Click here for more details from The Guardian today:
Monday, October 26, 2015
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Patti.
In case you missed it on PBS NewsHour earlier this week, here's the great interview with Patti Smith about her wonderful new book, M Train, conducted by Jeffrey Brown.
The entire transcript is available here, but then you'll miss Patti's smile.
The entire transcript is available here, but then you'll miss Patti's smile.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
The Kristol Oracle Works Again!
Because Bill Kristol has been proved wrong every single time he has opened his mouth -- or let his stubby little fingers plod across a keyboard or touchscreen -- anyone who checked Kristol's Twitter feed yesterday morning got advance notice of Vice President Biden's decision not to run for President this year.
I need to start following The Kristol Oracle regularly to find out which movies to avoid and which stocks to buy.
And to make this even stranger, he just tweeted a few minutes ago why he wanted Biden to run:
Following the rules of The Kristol Oracle, his confirmation that Joe Biden was going to announce his presidential candidacy today was exactly the opposite; it was advance warning that Joe would be leaving the establishment-Democrat field free for Hillary Clinton to play in by herself.
Since @BillKristol is demonstrably wrong about everything, Hillary can breathe a sigh of relief about any Biden bid. https://t.co/lxrhicMlDo
— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) October 20, 2015
I need to start following The Kristol Oracle regularly to find out which movies to avoid and which stocks to buy.
And to make this even stranger, he just tweeted a few minutes ago why he wanted Biden to run:
Friday, October 16, 2015
Further Proof that Polls May Tell Us NOTHING in 2016
In some ways, this post is just a follow-up to the "Political Horse Race Polling Is Officially Dead" entry from last week, but I couldn't resist bringing up the subject again after seeing this "Majority say Clinton won debate" headline on The Hill today. The debate winner has been a topic of debate on Twitter since the debate ended on Tuesday night and the CNN crowd of talking heads all declared Hillary Clinton the winner while their live online poll showed Bernie Sanders maintaining at least a 50 to 60 point lead.
The CNN poll was not the only poll going on during the debate, and they all showed a Sanders lead far beyond any normal margin of error; I wasn't the only one grabbing screen shots during the debate.
And it wasn't only instant online polls, it was focus groups as well that were uniformly leaning in Bernie's direction. Here, for example, is Frank Luntz on Fox News with a group of 28 Florida Democrats, half of whom were for Hillary before the debate began:
So how did the "first scientific poll" about the debate reaction manage to come up with a 53%-33% Clinton win over Sanders? Well, first of all, unlike the screen grabs up above, it took place in the two days AFTER the debate, i.e., after the corporate media's barrage of pro-Clinton spin. Second, it involved "Survey Monkey" participants, so you KNOW it's correct.
If this were going to be the only debate, it might be to Hillary Clinton's advantage to have all the official spin spun in her direction, but with five more debates to follow, it may work against her; she may be expected to dominate the next debates just as she "dominated" the first.
 |
| My screen grab of the CNN/Facebook online poll at 10:50pm on Tuesday, just before closing statements. Bernie Sanders' 78% was far from the largest lead he had, and I never saw it dip below 75%. |
Polls show the people believe @BernieSanders won #DemDebate, trust the people not mainstream media! #FeelTheBern pic.twitter.com/raSuFm9PwN
— Obsrvtns of Dvnc (@AtBestIsKorny) October 14, 2015
— Highcentered (@Highcentered) October 14, 2015
And it wasn't only instant online polls, it was focus groups as well that were uniformly leaning in Bernie's direction. Here, for example, is Frank Luntz on Fox News with a group of 28 Florida Democrats, half of whom were for Hillary before the debate began:
"Poor Jim Webb." -- Megyn Kelly
So how did the "first scientific poll" about the debate reaction manage to come up with a 53%-33% Clinton win over Sanders? Well, first of all, unlike the screen grabs up above, it took place in the two days AFTER the debate, i.e., after the corporate media's barrage of pro-Clinton spin. Second, it involved "Survey Monkey" participants, so you KNOW it's correct.
If this were going to be the only debate, it might be to Hillary Clinton's advantage to have all the official spin spun in her direction, but with five more debates to follow, it may work against her; she may be expected to dominate the next debates just as she "dominated" the first.
Thursday, October 15, 2015
"Liberal" Cool? Of Course It Is (and always has been)!
In concert with this morning's post about an article in Salon about "The L Word," I also stumbled upon this story from Public Radio International's The Takeaway: "Is the Word 'Liberal' Becoming Cool Again in America?"
As with the article in the last post, both reassessments of the word were prompted by the Democratic Presidential Debate on CNN on Tuesday night -- a debate which was not (except for Jim Webb) running away from liberal ideals and chasing the Republicans toward the Right.
As with the article in the last post, both reassessments of the word were prompted by the Democratic Presidential Debate on CNN on Tuesday night -- a debate which was not (except for Jim Webb) running away from liberal ideals and chasing the Republicans toward the Right.
Restoring Lustre to “Liberal”
I found "The Resurrection of the “Liberal”: How the Right Tried to Destroy American Liberalism — and How It Came Back from the Dead" by Heather Digby Parton in Salon fascinating, but that may only be because this blog was started in 2004 in disgust at the way Kerry and Clintons and other Democrats were all running away from a proud label that they were letting conservative Republicans define.
Even if restoring lustre to "Liberal" is not your raison d'être, it's worth reading.
Even if restoring lustre to "Liberal" is not your raison d'être, it's worth reading.
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
It will be hard to top Ben Carson...
... for the most offensive and idiotic statement of this offensive and idiotic campaign season:
But how many bodies with bullet holes are necessary to protect our holy God-Given Second Amendment?“I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.”--Dr. Benjamin Solomon "Ben" Carson, Sr., October 6, 2015
Political Horse Race Polling Is Officially Dead
Except for the poll on the sidebar of this blog (which currently shows Bernie Sanders with 83%, Hillary Clinton with 16%, and no other candidate with a single supporter), horse race polling is now obsolete. Official confirmation of this fact appeared on Politico today:
Other old-line pollsters like Pew Research are also declining to run horse-race polls at this time, leaving the field open to those who are being paid by Donald Trump. It's probably not quite that insidious, but it's also unsurprising that in an age where no one with any intelligence answers a phone call from an unknown number, the favorite candidate of low-intelligence voters is "winning" all the remaining horse race polls.
But after a bruising 2012 cycle, in which its polls were farther off than most of its competitors, Gallup told POLITICO it isn't planning any polls for the presidential primary horse race this cycle. And, even following an internal probe into what went wrong last time around, Gallup won't commit to tracking the general election.
Other old-line pollsters like Pew Research are also declining to run horse-race polls at this time, leaving the field open to those who are being paid by Donald Trump. It's probably not quite that insidious, but it's also unsurprising that in an age where no one with any intelligence answers a phone call from an unknown number, the favorite candidate of low-intelligence voters is "winning" all the remaining horse race polls.
Saturday, October 03, 2015
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