that makes a star.” (emphasis added)

Since the $3 million in added revenue is often less than what the star is actually paid, the impact of a Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts is usually a wash. A far less expensive performer, when cast in the same role, will turn out to be much more profitable. Sounds like Moneyball to me....

I was at a party at the guy's abode last night, and didn't hear a word about this getting published this morning. Since Shaq was so kind to invite me, I may have to nominate him for a Pulitzer Prize.

Glenn Greenwald points out some more embarassing moments from the annals of conservative online punditry...like pullings the wings off a butterfly.

I haven't read James Lileks in awhile, so I have to admit this passage, in an otherwise banal whinefest on "performance art" grabbed me:

Of course, one could make the case that the greatest threats to the freedoms of the West are posed by the head-choppers, plane-exploders, their many merry supporters, and the nuke-seeking state that supports them.

But don't expect the artists to make the case.

(snip)

The artists seem more concerned with a culture that won't let gays marry than one that won't let them live. (link via Instapundit)

Well, since you put it that way, if by "freedoms of the West," we're talking about basic civil liberties, due process, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, etc., well, no, the "head choppers," "plane exploders," et al., are clearly not the "greatest threat" to those liberties, not here in America, nor anywhere in any western democracy. Unlike the real fascists we were fighting in the '40's, terrorists do not pose an existential threat to our country. Al Qaeda can blow up planes to its heart's content, and even deliver the occasional nuke to one of the great cities in our Blue States, and still not threaten our right to self-government or our devotion to the Bill of Rights. It has been our own government that has seen fit to threaten those liberties, often without even a modiucum of a rationale towards fighting terrorists.

As terrible as September 11 was, it still resulted in less than half the number of dead Americans than at the Battle of Iwo Jima, fighting over "less than eight square miles," in a war that really did determine the survival of the "freedoms of the West." Of course, back then, those who saw the battle against the Axis Powers as a twilight struggle in the defense of freedom were too busy enlisting in the armed forces to be refighting the culture wars of the 1960's in the media.

And as far as whether artists in the West should care more about homophobia here than the persecution of gays in the Middle East, well, I guess artists are just funny that way, caring more about what's going on in their own backyard than somewhere else. We should care about both, for we are our brother's keeper and all that, but artists, as public citizens, can do a lot more to fight battles here than abroad.

I wonder how many of these suckers endorsed St. Joseph of Ingratius in the primary.

A Dingo Ate My Baby !!! Here's a list of movies that would be in turnaround if we lived in a just universe. My fave: Titanic II: Two Titanics.

Que sera, sera: Heathers 2? Apparently....

Greatest Johnny Cash cover ever !!!

Salon's TV maven, and Blue Devil Fanatic, Heather Havrilesky, notes what has been an obvious trend for some time, that what's on TV is generally smarter and better for you than what gets screened in movie houses, but provides enough examples to convince even the most jaded of film geeks. The cineplex is in the same position today that the drive-in was fifteen years ago, and the bricks-and-mortor record store was five years ago, a technologically obsolete mode of technology that services an increasingly narrower and narrower group. Because of the competition provided by thousands of cable and network channels, television offers more choices, is more willing to take risks on unknown talent, and has more time to develop storylines and characters than even the best films, all of which are crippled by the two-hour straightjacket.

Five will get you ten that Tom Cruise being fired yesterday has more to do with a multinational corporation deciding that it could no longer justify paying any film star $12 million a picture than for any bizarre behavior the Scientology acolyte has been accused recently. The beginning of the end for motion pictures occurred the day AMPAS relented on the screener ban; when the core constituency of the film industry realized they could cast an informed vote on the best movies of a year based on what they viewed on their DVD player, rather than hauling their lazy asses to Westwood, the jig was clearly up.

Cat Stevens covered this song on the Rushmore soundtrack, but the original version is by far the best. Unfortunately, either the audio is a split-second behind the video, or this is a really bad lip-sinc:

50-49-1: That is a not-unlikely partisan breakdown in the Senate that we might see the morning of November 8, 2006, should the Democrats pick 5-6 seats. With the one independent (Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who will probably breeze to victory) certain to vote with the Democrats, this margin would make control of the Senate dependent on the whims of one Senator. Right now, the focus has been on Joseph Lieberman, who continues to hold a narrow lead in the polls running as an "independent Democrat," potentially holding the tiebreaking vote.

