November 2008
75 posts
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, then I...”
– Palin, on Ayers and similar attacks.
What will happen to politics if the constitutional protections shielding candidates from the media are so flagrantly disregarded!!??
I hate her.
October 2008
135 posts
More Ev (media & politics)
Yesterday I wrote a long post arguing that the notion of what constituted “unfair bias” in political reporting was not only wrong, but bad. Basically, the idea is that unless you are equally nice to both sides then you are in the tank for the one that you are “favoring.” This has the perverse consequence of turning the media into a corrective lens on reality, making...
“All right guys, I didn’t prepare anything. The only thing I’ve been...”
– Famous Joe, the Plumber. (Politico via Wonkette)
Wonkette wrote:
He said, “All right guys, I didn’t prepare anything. The only thing I’ve been saying is just get out and get informed.” After offering this ringing endorsement, the crowd gasped as a trickle of blood came from his nose. Joe then...
The Economist: "It's Time" →
“Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.”
One comment was made repeatedly and consistently about the Obama “infomercial” during the cable news post gaming: that it was so well produced. No one’s surprised by this, of course, because the very precisely engineered media strategy is a hallmark of the Obama effort.
There’s plenty of talk about how the Schmidt-influenced McCain campaign is overly focused on the news...
“they’re lying to u”
– Mark Salter via BlackBerry to that Draper guy.
Not Salteresque.
76 American Nobel Laureates in Science Endorse... →
Lux on Media and Politics. →
seedz:
Warts and all, it is smart.
I think I fixed some of the warts.
[ *No quotes are exact, or close. Just the thoughts, roughly.* ]
I just watched Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, appear as a guest on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Scarborough tried to grill her on how there was a double standard for the left in terms of “divisive” rhetoric—there might be shouts of “terrorist” and “kill him” at Palin rallies,...
Judge rules Ohio homeless voters may list park... →
“You know, the other night in the debate with Senator Obama, I said his eloquence...”
– McCain
“Give science a chance! Less invasion, more equations!”
– Futurama (via derrinyet)
An under appreciated show.
Sam Nunn WILL be vice president
Former President Bill Clinton will campaign with Senator Barack Obama for the first time on Wednesday at an evening rally in Orlando, a Clinton aide said. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will not attend, although she has done numerous events in the Sunshine State on behalf of Mr. Obama in the last month. And in the past week, she appeared with Mr. Obama in this crucial battleground state.
The...
Campaign spending per hour in the first half of...
McCain: $26,000
Obama: $293,000
(First Read)
Shameless self-promotion →
Uh, it’s moved to a new place so I posted a link to it? It’s not false that I get points at my job for people looking at it.
"GOP Gal Claims Savage Negro Mugged Her … For... →
sunplusnightplusjess:
seedz:
It might be important Wonkette did this.
Oh man!!! As it turns out, the B doesn’t stand for ‘Barack’ or even Batman, but something along the lines of BULLSHIIIIT! I’ll also accept “batshit crazy”, “bogus”, or any synonym of desperate that starts with B.
But was it terrorism!?!?
Actually sort of shocking this didn’t make it there yet.
Watchmessianictime:
Flux carves things? WHAAAAA?
Yes. Yes, I carved that.
WatchBetter that a jack-o-lantern.
groupuscule:
Apple appears to have launched a massive advertising campaign attacking the fact that sometimes Microsoft does advertising.
Voters hate negative campaigns.
“She needed clothes at the time.”
– McCain
Change nerds can believe in
Time magazine’s Joe Klein has a lengthy interview with Barack Obama, covering a variety of subjects. One section that leapt out at me, of course, was Obama’s observations about energy, the environment, and the bigger picture:
The biggest problem with our energy policy has been to lurch from crisis to trance. And what we need is a sustained, serious effort. […] I was just...
“Develop a software and sensor package to enable a team of robots to search for...”
– DoD project description, via MindHacks.
I don’t think that these are intended to be friendly robots.
Students Competing For Slots At Elite Colleges... →
derrinyet:
Election nightmare
I woke up at 5:38 a.m. this morning, completely convinced that election results were being tabulated, and that I had no idea who was winning. I don’t quite remember what I was dreaming about, but it was definitely election day.
I had to check the date on my phone before falling back asleep.
Seriously?
Nate Silver:
I would like to issue a challenge to those pollsters like Franklin & Marshall and GfK which in spite of all the facts above, are showing a substantial shift toward the Republicans when they apply their likely voter models. E-mail me — my contact information is at the top of the page — and tell me why you think what you’re doing is good science.
That last line...
Literally a metaphor
The McCain campaign held a conference call in response to the pro-McCain Al-Qaeda position reported earlier today:
The most interesting line, however, came from former CIA Director Jim Woosley, who sought to frame the al-Qaeda blog posting as some sort of attempt at reverse political psychology
“If one takes one individual Islamist blogger from one terrorist Islamist blog who has come up...
I hope this becomes a major "gaffe", or whatever.
Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.
The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, “impetuous” Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is...
more read about than read →
leoncrawl:
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. “Luxembourg”
I feel that some of my more insightful comments weren’t reported, like my speculation on riot scenarios.
sam1vp:
Graphic design has no party, just sayin’
Really?
Um, if the decisive state is this close probably...
The McCain campaign is looking at an Electoral College strategy heading into the final two weeks that has virtually no room for error and depends heavily on a dramatic comeback in Pennsylvania, which hasn’t backed a Republican for president in 20 years.
While Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado are still officially listed as McCain target states, two top strategists and advisers tell CNN that...
Salter-esque
SALTER: Your blogging colleague over there seems to have lost his fucking mind, you know. Prior to Sarah Palin, he was accusing me of being a plagiarist, the whole Solzhenitsyn thing, the cross in the sand, and then it turned out that Sozhenitsyn didn’t write such a story. I mean, Jesus Christ, it’s just remarkable. This whole story about how the baby isn’t hers? Jesus Christ....
We are all plumbers now
mufasa:
Dan, whom are you addressing? (I am still getting the hang of this tumblr thing, so if the person that you are addressing is clear, I apologize.)
It’s from a McCain campaign email.
We are all plumbers now
We want you to tell us how you are “Joe the Plumber” and why you’re supporting John McCain and Sarah Palin in thirty seconds. You could even see your video as an official McCain TV ad. (McCain Campaign Email)
Other news from before 9/11 →
But my start page is the tumblr dashboard...
Yes, we still journey out to the far reaches of the still-expanding info-universe, but for most of us, most of the time, the World Wide Web has become a small and comfortable place. Indeed, statistics indicate that web traffic is becoming more concentrated at the largest sites, even as the overall number of sites continues to increase, and one recent study found that as people’s use of the...
how did I/we miss this?
elsam:
keyholez:
Kottke:
Google has released a search engine that only searches their index from 2001.
I actually did know about this! Here are two fun ones.
From soon after, same article
Well, there’s the way the banner seems to explicitly identifies with Odysseus, the paradigmatic of Bourgeois subjectivity…
keyholez:
groupuscule:
Eliezer says: “Risks of human extinction may tend to be underestimated since, obviously, humanity has never yet encountered an extinction event.” He then footnotes:
Milan Cirkovic points out that the Toba supereruption (~73,000 BCE)...