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Hello, loves!
With prom season around the corner, I decided to compile a list of stores where you wouldn't expect to find the perfect formal dress, but actually have a great selection (and won't break the bank!)
Windsor: Windsor has hundreds of beautiful formal gowns, and if you're not much of a sequins and sparkle girl (like me) you'll find plenty of dresses that aren't too frilly.
ASOS: ASOS actually has a wide variety of short and long prom dresses with fashion-forward, intricate detail.
Amazon: Yes, you can even get your prom dress on Amazon prime! I ordered this one and it arrived in good condition and is nice quality.
H&M: I found an adorable homecoming dress at H&M a few years ago. If you look hard enough for quality items, you can find them there (and matching shoes!)
Nordstrom Rack: This website and store has an endless selection of formal dresses- even some designer names for a steal.
I hope this post was helpful, and I can't wait to write more prom-related blogs coming up!
Happy dress hunting!


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NBCUniversal became the most recent of the mega-media companies to launch a streaming media service. There are already a number in the United States, some of which, like Netflix, are over a decade old. Many, including Netflix and Amazon Prime, are parts of companies with very deep pockets, deep enough to produce their own programming that competes with productions out of Hollywood studios.
But Tuesday's announcement from Netflix that the company will raise its most popular subscription plan from $11 to $13 a month may present an opportunity for NBCUniversal to push its free, ad-supported service as a viable alternative. Netflix's pending loss of Disney programming as the Mouse House launches its own streaming service is expected to have an impact on the market leader as well.
NBCUniversal also has the advantage of a huge library of video programming. This includes DreamWorks, Universal Studios, NBC News, NBC Sports, and over two dozen other movie, cable, and sports outlets.
As NBCUniversal announced the launch, management said:
This innovative new service will draw on NBCUniversal's large content library, as well as its broad reach of over 90 million U.S. households, plus Comcast and Sky's leading technology platforms. It will feature some of the world's most popular television and film franchises, including homegrown original programming as well as content from outside partners.
Unlike many streaming services, Amazon, Netflix and Hulu for example, the service will be supported by advertising, which means there is no price barrier to users. The company also said that 52 million Comcast Cable and Sky customers will have access to the service.
In addition to Disney's entry in the streaming wars, AT&T's WarnerMedia is planning to join the fray this year. But with the following 10 large competing services are already in place, prying market share from consumers who watch streaming media will be difficult.
These are the top 10, according to Parks Associates:
- Netflix
- Prime Video Users (Amazon Prime)
- Hulu (SVOD)
- HBO Now
- Starz
- Showtime
- CBS All Access
- Sling TV
- DIRECTV Now

subset: commoncrawl


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FoxFarm's Big & Chunky Perlite allows for extra aeration and better drainage. Its larger size allows for better root system anchorage, and the larger surface area holds moisture and nutrient as well. Big & Chunky features a sterile and neutral pH.
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I recently ordered a PowerEdge T340 with the PERC H330 and the 8 x 3.5" Hot Swap bay configuration. At the time, I had planned on the 8 x Hot Swap bays as being reserved entirely for data storage and intended on installing some SATA SSDs internally for OS, but now realize that the motherboard only has a single SATA controller for an optical drive and no additional controllers.
Does anybody know if there's a compatible SATA controller add-on adapter for the T340? Alternatively, does anybody know how to expand the H330 for use with more than just the 8 x Hot Swap bays, as the below link indicates that the H330 is capable of supporting more than just 8 physical drives?
There is no supported method to use additional internal drives like you are describing. If you are using an OS like VMware that runs from memory with few drive writes then you could look at USB storage or SD storage options. I think the T340 supports an optional Internal Dual SD Module. The T340 also supports a PCIe Boot Optimized Storage Solution card. So, you could use the BOSS card to install your OS onto a pair of M.2 SATA SSDs in RAID 1.
Daniel Mysinger
Dell EMC, Enterprise Engineer
Get support on Twitter @DellCaresPRO
403-BBVQ - BOSS controller card
Those are the ones I have listed. I think there is a 120GB M.2 that is validated as well.
Daniel Mysinger
Dell EMC, Enterprise Engineer
Get support on Twitter @DellCaresPRO


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Walker & Simpson Petroni 6ft Combo Pool and Hockey Table Mahogany Red
- Innovative design combination table
- 6ft Pool Table
Unique 'Flip' mechanism switches to
- 6ft Air Hockey Table
- Sturdy construction
- Mahogany finish
- All accessories included
We are delighted to offer this Walker & Simpson Pool and Air Hockey combination table. All Walker & Simpson tables are made with the highest quality materials to guarantee consistent, smooth-paced play. The innovative and unique design of this combination table allows you to enjoy not just one, but two high quality gaming options!
Integrating stable frames, with durable cloths, resistant cushions and the flattest tops gives Walker & Simpson the lead in providing impeccable games tables at competitive prices. This 6ft combination table has an elegant mahogany finish.
The pool table is finished to a very high quality, featuring a resilient, professional grade cloth made from 70% wool and 30% Nitrolin, this is an incredibly durable surface perfect for maintaining a smooth ball pace.
Flip the centre of the table using the unique integrated system and you then have a high quality mains powered Air Hockey table to enjoy.
At 6ft this table is also ideal for any home where space is limited.
Accessories included:
- 2 cues
- 1 set of pool balls
- 1 plastic triangle
- 1 plastic brush
- 2 pieces of chalk
- 2 pushers
- 1 hockey puck
- Air Hockey table requires mains electricity connection
- Single fan delivers consistent air-flow
Weight: Net: 75kg/ Gross: 85kg Assembled Size: Length 183cm, Width 94cm, Height 80cm


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Racing Memories
Here are few pictures that may prod the old memory cells. From an old programme of a VOC Cadwell Park race meeting held in July 1982 the scanned pictures may not be the greatest quality but I'm sure the memories will be. Eddy.
