video I think, if you listened very closely, today's show was supposed family values hour on Glenn Beck. Alas, the value part was mostly lost in translation and what came out instead was some weird variation of the last five minutes of a Scooby Doo episode: "You meddling kids!" Except that in Beck's version, the "children of our future" may be secret Maoists or would be if they weren't so stupid. (more...)

It looks like on top of revealing all the dirty little secrets behind the lives of every candidate in the 2008 Presidential Election Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, the authors of Game Change, may be out to save the magazine industry. Following yesterday's excerpt in New York magazine (where Heileman is a columnist) which focused on the Edwardses (oof) comes today's Time.com (where Halperin is a editor-at-large) piece opining on the future of Sarah Palin. Interestingly the Time.com piece is not an excerpt from the book so much as a loosely pulled together extension of its Palin chapters. (more...)

The newest book about 2008's soon-to-be-legendary presidential campaign hits shelves today. WaPo reporter Anne Kornblut's Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win hits bookshelves today and some early excerpts (courtesy of Mike Allen) not only looks like the makings for a good read but suggest that the battle of the political sexes -- so prevalent during much of the campaign -- may be about to return as a major talking point. And well it should. (more...)

We are about to head into six weeks of non-stop, end-of-decade countdown and highlight lists. Newsweek got a head start on the competition with their much passed-around the decade in seven minutes, but that is no doubt just the tip of the iceberg of what's to come between now and December 31. Granted it's been a helluva a decade. Or, according to Time 'The Decade From Hell,' which is the moniker they've opted to give it. (more...)

It's not really a secret around here that I am a big fan of New York Times op-ed columnist and author Gail Collins. Collins, whose witty and sharp columns often add a measure of levity to the Times op-ed pages -- particularly during last year's sometimes fraught campaign season -- has brought those same talents to her two books on the history of women in America. Her first, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines covered the lives of women from the Mayflower through to the end of the 1950's (and in the telling made me increasing grateful I was late enough to miss most of it). And she has just followed up with When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey Of American Women From 1960 To The Present, which picks up exactly where she left off and details the lives of women over the last fifty years. (more...)

excerpt Add Drudge to the list of media outlets that has got its hands on Sarah Palin's Going Rogue. The top story on the site today links directly through an excerpt of the book, posted by Drudge, that details Palin's decision to do the now infamous Katie Couric interviews. Apparently Palin agreed to them because she felt sorry for Katie: (more...)

video Back in the spring of 2007, long before the world learned about Rielle Hunter, the candidacy defining revelation regarding Democratic presidential contender John Edwards was that he spent $400 on a haircut. Once revealed this little tidbit of information was quickly picked up in the media, and then blown up, so that in the months going forward Edwards had to battle his dogged pretty-boy image as much, or more. as he was explaining past controversial decisions made in the Senate. The haircut story was first broken by Ben Smith at the then only three-month-old blog Politico (perhaps an small early warning sign of scooping power they would develop down the line). Yesterday Smith revealed the source of haircut tip: wonder-boy Obama campaign adviser David Plouffe. Says Smith: (more...)

The other day Murray Chass, the former NYT sports reporter, penned a much picked-up piece about how the considerably small number of newspapers who had sent reporters to cover the World Series was a "startling barometer of how critical the health of the newspaper industry is in this country." Yes, the newspaper industry, as we are all far too familiar, is in critical health. And maybe people are less interested in baseball, for whatever reason ($10 hot chocolate at Yankee Stadium may have something to do with that). Or maybe the country has just discovered a new national pastime. Namely, politics. (more...)

Earlier today, Mediaite's Glynnis MacNicol reported on a new Rasmussen poll that indicates that while 44% of adults (although they never do get to how the children would vote) say they would vote to re-elect President Obama were the election held today, 49% say they would not. She correctly notes that the poll doesn't consider a hypothetical opponent, or other variables. (more...)

Imagine, if you will, that you happened to be one of the many people (many in 2004 numbers anyway) watching the 2004 Democratic Convention. You happen to catch then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama's roof-raising, career-making (to put it mildly!) speech and you decide, wow this is a guy going places. I should get a camera and follow him! Amy Rice does not need to imagine this scenario because this is exactly what happened to her. And instead of thinking I should get a camera and follow this guy, she actually did, for four years. (more...)

A year ago tomorrow the nation went to polls and elected Barack Hussein Obama the 44th President of the United States. It was a joyful occasion, celebrated the world over, and variously compared to New Years Eve, the Yankees winning the World Series, the opposite of 9/11, and the proper beginning of the 21st Century. The national political mood of Election Day 2009 would likely not be recognizable to the Obama-happy nation of 12 months ago. What a difference, etc. And yet, it's hard to believe it's only been 12 months! And a mere nine-and-a-half months of actual presidency. And truly it is only a slight exaggeration to say that in the interim it's been all Obama, all the time. With that in mind let's take a look back at the Barack Obama highlights (and some lowlights) of the last year. (more...)

So yes. As the saying goes, what a difference a year makes. Twelve months after the momentous election of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president, a poll shows that were the election to be held today Obama might not be so successful. (more...)

Sarah Palin's public will have to wait a few more weeks to discover what the former Governor of Alaska has to say about all things Palin, but in the meantime perhaps they can feast upon a few interesting details from David Plouffe's new book The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory. (more...)

This is going to be good. One of the biggest disappointments of last year's historic election was Oprah opting out of any political interviews because she was a self-declared Barack Obama supporter, the lack of her clout was particularly felt when it came to a public vetting of Sarah Palin. (more...)

The most disappointing aspect of the news that Sarah Palin is titling her new memoir Going Rogue is that neither this website (nor any other that I know about including, sadly, The Onion) thought to hold some sort of advance poll to guess the title since I bet 'going rogue' would have been a top contender. It sounds like something from a David Letterman Top Ten List. (more...)

Late last year, at the end of the most historic election in the nation's history, and certainly the most covered, there was much speculation as to what websites would survive beyond the end of the traffic-driving election narrative, and which would fall away. (more...)