But has anyone considered the possibility that Chuck Hagel of Nebraska might be a more likely fly in the ointment? Hagel is clearly estranged from the GOP on a whole host of issues, ranging from the Iraq War to his lukewarm support for some of Bush's more extreme nominees, and has evidenced an intent to run for the Oval Office in 2008, possibly as an independent. In fact, he has been far more likely to buck his party on important issues than Lieberman has with the Democrats, and he wouldn't be as far out of the Democratic mainstream as his Nebraska colleague, Ben Nelson. Is anyone in the Democratic leadership on the Hill putting out any feelers, just in case they need his vote? If not, why not?

Roky Lives: With the recent untimely demise of Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee, it is fitting that tribute be paid to this legend while he still walks amongst us:

Did you know that my three-year old nephew, Charles Ruderman, calls Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", "Drums"? Of course you didn't; you weren't able to go with him yesterday to Disneyland....

Children really need to be taught to appreciate the sacrifices their elders make when they go to the so-called Happiest Place on Earth, as to what an absolutely hellish experience it is for those of us older than twelve. Having lived in LA my whole life (so far), the routine of going to Disneyland everytime some relative visits from out of town, or everytime a toddler needs to be amused, is quite mundane. The admission price of just under $60 a head gets you into an amusement park that is jammed, end-to-end, with people, and a grand total of one halfway decent roller coaster (Space Mountain, which is a classic ride more for the fact that it's totally in the dark than anything else).

On a typical summer day, every ride worth going on, either for nostalgia's sake (Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion) or for its kitsch value (The Jungle Cruise, a ride so steeped in racial stereotypes that its core audience seems to be the College Republicans, if one were to take it seriously), will have a line at least forty-five minutes long. In fact, the lines everywhere, from the ticket window to the admissions entrance to the "restaurant" serving a greasy fried chicken patty and fries, are frustratingly long. After fifty years, Disney does not have a clue as to handle crowds. Locals have long ago picked Knots Berry Farm or Magic Mountain as the place to spend a day after their thirteenth birthday.

So the only redeeming aspect of Disneyland is the shared impact it has on the wee ones. For my nephew, it was as if he was getting on the rides for the first time, and obviously, it wasn't the same rides I would have picked. Hearing him sing along to "It's a Small World", or accompanying him on Winnie the Pooh's Wild Adventure (twice), makes it almost seem like the sixty dollars was well spent.

A bit of a let down, this: Snakes on a Plane barely finished atop the weekend's box office, and that included an extra night of receipts from their late-night Thursday, lets-screen-this-before-any-critic-can-report-what-a-pathetic-piece-of-tripe-this-is. Since the reviews haven't been that bad, the distributors may have been too clever by half.

One of the great underrated (and underappreciated) bands of all-time. Bruce Springsteen, an unabashed admirer, never sounded better when he and his band rocked like this:


Sadly, the lead singer, Mike Smith, has been in failing health of late, and the band's music is very difficult to find.

Fuego?!? Speaking of this video, did you know that there was supposed to be an Asia reunion tour (with an accompanying CD) back in 2000? Damn that Geoff Downs...



...but now they've reconciled, and the kickoff for the reunion will be August 29, in Rochester !!!

With Lieberman taking a comfortable lead in the initial post-primary polls, the important question becomes whether he would vote with the Democratic caucus when the next Senate convenes in 2007. This whole notion of whether progressives should mau-mau the party leadership to strip him of his seniority really would be comical were the consequences not so enormous. Who cares if he attends a committee hearing the rest of the year, or what his place is in the pecking order right now.

If the Democrats take six seats this November from the GOP, then of course whoever wins the general election, Lamont or Lieberman, should be embraced by the party's leadership in the Senate. If we don't, or if the Democrats pick up seven or more seats, and Lieberman wins, then we can tell him to screw himself, and tell him to caucus with the other side. But lets get a majority before we start to act all vindictive and everything.

