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But you'll be seeing more of this kind of thing in the future. All famous and successful Americans are now targets. Unscrupulous people know that any accusation can be dumped on the Internet and within hours the mainstream media will pick it up. It will be printed in the papers, discussed on radio and TV and become part of the unfortunate person's r?sum? whether he or she is guilty or not. A click of the Internet mouse can wipe out a lifetime of honor and hard work. Just the accusation or allegation can be ruinous.Hmmmm. Here's O'Reilly, who only a month ago paid (it is reported) millions to settle a sexual harrassment lawsuit made against him by a Fox employee, whining about how "all famous and successful Americans are now targets". I guess he should know. But for someone who's supposed to speak for the little guy, O'Reilly sure behaves like one of the big guys.
Let me ask you something: In the future, do you think potential public servants and social crusaders are going to risk being brutally attacked within this insane system? I don't. I think many good people are simply going to walk away from the public arena.
A DraftHoward.com Web site has sprung up, and a Democratic source says Dean is planning a series of speeches ?to position himself as a centrist.? A campaign aide with close ties to the governor protests that he ?wouldn?t be positioning himself. Remember in Iowa, the nicks came from the left.? Rival campaigns attacked Dean for once agreeing with Newt Gingrich that Social Security?s growth rate should be slowed, and for winning the endorsement of the National Rifle Association as Vermont?s governor.Jonathan Chait says no:
Why would this be such a disaster? Because, remember, the Dean campaign advanced two novel theories about national politics. The first was that Democrats paid too much attention to winning over the center. What they really needed to do was mobilize the base by nominating a candidate like Dean who'd fire up liberals. This turned out to be doubly wrong. Democrats were fired up enough that they didn't need a Howard Dean to inspire them to unprecedented enthusiasm. And a fired-up Democratic base, volunteering and donating at unprecedented levels, was not enough to win.I think Chait get's the better part of this, but both of them underplay the significance of Dean's stance on the War. Clift said:
Second, Dean argued that Democrats didn't really need to engage the cultural issues that Republicans had long used to win white, working-class voters. Instead, Dean argued, it would be better to persuade culturally traditional whites to vote their economic self-interest. But of course, a candidate can't always decide for the voters what issues they should pay attention to. Economics is complicated. Cultural issues are visceral. The presidential election showed pretty decisively that Democrats can't get a hearing on their more popular economic platform if voters don't think their values are in the right place. A secular Yankee like Dean is about the worst possible candidate.
John Kerry?s biggest problem is that he never stood for anything that was big and bold. A headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion captured the emptiness of his campaign perfectly: KERRY?S ONE-POINT PLAN FOR AMERICA: GET RID OF GEORGE BUSH.And Dean's problem is that he was for something big and bold -- getting out of Iraq now. It's one thing to be big and bold but it's another thing to be big and bold in the wrong way about the wrong thing. (I'm tempted to add "at the wrong time" but I'm MovingOn). Clift is right that Dean wasn't an ultra-liberal Governor of Vermont but to the country (if not sufficiently to some elements of the Democratic left) he was an ultra-liberal candidate for President. If he needs to re-position himself today it's only because of the way he positioned himself during the campaign.
You dont' need no compensationOr something like that.
You don't need no coins or bills
No filthy lucre in your pockets
Hey -- rockers -- leave them kids alone
Man Kills Eight at Chinese High SchoolCould it have been a fanactical member of the National Knife Association, wielding an assault blade? Perhaps China needs a "Knife Free School Zone" policy? We'll know for sure when the Michael Moore movie comes out.
BEIJING - A man with a knife broke into a high school dormitory and killed eight students in the deadliest of a series of knife attacks at Chinese schools in recent months, the government said Friday.
Police were searching for the man following the attack late Thursday at the No. 2 High School in the city of Ruzhou, which also injured four students, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It didn't give a possible motive but said police believe they know the man's appearance.
The attacker broke into the dormitory at 11:45 p.m. and "chopped eight people to death and four to injury," Xinhua said. It had said earlier that the attack in central China took place Friday morning.
No one was available for comment at the Ruzhou police headquarters.
