May 16-May 19

American Idol Top 3 Rankings

5/6/12

I think it has been quite a strong season, but I felt tonight's performances, while solid, were a bit subpar. Based on past Final Two history, I expect the same next Tuesday.

In terms of song choice, producer/judge manipulation, etc, I would have a lot to analyze complain about in these final stages. These things happen every season, so I am going to just let it mostly go for now.

Anyways, I had the same rankings for all three rounds, which obviously means, that the overall rankings are the same.

Third- Phillip Phillips
 Round 1- B, Round 2-B, Round 3-B


Second- Jessica Sanchez
  Round 1-B, Round 2- B+., Round 3-B+


First- Joshua Ledet
 Round 1- B+, Round 2-B+., Round 3- B+

Needless to say, I would still like to see a Jessica vs. Joshua Finale. There just is no logical reason to think that will happen though. P2 just seems destined to win and I think the Idol Powers That Be have already submitted to that, and are trying to make the best of it, rather than trying to fight it.

Based (narrowly) on the merits tonight (and the fact that he has never been eliminated and had to be saved), Joshua (deserves the first opportunity to face him next week, but still, a part of me is rooting for Jessica to make it through. For one thing. I think she might have a better chance of uniting factions and pulling off an Idol upset over Phillip in the Finale.

It is interesting this year that the Final Three consist of a white dude, an African-American male subject to some irrelevant to his talent speculation, and a young Asian/Hispanic female. There really could be a racial and ethnic component in place to determine who is going to make it through between Jessica and Joshua.

I think it will be close and could go either way, but my hunch is that Jessica, a benefactor of the "save" makes it all the way to the Final 2 and there will be a Joshua elimination.

That's not the way I would have it necessarily, but in his Homecoming video piece, he did say that the VIP treatment made him feel like Barack Obama. I believe enough Americans caught that line and decided they would further grant him that feeling by not giving him their vote.

Conservative Democrat has left a new comment on your post "American Idol Top 3 Rankings": 

Corey, America is just NOT ready to have an Asian/Latina girl win the American Idol crown period.

I've said that Phillip Phillips will likely win the Idol crown, making it 5 years in a row for the guys and this is likely becoming the BCS.

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Race for the White House

5/19/12

I do not really have much to write about this week. This is going to be kind of short, but hopefully, next month, as summer kicks off, I will be a bit more motivated to delve into the race in further detail including a look at many of the possible running-mates for Mitt Romney, including the likelihood of their being selected, and whom my own personal list for #2 on the ticket would include.

In the meantime, the race continues to look close nationally, and with Mitt Romney looking surprisingly strong in recent polls from the state of Wisconsin, which is a place that Barack Obama absolutely must win in order to be reelected. There are a lot of factors at play in Wisconsin and within the next couple of weeks I will look at them further as I take a look at the Wisconsin Gubernatorial Recall election. That will be a season premiere of sorts for my 2012 Race of the Day, when I will take a look at all of this year's contests for Governor and U.S. Senate.

Having won two more states this past Tuesday and rapidly approaching the "magic number" to clinch the nomination, Mitt Romney is now the only Republican candidate to be actively seeking votes as Congressman Ron Paul's campaign has embarked on a new tactic of not seeking new votes, but by trying to win over convention delegates that have already been selected. This has led to some confusion in the media as to whether or not Paul had "dropped out." His campaign insists that it has not ended, although even the candidate's son, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has conceded that Romney will be the nominee.

While the Presidential nominations of both parties are a done deal, there will continue to be more states that vote and this coming Tuesday, Arkansas and Kentucky will be among them. Political junkies will keep an eye out to see just how Obama does running against no-name opposition in those states. Like what happened in Oklahoma, there is a chance that he will run far worse with his own party's voters than Romney will in the GOP primaries in those states,even though some well-known Republican names remain on the ballot.

Obama and other world leaders have converged on Chicago this weekend for the NATO summit and the city is waiting on baited breath to see if full-scale riots will break out. I guess if they do, I can talk about that next week, as well as any additional inflammatory, nonsensical, or blowhardish things that will come out of the mouth of Joe Biden. The Obama campaign has started to go to great lengths to do what some of Romney's unsuccessful GOP opponents had done, involving criticism of his record at Bain Capital. If they are doing that this early, they must be quite concerned about the campaign at this point.

Speaking of Chicago, another political story making headlines around here involve a New York Times piece, of questionable accuracy in which Nebraska billionaire Joe Ricketts was said to be getting ready to put many millions of dollars into SuperPAC ads which will revisit the issue of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's controversial former pastor.

The children of Joe Ricketts (who happen to be divided politically) are the owners of the Chicago Cubs,and when this story hit the presses, Mayor Rahm Emanuel of the Windy City, the former Obama Chief of Staff, was said to be furious and willing to blow up a deal with the Ricketts Family involving the renovation of Wrigley Field. There is a whole lot there that is unfair regarding the outrage of Rahm, but it appears that these ads (which were denounced in advance by Mitt Romney) are not going to be running anyway.

Some on the right may be disappointed about that, feeling that Wright continues to be fair game, but now the Romney campaign will be able to claim the moral high-ground when allies and associates of Obama on the left try to desperately insert Mormonism into the race.