Philadelphia broke its 25-year drought without a sports championship tonight when the Phillies won game five of the World Series by a 4-3 score. The streets immediately filled with ecstatic fans. The rest of the metro area must have decided to email their grandmas because the Intertubes are running so slow you’d think Ted Stevens had gotten his Hulk-Tie stuck in them again.
It’s pretty much impossible for me to surf the net and it’s taking a very long time to load the BooTrib homepage.
I watched Obama’s infomercial and I thought it was pretty good. I certainly don’t think it will hurt. What did you think?
I’ve rooted for the Phillies since I was old enough to follow baseball. I’m in a state of disbelief. Like a true Philadelphia fan and a life long Democrat I always expect the worst and hope for the best. Saw the best beat the Rays tonight. Wish I was in Philly. Then again its pretty comfortable on my couch.
Obama reassured the nation that he is the best choice for the presidency. I think the infomercial was designed to quell the fears of undecided voters. It was probably effective. The McCain-Palin caricature really looks ridiculous when confronted by the real Barak Obama.
Here’s what I think of the Phillies win.
Couldn’t agree more. It couldn’t happen to a more classless fanbase.
Is Philly’s # asset.
I don’t care about baseball. It is boring.
I’m just glad the Red Sox weren’t involved this year.
I didn’t watch the infomercial, but I was listening to our biggest talk radio station (the largest in the country, actually), and the host was waxing so absurdly ecstatic, talking about crying when he saw him and then he called a friend, and his friend and he started crying over the memory of it all, and all that rot, and I had to turn it off. Really, come on! He is a politician, and it was a 30 minute political ad, not the second coming of Christ, or the Mehdi appearing!
But I did see him on Jon Stewart’s show tonight, and he does have a great smile, and a good personality, and an easy sense of humour. I find him a very likable person. I also like the fact that he has an intellect, that he has exercised it, and he uses it, and he thinks. So, he has a lot of good qualities indeed, and between him and McCain/Palin there is no contest. I just wish he had a better understanding and better advisers when it comes to foreign policy, and it concerns me greatly that he thinks he needs an even bigger military than this country has now. What is needed is not MORE military, but more intelligent use of the military the country has.
and full of American flags and soothing music.
It was an embarrassment.
This guy better have more in his kit than a good video production team – we have major problems that require honest, courageous leadership.
Have you been listening or paying any attention these past 21 months or did you just wake up from a long, deep sleep?
Show me where Obama has recognized the need for endurance of hardship and sacrifice from the American people in the months and years ahead.
October 28, 2008 in Chester Pa.
October 25, 2008 in Reno, Nevada
October 23, 2008 in Indianapolis
Hell, his whole campaign theme has been predicated on sharing a common purpose and shared sacrifice. I just don’t see where you get this idea he has painted some picture for the American people that everything will be easy and free of sacrifice. Do you think anyone in their right mind, after living through the last eight years of Republican hell, would expect the solutions to the Bush disaster to be easy and pain free?
and for the money he paid, it HAD to be slick and polished.
Seriously, what an INANE and IDIOTIC comment. Slickness mean, essentially, that he presented well. Of all Obama’s strengths, his main one is that he picks his supporters well. And he did a great job with this AD.
THat’s what it was, for the ignoramusi among us – an AD. Ads are slick, polished, and make pitches at the gut, not the head.
If any intelligent person learns anything since 1980, it is that politics is not played in the head, it is played in the gut. And that is where this ad was pitched.
I thought the ad was pretty good.
It was a very well-done ad — and ad is the operative word here. Of course I, like most people here, would have liked more substance, but it was an ad. If any of the undecided and wavering saw it, it might have won a few extra votes. It was a nice summing up of the more obvious pitches.
I haven’t watched the windbags since the ad. Did it succeed in getting all the yakkers focused on Obama and yet again ignoring McCain? If so it served its purpose well.
recognize that the way politics has been done since 1980 needs to be changed.
Isn’t Obama about “change”?
Ed J,
What did you find embarrassing..how about inarticulate McCain?
sadly, there’s no hope for you. What principes do you live by?
It was the most important part in the Sales Pitch….the closer
In life we’re all salespersons or we’d better be…whether you’re a professional or jill/joe-the-builder…. We’ve to sell ourselves everyday, to our spouses, our children, our colleagues.
Imo, Steve Benen WaMo has a good summary:
Know Hope
Obama won’t be perfect, But he’ll be an exceptional president.