It was the fourth knife attack reported since August at a Chinese school or day care center. The earlier assaults left one child dead and a total of 42 people injured.
The reason for the surge in knife assaults isn't clear.
The first is a Marine from 3/5. His name is Corporal Yeager (Chuck Yeager's grandson). As the Marines cleared and apartment building, they got to the top floor and the point man kicked in the door. As he did so, an enemy grenade and a burst of gunfire came out. The explosion and enemy fire took off the point man's leg. He was then immediately shot in the arm as he lay in the doorway. Corporal Yeager tossed a grenade in the room and ran into the doorway and into the enemy fire in order to pull his buddy back to cover. As he was dragging the wounded Marine to cover, his own grenade came back through the doorway. Without pausing, he reached down and threw the grenade back through the door while he heaved his buddy to safety. The grenade went off inside the room and Cpl Yeager threw another in. He immediately entered the room following the second explosion. He gunned down three enemy all within three feet of where he stood and then let fly a third grenade as he backed out of the room to complete the evacuation of the wounded Marine. You have to understand that a grenade goes off within 5 seconds of having the pin pulled. Marines usually let them "cook off" for a second or two before tossing them in. Therefore, this entire episode took place in less than 30 seconds.Via Powerline.
The second example comes from 3/1. Cpl Mitchell is a squad leader. He was wounded as his squad was clearing a house when some enemy threw pineapple grenades down on top of them. As he was getting triaged, the doctor told him that he had been shot through the arm. Cpl Mitchell told the doctor that he had actually been shot "a couple of days ago" and had given himself self aide on the wound. When the doctor got on him about not coming off the line, he firmly told the doctor that he was a squad leader and did not have time to get treated as his men were still fighting. There are a number of Marines who have been wounded multiple times but refuse to leave their fellow Marines.
Rather attracted notice in 1974 for an exchange with Richard Nixon. At a National Association of Broadcasters convention in Houston, Rather was applauded when he stood to ask a question, drawing Nixon's query, "Are you running for something?" Many saw Rather's quick retort, "No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?" as an affront to Presidential dignity.Rather may have been rude, but consider the target. If you like ugly, you really really need to engross yourself in Nixon's Presidency in 1974. But I digress.
In other words, Kristof wants the President selected by New York, Massachussetts, Texas, California, and Florida. Kristof compares the Electoral College unfavorably to the election in Afghanistan, but the truth is that America is a much larger, more far-flung country than Afghanistan; the electorate here differs widely between rural, suburban, and urban settings, as well as regionally. Kristof's vision would lead to the diktat of urban centers over the rest of the United States, a result I'm certain Kristof desires. Gone would be private-property rights and a host of other issues crucial to farmers, ranchers, and others.It's not about whether the red states or the blue states get to dictate. It's about the States, period. We are the United States of America. The Constitution starts out: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union" of those States . . . . The Constitution is a compact among States. It is all about the States. If it weren't, there would be no Constitution and no United States. And today, if you think less than 13 of the smaller states will oppose an amendment to the Constitution (it takes 3/4th's majority of the States to ratify an Amendment) then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
All you need to know about that suggestion is contained in the county-based map of the presidential election. Kristof would have the sparse blue districts dictating policy to the vast red areas.
This one gave me a fit of the giggles until I realized he was serious. With money disappearing into all sorts of 527 ratholes in this past election, Kristof thinks the solution is to make all donations untraceable. Brilliant! I especially like the part about all the boasting making politicians doubt their constituents. I guess Kristof is unaware of a relatively new invention called the "receipt". It's necessary for all money transactions these days. How difficult is it to show a candidate the paper record of a transaction? How about another new invention, the "cancelled check"?
If you want campaign-finance reform, the best method is to quit being so hypocritical about it and insist on full disclosure. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and requiring instant disclosure on all donations will immediately allow the public to know who finances any campaign. End the silly distinctions between different uses of the same money, and force the cash back into the campaigns to make the candidates politically responsible for its use. Eliminate the 527 tax benefit for outside organizations. If people want to form groups to campaign for their cause, they don't have a right to be tax-exempt while doing so.
