Wanted to answer your Chuck Todd question separately.

I saw it, but was only kinda paying attention (burnt after roadtrip). My initial thoughts, fuzzy though they may be:

What a score, first interview with POTUS! Nice job, whoever booked him...

Starting the show with a roundtable was a bit much, I thought. Let Todd have some solo screen time!

Joe Scarborough? Meh.

I liked Todd's interview, for the most part. Intelligent questions, especially the one about "we have given the Saudis trillions in military aid over the years, shouldn't we expect them to fight in their region occasionally?" A question I hadn't exactly thought of before, but a damn fine point to make, I thought.

Wasn't too impressed (again, I was only half-paying attention, so this might not be fair) with Todd's followup questions, but it was his first interview (and a BIG one) so he might have been a bit nervous. We'll see how he does once he settles down in a few weeks.

So, an incomplete set of reactions, at best. Give me a chance to really pay attention to a MTP show, and I'll give you a better response, how's that? The fault is mine, for not watching it more closely, in other words.

-CW

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19851221&id=FxwhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jWIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3845,2377789

Any idea why it's happening???

Michale

Well, there are a few better touristy things to see in LA (one or two at least) but I was saving the good parts to see with the wife...

:-)

Michale [3] -

I've been to Sedona, must have driven right by it. If I had known it was special, I would have stopped and snapped a photo!

The first MickeyD's I noticed which had been forced by local building codes to "blend in" was this one, in Half Moon Bay, CA. (If that link doesn't work exactly right, look at picture #4)

John From Censornati -

I remember my Dad taking me to one of the original "golden arches through the roof" McD's when I was a kid (early 1970s), but I forget where it was -- maybe Ohio, maybe Indiana?

I read the wiki page, and it seems the corporation forced them all to upgrade so they're almost all gone now. The #3 one in Downey wasn't actually a corporate McDonald's franchise, they were an original McDonald franchise (pre-Kroc), so they were never subject to the corporate rules, which is how they were allowed to stay as they were.

Yes, I did eat lunch. They have a sign over the order window which points out what things cost in the 1950s (hamburger 15 cents) and what they cost now, and how much (percent) they've gone up. I forgot to take a photo of the sign, but it was pretty cool.

This is the only fast food restaurant ever invited to be on the National Historic Register, but they turned it down because it would have meant too many red tape hassles if they ever wanted to make any changes to the site.

Fun fact: the land is actually owned by the three Pep Boys, and there was indeed a Pep Boys in the same parking area.

:-)

Hey, it's kitschy history, but then hey, it's California, what do you expect?

akadjain -

Yep, it was indeed pretty cool! The back of my head is now part of TV history! Heh.

nypoet22 -

Fixed, and sorry. To others: please post a comment like this if the autofilter eats your comments, as it means I will fix the problem faster. Just FYI...

-CW

perhaps unlike baker, i strongly disagree with aaron miller's assertion that america doesn't want or need a great president. the people in general, and especially those people in the lower 99 percent of income brackets, both want and need the greatest of presidents. in my view, the reason we don't get one is because our ability to elect the executives and legislators we want and need, perhaps even moreso than during the gilded age, is hopelessly corrupted under the influence of large amounts of money.

JL

The scope and depth of this President's misguided view of the world is honestly and truly breathtaking..

I have said it before and this is just another manifestation of it..

He operates as if the world is what he WANTS it to be not as the world really is...

Michale

By that, I mean do you think the purely crass political maneuver helped or Hurt Democrats in the upcoming mid-terms??

Let's face it, people. Obama is in WAY over his head...

TS,

I haven't run Nate's latest odds table through my q 'n' d model, 538 has changed format, making the tabulation much slower for me. Kansas didn't affect my overall calculus, but Kansas looks close enough to be a weak spot in Republican hopes.

Perhaps.. But the Left has pretty much resigned itself to the fact that the GOP is going to own Congress..

What's your take on Obama punting Illegal Immigrant Amnesty???

Michale

I'd say the polling consensus has shifted over the summer a bit from "slight advantage" Republicans towards "advantage" Republicans" at roughly 60:40.

My own quick 'n' dirty approach calls it 55:45,using the NYT odds table, NYT says 61:39.

I haven't run Nate's latest odds table through my q 'n' d model, 538 has changed format, making the tabulation much slower for me. Kansas didn't affect my overall calculus, but Kansas looks close enough to be a weak spot in Republican hopes.

WAPO is still an outlier, but it's flipped recently from an 80% chance of Republican takeover to a mere 52%. More emphasis on "fundamentals."

The "Prognosticator Cloud" seems to feel polling data is a bit more unreliable this cycle than last and is putting more weight in those "fundamentals" = historical trends and/or wishful thinking/guessing.

What did you think about Chuck Todd's debut on MTP??