Luke Y. Thompson's review of Snakes on a Plane is up, and he (kinda) likes it:

David R. Ellis' directing skills aren't as evident here as they were in FINAL DESTINATION 2 (the best film in the FD series), but he has the same sense of humor, and he also has Sam Jackson, who elevates this above the direct-to-DVD level it might otherwise be. His acting is more subtle than some may notice; the build-up to that signature line is just as important as the line itself, and the way he gets just slightly more exasperated every time a new thing goes wrong is very well done. At the same time, Jackson is very much in danger of disappearing completely into caricature, blurring the line in people's minds between himself and the Dave Chappelle impersonation of him, in much the same way that, say Dana Carvey and George Bush Senior are inextricably intertwined in the memories of those who saw both back in the day. I fear that if and when Jackson decides to make an Oscar-bait film again, we'll be unable to see him as anything but the muthafuckin' snakes guy.

(snip)

Make no mistake, SNAKES ON A PLANE is basically a Sci-Fi channel movie original with better-than-usual actors and a slightly naughtier sense of humor. It never takes itself seriously, and neither should you. But I've always enjoyed and respected this kind of thing...so much the better that larger audiences seem to get the joke now too.

Actually, I don't think Samuel Jackson gives a snake's ass whether he's becoming a self-caricature, at least going by the interviews he's done this week, and if he's never again considered for another Oscar, well, that will be fine, so long as his paycheck doesn't bounce. You have to hand it to the producers of this film for so perfectly reading the zeitgeist the past few months. There may have been other films that used the Internet to shape itself for its paying audience, but none has done it so well as Snakes on a Plane.

This weekend, one of the few international sporting events for which an American can comfortably support the rest of the planet, the World Basketball Championships, begins in Japan. Dave Zirin writes in the Nation about how longtime GOP fundraisers Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski are exploiting some of our crippled soldiers as a motivational gimmick to "bind" our latest version of the Dream Team together. Real Americans should root for Puerto Rico. [link via Tapped, which takes the opposite view]

From the conservative blog Balloon Juice, on l'affaire Macaca:

I feel duly obligated as a blog owner to weigh in on the George Allen ‘Macaca’ affair. To be honest, I had heard that Allen had said something stupid, and I really didn’t pay any attention to it because, well, let’s face it- the last few years I have grown accustomed to elected Republicans saying something stupid.

--John Cole

Greatest Dylan Cover EVER !!!!



But what really sells this performance is the oh-so-funky dance.

I can't believe this former despot was still alive, as of yesterday. It's like finding out that Ian Smith is still with us....

Divisions within the Republican base? What's George Allen to do?

This is an appropriately trippy version of this song, circa 1967, from the Ed Sullivan Show:

I can't say for certain that this was not a joke, but I have a feeling he was dead serious. It's the equivalent of those jackasses in the lefty blogosphere whose clever contribution to the topic of race involves posting photoshopped pictures of their adversaries in blackface. How is this different from the Latino immigrants who waved the Mexican flag at pro-immigration rallies?

The Famous Guy Force Field: Michael Totten, a blogger who actually practices journalism, reports from Northern Israel.

Farewell, Sploid.

Jumpergate, Part Deux: Now comes word that yet another of the stars of this film is getting the axe. According to the Melbourne Herald Sun (by way of IMDB), Teresa Palmer, who was to play the love interest in the movie, has also been canned, in favor of a "star" to be determined later (probably Hillary Duff or Mischa Barton). Unlike Tom Sturridge, who was ousted weeks ago, Palmer has hired legal guns, and is apparently not going to go without a fight. Of course, as an ingenue, the clock is already working against her.

It would be one thing if these changes were being made because the director, Doug Liman, decided that he had made a mistake in casting, and that the talent he picked originally wasn't good enough, or that the stars were such prima donnas or party hounds that they were impossible to work with, or even that the actors he really wanted to work with all along had just become available. These firings would have still been arbitrary and cruel, but at least they would have been consistent with whatever artistic vision of creating a good movie the director might have.

But that is apparently not the case here. These people are being ditched because they are relative nobodies who need to be replaced by "names" (preferably, North American names) to cover the asses of the producers. And again, this is after filming had already started on the project, and the actors involved had already made a commitment of time and emotion to the endeavor.