The conference's organiser[that would be the World Toilet Summit currently underway in China], Jack Sim, says toilets are a forgotten human right and the silence over the issue needs to be broken.I'm tempted to say Jack Sim is full of shit and that he ought to be flushed down the crapper. Indeed, the temptation is too great. Jack Sim is full of shit and ought to be flushed down the crapper.
"The entire toilet movement is taking on the world," he said.
"People are saying 'we want good toilets' because a toilet is a basic human right and this basic human right has been neglected."
For those of you who have been waiting breathlessly for Capitol Records' infamous "Duophonic" (fake stereo) versions of the Beatles' catalog to appear on CD, well has Capitol got a treat for you!
"The Capitol Albums Vol. 1" contains the first four of Capitol Records' Beatles' albums (well, their first four music releases, as the 2-LP documentary "The Beatles' Story" came out on Capitol before "Beatles '65"...)
Yep, these are the reverb-laden Capitol mixes we all grew up with! For good or bad, this is what most of us remember. They're not the Beatles' albums as the Beatles envisioned them, but so what? They are a lot of fun to listen to!
So, what's good? Well, you get both the stereo and mono mixes of each album. When the Beatles' catalog was released on CD in 1987, only mono mixes of the first four albums were made available. This release is therefore the only place where you can get stereo mixes (albeit *reverb-laden* stereo mixes...). What's more, the sound quality is much better than the sound quality of the many "Capitol albums" bootlegs that have been on the market for years. It's great to have discs mastered from the original tapes! (Although, there is a glitch / dropout 18 seconds into the stereo version of "Don't Bother Me"...)
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These really *are* the original Capitol masters! The stereo version of "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" *has* the strange noise in the vocal channel before the singing starts! The mono version of "When I Get Home" *has* the alternate vocal line! The mono version of "Any Time At All" *has* the mixed down piano during the instrumental break! For those of us who need to have all the known mixes, you *will* find the original Capitol mixes here!
And, even though Capitol's "Duophonic" (fake stereo) mixes are infamous, the fact is Capitol only really used them when true stereo mixes weren't available. These are the only songs in Duophonic:
Let me get this straight. For years we've been trying desperately to get people to buy more efficient cars, and one way of doing it is to tax gas guzzlers at a higher rate than hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars. It's good for the environment and it helps reduce our need for imported oil. And it's working! So what happens? Now people are worried that it means lower gas tax revenues. Drivers of fuel hogs think it's unfair that they should pay more than drivers of hybrids. So let's think of a way of taxing fuel-efficient cars at higher levels. Yeah, that's the ticket!A better example would be cigarettes, the taxes on which have skyrocketed in recent years. What will happen when cigarette smoking declines to the point that we aren't raising as much money through those taxes?
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet
Taxman
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman
I?ll concede that the incumbent rule (under which undecided voters on the final survey typically break to challengers) did not hold in this year?s presidential race, but I?m dubious of a break towards Bush. In the national exit poll, those who made their final vote choice in the last four days went for Kerry 53% to 44%, while those deciding earlier went for Bush (52% to 47%). The same pattern held in Florida and Ohio. The average of the national tracking surveys also showed no trend to Bush over the final weekend; if anything, they had Kerry running slightly closer.I may be missing something here but two things bother me about this. First, the incumbent rule isn't about what polls are doing over the weekend -- it's about what happens when comparing the last poll before the election with the election itself. If Bush has 48.6 and Kerry 46.9 after the average of the final polls and they end up 51 and 48 respectively, it seems to me that Bush got the better of the deal. As well, those making "their final vote choice" over the weekend may well have made a different choice earlier in the campaign. If the incumbent rule is supposed to assist in predicting how the undecideds in the last poll will vote, then I'm not sure I get this.