O.K. Who is the young man below on the "A" at Donington in August 1980???
Above: Here's Doug Stafford outside the old paddock office at the V.O.C.
Cadwell meeting in May 1981. This was the good old days. The little
office behind Doug was so small but we managed to run meetings despite the fact
that the bikes were warming up right outside the door. Full marks for the
person that sited the public telephone close to where the user could "benefit"
from the full audio effect of a couple of dozen hairy four-strokes on open
Here is the list of competitors riding Vincent solos: Chris Hayden, Peter Biles, Peter Bell, Ian Alexander (rider extreme left in picture?), Doug Stafford, Les Irvine, Howard Worrall, Glyn Baxter, Bill Hancock, Ed Hunt, Bill Thomas, Ian Hamilton, Bernard Rowland, Dave Dock, Peter Brookes-Tee and George Rivis. On Vincent outfits: Dave Mallows/Steven Vines, Phil Davies/ Kath Ellis and Chris Chant/Bryan Sutton.
Above: Vintage Mallory, June 1980. A celebrity parade with Chris Vincent on ........ a Vincent Black Lightning.
A great period shot of Allan Nash on the left, Pat O'Keefe on his Norvin and Barry Howell on the right at Church Lawford sprint in 1962.
If I've infringed someone's copyright I apologize and will remove the pictures. Eddy.


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Another strategy to make money online is to become a social marketing manager. Being present on social media is key for any business that wants to attract new customers, promote their products and grow their following. However, constantly posting, liking and commenting on the numerous social media channels is extremely time consuming. More and more businesses are recruiting social media managers to run and organize all their social media. And to save money, social media employees are often employed as online freelancers.
I expanded my SEO blog and started writing about hosting, cache plugins, and other relevant topics… while recommending SiteGround in each tutorial. I added social proof like this poll where they were rated the #1 host. Each tutorial was super detailed and tons of people found them helpful – many generated 100 visitors/day since the great content got them ranked high.
By education, a B Tech graduate and MBA from IIM Lucnknow. Deepesh's journey from an engineer to a Digital Marketing has been exciting. He started his career as an Entreprenuer, founded editings.in. Now with 7+ years of experience into Digital Marketing, currently Deepesh leads Digital Marketing for Digital Vidya, having expertise into the areas of:
25. Products – You can create your own product, such as an ebook or computer software. You would then use your blog as a promotion tool to get people to buy your product. As long as you create a legitimate product with a whole lot of value, you should be able to get some buyers, but like everything else with a blog, you'll need the traffic to get the sells.
Thanks! I have a few products mixed into my blog posts, and will be adding more. I have found CB to be a mixed bag so far - but need more time to see how it pans out. Also wondering about setting up more sites to follow the funnel you set up. I was pleased to hear you mention having 3 follow ups in the responder sequence. Someone else had suggested 10! I figured by 4 or 5 you lost them anyway.
I come from a quite unsuccessful background of web design/SEO. I blogged because I knew it was good for SEO, but my articles never had a purpose regarding monetization. I finally took a leap of faith and dropped my clients to figure out blogging/affiliate marketing. I was good at website speed optimization and knew hosting was the #1 factor. Looking for the best, I saw SiteGround was rated #1 in multiple Facebook polls and had a great reputation with generous affiliate commissions. So I wrote detailed tutorials on website speed… how to configure WordPress cache plugins, hosting reviews, and other speed-related topics. Usually near the end of a post I would say "Oh, and here's why you should switch to SiteGround" with evidence on why they're the best… Facebook polls, Tweets, load time improvements, etc. That's when things got good. I've been broke my whole life and it's my calling to show people how do this.
My 10-year-old son brought home a book from our park's free library box. It was a biology textbook – teachers edition. He said it looked interesting and hey, it was free (having no idea you could sell it). I scanned it in my Amazon seller app and realized it was worth around $150. He was so excited. We listed it for sale for $130 and it sold! Going to tell him, he just made $130!
Not only will this multiply the money you're bringing in in a serious way, but it protects you against any sudden changes in the market or in your business. Remember that old saying about putting all your eggs in one basket? A few hours a week committed to just one or two of the following opportunities will put you in a much stronger position to be financially safe and independent.
All CPA marketers put their eggs in one basket. I've seen plenty of the greats go from zero to hero and vice versa several time in their careers. The smart ones learn to build their own business in the process and pimp their products to CPA newbies (where the real money is). So if your only focus is to make the most money you can I would advise you not to spend it all because that business model won't last.
It will probably take a couple years to build a sustainable, passive income. That is the 1st car I have EVER purchased myself at age 29 (I was broke until then and leased from my parents). But the time committed to affiliate marketing and creating great tutorials and YouTube videos was worth it… I work for myself, there is virtually no limit on how much I can make, my schedule is flexible, and I collect enough passive income to live how I want.
If you're writing reviews, you should 100% be using rich snippets (they add review stars to your search engine snippets and increase click-through rates). There are many WordPress plugins for this but my favorite is WP Rich Snippets. It's $69/year (or $399 one-time) and I use it for every single review I write. They have tons of add-ons, settings, styling options, and looks nice. Free plugins like All In One Schema.org do work but lack settings, styling, and flexibility.
However, not matter what method you choose to make money online, understand that you might be able to make some money fast, but for the sizable returns, you'll need significant sweat equity. However, a year from now, you'll be happy you started today. Remember, time is far more valuable than money. Focus on creating passive income streams that will free up your time so that you can quit the rat race and focus on the things that matter. That's the important thing here.