But in the end, as far as the bottom line is concerned, it will make no difference. As I noted yesterday, Hayden Christensen's only non-Star Wars film made less than $3 million, and that was a good film. Mischa Barton's only significant movie to date as an adult, The OH in Ohio, has grossed less than $260,000 in limited release. The Lord of the Rings trilogy had no major names or stars in the lead roles at the time it came out (unless you consider Sir Ian to have been a star at that time), and it became one of the biggest hits of all time. Same with the first Star Wars movie. To paraphrase Chris Rock from the Oscars a few years back, there are just a few stars, like Tom Cruise (boy, is that dated) or Sean Connery, whom people will actually pay to see, and then there's everyone else, from Jude Law and Heath Ledger to Dustin Diamond and Pauly Short, who moviegoers don't give a rat's ass about; all they want from that fungible class of "everyone else" is a good performance.

Canning someone you cast in a movie because they're not famous enough is not only a shitty thing to do, it makes no sense from a box office standpoint. It will probably make the movie less enjoyable for movie fans. It's bad business. No wonder the movies suck.

UPDATE: Well, perhaps Jumper will suck less. Teresa Palmer remains in the cast.

UPDATE [10/16]: And now she's gone....

Damascene Rage: Kevin Drum makes a solid point, whilst riffing on a Josh Marshall post:

And just recently I've been thinking about what a genuinely profound story this is, one that the mainstream media ought to be more interested in. Instead of writing incessantly about "angry bloggers," they ought to be asking why so many mild-mannered moderate liberals have become so radicalized during George Bush's tenure. It deserves attention beyond the level of cliches and slogans.

The inability to acknowledge this phenomenum is what has doomed Joe Lieberman to what appears to be political oblivion. Other than the Iraq War, there doesn't seem to be a single issue that has riled the lefty blogosphere in any substantive sense. Frustration over the obsequiousness of the nominal opposition in our country, as manifested in a timid punditocracy and "centrist" Democratic leadership in Congress, seems to have created a rage on the left that has typically been the province of right wing talk radio and sites like LGF. Lieberman is certainly not the most conservative Democratic Senator (he's not even the most rightward Democrat running for reelection in a Blue State this year), but he got caught on the wrong side of history.

Words I never thought I would see in the same sentence: "George Bush", "read", and "Albert Camus."

It's official: George Allen is a racist jerk.

Vanity Fare: Sorry for the Hollywood theme today, children, but I thought I would share one of my pet peeves, the absolutely sorry state of what amounts to "journalism" in the Business of Show. To wit, this story, appearing in the Hollywood Reporter last Friday, about a casting change on a film:

Hayden Christensen will star in "Jumper," a big-budget thriller being directed by Doug Liman, whose credits include "Swingers," "The Bourne Identity" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

The film's production company, Regency Enterprises, has partnered with 20th Century Fox to finance the production, which sources say is budgeted in the $100 million range.

Christensen's casting jump-starts the production, which was to have begun shooting earlier this summer but had been running idle. Christensen replaces Tom Sturridge in the lead role of David; during preproduction, a decision was made to go with a more prominent actor. Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Bell and Teresa Palmer remain with the project.

First, if this casting change had been made "preproduction", wouldn't it have been worthwhile to check to see that it was actually being made "preproduction", and not after filming had already started on the project? A simple Google search would have informed the "journalists" that, in fact, filming had already begun on Jumper earlier this summer, with the original star.

Second, isn't the real story here not that Hayden Christensen is going to get another opportunity to ruin a big-budget film, but that the director's first choice for the role was dumped (after filming had begun, mind you) in order for him to get the part. "A more prominent actor?" C'mon, this isn't Orlando Bloom or Leonardo DiCaprio we're talking about here; this is Hayden Freaking Christensen. The other big film he did besides Clones and Sith, Shattered Glass, made a grand total of $3 million in domestic gross, and he was actually quite good in that. If Mr. Liman, the director, wanted the move, what does that say about his habits in preparation for making movies? (hey, kids, lets shoot a film, and we'll decide who the star is as we go along) And if he didn't, doesn't this make him look like the studio's bitch?

