Tuesday, August 15, 2006

All the blog fit to print

You're kidding, right?

May 2007 will bring a heckload of money into the box office.
Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Ambassador Dennis Ross will be speaking at a Louisville fundraiser for Ken Lucas on September 6th. I think the cost is $250.

The Steak Fry in Iowa is just around the corner. Obama is Tom Harkin's guest.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has started his re-election bid by starting to raise money online for his re-election in 2008.

Say what?!? Natalie Portman is set to play a hooker in Johnny Postal! The film also has Blondie's lead singer Deborah Harry in the cast.

This NY Times article is worth the read. Check out Evan Bayh's hair while your at it!
At 50, Mr. Bayh has already served two terms as governor of Indiana and is in his second term as senator. He is clearly proud of his ability to run — and win — in a conservative, Midwestern state, an important part of the political rationale for his potential presidential candidacy. (He has said he will make a decision by the end of this year.)

While Birch Bayh was known as a classic “Great Society liberal,” as Evan Bayh has put it, and as a champion of causes like the equal rights amendment, the son has long been a careful centrist, a former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council and a founder of the Third Way, a centrist research group.

Visiting 22 states over the past year, he has argued that the way for Democrats to win is to reach out to the middle class, demonstrate credibility on national security and show respect for faith and values issues.

“The world has changed a lot” since his father’s day, Mr. Bayh said. “So it’s natural that how we solve our problems changes, too.” For example, he said, the importance of fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets has become increasingly apparent over the years. And from a political standpoint, Democrats have learned over and over since 1980 the power of an ideological campaign when waged against them.

Mr. Bayh was 24 when his father ran for re-election in 1980; he took a break from law school to be chairman of his campaign. It was clear, early on, that it would be a tough election: double-digit inflation, a hostage crisis, an embattled Democratic president at the top of the ticket, and the emergence of a tough new conservative organization known as the National Conservative Political Action Committee, or Ncpac.

Ncpac wanted not only to defeat a generation of liberals — Mr. Bayh, Mr. Culver, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, Senator Frank Church of Idaho and a handful of others — but also to “send a shiver down the spine of every other liberal senator and congressman,” as one official put it. They succeeded at both.

Afterward, “I came close to being turned off to politics,” Evan Bayh said. “I love my father and I believe in him. And he lost to Dan Quayle. I had a hard time understanding how that could happen.”

But Mr. Bayh said he ultimately came to see the loss as “an occupational hazard.” He added: “Every once in a while, an election comes along and who you are and what you believe gets subsumed in a larger tide. It just happens.”

People wanted change in 1980, he said. “And I think people want a change now,” he added.

But do Democrats want, in 2008, the practical centrism that Mr. Bayh offers? Or are they hungry, once again, for an unapologetic liberalism to match the conservatism on the right?

Mr. Bayh replied that Democrats who “believe we can stay true to our progressive heritage and implement it in practical ways” and who are keenly aware that “the Republicans are trying to pigeonhole us” will eventually “make their voices heard.”

The elder Mr. Bayh, now a 78-year-old lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, said the differences between his politics and those of his son tended to be exaggerated. But in general, said Mr. Bayh, who ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1976, “I try to remain at arm’s length; he’s the candidate, not old dad.”
I gotta go to get a hair cut, which is kinda sad given that at the young age of 21, I'm starting to lose hair--which is not fun given that if your grandparents were not bald, then you are not supposed to be bald.

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