This is the best course on how to make money on CB I've seen so far. It takes you from the most basic things that you need to know to the best ways to really make money from CB. Kc Tan knows his stuff really well because he practices what he teaches and gives us real examples. I really like this course and will definitely recommend it to anyone who wanted to start making real money from CB affiliate program. 5 stars!" – Frederic Talis
"give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, & give unto God what is God's" Matthew 12:17 Ever read that one? Seriously, you should reevaluate your priorities. You seem to be pushing, (with misguided force I might add) the idea that money is somehow holy. Your faith is the currency of God, & that's what you should be concerned about losing, not your little gold coins. Seriously ok.
A niche affiliate site often presents like an eCommerce store. To get started with an affiliate site, choose your niche then display products with pictures, descriptions, and prices, just as you would on an online store. However, when visitors click the 'buy' button, they will be taken directly to Amazon, to make the purchase. You then make an affiliate fee for sending the traffic to Amazon, but have none of the packaging hassle, or initial financial output creating or buying the products.
6. IZEA – IZEA works in addition to a blog or on its own. You get paid to blog, tweet, take photos and take videos. The pay is mostly based on your following, so if you want to make money with your tweets, you'll need to grow you Twitter following. Likewise, if you want to make money with blogs, you'll need substantial blog traffic (more on blogging below).
My situation is I'm a Professor and Program Director for a Community College teaching massage therapy, a very in-demand field yet my college does little marketing. It's my job to recruit students. I have a Facebook page and Twitter, and about 100+ followers on each. Can you see this type of system with funnels etc. working to help recruit potential students? If so, how? I feel like building content and creating opt ins should help, as we too are offering a "product". Thanks for your time!
The first thing to do is to join an affiliate program then select the products you intend to sell. The owners of the products would provide you with an affiliate code you can use for referring traffic to the main site. Also, you will be offered banners, text links and several forms of creative copies in which you just copy and paste the code on your own site to refer traffic. Any interested customer who clicks on the links from your website will be redirected to the main site where the product is sold and if they pay for the product or subscribe to a program/service and indicate you as the referral, you get a certain percentage as commission.
Make a point to test products before you start to promote them. I usually test Clickbank products on my social networks first to see if it has a positive or negative impact on individuals. You can also email a few friends or even get friends and family to give you their honest opinion before you implement your marketing strategy. Remember everyone is different and what you might see as a great product might just be a lousy one for others.
Matched Betting (not available in the USA) enables you to gamble (nearly) risk-free. I say nearly as there is always room for error! It involves placing bets on all outcomes of an event, using free online bets given out by the Bookies. Although it may take a while to get your head around the concept, Matched Betting can make a substantial addition to your monthly income.
When you promote a product you also promote the person or the company who is behind the product so try to choose wisely. You don't want your visitors to go and buy a product following your advice then come back unhappy. Do you think that this visitor will come back to your site and take your advice again? Most likely no; this can hurt your credibility in the long run. Usually, websites/company that offer good customer service will have better customer satisfaction so try to stick with promoting their products.
SEO: getting consistent traffic by writing AWESOME content about your keywords (there's a phrase "length is strength" in SEO and this paid off big time for me). Maybe you're doing videos or an eCourse, but I found blog posts WAY easier to update which means less maintenance. The biggest factor by FAR was the time I spent meticulously creating my tutorials… which eventually resulted in a sudden 3x increase in SEO traffic
If you are really short on cash and need some immediate funds then you should start by looking around your house. Clear out your cupboards and find any items lying around that you don't need or haven't used for a while. Then sell them on eBay. Just because they are gathering dust in your cupboards, doesn't mean someone else won't snap them up. Simply sign up with eBay, list your products and then, as they are sold, send them off to the buyers.
Daily Surveys can be taken one or more times per day. This is indicated in the survey description. Other targeted surveys can be taken as you see them. Be sure to complete these when you see them. Some surveys may accept a limited number of responses from people matching your demographics, and can sometimes disappear quickly. New surveys come out all the time too!
If it's not clear yet, information and expertise are two of the most consistent and lucrative ways to make extra money online. If you don't like talking on the phone, you can sign up to get paid to answer professional questions on JustAnswer. There are thousands of questions being asked every month from people looking for help from lawyers, doctors, mechanics, vets, and more. To apply, you'll need to supply your professional verification, resume, and a form of identification.
You can work as a virtual assistant through dedicated websites, such as Upwork or Zirtual. All kinds of skills are needed, and compensation can vary anywhere between $10 per hour to $100 or more. Obviously, the higher pay will be to people who have more technical skills, such as web building skills and marketing. But you can find work doing administrative tasks at the lower end of the pay scale.
You could also opt to use existing websites for making money. These include both active income and passive income methods. For example, you could sell some used items or invest in creating some digital designs that then can be sold on merchandise. Again, devote a sizable portion of your time to passive income so that you can slowly build up earnings that will arrive on autopilot without any extra added effort.
A spin-off for web designers is to offer a landing page creation service. Well optimized landing pages can be the difference between a successful and a failing business. And, as creating the perfect landing page isn't easy, this is a service many businesses are prepared to pay for. I know people who are earning 6 figures per year and all they do is create landing pages for businesses. There's serious money to be made.
The affiliate marketing scam is equal in size if not greater in size to the Nigerian 401 scam. Yes, you really have a person willing to give you $ 1 Million. BS you say? Then how come you buy the same BS packaged in a different way, when someone tells you how you can make millions in affiliate marketing by buying their


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ELLSWORTH — Ellsworth schools are slated to receive more money from the state next year if Governor Janet Mills' biennial budget passes as proposed.