When I presented the details on likely voter models, I noticed that the pollsters that used a variant of the Gallup likely voter model showed Bush doing consistently better than other surveys. That difference now looks prescient. The following table shows the results of those using the Gallup likely voter model either in the final week (Gallup, Pew, Newsweek) or in the final two weeks (adds Time and the LA Times). In both cases, the Gallup-model showed a Bush margin closer to the actual result (3.2%+) than the average of the other surveys (0.9%). There were three surveys in the ?other? category that correctly forecast Bush?s final three-point margin (notably, Pew, TIPP, ICR), but the other 10 showed Kerry doing slightly better.In part Gallup eschewed weighting by party ID in their model, which other polls embraced. MP argued (also in part) that weighing by party ID is problematic since responses to those questions are more volatile than say, responses by age or sex. But two polls which weighed by party ID were still pretty close, and he says he'll have more on that in a bit.
"Yasser Arafat's death marks the end of an era and will no doubt be painfully felt by Palestinians throughout the Middle East and elsewhere in the world," Carter said.Yasser Arafat's PLO was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games. Yasser Arafat pioneered terrorism as a political tool -- the bombs, the plane hijackings, and the Achille Lauro hijacking which included the murder of a wheelchair bound American. Yasser Arafat's eventual acceptance on the world stage as a legitimate leader was disgusting and his performance as one was appalling. He was not the leader of the Palestinians, he was their demagogue. Arafat's legacy is The Wall that Israel's been forced to build to protect itself from what he has created. The modern Palestinian nationalism that Arafat fathered is a disaster.
He was the father of the modern Palestinian nationalist movement. A powerful human symbol and forceful advocate, Palestinians united behind him in their pursuit of a homeland," he said in a statement distributed by his Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center.
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. At 1:05 a.m. Wednesday morning, CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. The exit polls were later combined with?and therefore contaminated by?the tabulated results, ultimately becoming a mirror of the apparent actual vote. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.Apologies to all the gadflys out there.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.
Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]
Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new.
Remember two things: First, the weighting of exit polls to match actual results is not new, but a standard procedure used since the early days of exit polls. Second, the weighting to actual returns does not occur all at once but continuously, precinct by precinct, over the course of election night. The exit pollsters weight their sample to match incoming actual results for each sampled precinct as actual returns become available. Thus, the exit poll results get continuously updated in what bloggers might call ?real time.? Some of the online postings may reflect that updating; some may not. We have no way of knowing. There is also one more step: The sampled precincts are still just a sample, so even when all the sampled precincts have been weighted to the actual result, sampling error may cause the survey to differ from the statewide result. At that point, near the end of vote counting, the exit pollsters will apply another overall weight so that the vote on the survey matches the actual statewide result.Aside from whichever candidate one supported and whether or not that candidate won, the best thing about this election is that it won't be tainted by the likes of Palast although he's giving it his best shot.
Although the data now in the public domain is not much help, the raw data puts the exit pollster in a strong position to evaluate some of the speculation about vote fraud. If, for example, someone tampered with tabulations from touch screen voting machines that lacked a paper trail, then an analysis of the poll data should show a greater discrepancy in precincts with such machines.
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One last thought: I said I am dubious that this data will show evidence of vote tampering. Why? No pollster ever wants to be wrong, to have their numbers called into question. Yet, fair or not, that is exactly what people are saying about last week?s exit polls.
The NEP officials who ran this year?s exit polling, Warren Mitofsky and Joe Lenski, are people I greatly respect. They are not partisans, but extraordinarily skilled survey methodologists. Mitofsky, along with a small team of colleagues at CBS, helped invent the exit poll almost 40 years ago, along with many other methods and models still in use by survey researchers today. Although no one is infallible, Mitofsky is deservedly a legend in the field of survey research. Yet despite that stellar standing, last week?s perceived glitch still threatens his reputation and the continuing livelihood of his collegues.
So apply a bit of common sense: If Mitofsky has evidence that his exit poll was right but the vote tally was wrong, do you believe for a minute that he would suppress it? I certainly do not.
[George Bush] received the most votes by any presidential candidate in history ? over 58 million, even breaking President Reagan?s 1984 mark of 54.5 million votes. [Updated figures actually show over 59.6 million ? Beldar]So what. Why doesn't it matter? Because if it mattered, then it also matters that George Bush "lost" more jobs than any President in history (or since Hoover, or whatever). The reason why more jobs were lost is because we were losing jobs in a larger pool of jobs to lose. The reason why Bush got more votes than ever is because he won an election in a pool of votes that was larger than ever before.
