I am the shotgun DJ

A while back the charming samantha2074 replaced the stereo in her car (the factory one had a button missing that was allegedly impossible to replace). By searching high and low, she was able to get one that not only took MP3 CDs, but also had an auxiliary input socket right on the front. (Car stereos with aux input on the front are harder to find than you might think; I suspect conspiracy. With car tape players you could at least use the cassette adapters... sometimes; they didn't work in the one I used to have for some reason.)

Today, on the way to Christmas shopping, we finally figured out how to manipulate the stereo's typically strange user interface to make use of the aux input, and I spun MP3s all the way to the mall. This could be fun and/or annoying on long trips. It worked a lot better than those crummy FM transmitters. But it may be too much power for one passenger to have; you don't want to go out of your way to annoy the person operating the vehicle.

How big?

In the course of an article about Democratic candidates' reaction to the capture of Saddam Hussein, Michael Kinsley says

It's a real mystery why politicians find it so hard to admit the obvious about the horse-race aspects of politics. No doubt it requires a dose of blind optimism to be a politician in the first place. [...] But there is also an annoying convention that you must pretend to a confidence you don't feel. Anyone who doesn't realize that this week's news has been a big boost for Bush's reelection is too stupid or blinded to be elected president.

First of all, of course this is no mystery; Kinsley's just having fun avoiding the obvious too. Karl Rove is right about one thing: lots of people vote in elections, intentionally or not, for the guy who they think is the probable winner. If you make it known that you think you're going to lose, you'll lose.

Second, early evidence is that it's a significant boost, but not a big one by the standards of these things: something like 6 or 7 percent in both job approval and reelect numbers. That's less than half the size of the boost Bush got from the beginning of the Iraq war (already evaporated) and about a fifth or sixth the size of the boost he got from the Sept. 11 attacks and the immediate aftermath (also evaporated, much more slowly). Crises and similar big events have transient effects on public opinion, and good news generally doesn't produce the largest boost for the sitting administration; breaking crises do.

Now, given that this is an unusual time right after the breaking news, things are pretty good for him at the moment. Bush's margin over all the Democratic candidates is, right now, at or near 60/40, which usually translates to a landslide win. If the capture of Saddam were an October surprise a week before the election, it alone would probably give Bush an insurmountable lock; but it isn't. As it is, it will help him over the long term if and only if he can parlay the capture into greater stability for Iraq and a good end for the ongoing war there. That remains to be seen.

You know what?

Screw the FM tuner. I want my MP3 player to get Internet radio. Also it should have eleven TVs like the Googel Maverick.