Her recently released two-year budget allocates an additional $126 million for education, $41.3 million in fiscal year 2020 and $85 million in 2021.
According to numbers released by the Maine Department of Education, the proposal includes $7.84 million for Ellsworth schools for the 2019-2020 school year, roughly $800,000 more than the state contributed this year.
"While that's really good news," Ellsworth schools Superintendent Dan Higgins told School Board members at a meeting on Feb. 12, "it's important for all of us to remember that this is the preliminary budget. It still has to work its way through the legislative session."
The Governor has pledged to increase school funding statewide during her tenure, including more money for teacher salaries, special education and an expansion of pre-kindergarten programs.
The state has a complicated school funding formula that considers several factors, including the value of a district's tax base, the percentage of low-income students it serves and the district's special education costs, to determine what share of the cost of "essential programs and services" the state will pay for.
Mills' proposal calls for the state to fund 50 percent of the total cost of education, compared to 49 percent this year.
In a 2004 referendum, voters agreed to increase the total to 55 percent, a figure that has never been approved by the Legislature.
The amount of state funding will change over the legislative session as the budget bill makes its way through the legislative process and bills are passed that affect education funding, or change the funding formula.
Ellsworth is not the only district in Hancock County set to receive more money if the budget passes as proposed.
Regional school units 24 and 25 (RSU 24, RSU 25) and Bar Harbor all would get additional funding under the plan. Blue Hill would receive roughly $5,000 less in 2020 under the proposal, although the state's share of funding for the district would increase slightly.
Higgins said "the best news" is that the funding numbers, even though they are preliminary, are out earlier than in previous years, which will allow educators to plan better as they go into the budgeting season.
"From the educational perspective," Higgins said, Mills "is off to a great start."


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The New 'New Property'
Why the left could love Bush's "ownership society."
Don't Let Prince Charles See The Incredibles: Was Prince Charles being feudal or simply a good meritocrat when he wrote, of a secretary seeking a promotion:
What is wrong with people nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities. ... This is all to do with the learning culture in schools. It is a consequence of the child-centred system which admits no failure and tells people they can all be pop stars, High Court judges, brilliant TV presenters or even infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary effort or having abilities. It's social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially re-engineered to contradict the lessons of history.
Charles was accused of feudal leanings by the secretary in question, by much of the British press, and (implicitly) by Charles Clarke, the Labor education minister, who said
We can't all be born to be king but we can all have a position where we can really aspire, for ourselves and for our families, to do the very best they possibly can.
Technically Charles would appear to be off the hook--he doesn't say in his memo that no secretary can ever aspire to other achievements. He merely seems to be saying 1)this secretary doesn't have the chops, and 2) too many people think they can do things for which they don't have the chops. The first is a judgment non-feudal, fluid meritocracies have to make of everyone at some point (when they've done "the very best they possibly can"). The second is a complaint anybody who has to run such a meritocracy (and constantly tell people "no") might have, and isn't incompatible with believing that people who actually have ability and put in the effort should rise. (Issue 2 is ventilated in The Incredibles, which takes Charles' side. How'd Tierney miss that angle?)
Meritocracy, it's often noted, is the most vicious of hierarchies because it tells people not only that they have wound up at a certain level but that they deserve to be at that level. It may say something about the unwillingness of putative meritocrats (like Clarke) to face the harshness of their own system that they need to acccuse people like Charles, who make those harsh judgments explicit, of not being meritocrats but of really being aristos who don't want people to "rise above their station." ... P.S.: It's entirely possible, of course, that Charles is an inveterate feudal bigot in private. (If not him, who?) And it's too bad he didn't cut the condescending line in yesterday's self-defense that declared, "In my view it is just as great an achievement to be a plumber or a bricklayer as it is to be a lawyer or a doctor." Does anyone think he really thinks that? ... 11:18 P.M.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Ex-President Bill Clinton, in an interview with Peter Jennings:
You know, my position on the Iraq War was different from almost everybody else's that I've heard talk. I supported giving the president the authority to take action against Saddam Hussein if he did not cooperate with the U.N. inspectors, or if he was found to have had weapons of mass destruction he wouldn't give up. I did believe that the administration made a mistake going to war when they did, and that's what alienated the world. Most Americans still haven't focused on this. [Emphasis added]
Wait. Wasn't that John Kerry's position on Iraq? It sounded like a flip-flop when Kerry said it! ... [But Kerry said he'd have supported giving the authority even if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq--ed. Staff error.] 8:59 P.M.
The New 'New Property': In Slate's just concluded welfare dialogue, there was one obvious solution to the dilemma of hard-working single mothers who don't make more than $18,000 a year: Give them training so they can earn more. I had assumed, without really knowing, that individual job training "accounts" must be part of President Bush's high-concept "ownership society." They certainly should be. The government spends billions on job training, after all. Some programs work. Some don't. Why not trust the workers themselves to figure out which ones will actually get them higher-paying jobs--as long as they know that if they waste their training money it's gone, just as if they'd spent their own funds? ....
Is that what Bush has in mind, though? The NYT's David Brooks advertised job training as part of the Ownership Society in a column last December (presumably because that's how White House aides were talking about it) and the Department of Labor is billing "reemployment accounts" for the workers who lose their jobs as an O.S. initiative. But President Bush's speech announcing his big job training initiative last spring talked mainly about funneling money to governors and community colleges--i.e. government--not to the workers themselves. And while Bush's GOP convention acceptance speech two months ago mentioned both "training" and the "ownership society" within a few sentences of each other, Bush was unclear on the connection. All this suggests to me that the community colleges, governors, and existing training providers are effectively resisting giving control of job training funds to the individual workers--after all, the workers might decide to spend the money elsewhere. ...