Obviously, these topics deserve more careful consideration once we have final results, but it is obvious that (a) the incumbent rule did not apply and (b) that the consensus of the national polls was reasonably close to the final result. While the turnout was heavy, it did not conceal any hidden Kerry vote, as I speculated it might. If anything, the polls slightly underestimated Bush's national margin.As I said before (too tired to find the links but do a search for "incumbent rule" on the right if you're interested), I thought it would be very interesting to see how the incumbent rule played out here, and based my prediction of MP's prediction upon it. I figure that when the dust settles, and the polls are pulled apart and compared to the results, there will be some new wisdom if not new "conventional wisdom". In case you're wondering, conventional wisdom is wisdom until it isn't. MP's been wondering what to do next with his blog. I hope he keeps it alive if even intermittently -- there's no other accesible, down to earth analysis of this stuff on the planet.
Why? One big clue should have been the failure of the incumbent rule in 2002, when a number of incumbents received more support on Election Day than on their final polls. In retrospect, I dismissed that contradictory evidence too quickly. John Kerry's lead pollster, Mark Mellman, was of clearer mind when he wrote this past Sunday:
We simply do not defeat an incumbent president in wartime. After wars surely, but never in their midst. Republicans have been spinning this fact for months, and they are correct.A point well taken.
Let?s face it. It?s not Kerry?s fault. It?s not Nader?s fault (this time). It?s not the media?s fault (though they do bear a heavy responsibility for much of what ails our political system). It?s not ?our? fault either. The problem is just this: Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care about what those of us in the ?reality-based community? say or believe about anything.Excuse me while I wipe off the condescension and disdain.
In the aftermath of this civil war that our nation has just fought, one result is clear: the Democratic Party's first priority should be to reconnect with the American heartland.Well that wasn't as bad but still quite revealing. Kristoff first says that he knows better than those heartland voters do about what their economic interests are. He just thinks they're dumb because they don't buy what he's selling. But the Johanns's quote gets closer to what I think is the truth, and it's not all about religion and abortion.
I'm writing this on tenterhooks on Tuesday, without knowing the election results. But whether John Kerry's supporters are now celebrating or seeking asylum abroad, they should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates.
One of the Republican Party's major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires. Democrats are still effective on bread-and-butter issues like health care, but they come across in much of America as arrogant and out of touch the moment the discussion shifts to values.
"On values, they are really noncompetitive in the heartland," noted Mike Johanns, a Republican who is governor of Nebraska. "This kind of elitist, Eastern approach to the party is just devastating in the Midwest and Western states. It's very difficult for senatorial, Congressional and even local candidates to survive."
This Josh Marshall post raises a question that's been bugging me for the last 48 hours:But wait -- there's more!
The final FOX news poll -- with calls on Saturday and Sunday only --has Kerry over Bush 48% to 46% among likely voters. Among registered voters it's Kerry 47%, Bush 45%. Among those who've already voted, it's Kerry 48%, Bush 43%. (emphasis added)
UPDATE: Stop the presses! CBS News also has early voting results -- but they have Bush beating Kerry!Drezner concludes that the early voting samples are too small. I conclude that if the Red Sox can win a World Series, and Fox can call for Kerry, and CBS for Bush, then the end of the world is 'nigh.Early voters split about evenly, one-third each between Democrats, Republicans and Independents. They are a bit older: one-quarter are 65 or over, and eight in ten are above age 45. President Bush holds a lead among them (51% to 43%). (emphasis added)Let's take a moment to allow the heads of those obsessed with media bias to explode at the thought that FOX has a poll favorable to Kerry while CBS has one favorable to Bush.
: I take this pledge (inspired by a few of the posts below below):Well sure I'll take the pledge, but yeah, I think Jeff missed something. I'd like to hear definitions and boundaries we can all agree upon as to where criticism crosses over the line denoting support. For as we all know, whoever wins will be criticized, and those defending him will accuse the critics of not supporting him.
After the election results are in, I promise to:
: Support the President, even if I didn't vote for him.
: Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
: Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
: Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.
What did I miss?
Care to take the pledge?
