TIM WORSTALL thinks about the impact of blogs on the coming British elections.
Archive for 2005
January 21, 2005
AND WITH PLENTY OF TIME BEFORE DINNER: This week’s Carnival of the Recipes is up, hosted by CalTechGirl this week.
JOHN POWERS thinks that Democrats should rethink:
Whether it’s rewriting the tax code or privatizing Social Security to solve an imaginary “crisis,” the right has become the agent of change.
In contrast, the left has become — there’s no other word for it — reactionary.
Still unable to accept that the right has dominated our national life for the last quarter-century, the left hasn’t done the hard, slow work of thinking through what it means to be progressive during an era of ultraglobalized capitalism in which the only successful Democratic president in the last 35 years, Bill Clinton, followed policies that even he compared to Dwight Eisenhower’s. Far from proposing bold new ideas that might seize the popular imagination, the left now plays the kind of small-ball that Dubya disdains. Even worse, it’s become the side that’s forever saying “No.”
It does seem that way.
UPDATE: Something similar from The Economist:
The biggest problem with the current Democratic leadership is not that it has lost the will to fight but that it has lost the power to think. When was the last intellectually innovative idea you heard from Nancy Pelosi, the current minority leader, or, for that matter, from Dick Gephardt, her predecessor? Heaven knows, Mr Gingrich’s musings have caused his party problems. But the Democrats are in danger of turning into that most pathetic of all political organisations—a minority party that devotes all its energies to the blind defence of the status quo. By all means let the Democrats learn from Newt the fighter; but if they want to recapture power they need to learn from Newt the thinker, too.
Indeed.
JOHN TABIN looks at the exit-poll after-action report: “The pollsters have good reason to be embarrassed; their post-election spin, always dubious, is fully derailed. For months, their line has been that their data was just fine, and it was misinterpreted by the nefarious bloggers who broke the embargo by posting leaked data that was incomplete. . . . But Edison/Mitofsky’s data was flawed long after half time.”
UNSCAM UPDATE: I missed this yesterday, but better late than never:
January 20, 2005 — WASHINGTON — Former Republican vice-presidential candidate and New York Congressman Jack Kemp has been questioned by the FBI in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, it was revealed last night. Newsweek magazine reported on its Web site that the ex-Buffalo Bills quarterback faces scrutiny about his dealings with Virginia-based oil trader Samir Vincent, who earlier this week became the first figure to be formally charged with criminal wrongdoing in the $21.3 billion global scandal.
What’s sadder — that Jack Kemp would be involved in something like this, or that someone would think that Jack Kemp could help them?
January 20, 2005
THE BELMONT CLUB: “It is perhaps the subconscious realization that it has awakened to a nightmare new world that drives the the Left’s incredulous reaction to George Bush. . . . The European ideologies of the last century have left the stream of history and will not, cannot acknowledge it. . . . Personally I find it difficult to conceive of an enmity with Muslims in general when it is Muslims doing the most dying on the side of freedom in Iraq.”
HOW NEGATIVE is media coverage of Iraq? Arthur Chrenkoff does the math.
SOME ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES for the second term: “Federal Agencies Filled With Holders of Store Bought Diplomas.”
MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT, in John Ashkkkroft’s Christine Gregoire’s America.
BAD SCARY NUMBERS IN bogus stories on Internet threats? Shocking but true:
It’s an alarming statistic: One in five children has been sexually solicited online.
That stat is turning up on billboards and television commercials around the country, driven by an aggressive push from child-protection advocates. In the TV version, eerie music plays as a camera pans over a school playground and then shows a park. A female narrator intones: “To the list of places you might find sexual predators, add this one” — as the image changes to a girl using a computer in her bedroom. The spot ends with the one-in-five stat. It’s all part of an ad blitz that has gotten millions of dollars of free media time since its launch last year and is set to continue through 2007.
But while the motivation behind the campaign appears to be sound, the crucial statistic is misleading and could scare parents into thinking the danger is greater than it really is. . . .
The upshot of all of this is a dated stat — five years is an eon in Internet time — that makes once-valid research seem scarier than it is.
It is no great surprise that advertising can present statistics in misleading or slanted ways. But when this happens in commercial ads, competitors can fire back. For noncontroversial issue advertising, no one has great motivation to challenge advocates’ claims — who would argue that parents don’t need to be vigilant about their children’s online activities?
I think that nonprofits and advocacy groups should be held to the same standard as businesses on this sort of thing — especially since it’s often part of a pitch to raise money. And, as I’ve written before (here, here, here, here, and here, among other places), nonprofits need to be getting the kind of financial-accounting scrutiny that businesses get, too.
I PICKED ON THE E.U. EARLIER, but the United States is not without sin on the shrimp-quota front:
Less than two weeks after a 40-foot wave flattened massive swaths of Southeast Asia, the United States slapped a tariff on millions of dollars worth of seafood imports from India and Thailand. As the federal government promised $350 million, and private citizens pledged even more, the message to surviving shrimp farmers was clear: Have our marines, our pity, and our cash, but for the love of God, do not send us your cheap shrimp.