Isn't this potential Bush initiative--giving citizens "ownership" of their training subsidies--one liberals should applaud? Sure, it appeals to conservatives: No less than Social Security privatization, it takes a large bureaucratic government program and gives individuals control of --and accountability for--their little piece of it. (It's "New Paradigm"-y!) Unlike Social Security privatization, though, it doesn't threaten the core purpose of the welfare state--after all, if you waste your training account, you're just not going to earn very much, but if you waste your Social Security investment and there's no government check to plug the hole you're destitute. ....
In both cases, giving individuals control of their government subsidies could create a built-in demand to constantly increase those subsidies. To voters' desire for every-higher Social Security benefits we might be able add voters' desire for ever- fatter retraining accounts. Maybe that's why President Bush is dragging his feet. He can handle the lobbying of community colleges for more money. But lobbying from voters might be harder to resist, leading to a big expansionof government in an area where its growth has been held in check.
When you think about it, "Ownership Society" programs aren't such an inherently right-wing idea after all. Another word for them might be "entitltements." On the Left, in the 60s, a trendy Yale law professor named Charles Reich came up with a whole theory about individuals' de facto ownership of govenrment benefits--he called it the "New Property." Reich's theory was then used to justify all sorts of judicial interference with any attempt by government to take away this "property." (A civil servant's job was even declared his or her "property" for constitutional purposes.)
Maybe "ownership society" only sounds conservative when it's used as a way to erode existing collectively-administered government benefits like Social Security. When it's used to create new individually-controlled govenrment benefits, like job training accounts, it sounds like Charles Reich's 1960's Yale Law school dream come true. ...
(Not that there's anything wrong with it! Except when a) the new "owned" benefits subsidize able-bodied people who don't work--like the old AFDC program; b) we can't afford them; or c) "ownership" translates into paralyzing legal protections.) ... 7:26 P.M.
Friday, November 19, 2004
Just an excitable boy: Andrew Sullivan says:
Bill Clinton was celebrated for his progressiveness, and ease with African-Americans. But it's inconceivable that he would have given so much power and authority to a black female peer. [Emphasis added]
It is? I can conceive it quite easily, if there'd been a suitable candidate around. ... What hidden wellspring of Clintonian insecurity is Sullivan referring to? ... P.S.: One bit of evidence--Clinton reportedly offered Cheryl Mills the job of White House counsel. Not an unimportant position in the Clinton White House! ..3:13 P.M.
Kerry--It was all Osama's fault: Fox's Geraldo Rivera has Kerry blaming the Osama tape for his loss. Just because the Osama Excuse is convenient and self-serving doesn't mean it's wrong! (The Batman Effect might have come into play.) But here's what Newsweek's post-election now-it-can-be-told insider account has to say on the subject, from Kerry's own pollster:
Osama bin Laden had given the Kerry campaign a good scare on Friday night. The tape of the Qaeda leader, creepily invoking polemical filmmaker Michael Moore, was played in the war room at Kerry headquarters in Washington. Pollster Mark Mellman noticed the quiet in the room and the color draining from people's faces. Was this the October Surprise? Was bin Laden going to get Bush re-elected by showing his fright mask on election eve?
Mellman saw a slight wobble in Kerry's polls overnight. He walked 45 minutes from his Georgetown home to headquarters downtown (he doesn't drive on the Sabbath) to present the potentially ominous results, but by Sunday Kerry had recovered. Perhaps voters had been numbed by the years of scratchy tapes smuggled out of Pakistan and the elevated threat levels. "Saturday Night Live" took out some of the sting by parodying the tape. In any case, by Sunday night the Kerry campaign was allowing itself to feel optimistic.
Nor was Kerry having such a great week before the Osama tape was televised on 10/29, at least according to WaPo's tracking poll. (The Osama explanation does conform to the TIPP poll, however.) ... P.S.: Wasn't it Kerry's job to convince voters he had at least as good a strategy for combatting bin Laden as Bush does? So whose fault was it in the end? ... If the OBL tape really had a big impact, isn't that really an argument against the political pros' main second-guess of Kerry's campaign--that it should have "pivoted" more clearly to domestic policy? ... Update: More Kerry excuses here (including, inevitably, blaming his staff!). ... 1:45 P.M.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Noam Scheiber cites GOP polltaker David Winston for the theory that liberal guilt causes exit-poll interviewers to oversample blacks and women. But this is a testable theory, no? Did the early exit polls oversample blacks in comparison with the final vote? And did it vary from polltaker to polltaker? (Presumably some of them are more guilty of guilt than others.) Update: Several readers claim Winston's theory is not testable, because it's only from exit polls themselves that we think we know the percent of voters who actually are black, female, etc.But obviously if, say, 30% of the national sample were African American, that would be too high. More: Mystery Pollster seems to agree--he says he's "heard, through the grapevine, that the mid-day exit polls did have unusually high percentages of women and African American voters." Of course, an oversampling of women and blacks doesn't necessarily reflect interviewer guilt or bias--it could be an artifact of, say, Kerry voters differential eagerness to talk to the interviewers. MP points out that a) the interviewers are told to interview "every 4th or 5th or 10th voter exiting the polls," which should in theory eliminate the effect of any liberal guilt, and b) interviewers also note the race, sex and approximate age of voters who refuse interviews, which in theory provides a fair demographic picture of the actual electorate and allows any oversampling of blacks, women, etc. to be discovered and corrected. But those corrections may not have been made in the early pro-Kerry numbers that sent everyone into orbit. ... 11:05 P.M.