Michale

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/polls-show-path-of-least-resistance-to-gop-majority/

:D

Michale

That sounds like you ate there. Between the HOV lane and McDonald's, you were living dangerously on vacation.

There were six kids in my family and my father worked two jobs, so there wasn't a lot of money for eating out. It was a big deal when we would go to the McDonald's in Beaver Falls (about 10-15 miles away) for dinner. It was the closest one. One with no indoor seating. Now fast food is everywhere and people who can't afford to eat out do so anyway.

The bane of my existence.. :D

Michale

Sounds like a fun week. :D

Speaking of McDonalds...

Where is the only McDonalds that doesn't have Golden Arches???

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/6241

Sedona, AZ Home of the Teal Arches... :D

Michale

I know of small towns and villages in southern Ontario that are more exciting than that!

I was in LA once, just passing through on my way to Hawai'i. I'm very pleased to know that I didn't miss anything. Heh.

I spent last week on vacation, which included being on vacation from all things political. Which is why I am writing this as a comment, because there was simply no way to justify it as a column. My blog has seldom been a "here's what I've been doing" sort of blog, so this'll have to do.

My wife had an off-site three-day organizational meeting in Irvine, which is a suburb in Orange County, down in Southern California (to set the scene, I thought the hotel was hosting some sort of Republican convention, but it turned out to just be a bridge tournament -- which pretty much sums up Orange County). Being a Northern Californian means dismissing all of the greater Los Angeles area as "La-La Land," of course, and I have to admit I've never really done any touristy things in L.A. before last week. I've only ever been to Southern California three times previously, and I never stopped to sightsee, so this was the first time I have ever done so. At the same time, my wife was busy all day so I limited my sightseeing to things she wouldn't have really been interested in anyway (I would still like to see the La Brea Tar Pits, for instance, but I'd want her to be able to be with me).

Before I get to my two mini-adventures, a word about the Los Angeles freeways. Actually, two words: terrifyingly stupendous. That about sums it up. The freeways in L.A. are awesome, in the literal sense of the word. They inspire awe (or at least they did in me). Driving freeways elsewhere (even elsewhere in California) is only a precursor to the L.A. freeway experience. Pretty much anywhere you want to travel in the entire megalopolis of L.A. is reachable by freeway -- often, by two or three different routes. All the freeways (or at least the ones I traveled) dwarf other American freeways. Four lanes of traffic heading in the same direction is simply not enough. Why not have five, six, seven, even eight lanes?

Driving such enormous roads is a bit terrifying, especially when you move all the way over to the carpool lane (the "HOV lane," for you East-Coasters) -- because most of them have been squeezed in by eliminating the breakdown lane or shoulder. This leaves you traveling at high speeds right next to a retaining wall -- which, as I said, can be pretty terrifying. But I have to say, I didn't experience a whole lot of traffic jams -- in most of the freeway driving I did it was possible to move at the speed limit (or above, should you so choose). In any case, if you've never been to L.A., then you haven't really had the full freeway experience -- I'll leave it at that.

Driving adventures aside, I spent my first vacation day doing a quintessential Los Angeles touristy activity -- I attended the taping of a television show. If you saw last Wednesday's Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, and if you knew exactly where to look in the split second crowd pan shot, it is possible to positively identify the back of my head. The friend I went with (who is temporarily stationed down in Southern California) is more visible, as you can see the side of his face. Television immortality!

I went to see Craig Ferguson because he won't be around for much longer -- he loses his hosting position in December. As I've stated many times on this blog, I love Ferguson's humor and think it's a shame he won't be on the airwaves next year. Because his taping schedule and my vacation schedule overlapped, I had to go and be part of his show before it ends. The show was funny, and you can likely find a video of it online by searching for "Craig Ferguson sex turtle show." No, seriously!

The second touristy thing I did will likely make some of you laugh, since what passes for "history" in Los Angeles is indeed somewhat of a joke -- I drove 45 minutes on the freeways to go to a McDonald's. In Downey, California. I did this not because there is a shortage of McDonald's restaurants elsewhere in the area, but because the Downey McDonald's is the oldest one that is still in business. It is the third McDonald's ever built (they've since torn down numbers one and two), and it existed even before Ray Kroc bought the chain and invented international fast-food branding as an industry. For those of you who are old enough to remember, it is a "golden arches" hamburger stand, with no indoor seating at all. You go up to the window and order, and then you sit at a table out front. Here's the Wikipedia entry if you don't know what I'm referring to.

I fully admit this was a cheesy (pun intended) and kitschy thing to do, but I only had a couple hours to kill that day, and it seemed like a perfect way to fill the time (it was around lunchtime anyway...). So now I can say "been there, done that, bought an awesome T-shirt."

That's pretty much it for my L.A. adventures. I had some meaningless fun for a few days, that's about all you can say. Now you can see why this didn't rise to the level of me posting it as a column, can't you?

-CW