Unlike Europe, we did send aircraft carriers and such. But as I’ve said here before, trade is better than aid. And, sympathies for Bubba Gump notwithstanding, so are cheap shrimp.
JAMES DOBSON IS BLOWING IT with his attacks on SpongeBob.
Not many people, forced to choose between SpongeBob Squarepants and James Dobson, are going to pick Dobson.
UPDATE: More here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: I had forgotten, until Rand Simberg emailed to remind me, that the question of SpongeBob’s sexuality has already been settled.
AUSTIN BAY: “The President’s inaugural speech said in spades what I wish he would say every day.”
UPDATE: GayPatriot: “I’m sorry, I thought the entire speech was about Iraq…and Afghanistan…and Iran…and Palestine. All Bush talked about was Freedom vs. Oppression, Democracy vs. Tyranny.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Perry is drawing JFK / GWB parallels.
MORE: Was Bush channeling Natan Sharansky?
MOOREWATCH IS DEFENDING MICHAEL MOORE with a post indicating that the story about Moore’s bodyguard being arrested on a gun charge isn’t true.
Good for them, as they demonstrate a commitment to accuracy that Moore himself should envy.
PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH is fact-checking Harry Reid, who really should be more careful whose press releases he relies on.
UPDATE: Okay, Pejman is relying on James Taranto — which is much wiser.
STEVE STURM ISN’T EXCITED about the inauguration. I’m not either, really. I’m kind of relieved that there weren’t any explosions, though.
SOME THOUGHTS on the Democrats’ great hope, over at GlennReynolds.com.
ABBAS UPDATE: Meryl Yourish is looking thoughtful and going “Hmmm.”
This is what journalism has devolved to in Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung: Translating a cynical fantasy obituary of George W. Bush written by Griel Marcus and combining it with a picture of Bush and Rumsfeld in Mickey Mouse Ears.
I think they’ve got the wrong Disney character. And Germans should know better.
I WROTE A WHILE BACK in The Guardian that Hillary Clinton is a member of the Religious Left. There’s further support for that here from Hillary herself:
Addressing a crowd of more than 500, including many religious leaders, at Boston’s Fairmont Copley Plaza, Clinton invoked God more than half a dozen times, at one point declaring, “I’ve always been a praying person.”
She said there must be room for religious people to “live out their faith in the public square.”
I think that she’s serious about that, and not faking it as some on the right are suggesting.
UPDATE: Michael Novak emails:
Yes, she is serious about praying often. Yes, she is a serious Christian, and has been for some time (not deep, I think, but serious). And, yes, she is a person of the left. So you are right to identify her as part of the religious left. But I interpret her talk in Boston as an effort to bring religious left and religious right into some common work together, and precisely in supporting faith-based workers who sacrifice to help the poor and needy. I am sure you applaud, too, when religious right and religious left join hands for good purposes, especially in serving others. And it seems to me a generous move for Senator Clinton to do so by supporting a program with which President Bush has been so personally identified. She makes clear that such a program is not in itself ideological, but a place where right and left can come together in helping others. I am glad you stressed her sincerity. She could have interpreted her own self-interest as in being anti-Bush at all costs, and she did not.
Good point.
MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:
Hundreds of people gathered at both ends of Meridian Hill Park in Northwest Washington for a peace rally sponsored by the D.C Antiwar Network.
But there were interlopers: Thirteen members of ProtestWarror, supporting the Bush administration and its policies in Iraq. When the Bush supporters arrived, about 20 black-clad, self-described anarchists emerged from the crowd, shouting profanity and epithets and demanding that they leave the peace rally.
When the Bush supporters refused to leave, the anarchists tore the sign out of the Bush supporters’ hands and stomped on them. When ProtestWarrior leader Gil Kobrin objected, several male anarchists knocked him to the ground, kicking him in the back and punching him. Other anarchists punched and shoved Kobrin’s 12 colleagues.
Those “peace” protesters are vicious.
OPINIO JURIS is a new law professor blog dedicated to international law.
TERM TWO BEGINS: Lets hope it goes well for everyone.
UPDATE: Here’s the text of Bush’s inaugural address. He’s not thinking small: “Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.” He plugs the Koran, too.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Funny, I switched about halfway through from NPR to an AM station running Fox, and on the AM station the applause sounded much louder.
MORE: Victor Davis Hanson comments. Ed Morrissey writes: “in its own way, this might be one of the most radically classical-liberal American speeches in a generation.”
And Joe Gandelman has some thoughts, and is rounding up reactions. But some people are very upset at the lack of giant puppets.
HAS “REALIGNMENT” STOPPED? I hope that the Democrats manage to stay competitive. Karl Rove may want to marginalize them, but I’d rather see a two-party system, albeit not one in which Barbara Boxer is the authentic voice of one of those parties.