Category: Politics
November 3, 2004
Failing to Reach Into the Red
Great opinion piece in the New York Times: Living Poor, Voting Rich. 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… 
October 26, 2004
Clinton and Kerry in Philadelphia
This was the scene outside my office on Monday. (I work in the white building in the upper-right corner, behind the orange crane.) Several of my co-workers and I were looking down from a conference room. I counted over a dozen satellite trucks, but we were unable to find any local coverage of the event on television (I’m told there…
October 19, 2004
Flu vs. Anthrax
Alex at Marginal Revolution (my favorite economics blog — seriously, economics is fun!) posted some clear numbers on the U.S. spending on R&D for the flu vs. spending on anthrax/etc. (Not saying anthrax/etc. is not important, but priorities people!) Annual U.S. Deaths Due to the Flu: approx 36,000. Annual U.S. Deaths Due to Anthrax: ~1. Spending on R&D to fight…
October 17, 2004
Red and Blue Worldview
Listened a bit to George Lakoff on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, speaking about “The Thinking Behind Red and Blue States.” I’m downloading the full audio at the moment to give it another listen. The snippets I caught were about the way liberals and conservatives view government’s role, and seemed to reflect the understanding I’ve gained from this year’s election….
October 8, 2004
Questions for Bush
Questions for Bush, including one from Doris Kearns Goodwin, everyone’s favorite Presidential scholar: History suggests our best presidents acknowledge error, learn from mistakes, grow in the job. Lincoln readily conceded a number of errors. “I’d like to believe I’m smarter today than I was yesterday,” he explained. Yet when you were first asked about mistakes you had made since the…
October 6, 2004
Check Your Facts
Last night in the vice-presidential debate V.P. Cheney advised Americans to go to “FactCheck.com” to get the true story about Halliburton. They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton. What he meant to say was FactCheck.org. This morning…
September 24, 2004
Campaign Clarity
New York Times Op-Ed section has a great piece today: The Candidates, Seen From the Classroom. Stanley Fish clearly and concisely describes what I believe to be the key problem facing the Kerry campaign. If you can’t explain an idea or a policy plainly in one or two sentences, it’s not yours; and if it’s not yours, no one you…
August 24, 2004
What About the Issues?
Seriously, this swift boat business is the last straw (and then there’s the accompanying book). I feel like I’m a relatively well-informed person and, while I have my own ideas about what the issues are (beyond Iraq and national security), I have no idea what issues are likely to be dealt with in the next few years, let alone how…
July 26, 2004
Carter’s Speech at the Democratic Convention
The mindless cheering and general hysteria is getting to me already, but I really liked this part of Carter’s speech: In repudiating extremism we need to recommit ourselves to a few common-sense principles that should transcend partisan differences. First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place in jeopardy what is most precious to us, namely, the centrality of…
July 14, 2004
Outfoxed - Fair and Balanced Use
Interesting not only for its attack on the supposedly “fair and balanced” FOX News, the new documentary Outfoxed also creates an interesting case to defend fair use. It strikes me that this has connections to the study released last October by the Program on International Policy Attitudes Misperceptions, The Media and The Iraq War [PDF]. It found that people who…