What Could It Be?

The suspense is literally eating away at me this very second: a "lost" Beatles song from over 40 years might soon be released to the public:

"Carnival of Light" -- a 14-minute experimental track recorded at the height of the Beatles' musical experimentations with psychedelia and inspired by avant-garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen -- has long been considered too adventurous for mainstream audiences.

In an interview for BBC radio, McCartney said his bandmates and their producer George Martin had vetoed its inclusion on the exhaustive 1990s "Anthology" collection, according to UK's The Observer newspaper.

McCartney confirmed he still owned the master tapes, adding that he suspected "the time has come for it to get its moment," The Observer reported. "I like it because it's the Beatles free, going off piste," McCartney said.

This would be AMAZING. The great thing about the Beatles is that, no matter how many times you listen to them, they still have the potential to sound fresh, modern and innovative. They are one-of-a-kind in that regard.

Plus, I'm always a sucker for new or tastefully re-imagined Beatles songs (i.e. the entire soundtrack to Love, the Cirque du Soleil concert), and this would certainly fit the bill. The Beatles "free, going off piste?" Sign me up.

The Last Week of the Campaign

In two minutes, courtesy of Slate:

Vote for Facebook

Much has been made of the fact that the Obama campaign had a kick-ass web presence, as well as possibly the best marketing strategy in the history of political campaigns. But check this out:

A student at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire ran for Country Treasurer and rode the Obama wave to victory using $50 in Facebook ads targeting students at Dartmouth and nearby Plymouth State University. She won by just 586 votes.

Incredible! The girl who won is 20 years old and beat an opponent 48 years her senior. Read more of this story here.

They Met

Obama and Hillary did indeed meet yesterday in Chicago to talk about a role in his administration:

The meeting took place at Obama's transition offices in the mid-afternoon.

It did not appear on the schedule that's distributed to Clinton staff and handlers.

One knowledgeable source said that the meeting was "not an interview." The source would not elaborate.

Interesting. Keep in mind that the Obama transition has already told us not to expect any Cabinet appointments before Thanksgiving. I for one was disappointed by that, as I guess I'm just so desperate for news tidbits and information now that the campaign is over.

Hillary being named to the Cabinet, though, would be the topic du jour of several news cycles, and would certainly satisfy the media's craving for something new.

I'll tell ya one thing: it would probably push that bespectacled governor from Alaska out of the spotlight for a little while.

Scenes From "The West Wing"

"You got a best friend?"

"Yes sir."

"Is he smarter than you?"

"Yes sir."

"Would you trust him with your life?"

"Yes sir."

"That's your Chief of Staff."

After all these years, and countless viewings, that exchange still brings tears to my eyes. God, I love this show.

Gold Star Winner: November 13, 2008

Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
Former Speaker of the House

Here's the former Congressman in an interview with Politico:

"The Republican Party right now is like a mid-size college team trying to play in the Super Bowl. It is pretty hard to say our losses were because of John McCain’s campaign. McCain performed way above plausibility compared to where the Republican president was in the polls. We have to look honestly at what went wrong.”

He may not have a perfect record (far from it), but Newt scores a touchdown with that political analysis. Way to go, Mr. Gingrich, and congratulations.

Man, we've got a little Republican Gold Star streak going on here at The 'Festo, don't we?

Don't Buy Those Hillary Exit Polls

There are some exit polls circulating that show that if Hillary Clinton had been the Democratic presidential nominee, she would have (gasp!) beaten John McCain by even more than Barack Obama did!

My advice? Don't buy it. Nate Silver, who is WAY smarter than I or anyone else could hope to be when it comes to these matters, has this to say:

If America had woken up last Tuesday morning and magically found Hillary Clinton's name on the ballot in lieu of Barack Obama, might she have won by 11 points? Perhaps. She certainly proved herself to be an exceptionally compelling candidate, even if her execution and staffing decisions were sometimes wanting.

But what would Clinton's numbers have looked like if she had actually endured ... you know ... a campaign?

