Do these guys know how to get good real estate deals, or what?

A bounce built on a predictable convention upswing and a couple of ads that are grossly misleading. One day after the first negative tracking polls, and already our teeth are gnashed and our garments are rent?

My point isn't, "relax," because I hate those headlines, too. But they can make ads that address the lies. They can make ads that hit the Republican ticket for touting all the ways they've fought Republicans.

And the debates. Obama is good. Obama and/or moderators will get to poke some holes in the empty rhetoric and home-crowd grandstanding that is pushing this current wave. Hopefully they'll poke at the McTemper a little, too.

Sometimes during a battle, you're not on top. That doesn't mean you've lost. Unless you reach that portion of the battle, of course, and start freaking out en masse. The Republicans always know that. Can we learn it?

(p.s. If all else fails, focus on the damn electoral map. Giving yourself over to national tracking polls is like following a football game by keeping an eye on the total yards instead of points.)

Larry Kudlow, financial guru, writing for the National Review, on May 21, 2008:

One of the things we’ve learned during the Democratic primary battle is that Hillary’s victories are bullish for stocks and Obama’s wins are bearish.

The clearest example was Hillary’s massive West Virginia victory. Stocks opened strong the following day. But after Obama’s big North Carolina win, a night he nearly carried Indiana, stocks opened way down.

Even though Hillary clocked Obama in Kentucky, since Obama took Oregon convincingly, he really carried last night’s elections and now stands on the verge of gaining the Democratic nomination. Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 80 points this morning.

Markets don’t like Obama.

Let's go to the videotape. How did the market like the conventions?

11,628.06 - Dow enjoys a nice bump and closes up on 8/22, the last trading day before the Democratic convention.

11,543,96 - Dow Jones index at the close of 8/29, the day following the end of the Dem convention, and also the last trading day before the GOP event. I guess the markets still don't like Obama all that much, because the Dow had ups and downs, but ultimately dropped over the course of the festivities in Denver, ending in the red thanks to a 171-point drop the day after Obama's speech.

Now on to St. Paul ...

11,220.96 - Dow Jones at the close on 9/5, the day after the GOP convention ends. Stocks did manage a 16-point gain following Day 1, which had featured cancelled prime-time coverage, a speech by Laura Bush, and also the relief that Gustav had done less damage than feared.
     Otherwise, the big day was a 314-point loss the day after speeches by Huckabee, Romney, Giuliani, and Palin.

So in the immortal words of Richard Dawson, "Survey SAID ..."

Net Dow Jones loss during Democratic convention: 84 points.
Net Dow Jones loss during Republican convention: 323 points.

What are we to think? We are left with only two real possibilities:

a)  Mr. Kudlow was correct. However, the financial markets dislike John McCain 284% more than they dislike Barack Obama.
b)  Mr. Kudlow, allegedly a Very Serious Person with a career in studying how the markets operate, knew that he was ignoring the difference between causation and correlation, and was fully aware that his "professional" assessment was in fact pundit malpractice and Total, Utter Crap.

I'm fine either way. But in lieu of a definitive answer, I suppose I'm happiest keeping both answers in a simultaneous state of "possibly true." After all, current pet status aside, I have a long history as a cat person.

And counting. Where's the clock?

And counting. Where's the clock?

I get 16,271. Not counting today in case McCain ships her off tonight.

I get 16,271. Not counting today in case McCain ships her off tonight.

I get 16,271. Not counting today in case McCain ships her off tonight.

I get 16,271. Not counting today in case McCain ships her off tonight.

That is all.

Watching the coverage of the oil spill near New Orleans, I imagined the ad that the renewable energy crowd should make: 30 seconds of mock news coverage, with professional voiceover and footage of the ad's "disasters" ...

Massive solar spill blanket Bay area, authorities struggle to contain sunshine ...

or

Excessive winds blow near Iowa turbines, thousands of birds forced to lean to the left ...

I was as shocked as anyone when I saw the headline about Tim Russert on Friday afternoon (I saw the news at Political Wire, but in a sign of the times, Russert's Wikipedia page was apparently updated an hour before the news went out over NBC.) (In another sign of the times, I learned that fact on a political website which quoted an article featured on the website of a newspaper.)

I have to admit, though, that I've also been somewhat surprised at the length and depth of the coverage and apparent reaction. I was also surprised to read that he'd been doing Meet The Press for 17 years (how can that be?). I did not watch the show, but I always paid attention to his segments on Today or MSNBC. Mostly, I noticed how often he was up late-night for primary coverage and then somehow mostly awake to appear on the first news segment a little after 7 a.m. the next morning.

So, what to do with Meet The Press? Jonah Goldberg thinks they should move to a panel format. Matt Yglesias agrees. I disagree, in part because as Real Clear Politics points out, a strong host is the industry norm these days. Also, because panels of reporters can easily slip into self-bravado and/or navel-gazing at the expense of what is supposed to be a fact-gathering process.