Wedneday, November 17, 2004
Exit poll debacle impresario Warren Mitofsky says his precinct level returns disprove the idea that no-paper-trail electronic voting machines were rigged. ** Exit results from the non-machine precincts were just as off as the results from machine precincts!. ... P.S.: I wasn't going to link to this--Mitofsky is not exactly glowing with credibility these days as he tries to blame untutored bloggers for the fact that, based on his expensive, faulty poll, every news organization in America and both candidates thought Kerry was going to win. But Mystery Pollster thinks it's important. ... ** Update/Correction: Mitofsky's analysis probably used precincts from all across the nation, not from a single state such as Florida. MP offers reasons why Mitofksy's "ability to detect differences within a single state are limited." 9:59 P.M.
Would you believe John Cougar Mellenkaus? Hmm. If I changed the name of the blog to blowfiles I'd probably get more hits. It's available! ... P.S.: But it's not as if I now have an embarrassing name that sounds like that of a world-famous kiddie's cartoon character! ... What's that?. ... P.P.S.: Big mistake! Rich Blow--memorable! Richard Bradley--fades into th e w o o d w o r k. ... 8:18 P.M.
In The Nation, Tom Geoghegan pushes a really bad idea--"Blue States could pass a law: 'Nobody can be fired, except for just cause.'"** But his trademark mordancy is intact:
The problem is, unions represent only about 8 percent of the workforce (private sector). When the airlines finish with Chapter 11, we could be even smaller. In four years, could labor in the private sector be more or less gone? I hope not. Anyway, I suppose someone will always be on strike at Yale.
P.S.: I do think Geoghegan's plan to put concrete worker benefits on blue-state ballots--"paid maternity leave for three months ... right to a vacation for seven days ... right to four sick days ... severance pay"--might work, in that many of the measures would pass. (But then who'd need unions?) The obvious counterexample, though, is California's Prop. 72 to mandate employer-paid health benefits, which narrowly failed after Gov. Schwarzenegger came out against it. (I voted for it on immature 'heighten the contradictions' grounds.) ... P.P.S.: Geoghegan's article, available yesterday, seems to have been pulled back behind The Nation's subscriber wall. Guess too many people were reading it! (Soviet-era store manager: "We no longer carry that item. It kept selling out.")
**--Then Mike Ovitz's severance would have been even bigger! 9:35 A.M.
From Kay Hymowitz's depressing, sensible City Journal report on black "Accidental Fathers":
In fact, some hip-hop icons are going all Ozzie, crooning their devotion and life lessons for their sons. "You a blessin' and I'll always guide you," sings rapper Ray Benzino, co-owner of Source Magazine and organizer of the publication's 2002 event "to reveal the nurturing side of rap artists as fathers and mentors." [Emphasis added]
Wouldn't it have been better if The Source had just gone out of business? ... P.S.: Hymowitz also says "More black males get their GED in prison than graduate from high school." If John Kerry said that, I wouldn't believe it. I don't believe it! ...9:20 A.M.
Monday, November 15, 2004
FYI: I'm participating in the Festpost for Jason DeParle's big welfare book here. ... 1:59 P.M.
Post-Mortem Skipper: If you haven't been able to bring yourself to face all the Democratic recriminations, Alexander Barnes Dryer's excellent TNR summarizer may be all you need to read. ... But: He's way too tough on the "gay marriage" theory. If that issue really caused Southern Ohio to go for Bush, doesn't it explain, like, 100% of the outcome, not 5%? ...Also: Why no links? ... P.S.: Are you really going to make us type out "Alexander Barnes Dryer" for the rest of your career? I have RSI already. ... 11:00 A.M.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Keep Your Hat On: Randy Newman's 1988 hit "It's Money That Matters" opens with a lyric that always puzzled me:
Of all of the people that I used to know
Most never adjusted to the great big world
I see them lurking in book stores
Working for the Public Radio
Carrying their babies around in a sack on their back
Moving careful and slow
All of these people are much brighter than I
In any fair system they would flourish and thrive
But they barely survive
They eke out a living and they barely survive
Are people at NPR that hard up? Or was Newman's perspective distorted by his exposure to the entertainment industry pay scale? I never figured it out. Comes now the news, via NPR's Form 990, that All Things Considered host Robert Siegel makes $259,777 a year (plus benefits). Seems like plenty to me! [Thanks to Petrelis ] ... Update: Well-informed emailer B. suggests "the big run up in NPR salaries" didn't take place until after this incident in 2001. I tend to think Newman was wrong even back in 1988. The NPR people could always afford Volvos. What more do they need! ... Update: Many readers suggest Newman was referring to employees of local public radio stations, rather than NPR. Reader AOP thinks he was employing the "unreliable narrator" device. "[T]he narrator is a crass dummy who can't identify the signal characteristics of the upper-middle class liberal good life (which do, at first glance, often bear a lot in common with impoverished college life)." ... But do crass dummies go around talking about what would happen "in any fair system." That sounds like what college lefties (or NPR employees!) would say. ... 11:19 A.M.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Poached Blog: At the ONA convention in Los Angeles, I stole the following ideas ...
From Joe Trippi: Expect a big wave of Democratic retirements from Congress in the next couple of years, as veterans who've been holding on in hopes of regaining majority power give up. Many of these Democrats have been using their personal popularity (and powers of incumbency) to win in Republican areas. When they leave, their seats will flip. The GOPs could attain 60 votes in the Senate and maybe 30 more seats in the House. Thank you, Rep. Matsui!
