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Cost of the War in Iraq
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| unsticker |
| 10.29.03 (7:41 pm) [edit] |
One more reason why they shouldn't let Bush ad-lib. From yesterday's news conference:
[i][Condoleezza Rice's] job is to coordinate interagency. She's doing a fine job of coordinating interagency . . . and to help unstick things that may get stuck. That's the best way to put it. She's an unsticker and -- is she listening? Okay, well, she's doing a fine job. [/i]
An unsticker?? That's, um, interesting...
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| Elliott Smith |
| 10.22.03 (8:55 am) [edit] |
This is so [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/art...,11711,1068430,00.html]tragically sad[/url].
I remember seeing him play some years back at the Fillmore (opening for the Tindersticks, maybe?). It was before he had been nominated for the best song Oscar. It was one of those rare shows where the performer really had a conversation with the audience. He chatted about the stories behind the songs and tried to play everything people asked for, even if he couldn't quite remember the whole song. I remember in particular that for one song he had to tune his guitar to a different key because his girlfriend had small hands and always used a capo on his guitar for that song. He just seemed like a really sweet guy.
And he looked so terrified playing "Miss Misery" in his white suit at the Oscars. Poor thing.
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| media disinformation |
| 10.17.03 (12:50 pm) [edit] |
PIPA just put out an entertaining little study about the relationship between what news source you use and the number of misconceptions you have about the war in Iraq.
Needless to say, Fox news doesn't fare very well. Even if you look only at Republicans, those who watched Fox were far more likely to believe
that we had found WMDs in Iraq
that a majority of world public opinion approved of our actions in Iraq
that there was definite evidence of a substantial link between Saddam and 9-11/al-Qaeda
Full story: [url=http://www.pipa.org/OnlineRep...]Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War[/url] .
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| diebold, again, of course |
| 10.15.03 (1:22 pm) [edit] |
It looks like Diebold is in trouble again -- not good news for the voting machine company that promised to "deliver" votes to Bush in 2004 (ok, I'm exaggerating, it's only the CEO who wants to deliver said votes. But still, it's pretty bad form). Read on:
[i]...a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials.
If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state election-certification rules. The charges also raise questions about the integrity of the Georgia election results and any other election that uses patched Diebold systems that have not been re-certified. [/i]
So, basically, the software in Georgia's voting machines may have been altered in such a way that changed the way votes were tabulated. Was the outcome of the election altered? I have no idea, frankly. Still, not having any testing or approval of the new patches is not cool and quite illegal.
Full article [url=http://www.wired.com/news/pol...,1283,60563,00.html]here[/url].
I wonder if the [url=http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPO...]surprise Sen. Cleland loss[/url] will be revisited (or, rather, [url=http://www.salon.com/tech/fea...]re-revisited[/url]).
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| Proselytized by Prince |
| 10.13.03 (9:22 am) [edit] |
From yesterday's [url=http://www.startribune.com/st...]Star Tribune[/url]:
[i]Proselytizing for Jehovah's Witnesses during last Sunday's Vikings game wasn't the smoothest call Prince has ever made. An Eden Prairie woman, who prefers to be identified only as Rochelle, said, "Door bell rings. My husband runs upstairs and says, 'Prince is at the door!' I said, 'No way.' " Even though this was an inopportune time, they let in the man who introduced himself at "Prince Nelson" and another man. "I'm terrible with names," Rochelle said. "He was a bass player for some group, a long time ago. Older gentleman." Larry Graham? "Very good," Rochelle said. "This is Sunday about 2 o'clock. And it's the night of Yom Kippur. My first thought is 'Cool, cool, cool. He wants to use my house for a set. I'm glad! Demolish the whole thing! Start over!' Then they start in on this Jehovah's Witnesses stuff. I said, 'You know what? You've walked into a Jewish household, and this is not something I'm interested in.' He says, Can I just finish? Then the other guy, Larry Graham, gets out his little Bible and starts reading scriptures about being Jewish and the land of Israel." Uh-oh. Rochelle said she could not help but think, the Vikings had possession of the ball about two seconds ago. "They stayed for about 25 minutes," Rochelle said. "Left us a pamphlet." She should have asked Symbolina for an autograph. "There's no reason to slam him," she said. "He didn't do anything wrong; he was very kind. We watched him leave. Outside is a big black truck with a woman, long dark hair, in the front seat and they left." The woman met the general description of Prince's supposed wife, Manuella. Rochelle seemed perplexed that Prince didn't seem to stop at any other houses in her neighborhood. "They go door-to-door. Walking. He wasn't walking. He was driving." Hey, he was knocking on doors during a Vikings-Falcons game -- you can't expect Symbolina to follow ALL the rules of the religion he declared as his new faith in a 2001 magazine interview. "It was so bizarre, you would have just laughed," she said. The perfect esprit d'escalier came to Rochelle after Prince left: "If I showed up at Paisley [Park], would you let me in your front door to talk about Judaism?" There was no response from Paisley Park, where a note seeking a comment was delivered Thursday.[/i]
