Friday, August 22, 2008

Friday Night

Various news outlets are reporting that Barack Obama has selected Joe Biden as his running mate. I hope they're wrong.

It's not that I don't like Biden. He seems like an intelligent man who's been right about foreign affairs a lot more often than your average politician. He's also a good speaker and to the extent you want a running mate to be an "attack dog," he can probably do that with great gusto and more class than most.

No, I hope it's not Biden for two reasons. One is that an awful lot of people signed up for the infamous Obama text message announcement on the belief that they'd be the first to know. That message doesn't seem to have gone out...so if it's Biden, then Obama is letting all those people down. That may sound petty but a lot of elections turn on petty matters.

I also hope it's not Biden because I enjoy it so much when the press gets something like this wrong. It reminds us that they're quite fallible. They get a lot of little things wrong but we forget that and need the big "misses" to remind us.

Also, I still think Biden looks too much like McLean Stevenson. But apart from all that, he's probably a good choice. We can now look forward this weekend to all the articles and speeches from Republicans and right-wingers explaining how Biden is the worst possible choice and how Obama might as well concede now. Of course, they'd say that about whoever was picked, just as the Democrats will say that about McCain's selection.

• Posted at 11:45 PM · LINK

Friday Evening

Apparently, Barack Obama was going to announce the name of his running mate today but he heard that I'd predicted he would. Just to make me look bad, he decided to delay. He'll probably pick Biden just to make me wrong on that count, too.

Just for that, I'm throwing my support behind Ron Paul.

• Posted at 6:58 PM · LINK

Laugh and Be Happy

For those who grew up in Los Angeles: An interview with "Sheriff John" Rovick, one of our local kids' show legends. Thank you, Rob Rose, for the link.

• Posted at 3:51 PM · LINK

Frosty Reception

Fred Rupnow found a new link to the article written by Jackie Vernon's son. Thank you, Fred.

• Posted at 1:32 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Turns out there are a lot of folks out there who remember Jackie Vernon. A lot of them wrote to say I should have reminded all that he was the voice of Frosty the Snowman in the popular Christmas special of the same name. I also probably should have linked you to this post, which I wrote back in '04 about Mr. Vernon. Unfortunately, the link in there to an article by his son no longer works.

Comedy writer Arnie Kogen writes to say...

Read your piece today about Jackie Vernon. I wrote for Jackie in the mid 1960's. Wrote material for his appearances on Paar and Ed Sullivan. He paid about as swiftly as he spoke. Verrrry slowly. His classic material was not mine. That of course was the "slide show" with his guide, Guido, also his pick up lines at the beach "Excuse me, Miss, I seem to have lost my Congressional Medal of Honor around here somewhere" and, for me, his greatest line of all: He was once arrested on New Years Eve in Times Sguare — for loitering.

The best part of the Congressional Medal of Honor joke was the follow-up line: "Oh, well. I have another one at home."

I wish I could link to that classic "slide" routine but there doesn't seem to be a video of it online anywhere. He did a little of a later version of it in this ten minute hunk from that Young at Heart Comedians Special...

• Posted at 11:17 AM · LINK

Today's Reason Not To Vote For John McCain

Dr. Phillip Butler is a "long time acquaintance" (his terminology) of John McCain and was a prisoner of war for an even longer time during the same period. He doesn't think McCain should be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.

One cannot help but muse what the folks who brought you the "Swift Boat Vet" attacks on John Kerry would have done with a guy like Butler. One way in which the Kerry campaign (and the media, which is supposed to watchdog what candidates and their surrogates assert) dropped the ball that year was that a lot of folks got the erroneous idea that the men in the anti-Kerry ads had actually served alongside him, witnessed him not earning his medals, etc. Butler was a lot closer to McCain than any of the guys who slandered Kerry were to him.

• Posted at 10:58 AM · LINK

Friday Morning

The big campaign news story, eclipsing even the fact that John McCain doesn't know how many houses he has, is that Barack Obama's about to announce his choice of running mate. Obviously, I have no idea who it is. I have a vague, based-on-nothing hunch that it won't be Biden, Bayh or Kaine from the "short list;" that it'll either be Hillary C. or someone who'll come as a total surprise. But I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

What I was mulling was when do you make that announcement? A lot of Obama campaign donors are waiting...waiting to find out via a text message which will be sent to them before the selection is revealed anywhere else. Obama is making a joint appearance tomorrow with the individual so the text message has to come before then...but it also has to come before the news leaks from some other source. If you're Obama, you don't want to rob all those donors of that little, deserved thrill. The closer you get to the time of that joint appearance, the more you risk that happening. So you'll release it today.

When I woke up about half an hour ago, I wondered if it had already been announced. Then I realized it was too early for that. You want to do it when all those donors are awake so the ones on the West Coast don't miss it. Ideally, you want them all at work or school so they can turn to everyone around them and say, "Hey, I have news for you all," and feel special. And you don't want to wait too late in the day because you want it on the evening newscasts. (Late Friday is when you release news you don't want people to notice.)

So I'm going to guess between 1 PM and 3 PM Eastern time and probably closer to 1:00. Let's all watch me be wrong about this.

• Posted at 8:22 AM · LINK

Clicker Beware!

My GMail account just received this message...

Your account has been randomly flagged in our system as a part of our routine security measures. This is a must to ensure that only you have acces and use of your Gmail and to ensure a safe Gmail experience. We require all flagged accounts to verify their information on file with us. This is the right link for update account page. After you verify your information, your account shall be returned to good standing and you will continue to have full use of your account. Please note that if you don't verify your ownership of account in 2 x 24 hours we will block/ susspend your Gmail.

Thanks,
Gmail Administrator

...and in the message are links to click on...links that will allegedly verify your account and allow you to keep it. But of course, this is a scam. For one thing, the links go to a web address located in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory. I don't think Google has any offices there.

We all get these but what got me was that this isn't even a good try. Look at the stilted language. Look at the spelling errors. "Acces?" "Susspend?" Most people don't check their e-mail addresses every day so Google is not going to shut anyone down for not responding within 48 hours. For that matter, I don't recall giving GMail much information when I signed up for the account. What are they trying to verify? I'm guessing some sort of banking data will be requested.

It's really a lousy, obvious fake. Bet it catches a lot of people.

• Posted at 12:08 AM · LINK