All he needs to be is an adequate president. After the last eight years that would be a welcome change.
the challenges ahead requires more than an ‘adequate’ president. That’s a descriptive best suited for Bush. He was adequate….and re-elected.
I disagree that he was adequate.
Does his total unfitness for the White House somehow add to Obama’s qualifications?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
FIRST LADY MICHELE OBAMA
Just repeat 10-20 times daily, for the good of your future happiness.
In the next four years, people like you are going to be profoundly unhappy.
Too bad.
that I’m a McCain supporter? A criticism of your guy is not advocacy of his opponent.
Criticize Obama is support for McCain. I don’t care if you like it or not, that’s the way it works.
That’s nonsense. I can’t abide Obama’s ideas about foreign policy as pertains to the Middle East and South Asia, and that combined with his plans to expand the military and increase the military budget is completely unacceptable to me. I do not feel compelled to remain silent about that, nor should I.
I will be voting against McCain next week.
That’s a very silly comment. The purpose of the infomercial was to help him win the election, not solve the country’s problems. It was a 30 minute campaign ad, not a policy meeting.
Sheeeeeesh!
A campaign is not a BS session. A campaign is “The selling of the President”. It does not involve making syllogisms or arguments that are logical. There is NOTHING in a campaign which involves logic. It all occurs below the belt, in the gut.
If you haven’t figgered that out yet, you should not be following politics. It all will seem like people speaking Aramaic.
Huh?! How was that unpleasant rant even remotely a response to my comment, please? I said it was an AD the purpose of which was to sell people on voting for Obama, and from what I have heard it was well designed and produced to do just that. So, what’s you’re problem?
And by the way, how much Aramaic do you know? Have you ever even heard it? Have you ever spoken it? I have.
I did not disagree. I guess if I said “I agree” at the start, my point of supporting your comments would have been clearer.
We agree.
Yeah, it didn’t sound like you were supporting what I said at all. Thanks for clarifying.
The comment you refer to — which echoes others that seem to be ricocheting around the Tubes — finally nails down exactly what is meant by the Dem/liberal cirular firing squad. How many years/decades have we all been bitching our asses off about how Dems have all the marketing ability of a puddle of puke, how the likes of Gore and Kerry couldn’t sell a chubby puppy to a hungry mountain lion.
So we finally get a master politician on our side and what do we hear? His stuff is just slick and polished, dammit to hell. I’m starting to think anybody that deigns to run on our side is either an ascended saint or hasn’t been paying attention. The ad was indeed slick and polished. When’s the last time you could say that about any segment of any Dem presidential candidate’s campaign? So let’s all complain about it.
Admittedly, I do not at all like the fact that political campaigns are really little more than marketing campaigns designed by well-paid P.R. experts, but that’s how it is. However, it is just plain silly to criticize something for doing a good job of what it was intended and designed to do.
A man you believe has principles has 30 minutes of prime-time TV to do with as he pleases and you don’t think he should use that to propose solutions to the country’s problems?
Absolutely not. He should use it to do what he needs to do to win the election. Period. That’s how the system works here whether you like it or I like it or not.
Obama’s ad was a good one. He included bits from his best speeches, which made the presentation lively and relevent. The interviews with “regular people” were exceptional, too. When he was talking with older people about losing their pensions, it was very emotional. I’ve seen my parent’s panic over the losses of their retirement funds; it really hit a nerve with me.
This was not a typical “speech” promotion piece. It showed Obama interacting with people, laying out his economic plans, and it reached out to answer questions people might still have (if that’s possible at this stage of the game) about what he represents.
I liked it.
He out-Reaganed Reagan. I kept waiting for the “It’s morning in America…..” If you’re cynical, like me, it didn’t work, but I know the people he’s targeting with this aren’t cynical, and wanted the schmaltz.
He provided hope and an optomistic view of the future. The “shining city on the hill” is somewhat vaselinesque, to be sure, but is what people want.
Who wants a view of the future which is “we are all doomed?” That’s a loser, folks. Obama provides hope, and the candidate of hope is usually the winner. Of course, if you are ahead, you can run on hope. If you are behind, you can’t, so it is somewhat of a self-fulfilling statement about hope and winning.
Except Reagan was total bullshit, all package no candy bar. Obama also uses the rhetoric of hope but backs it up with a worldview that makes it reasonable to have some hope for his administration. Reagan just babbled nonsense when he wasn’t reading his script. Big difference.
I have never understood how Reagan got the label of “The Great Communicator”. He didn’t seem to communicate all that well to me.