Meanwhile, Taegan Goddard suggests resident MSNBC political expert, Chuck Todd. I like Chuck's work quite a bit from what I've seen. Guys like Chris Matthews and Barnacle -- and less often, Russert himself -- could get difficult to watch because a perceived subtext of, "Hey, am I making a pretty smart point, or what?"

Todd, on the other hand, exudes next to none of that. He's levelheaded, knowledgeable, and delivers interesting info without floating out half-baked theories or spoon-fed memes because he has time to fill. However, while he'd be a natural to move up to the network's election coverage commentary top dog, he doesn't show the old-school reporting / interrogation knack that the MTP host should bring.

My pick? David Gregory. He's personable enough. He has a sense of humor. Not quite the right type to do regular Today hosting, but warm enough for this assignment. And he is a reporter at heart. That means he is not afraid to ask the difficult or uncomfortable question.

More importantly, while covering the White House beat, he got more than a good taste of someone lying to your face for political expediency. The ability to detect that in a live environment and the subsequently instant impulse to react by being a persistent pain in the ass is what that show needs. Plus, he deserves the shot.

That's a much better way to continue the spirit of what Russert steered MTP to become, as opposed to letting it devolve into some ruminating reporter drum circle where the guests are let off the hook because a supposedly clever point or premise while making an alleged question is treated as the end instead of the means. 

Bonus sleeper pick: Keith Olbermann. (But not for the reason you think.) Yes, his MSNBC show clearly serves to counter O'Reilly's starboard bent. Yes, nobody could mistake him for an old-school anchor whose politics are checked at the door Brokaw-style out of anchor ethics. Yes, he would be more than able to give Republicans a good skewering when they deserve it.

Howevah, the real upside would be the opportunity for Olbermann to give the business to Democratic guests just as hard if not harder. He would thereby raise his reputation above that of witty left-leaning attack dog, and he would also do Democrats the favor of strengthening their politicians by addressing their weaknesses or mistakes in a way that would spur improvement out of a fear of humiliation, if nothing else.

That probably will never happen because of the niche (and ranks of non-fans) that he has built with his own show, but I think the upside of Olbermann in that chair and playing no favorites is real, if overlooked, for all involved.

Has anyone in the political world pointed this out yet? Are the political and sports worlds really so segregated?

Clayton Williams' 1990 remark along the lines of (not quite verbatim here) "if rape is inevitable, then just relax and enjoy it," was horrible. But for a sports fan in his late 30's, the comment was instantly familiar, yet I haven't seen mention yet of its earlier life in the headlines.

This particular verbal gaffe was coined by former Indiana (and later Texas Tech) coach Bobby Knight, who in 1988 used the image when talking to Connie Chung about handling stressful things like bad calls by referees.

Because, you know, Knight was always so Zen-like in dealing with officials.

Not that any of this changes the evaluation of Williams' judgment in making the remark. It just shows that he doesn't give credit where credit is due (to use the term loosely) when borrowing offensive metaphors. And that perhaps too few political junkies are Russertesque in cultivating a healthy appetite for sports and politics alike.

A little followup on one passage from that Jeffrey Goldberg interview with Senator McCain:

"I don’t try to divine people’s motives. I look at their actions and what they say. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the state of their emotions. I do know what their nation’s stated purpose is, I do know they continue in the development of nuclear weapons, and I know that they continue to support terrorists who are bent on the destruction of the state of Israel. You’ll have to ask someone who engages in this psycho stuff to talk about their emotions."

Two things jump out. Referring to the "nation's" stated purpose instead of the "government's" stated purpose. When we talk about accountability and foreign policy, conflating a citizenry with the decisionmakers at the top (both internally and in marketing your foreign policy to your own people) seems like a key element on the path to feeling OK about going to war.

Two, the guy who says he can be the chief negotiator in the region doesn't "try to divine people's motives"? I'm no diplomat, and not to sound too thespian about it, but wouldn't grasping the motivations of the parties at the table be kind of a fundamental tool in creating a solution?

I mean, you're not fixing an engine, you're figuring out what makes people tick in order to improve your chances of getting what you want. Or is that kind of "psycho stuff" too nuanced?

I've been a bit uncomfortable with the hard Bush=McCain tack from the Dems, but maybe there's a little more to it than I thought. After all this, our electorate will surely connect the dots between an obvious disdain for real diplomacy and the likelihood that our troops will get deployed and killed unnecessarily.

Won't we?

Next time you hear a conservative whine about political correctness, remember this.

Dunkin Donuts has pulled an online ad featuring Rachel Ray because Malkin and other conservatives have complained that Ray's *scarf* in the photo allegedly resembles traditional Arab women's headdress. And thus, Malkin's band of wingers contend, the ad provides symbolic support for terrorism. Because, you know, Arab = Muslim = terrorist.

Yes, exactly. A large corporation decided it could expand its U.S. iced coffee market share if it could just show some subliminal support for Muslim extremism.

I suppose Ms. Ray best do a show devoted to Freedom Fries if she wants to avoid a boycott.