From Dave Winer: Trippi argued that the Internet sends power within the parties to the activist/citizens at the bottom. Winer says that in the long run the Internet will not distribute power within parties so much as lead to entirely new political organizations. What the Web does, he notes, is enable communities of interest to form that aren't well served by the Dem/Gop duopoly. I tend to think Winer's right. Why? It became apparent, during the Trippi-Winer discussion, that the Internet has been wildly successful at raising millions of dollars for the parties' presidential candidacies but that in 2004 there was a shortage of things the parties could efficiently spend those millions on. Would $10 million more have helped Kerry? By allowing him to do what, exactly? Place more TV ads in the clutter that clogged battleground viewers' brains? Hire yet more organizers and canvassers? Kerry had plenty of canvassers; at some point adding more just annoys voters. I suspect that, in the future, millions of potential dollars will be sloshing around with no place to go--at least no place within the existing two party structure. Isn't it logical that these easily-raisable millions will instead go to create organizations that serve the new hybrid communities that are now able to form: Anti-war Republicans or culturally permissive free-marketers; Giuliani-McCainiacs; anti-Union Democrats; an anti-immigration party drawing from both Dems and GOPS, etc. Some of these groups will last several election cycles. Some may form and dissolve in a single campaign. One of them may eventually supplant the weaker of the two majors--a revival of the "party in a laptop" notion that was dashed when Howard Dean declined to mount a third-party run. Who needs Terry McAuliffe to raise your money when you have the Web? It's very, very easy to start an organization of national scope these days. (Small partial example: KerryHatersforKerry. About a day and a half's work went into it, I'd guess. The Democrats did not approve the message. But more than 200,000 people visited it in about a month of existence.)
From Trippi and Jehmu Greene: The youth vote did too turn out in 2004, and for Kerry. Trippi claims two million new Kerry voters--whose impact was swamped by other factors.
From Ana Marie Cox: CBS, in publishing the Texas National Guard documents story, was behaving like a good blogger would! If I got some seemingly important documents about a presidential candidate, I might well** slap them up on the web and ask if they could really be authentic, confident I'd find out the truth by return e-mail. The difference is that CBS pretended its story was an old media, take-it-to-the-bank triple-checked black-and-white shot of professional-grade truth, not a blog query with an implicit or explicit question mark after it.
**Assuming it wouldn't open up libel exposure. Microsoft has lawyers to help make that judgment. A presidential candidate seems unlikely to sue. But CBS arguably opened itself up to a possible claim by at least one other individual. 11:42 P.M.
Que Mal! When Fouad Ajami wrote a strange, pessimistic NYT op-ed piece on the Iraq War last spring, headlined "Iraq May Survive, but the Dream Is Dead," I was puzzled. What "dream" was that, and why was it dead, given that a U.S. defeat in Iraq was (and still is) hardly certain? I admit I should have known the answer--but Michael Hirsh's piece in this month's Washington Monthly was an eye-opener for me. Turns out it's all about Ataturk. Who knew? Not me. ... P.S.: Hirsh's piece is dotted with cheap anti-Bushisms (e.g.: "Bush, having handed over faux sovereignty to the Iraqis and while beating a pell-mell retreat under fire ...") but it's not nearly as pessimistic as it thinks it is. If the "Kemalist vision of a secularized, Westernized Arab democracy that casts off the medieval shackles of Islam" is currently unattainable in Iraq--indeed, it seems in retrospect crazy--Hirsh's last-best outcome of "a moderately religious, Shiite-dominated democracy, brokered and blessed by [Ayatollah Sistani]") seems like a major achievement, maybe one worth fighting and dying for. ... You'd have to be less of a Marxist/Wrightist than I am to think that Islamic, non-secular societies can't and won't eventually find their way to modern democracy and market economics themselves, as it becomes manifest it's in their self-interest to do so. ... 2:09 A.M.
Friday, November 12, 2004
But they're really nice pajamas: Vanity Fair unveils its Web portal, which seems remarkably straightforward and un-snobby. ... VF's interest is either a sign that a) blogs have peaked (Graydon Carter thinks they're hot!) or b) blogs are here to stay. I can't figure out which. ... 1:43 P.M.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Better Wonkette: Shouldn't it be "When you're not with the one you love, love the one you love!"? 7:19 P.M.
Jayhosed: Heartless Ryan Lizza recriminates up a storm--make sure you read the blog tidbits as well as the print set-piece. 1) Lizza argues the Kerry campaign lacked a message and was stuck on the "JHOS" laundry list -- "jobs, health care, oil, and security." I thought that after the early-September Clintonite coup the campaign had an overall message-- something about "more of the same" vs. "new direction." What happened to that? 2) Joe Lockhart is fingered as responsible for the final week's Al Qaqaa obsession; 3) Shrum does indeed seem to be guilty of blaming "events" that prevented a pivot to domestic issues:
"I think partly or primarily because of events, the case Kerry was making on health care, the economy, and energy was not heard as clearly as it could have been or should have been."
But a New York Times story about a months-old disappearance of munitions is not an "event" in the same way the Osama tape was an "event." Kerry didn't have to talk obsessively about Al Qaqaa in the week before the tape's appearance. (I agree that Kerry should have kept his main focus on Iraq and terrorism instead of even trying to "pivot" to domestic pocketbook topics. But reacting like Andrew Sullivan to every day's headline wasn't the way to do it! The decision wasn't dictated by the closing weeks' "events.") 4) Bitchy quote of the day: "Go ask [Edwards] what he's hunted." 5) A cautionary note when evaluating the decision not to go viciously negative on Bush: Just because Kerry lost doesn't mean that every decision his strategists made was wrong, even if it was a play-it-safe, focus-grouped decision! 6) According to Lizza, one Kerry aide "repeatedly pressed" the candidate to give a speech about ... welfare reform. ... Why didn't I think of that? Kerry had, after all, voted for the big 1996 reform bill:
The idea was rebuffed because welfare didn't show up in polling as a key issue for voters. "It's never going to be the top issue," the aide complains. "If you call me on the phone, I'm not going to say that. But, if I hear you talk about welfare reform, it tells me something about your underlying character."
