If you're going to keep track of possible electoral vote scenarios this fall, you'll want to bookmark this site which does a great job of following polls and showing you how everyone's doing. The caution is that they take even a one-point lead (in a poll with a margin of error greater than that) as significant.
For instance, at this moment (it could change within the hour), they have Obama at 317 and McCain at 221. Since you need 270 to win, that sounds like a landslide for Obama...but take a closer look. They have Virginia as "barely Democratic" and they award Obama its 13 electoral votes. Why? Because the Rasmussen Poll has Obama at 45% and McCain at 44%. The margin of error in this poll is 4.5% so a one point lead is meaningless. (Then again, Rasmussen is the poll most Republicans love. When all others have Democrats ahead, Rasmussen often favors the G.O.P., at least when it's far enough from election day that they won't be proven instantly wrong.)
Or take Nevada. The site gives its 5 electoral votes to McCain since McCain is at 44% and Obama's at 42% in a Mason-Dixon poll with a 3 point margin o' error. Obama gets Missouri's 11 and Ohio's 20 though he's one point ahead there while McCain gets North Carolina's 15 due to being two points ahead. And all of this is going by only one poll per state...the most recent one, even if one the day before said something very different.
Bottom line: Use it but click through on the swing states and look at all the polls for a given state and at the trends. In much of the country, it is already over: McCain ain't gonna win California or New York. Obama ain't gonna win Texas or Utah. And an awful lot of states could go either way.
Time to plug Stu's Show, which airs Wednesdays right on your very own computer...that is, if you log into Shokus Internet Radio at the proper hour. The proper hour is 4 PM if you live on the West Coast, 7 PM if you live on the East Coast and if you live anywhere else, you can probably figure it out from that. Each week, your enthusiastic host, Stu Shostak, interviews someone prominent in the entertainment industry...or when he can't find anyone, he has me on. The show is live on Wednesdays so you can call in and ask questions of his guest during the proceedings.
He has a biggie tomorrow. The insegrevious Gary Owens will be in Stu's studio, talking of his days as a top-rated radio personality, his time as announcer on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, his countless other TV appearances, his work as a cartoon voice actor (Space Ghost, Roger Ramjet and so many others), his work as one of the most-heard announcers in the commercial and promo business, his probable new job as Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, his...well, they won't even get through all that. They only have two hours.
Gary is one of the nicest, most fascinating gentlemen in our business so I'll be listening...and you can, too. Just click the link on this page (or right here) that will take you to Shokus Internet Radio and do what they tell you. Remember...this is not a podcast that you can listen to whenever you like. It's a radio show that's broadcast at a specific time and you have to listen when it's on.
And get used to it because Stu has a great guest next week, too. On June 25, he welcomes the legendary Chuck McCann to his show. My pal Earl Kress and I will also be in the studio for that one and I will personally get Chuck to tell the three greatest show business anecdotes I've ever heard. So listen tomorrow for Gary and then listen next week for Chuck.
Here's another piece about the Supreme Court decision that restored habeas corpus rights to prisoners being detained indefinitely at Guantanamo. It's by George F. Will and in it, he takes the position that I think Conservatives should take on this issue...and would have, if it had been a Clinton administration doing all this reckless imprisonment.
I liked most of the 1964 Hanna-Barbera feature, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear. What I didn't like from the moment I first saw it at the Picwood Theater in West L.A. were the musical numbers in which Yogi (Daws Butler) and Boo Boo (Don Messick) were dubbed with voices that were neither Daws nor Don. Even at age 12, I could tell the difference and I felt cheated.
The one musical number I really enjoyed therefore was this one which featured neither Yogi nor Boo Boo. It's the "St. Louie" number performed by a bunch of anonymous bears. The speaking voices you'll hear at the beginning are Mel Blanc and Don Messick but when the bears sing, that's a group of singers who called themselves Jonah and the Wailers. Who were they? Beats the heck outta me. There have apparently been a lot of groups over the years who've gone by that name but I know of no reference for whoever was going by that moniker in '64.
The great Warner Brothers director Friz Freleng worked without credit on the storyboard for Hey There, It's Yogi Bear and since he was known for doing jazzy dance numbers in his cartoons, some have assumed this scene is his handiwork. I have it on good authority that it was devised after Friz left the project and that it's mainly the work of Jerry Eisenberg and Willie Ito. It runs less than two minutes and it's very catchy...
June 18, 2008