Would she have handled the financial crisis with as much aplomb as Obama did? Probably. Would she have been so capable and reassuring in the debates? Almost certainly. Would she have had an easier time resonating with working class voters in places like Missouri and West Virginia? Yes.

But would she have managed the media as deftly as Obama did? Perhaps not. Would Republican attacks on Bill Clinton and Kazakhstan been as counterproductive to their cause as their effort to link Barack Obama and Bill Ayers? Maybe -- or maybe not. Would she have matched Obama's field organization and raised as much money? Doubtful.

Would her campaign have had the same steely confidence as Obama's did after the Republican convention bounce? Unlikely. Would she have delivered as strong a speech as Mr. Obama did in Denver? Iffy. Would she have catalyzed near-universal turnout in the black community? No.

These kinds of hypotheticals are ridiculous, and should not be taken seriously. Later on in his post (which I would have included here but didn't for the sake of space), Silver also mentions the most obvious thing that would have been different had Hillary been the nominee: there would have been no Sarah Palin. It is almost unfathomable that John McCain would have picked Palin as his running mate had the Democratic ticket been headed by another woman who also happened to be much smarter and much more qualified to run for national office.

Furthermore, I think that the contrast between Obama and McCain was one that worked heavily in the Democrats' favor. Obama, with his name, background and relative greenness to Washington, was a convincing agent of change and had great appeal to independents. He was the first Democrat to win independents in a generation.

Even if she had been the nominee, and even if she had won anyway, I would bet you a lot of money that there is no way in hell that Hillary Clinton would have won independents, and certainly not any significant number of Republicans. Hillary Clinton is very popular with two groups of people: women and Democrats, who are, by and large, one and the same (meaning the majority of women are Democrats, and the majority of Democrats are women).

Could Hillary have won? Probably, though no one can say for sure. Is it a certainty that she would have beaten McCain by more than Obama did? Not at all, and I dare say it's more likely that the election would have been a squeaker.

Flop of the Year Alert

I've been saying for weeks, and will say again here, that I have the distinct feeling that Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia is going to be a massive flop. And now, just a few days before its premiere in... Australia... the film isn't even finished yet:

Luhrmann renewed the debate over exactly how unfinished the film is on the LAT's The Envelope blog, revealing that at the end of the "emotional cinematic banquet" there will be a death of some kind, even if he's not quite sure yet who buys it. Meanwhile, Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman tried to dismiss the controversy over the $130 million dollar film's "six endings." This barely counts as optimism when it comes to the film's still-ongoing editing process. Since they are shutting down a street in Sydney for the premiere, should the local authorities prepare for a riot or can Luhrmann deliver in time?

Seriously, though: apart from Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, when is the last time Nicole Kidman was in a hit movie? To Die For?

Rachel Maddow is My Girlfriend

Although that would be so impossible, on SO many levels...

Why Sarah Palin Still Haunts Them, Too

The aforementioned Andrew Sullivan:

Let's be real in a way the national media seems incapable of: this person should never have been placed on a national ticket in a mature democracy. She was incapable of running a town in Alaska competently. The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months - and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish - is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the two-term presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural "identity". Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again. And we have to find a way to prevent this from recurring.

And from later in his post:

Her candidacy, in short, was indefensible. It remains indefensible. Until the mainstream media, the GOP establishment, and the conservative intelligentsia acknowledge the depth of their error, this blog will keep demanding basic accountability.

And here's Kevin Drum's take:

Despite all the grief she's gotten, I continue to think that the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate represents the breaking of a consensual cultural barrier far more fundamental than most people realize. It's not just that she was inexperienced (Spiro Agnew and John Edwards weren't much more experienced than Palin when they ran for VP) but that she was — obviously, transparently, completely — uninterested in and uninformed about national policy at nearly every level. We've simply never seen someone so completely unmoored from the normal requirements of national office before. She was chosen purely at the level of celebrity, and an awful lot of people seemed to be just fine with that.