August 2008
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Blog-Parents

RaptorMagic

Orcinus

Blog-Brothers

Callimachus
(Done with Mirrors)

Gelmo
(Statistical blah blah blah)

Other Blogs I Read
Regularly Often

Athletics Nation

Andrew Sullivan
(Daily Dish)

Kevin Drum
(Political Animal)

Hilzoy
(Obsidian Wings)

 Sunday, August 24, 2008
Biden

Yes, I heard about the running-mate pick. I didn't sign up for the nifty we-promise-to-tell-you-the-minute-it-is-announced message, but I'm on the regular mailing list for the Obama campaign, so I got an email yesterday morning. (And I got the usual, almost-daily, "send us money" email yesterday afternoon.) If it weren't for the email, I might well have lasted the entire day without hearing about it. I haven't been visiting political blogs much lately, and I never read, watch, or listen to the news.

I have little to add to the various observations that are all over the Internet now. A lot of the commentary seems intelligent to me, in contrast to the months of increasingly speculative speculation. It seems that commentators are smarter when something actually happens than they are when they're just responding to each other's columns because they've got nothing better to talk about. Funny how that works. In my imaginary journalistic utopia, the first rule of journalism is if you don't have anything to say, don't say it.

In spite of that, my first comment on Biden is that I like his loquaciousness. Sometimes he's boring, but I enjoy that he'll talk and talk and share whatever thoughts are going through his head. Strategically, I don't know how good that is (and I'm sure the campaign team has planned accordingly), but it's something I've always liked about the guy.

My second comment is to play traffic cop. Of the many bloggy opinions about Biden I read yesterday, the one I found most interesting was this one at Democracy Arsenal, commenting on Biden's skill in selecting competent staff. That's a good quality.

My third is a thoroughly Benzenish observation, which you'll surely find nowhere else. This morning I happened to be thinking about how Biden and Obama both have five letters in their name, and both alternate vowels and consonants. Biden's follows the usual pattern with three consonants. Years ago I remember noticing that there were a lot of these among national politicians. I think there must have been more of them back then. Among today's crop only Hagel and Lugar come quickly to mind, though skimming the list of senators I see Boxer, Levin, and Wyden, too. The other pattern is less common, but the Senate does provide one more besides Obama: the palindromic Daniel Akaka. (The name looks like it could be Japanese, as so many Hawaiian politicians are, but in fact it is Hawaiian.)

This, combined with the fact that the first letter in Biden's name is the same as the second letter in Obama's, made me think that it would be pretty easy to come up with one of those 5-by-5 squares where each line and column is a word. It turned out to be a little harder than I expected, but a few hours later I came up with this:

O B A M A
B I D E N
A D U L T
M E L E E
A N T E D

Anted is what you did before each hand in that poker game. It could have been antes, but I hate ending a square with a plural. (Not that the past tense is much better.)

10:26:37 AM  [permalink]  comment []