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 Monday, April 1, 2002
And:  While Clinton used polling to craft popular policies, Bush uses polling to spin unpopular ones. 11:17:45 PM 
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meme this: Why isn't this story by Joshua Green about Bush's reliance on pollsters (and those pollsters' conflicts of interest) spreading like wildfire? Besides the fact that this demonstrates yet another way in which Bush stretches the truth (I'm trying to be nice here) to manipulate his image (and American voters), this story is more than a little disturbing. That a politician is not honest is nothing new; but it does seem that something's wrong when attempts to gauge the popular will on important issues (which is what a poll ostensibly does) have "become a sort of shorthand for everything people dislike about Washington politics." I mean, isn't our government supposed to be of, by, and for the people? Who stands to gain the most when the people think the best leader is the one who ignores what they have to say? Of course, governing strictly by polls might not be ideal (that starts to get into questions of whether you prefer a republic or a direct democracy, which is really another debate), but it seems to me that the whole poll issue has been one of the factors that has enabled Bush to do whatever he wants because it's helped him convince American voters that he knows something they don't (his "values and principles"). Meanwhile, "the Bush administration is a frequent consumer of polls." [via Talking Points Memo] 11:13:47 PM
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legal advice: I love LawMeme's legal perspective on tech/media issues. What about similar blogs on other issues -- like foreign policy, health care, civil rights? Are they out there? 8:16:53 PM
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very afraid: The NY Times says the critical consensus is in: the U.S. is a full-blown empire in the "Holy Roman Empire" kind of way. According to Yale's Paul Kennedy,
rom the time the first settlers arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an imperial nation, a conquering nation.
He's completely correct, of course. What's scary is that he (like most of the others quoted in the article) thinks this is a good thing. These are scary times, scary times, indeed. 8:13:30 PM
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love/hate: Allied lists a bunch of things to hate about blogging, most of which I agree with completely. But like I said on her comment page, what really bugs me is that it seems to me that blogging remains pretty dependent on big media to feed it memes. I mean, for the most part, bloggers only talk about stuff they find in major media. And while that's certainly worthwhile and better than no conversation about these things at all, and while blogs might in this way act as editors to help keep big media honest (someday, maybe), for the most part we're not extending the debate that far because we're limited by what they give us. And the even bigger problem is that the only solution to bloggers' dependency on big media seems to be if bloggers start making/reporting news themselves, yet most bloggers do this as a hobby so few of us have time to commit to going out and digging up the "truth" about important issues. And yeah, some tech stories are being broken by bloggers, but well, there are more important things in life than what happens at Mac World. 7:25:08 PM
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clarifying: by this post about whether the media is biased toward the left or right I don't mean to start some childish back-and-forth (which is how that post sounded), but rather encourage some real consideration of the question. The media are, by definition, biased. Humans are biased, no getting around it. But is media bias pervasively one way or the other? Are the ideas of "the left" or "the right" even applicable? Or is bias often determined by money (which goes both ways)? What about spectacle? Does coverage get tilted in whatever direction will create the most sensational headlines for the longest amount of time? 7:46:30 AM
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a little sum'n sum'n: I'm in love w/Aaron McGruder's Ceasar. But damn! I thought Ceaser was a girl! 7:17:06 AM
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duh. Is it a coincidence that the pile of work I have to do grows in direct proportion with the number of entries on this page? Nah... Is there a Reluctant Bloggers webring for people who really shouldn't be (and almost wish they weren't) blogging, but who do so anyway because they can't seem to not? If not, there should be. 7:16:21 AM
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not natural: After living in the barren midwest for far too long, I finally found the word to capture why it sucks so much: unnatural. The midwest (or this particular bit of it, anyway), is unnatural -- literally. There's nothing natural here anymore, and I mean "natural" in the sense of not completely shaped (or reshaped) by humans. It seems almost every inch of land here has been developed; what's not paved over and built up has been graded and ploughed, cultivated well beyond its natural productive capacity, and pumped full of pesticides and fertilizer so the cycle can go on endlessly. So if you ever feel like you'd like to go for a little hike, or drive out into the woods somewhere or something, you better have a few days, 'cause you're going to have to drive pretty far. 7:16:07 AM
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| Mar May |
  
Top 10 hits for conspiracy on..
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