Third, what was Mr. Sturridge's reaction to all this? Was he disappointed? Relieved to be out of that hellhole? Considering that his father is also a director*, will there be consequences down the line for such contemptible treatment of the lad? But in the article, we're left to speculate, since it doesn't appear that the writers in question bothered to even attempt contacting him.

Those are obvious questions, and it rankles me no end that there aren't people out there who are willing to go beyond the studio's press releases, and try to give their readers an accurate view as to what's happening on a movie set. You'd think simple human curiosity would do the trick, or at least an aversion to always being lied to.

*And his mother is the Blogmuse, pictured top right.

Do you realize that since he was so brutally insulted by Chris Rock at the Oscars last year, no movie featuring Jude Law has seen the light of day? I guess Clive Owen has now taken on the mantle of being the British star who will appear in anything for money. And there's even better news coming out of England...but sad news stateside, as an Oscar-winning actress' career comes to an end today.

Religion of Peace...and Progeny: Did you know that Brooke Shields is a lineal descendent of Mohammed, allegedly. So am I, for that matter, and so are you, if you are of European ancestry. Just don't tell Charles Johnson....

Another pundit sees fit to blame the "McGovernites" for the defeat of St. Joseph. Thomas Edsall writes in the New Republic:

In a quick and dirty analysis of the difference between the Lamont and Lieberman voters based on income, education, and other demographic data from across Connecticut, Ken Strasma of Strategic Telemetry found that Lamont's strongest support came from areas with high housing values, voters with college or graduate degrees, and parents with children in private schools. Lieberman's votes, in contrast, came from the cities, renters, blue-collar and service-sector workers, and those receiving Social Security benefits.

There is nothing wrong with upscale liberals or downscale renters; a vote is a vote. The problem for the Democrats is (and has been for more than a quarter century) that liberal elites are disproportionately powerful in primaries--where they turn out in much higher numbers--and in the operations of the party itself. In presidential campaigns, these voters have nominated a succession of losers, including George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. The power of this wing of the party is easy to see in battles against Republican Supreme Court nominees, when Democratic opposition concentrates on such issues as abortion and sexual privacy to the virtual exclusion of questions of business versus labor, tort law, and the power of the state to regulate corporate activity.

With all due respect, I'm not sure that's an accurate breakdown of the votes. The exit poll done by CBS/New York Times showed almost no divergence in the vote based on income; Lieberman barely won among those who made less than $50k, and Lamont barely won above that total. Lamont did win a clear majority of votes, according to the exit poll, among those two "elitist" voting blocs, union members and African-Americans. Lieberman won among Catholic and Jewish voters, and among voters who never attended college. There was no gender gap to speak of. In short, this was a fairly typical intramural battle between two Democrats, and not some bellweather repudiation by Brie-snorting elites against the working class.

How would you like to be the campaign staffer that wrangled this celebrity endorsement? At the very least, it should quiet any talk about Mel Gibson not being a conservative....

A good analysis of the effects of artificial testosterone on an athlete. The consensus seems to be that a one-off boost (such as what Floyd Landis has been accused of) will do nothing to improve performance, since the body's response is to produce less of the hormone, thereby negating the immediate benefit; for artificial testosterone to improve athletic performance, it needs to be taken frequently over a period of time.

Shorter Jacob Weisberg*:

However bad the war may be, don't punish its cheerleaders.

There is something truly pathetic about anyone having to use the George McGovern card on a 21st Century election. Putting aside the fact that you can't use a thirty-year old election to predict anything about what will happen this year, or in 2008 or 2010, no more than one could have plausibly attacked FDR and the New Deal in the 1932 Election simply because William Jennings Bryan had failed running on a similar platform in 1896. As Mark Schmitt pointed out earlier this week, the post-McGovern Democratic Party had to battle the notion not just that they were too dovish, but the fact that American involvement in Vietnam had been started by Democrats. Anti-war Democrats may have been distrusted by the public at-large, but it was the party hawks, the Scoop Jackson/Hubert Humphrey wing of the party, that were completely discredited by the disaster in Vietnam.

