Secrets of the 2008 Campaign -- Newsweek

Newsweek has reporters in each campaign team. They get more access to see and hear than the rest of the press corps, on condition they do not reveal anything until after the election.

Sample: The debates unnerved both [Obama and McCain]. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when [NBC anchor] Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

"The Clinton campaign blew through cash: fancy hotels like the Bellagio in Las Vegas and the Four Seasons everywhere; thousands of dollars on flowers and valet parking; and one memorable $100,000 grocery bill at a Des Moines supermarket. Hillary never spent a night in a motel in rural Iowa if she could possibly avoid it. She preferred to overnight in the Presidential Suite in the Des Moines Embassy Suites and to fly alone in private jets, without the press or staff."

Spoof Times

Thousands of copies of an elaborate hoax edition of the New York Times were handed out free around the city this morning by volunteers for the Yes Men, a lefty pressure group. See above; the main story of the fake edition dated sometime in 2009 was the ending of the Iraq War. (Didn't it end when the moron-in-chief Bush arrived on that aircraft carrier deck with the "Mission Accomplished" banner?) Apparently the fake edition ran to 14 pages of utopian news and took six months to plan and execute -- AND must have cost a fortune!

The Trillion Dollar War

Latest news from the world's oldest Irish newspaper

The Southern Cross, the world's oldest continuously published Irish newspaper for overseas Irish, comes out monthly from Buenos Aires (yes, Argentina), as it has done since 1875. There has been an Irish community in Argentina since the early 19th century.

Obama suggests Nancy Reagan unhinged

At his first full-length press conference yesterday, a tired-looking President-Elect Obama dealt with a range of urgent issues and took questions from the press. [Note: Obama has already launched Change.gov to keep everyone up-to-date with his whirlwind of activities].

He also talked briefly about what kind of dog his two daughters might want when they move to Washington, D.C. And when asked if he had been in touch with past Presidents, he said yes, all of them -- then he clarified himself by saying "the living Presidents," and then joked that he: "didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any séances."

Which was kind of amusing. But later he issued an apology saying he meant former First Lady Nancy Reagan no disrespect.

[Above, an election night shot of Barack and Michelle, from the Flickr pool].

Spare a Dime for a Cat with a Lobster

Early casualty of the economic ill-wind: the art world. Two friends who work as art dealers/buyers/collectors both said more or less the same thing in the last week: their business has almost entirely vanished. Most nobody has money for art when money is tight...

Walk / Don't Walk

Pedestrian Sign from TopLeftPixel.