The Republican Presidential field has descended on New Hampshire en masse this weekend for the Republican Leadership Summit in Nashua. How’d Friday go?
(Bloomberg – With All Due Respect)
The Washington Post ponders 11 other ways Rick Perry could have answered the “are you smart enough to be President” question.
Saturday will see speeches from Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal, among others.
New Hampshire Public Radio‘s live blog is here.
Former Arkansas Gov Mike Huckabee – who in the 2008 GOP contest won the party’s Iowa caucus and six other states, mostly in the south – told Fox News that he would make an announcement on May 5th about whether he will be getting in the race this time around.
Once the Republicans leave town, Hillary Clinton heads to the first in the nation primary state, with a low-key “conversational” approach to campaigning similar to this week in Iowa on deck for Monday and Tuesday.
Jonathan Chait writes an interesting piece at New York magazine on how ‘negative partisanship’ has transformed American politics. He says:
The splitting of American politics into two coherent ideological parties with very little programmatic overlap changes things. Voters who are fundamentally attached to one party or the other are not going to abandon their team merely because their party has held onto office for too many terms, or because the other party’s president is presiding over a nice recovery. Those factors are not meaningless because some swing voters do still exist. And performance can change voter perceptions to a degree; a deep recession might make some Democrats doubt their party’s economic program. But these temporal effects are muted.
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* WORLD * With Greece’s main creditors reportedly looking for a way to prevent the country dropping out of the Euro, Der Spiegel reports that the country could be set for a €5bn lifeline by way of a gas pipeline deal with Russia.
The Telegraph translates the Spiegel story, saying: “A deal between Russia and Greece is expected to be signed on Tuesday, the magazine added, with the payment an advance on future profits from transit fees. The pipeline is due to be up and running in 2019.”
The G20, meeting in Washington was optimistic over global growth prospects, but the situation in Greece was clearly playing on the minds of participants. Reuters reports:
Greece was not mentioned by name in the communique and Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, speaking on behalf of the G20, said the issue of Greece did not feature in the formal discussions.
But uncertainty over whether Athens could reach agreement with its European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders over new bailout terms in time to meet big upcoming debt payments cast a cloud over the gathering and other talks on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank spring meetings.
Meanwhile, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras tweets:
https://twitter.com/tsipras_eu/status/589122208854888448
As the jury in the Boston marathon bombing trial prepares to reconvene for the penalty phase on Tuesday, the parents of the attack’s youngest victim have written in the Boston Globe appealing for the death penalty to be taken off the table of sentencing options.
We understand all too well the heinousness and brutality of the crimes committed. We were there. We lived it. The defendant murdered our 8-year-old son, maimed our 7-year-old daughter, and stole part of our soul. We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty, but the continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives. We hope our two remaining children do not have to grow up with the lingering, painful reminder of what the defendant took from them, which years of appeals would undoubtedly bring.
For us, the story of Marathon Monday 2013 should not be defined by the actions or beliefs of the defendant, but by the resiliency of the human spirit and the rallying cries of this great city. We can never replace what was taken from us, but we can continue to get up every morning and fight another day. As long as the defendant is in the spotlight, we have no choice but to live a story told on his terms, not ours. The minute the defendant fades from our newspapers and TV screens is the minute we begin the process of rebuilding our lives and our family.
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* BRITISH ELECTION * Former Obama strategist David Axelrod, now advising Labour leader Ed Miliband, tells The Guardian that the Conservatives are “overconfident” and “increasingly panic-stricken” and have underestimated their opponents.
[Axelrod] argued that the Tory attempt to character-assassinate Miliband had been an error, referring particularly to the way in which the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, had claimed anyone prepared to “stab his brother in the back” to gain the Labour leadership was prepared to stab the nation’s security in the back.
“Plainly that backfired because they got off of it pretty quickly. People are worried about their own family, they are not worried about Ed’s family. They worry about whether their kids are going to make it in the future. They want to hear some solid ideas. All of this other stuff appears like a sideshow and they notice it is a sideshow. It appears desperate and it was desperate.”
As if to reinforce the idea that the Tories’ line of personal attack had fallen flat, The Economist writes on ‘The Limits to Ridicule’, saying:
A Tory backbencher reflects on Ed Miliband. “The moment I found out we were in trouble was when I walked into a pub full of UKIP supporters and heard a bloke at the bar say: “So how did that muppet shag all those birds?”
This is quite, quite brilliant:
The deadline for registering to vote in the election is Monday, April 20th.
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* BUSINESS * Bloomberg terminals went dark for a number of hours on Friday morning as a service interruption rattled markets at the start of the London trading day.
The highest-paid CEO in American business is about to be…
Burger chain Five Guys “believes it has saturated the United States and Canada, and is not offering any more franchise licenses. The company has even started buying back locations from franchisees,” according to research by PrivCo. (via Darren Rovell)
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* MEDIA * Another excellent column at Digiday by Copyranter Mark Duffy, this time on native advertising and its effect on editorial brands.
Yes, the news sites’ readers will determine the success or failure of native ads. But hasn’t this generation already figured out that brands have all the “hand” in this relationship and that brand hand strength is only going to increase? Do they think brands are going to stop requesting news posts be pulled? Maybe millennials just don’t care either, about news integrity and ethics, or about brand power. The planet’s got much bigger problems; I don’t blame them at all.
(HBO)
Nikki Usher and Matthew Hindman write at Columbia Journalism Review about the Future of Non-Profit News – Gaining Ground or Just Treading Water? They write:
It is hopeful to think that a nonprofit news site would be able to attract support by building a donor or member base. But this simply might not be a reliable way to scale. For instance, as Knight notes, “The average number of donors increased from 500 to 700” between 2011 and 2013, “mainly driven by donations of less than $1,000, which accounted for 97 percent of all donations in 2013.” This means that donor funding, even if it improves, is unlikely to ever be a significant source of money for a news non-profit.
(When I worked at local weekly in London – now sadly folded – our editor used to tell people “We’re a non-profit, but not by design..”)
After 53 years on the air, the longest-running weekly show ever, Univision’s Sabado Gigante will come to an end in September.
(Univision Noticias)
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* CULTURE * A day after the Star Wars trailer dropped, a leak of the teaser trailer for next year’s Batman v Superman – Dawn of Justice foiled plans for a Monday rollout and prompted director Zack Snyder to go ahead and release it into the wild.
(Warner Brothers)
Paul Almond, the documentary film maker behind the original “Seven Up” film looking at British childhood, died aged 83. Almond’s 1964 film provided the foundation for a series revisiting the children’s lives, by filmmaker Michael Apted.
(First Run Features)
Country music star Tim McGraw found himself at the center of criticism from some quarters over his plan to play a benefit concert for a Sandy Hook charity. (Although maybe too many headlines describing as him as being “under fire” needed a second thought).
Saturday is Record Store Day, so go out and buy some vinyl. Here’s the first record I ever bought:
The Overnight Note 