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| Cheers to the debate |
| 10.09.03 (3:00 pm) [edit] |
It looks like we have yet another Democratic debate to watch tonight. Slate has given us this handy [url=http://slate.msn.com/id/20895...]drinking game[/url] for the event:
[i][b]Take one drink if[/b]:
A candidate mentions an ordinary American by name
A candidate mentions Bill Clinton
A candidate mentions John Ashcroft
A candidate mentions John McCain
A candidate mentions Enron
A candidate mentions Halliburton
A candidate mentions a member of his or her family
A candidate gives out his or her campaign Web site URL
A candidate flourishes a printout of a strategy paper or a bill he or she co-sponsored
A candidate looks into the wrong camera during introductions
A candidate speaks Spanish
A candidate refuses to answer a hypothetical question
A candidate evades the question of whether they'd vote for Bush's $87 billion
A candidate uses the phrase "when I'm president"
A candidate promises to "support our troops"
[b]Take two drinks if[/b]:
A candidate says a rival is "wrong"
A candidate says he or she is "surprised" by something a rival says
The camera catches an audience member in mid-yawn
[b]Drain your glass if[/b]:
You laugh out loud at a candidate's joke
[b]Finish the bottle if[/b]:
The candidates get into a fistfight
[b]Kamikaze version[/b]: Take a drink every time a candidate mentions President Bush by name. (Note: This is not recommended if you have to work Friday.)[/i]
I'm sure we can come up with more. How many drinks if Howard Dean's shirt actually starts choking him?
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| no on recall, yes for Arnold |
| 10.09.03 (7:23 am) [edit] |
OK, I found the exit poll results I wanted. The exit poll reported that 46% voted for Schwarzenegger and 32% voted for Bustamante. Since that isn't too far off from the real thing, I feel safe to proceed.
The whole table is [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com...]here[/url]. Warning: the format is kind of annoying. It has column and row percentages in the same table. Tufte would not approve.
4% of voters both voted no on the recall and picked Schwarzenegger for governor. They account for 8% of Schwarzenegger's total vote. Interestingly, 3% of voters both voted yes on the recall and selected Bustamante as their candidate.
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| comparative celebrity |
| 10.08.03 (1:09 pm) [edit] |
The other day I was asked to compare the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger to that of Jesse Ventura. While both were highly entertaining to have as candidates, I think there are a few key differences between the two.
1. Jesse held elective office before he became governor. OK, it was only mayor of Brooklyn Park, but it still counts for something.
2. Jesse lacked natural allies in the government. Because Jesse was an independent (and really acted like an independent rather than a disgruntled partisan), he had a harder time building a coalition on issues. Frankly, he seemed to pay attention to only a few pet issues and leave the rest to the legislature. Conversely, Arnold is a Republican. Although most of the press has focused on what a moderate Republican he is, he is going to be most influenced by those to the right to him. And because Arnold's own views aren't very solidified, I wouldn't be surprised if he made a big slide to the right once he took office.
3. While both candidates were helped by cynical voters, the rationale for each election was quite different. In 1998, Minnesota had an open governor's seat (previously held by a Republican). Jesse's election was also largely facilitated by the enactment of same day voting registration (i.e., many first time voters). In California, the loss was clearly the Democrats'. But it's not certain that Gray Davis' failures will spread to the rest of the party. For one, the "true" Republican on the ticket, McClintock, only received 13% of the vote. Also, the resounding failure of the racial privacy initiative indicates that the state hasn't suddenly adopted a new conservative ideology (the initiative probably confused most people).
Just by glancing at the numbers, it is likely that a good percentage of the votes for Arnold were people who voted against the recall. While my conclusions are by no means based on "good" math, consider this. Bustamante got 32% of the vote, but 45% voted against the recall. We can assume that the vast majority of Bustamante voters voted no. So, for whom did the remaining 13% vote? Probably not McClintock. Chances are, it's spread between Arnold, Camejo, and a bunch of the lesser known candidates. Wish I had an exit poll handy... None of the results I've seen so far show who the "no" voters voted for. Help, anyone?
