Daily News Roundup, 1/15/08: O, Michigan

The Michigan GOP primary is today, and so the two or three candidates who have a shot there are all over it. Mitt Romney says that it isn't do or die for him, but he is certainly acting like it.

During the first nine days of January, the Romney campaign spent more than $2 million in advertisements on television and radio in Michigan, compared with McCain's $359,000 and Huckabee's $39,000.

Romney's campaign also announced it was pulling paid media in other early-voting states and focusing its remaining resources in Michigan.

Michigan has problems. I haven't lived there as an adult, but I was born there and a big share of my family still lives there. So when I hear about the troubles there — that unemployment is 7 percent or so, or that people are moving away from the state in droves — I know they aren't simple exaggerations.

And in case you are wondering about the Democratic primary in Michigan, it happens today, too. They just don't have any delegates up for grabs, because Michigan officials set the primary date outside of the time frame approved by the DNC. The Michigan GOP lost half the delegates it would have had for the same reason, but since half are left, you have a race there today on the GOP side.

Speaking of primaries, we know now that the primary season will be lasting at least a bit longer than originally anticipated, perhaps even beyond Ultra Mega Tuesday. If things don't shake out to some sort of definition on February 5th, it is possible that both primaries might have some sort of real meaning in Texas. This is not a usual state of affairs for Texans, and we may not know how to respond; good for us, then, that William McKenzie took the time to give us tidbits about The Texas We Live In:

To show how much this place has changed, Democrats – yes Democrats – can count on Dallas being a welcoming place. Ditto Houston. Marry them up with Austin, El Paso and San Antonio, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have ready locations to scour for votes.

Imagine it, Texas: a primary battle right on your doorstep, or at least one less than 150 miles away.

How about this for an idea that we know to be true but perhaps don't think about very often: Saudi Arabia controls our oil spigot. During his trip to the Middle East, President Bush asked Saudi Arabia to lower global oil prices. I kept reading a few parts of the articles over and over again to see if I could get a different meaning out of it, but I couldn't.

Speaking to a group of Saudi entrepreneurs here, Mr. Bush said that he would speak to the Saudi leader, King Abdullah, about the price of oil, which he said was “tough on our economy.”

So there is that, an awfully big share of power allocated across an awfully small space. It is a sign of the world we live in. If you read the rest of the article, though, you will notice that the King took Bush to his ranch near Riyadh, which I think is funny.

Lastly today, some media news. First, you may have heard that Bill Kristol was hired to the editorials at the New York Times as a conservative contributor. You may not have heard that Clark Hoyt, the public editor for the Paper of Record, has deemed it a mistake. If you know anything about Bill Kristol, you know that is probably an accurate assessment.

And then, for you Keith Olbermann fans out there — check it out. Now he's blogging.