P.S.: And don't miss the dishy outtake from anti-pivot Huffington's LAT piece, available here.
Just how misguided the campaign's leadership was can be seen in the battle that took place between Vernon Jordan, the campaign's debate negotiator, and Cahill and Shrum. "They were so opposed," someone close to the negotiations told me, "to Jordan's accepting the first debate being all about foreign policy, in exchange for a third debate, that Jordan and Cahill had a knock down, drag out argument. It was so bad that Jordan had to send her flowers before they could make up." It was a familiar strategic battle with Jordan siding with those who believed that unless Kerry could win on national security, he would not win period. ... [Emphasis added]
The wisdom of the P____-Man! 2:24 P.M.
John Kerry, master politician, knew how to win over Gore mentor Martin Peretz:
[Kerry] was first elected to the Senate in 1984, the same year as Al Gore. Something demonic in Kerry persuaded him to belittle Gore whenever we met.
At last, Peretz tells us what he really thinks of Kerry! 12:12 P.M.
De' Whole Bunk and Nothing But Debunk: If you read Glenn Reynolds' roundup of stolen-election debunkings alongside RottenDenmark, you'll be up to date on the state of the "Are We Sure Bush Won?" debate. ... The best of the debunking articles is Farhad Manjoo's piece in Salon, though this Yale Free Press report does a better explaining-away of the most salient "anomaly" out there--the pro-Bush surge in Democratic opti-scan counties in Florida. ... Denmark's anonymous Hamlet tries to poke holes in the YFP analysis, with only limited effectiveness in my judgment. (It would be one thing if all the opti-scan counties showed a mysterious GOP surge that hadn't appeared in previous years. This doesn't seem to have been the case--previous years fall roughly into line. Denmark's surviving charge is much weaker--that non-optiscan counties didn't see as big a pro-Bush surge this year as opti-scan counties. But counties that can afford to move up from opti-scan systems tend to be richer and different--Lee County, for example, which contains the city of Fort Myers. You wouldn't necessarily expect a big surge of Bush voters there--certainly not a surge of registered Democratic Bush voters. That's because Lee County, unlike the 28 puzzling opti-scan counties, has more registered Republicans than Democrats. The area's conservative voters have obviously already switched over to the GOP.) ...
P.S.: I still support more debunking, and bunking! I disagree with Reynolds' suggestion that those who press vote fraud complaints are "losers" (except in the sense that they wouldn't be complaining if they'd won). But the left-blogosphere's election-stealing charge now looks like it's in about the same shape that Yasser Arafat was in four days ago. ... Update: Make that three days. WaPo notes that the Bush totals in the seemingly Dem-heavy opti-scan counties were also boosted by independents. I forgot about them! ...
P.P.S.: See also this Wired News article. Wired quotes Stanford professor Jonathan Wand:
"It's important that when allegations are made that people bring to bear the correct evidence and statistical analysis to actually back it up. ... What is destructive is when the allegations are made and they are misconceived or implausible.
Nah. It's only when people make misconceived and implausible allegations that other people can point out how misconceived and implausible they are--something that happens very quickly on the Web. That's less destructive than letting them seethe unexamined, no? In this case, the conspiracy theories are being put to rest in under two weeks, thanks to all the irresponsible people. ... Even if they don't bother to read Barone's Almanac first! 4:01 A.M.
Drudge Report--80 % true. Close enough! Instapundit--All-powerful hit king. Joshua Marshall--He reports! And decides! Wonkette--Makes Jack Shafer feel guilty. Salon--Survives! kf gloating on hold. Andrew Sullivan--He asks, he tells. He sells! David Corn--Trustworthy reporting from the left. Washington Monthly--Includes Charlie Peters' proto-blog. Lucianne.com--Stirs the drink. Virginia Postrel--Friend of the future! Peggy Noonan--Gold in every column. Matt Miller--Savvy rad-centrism. WaPo--Waking from post-Bradlee snooze. Calmer Times--Registration required. NY Observer--Read it before the good writers are all hired away. New Republic--Left on welfare, right on warfare! Jim Pinkerton--Quality ideas come from quantity ideas. Tom Tomorrow--Everyone's favorite leftish cartoonists' blog. Ann "Too Far" Coulter--Sometimes it's just far enough. Bull Moose--National Greatness Central. John Ellis--Forget that Florida business! The cuz knows politics, and he has, ah, sources. "The Note"--How the pros start their day. Romenesko--O.K. they actually start it here. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities--Money Liberal Central.. Steve Chapman--Ornery-but-lovable libertarian. Rich Galen--Sophisticated GOP insider. Man Without Qualities--Seems to know a lot about white collar crime. Hmmm. Overlawyered.com--Daily horror stories. Eugene Volokh--Smart, packin' prof, and not Instapundit! Eve Tushnet--Queer, Catholic, conservative and not Andrew Sullivan! WSJ's Best of the Web--James Taranto's excellent obsessions. Walter Shapiro--Politics and (don't laugh) neoliberal humor! Eric Alterman--Born to blog. Joe Conason--Bush-bashing, free most days. Lloyd Grove--Don't let him write about you. Arianna--A hybrid vehicle. TomPaine.com--Web-lib populists. Take on the News--TomPaine's blog. B-Log--Blog of spirituality! Hit & Run--Reason gone wild! Daniel Weintraub--Beeblogger and Davis Recall Central. Eduwonk--You'll never have to read another mind-numbing education story again. Nonzero--Bob Wright explains it all. [More tk