Obviously, the ongoing debacle in the Persian Gulf cannot be tied to the party that has been out of power this decade. One can hardly say that the party doves, those who have always seen this adventure as folly, will be discredited; the public has an annoying tendency of not distrusting people who were right from the start. It will be a long time before any Republican President is going to be able to rally the people behind another discretionary war, notwithstanding the ingrained hawkishness of Americans. More likely, we'll see a resurgence of isolationism within conservative ranks, and the Paleo-Con v. Neo-Con battle will make the party divisions the Democrats sustained after 1968 seem tame indeed.

*with proper credit to Elton Beard, of course.

Lieberman Concedes !! But only for tonight...huge turnout provided the difference. Kos finally gets a real notch on his belt. There will be intense pressure on the Senator to act graciously in defeat in the next few days; I doubt that he's gonna hold most of the 48% of the Dems he got tonight.

UPDATE: Marc Cooper says it best about the Senator's independent run:

I already heard KOS on Air America hyperventilating against this move, mumbling something about some request he plans to make to Harry Reid to expel Lieberman from the Democratic caucus.

I have to scratch my head and wonder what makes some people so phobic about democracy. What is ever gained by restricting access to the ballot? I've already written about how I think Lieberman is a putz. And I'm pleased he lost. But moaning and bitching about him running as an independent seems ridiculous to me.

The way you keep people from gaining elected office is by beating them in elections -- not by keeping them off the ballot. That is, if you believe in democracy or unless you are Fidel Castro.

Beating St. Joseph in the general election will send an even stronger signal about the public's anger over the war, since it won't just be a rejection from Democrats, but from Independents and Republicans as well. And it's going to happen. Bring It On !!

Election day in Connecticut. One thing that interested me about yesterday's poll was the class breakdown. Lamont, the more progressive of the two candidates, is routing Lieberman among wealthy and upper-middle income voters, while the incumbent has a slight lead with voters of below-average incomes. Since people with means tend to be more likely to vote than people without, that's a good sign for the challenger, although I'm somewhat skeptical about the Democrats appealing to Luxury Box Liberals as our way out of the political wilderness.

Another sad loss for the Left Coast. There's fast food, and then there's In n' Out. You always get a good, fresh burger and fries, and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you're being served by people not being paid a peon's wage.

Do I detect a note of sarcasm? From two recent court decisions, concerning the perfect law our Congress passed last year:

"During hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, evidently testimony was received suggesting that BAPCPA (the Bankruptcy Abuse Protection and Consumer Protection Act) was perfect." S. 256 Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feb. 10, 2005

--In re TCR of Denver, LLC, 338 B.R. 494, 498 (Bankr.D.Ct. 2006)

"It has been reported that a "technical amendments" bill is in the works to fix various glitches in BAPCPA, notwithstanding Congressional testimony that it was so perfect that not a word need be changed."

--In re McNabb, 326 B.R. 785, 791 (Bankr. D.Ariz. 2005) It's been sort of a pet hobby of bankruptcy judges, trying to figure out the most poorly drafted, idiotic and/or bizarre passage in the law, and throwing it back into the face of its hubristic supporters. Shows what happens when you let the bottom third of our nation's law schools band together to draft laws in our nation's Capitol.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, in his own words. For all the Beltway claims that this challenge is motivated from some "elitist" contempt by progressive and liberal bloggers, Ned Lamont wouldn't even be close if St. Joseph hadn't been so conspicuously contemptuous of the party base during his Senate tenure. This isn't about making bogus claims that Lieberman is a "vichy Democrat", or that his vote to invoke cloture on the Bankruptcy Bill meant that he secretly supported the measure, for example. It's about his unwillingness to use his bully pulpit to take the battle to the Republicans.

51-45: Lamont's lead is cut in half in less than a week. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this poll is the gender gap: the challenger has a comfortable, thirteen point leed with men, but Lieberman is keeping this close by tying Lamont among women. So much for the Alito cloture vote having any importance...six points is the trigger, I think. If St. Joseph finishes within this margin, then I think he claims Joementum and runs through November (and probably wins). Anything worse, and he has to look in the mirror and salvage some dignity from the rout by conceding.