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| 10 little candidates |
| 10.06.03 (9:10 pm) [edit] |
Bob Graham has dropped out of the presidential race. Any bets on who will be next?
Gephardt and Kucinich have to worry about their reelection campaigns, so one of them is likely to go next. My guess is that it will be Gephardt who leaves first, since the nutty candidates always seem to stick around longer (remember Jerry Brown and his 800 number in 1992?).
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| comparative gropers |
| 10.05.03 (6:35 pm) [edit] |
Today in the LA Times, Susan Faludi brings up an interesting question (regardless of what you think of her other work). Why were men so quick to condemn Clinton for his sexual transgressions, but don't take Schwarzenegger's seriously? She writes:
[i]Even before The Times' piece, Schwarzenegger's bad behavior toward women had made the rounds. Premiere magazine offered chapter and verse on Schwarzenegger's molesting tendencies two years ago, and the Oui interview in which he bragged about nailing that babe in a gang bang has been endlessly recycled. None of it seems to have had an effect on the very constituency that expressed the most disgust over reports of Bill Clinton's philandering: American men.
Tarred with the same sexual-harassment brush, Schwarzenegger and Clinton emerged with mirror-opposite gender gaps. Clinton rode an ever-larger female gender advantage to election in both campaigns (a whopping 17-percentage-point gap in 1996), while Schwarzenegger owes his lead in the polls to a lopsidedly male following, with 45% of men supporting him in the latest survey, compared with only 36% of women. Why the difference between the two pols with the wandering eyes?[/i]
Faludi chalks it up the differing sexual styles of Clinton and Schwarzenegger. Clinton has a more sensual, "feminine" style, while Schwarzenegger's is of the playful "locker-room" ilk. Clinton was after sex, Schwarzegger was after humiliation. You can read the full argument [url=http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,1,7616017.story?coll=la-headlines-o ped-manual]here[/url].
Or could it just be that women are more likely to be Democrats and men are more likely to be Republicans? We forgive the transgressions of our own and are outraged at those of others.
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| democracy |
| 10.04.03 (12:05 am) [edit] |
Quote for the day:
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."--HL Mencken.
And check out a very entertaining [url=http://www.nocommercialpotent...]presidential slide show[/url]!
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| unfortunate |
| 10.02.03 (6:18 pm) [edit] |
Ok, [url=http://www.salon.com/news/wir...]this[/url] is rich:
[i]Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday "it will be unfortunate" if it turns out that intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq turns out to have been seriously flawed.
Rumsfeld, asked by reporters if he still believes such weapons will be found, said: "It's not clear that it was off by a little bit, or a mile, at this stage."
"If it is off by a lot, that will be unfortunate and then we'll know that." [/i]
Yeah, pretty freakin' [i]unfortunate [/i]for all the dead, the orphans, and the amputees in Iraq. And so [i]unfortunate [/i]for those who dared challenge the "intelligence" reports about Iraq and as a result were slandered and called "anti-American."
If anyone in the Clinton administration had said, "oops, we were wrong, I guess we shouldn't have gone into Kosovo," would the Republicans have sat back and let that slide?
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| Arnold |
| 10.02.03 (4:23 pm) [edit] |
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Oh, God, Arnold is going to win California, isn't he? My head hurts... :(
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| Outing the CIA |
| 10.01.03 (10:25 am) [edit] |
I don't have tons to say about what happened to [url=http://www.tblog.com/blog-top...+Administration+Is+Focus+ of+Inquiry]Ambassador Wilson's wife[/url], except, thank God, someone is taking action about it.
A while back I saw the video where Wilson said he hoped he could see "Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." You can still see the video [url=http://www.house.gov/inslee/m...]here[/url], I think. The comment happens around the 1 hour, 18 minutes mark.
If the allegations are true, and I believe they are, I am completely appalled. The idea that people in the Bush administration would put the lives of many CIA operatives and contacts at risk and jeopardize attempts to find evidence of [i]real[/i] terrorism - all in the name of petty retribution against Wilson - is disgusting. And when I try to produce anything more to say about it, I just start sputtering. What in the hell is wrong with these people?
And Novak? Backpedaling like a circus clown!
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