Nixon's Job Approval Ratings
Mon Apr 04, 2005 at 03:11:08 PM PDT
From time to time as I look at President Bush's weekly approval ratings, I find myself wanting to look at the week-by-week job approval ratings of former President Nixon. They are out there and available, of course, but they're surprisingly hard to find on the web. I'm not aware of anyone who's really compiled the data for online presentation.
The best source I've found so far is the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut. They have a page with the data, but their graph quite frankly stinks. The value axis is compressed, there aren't any gridlines, and it just doesn't tell you much. So I compiled their data and made my own graphs, which I'll share with you after the jump.
Democrats, Mac OS X, Dean, and the iPod
Tue Feb 15, 2005 at 01:22:23 PM PDT
The election of Howard Dean as DNC chair reminds me of the day when Steve Jobs was asked back as the interim CEO of Apple Computer. And I take that as a hopeful sign.
I was working at Apple the day Steve came back, and I've been in and out of the company a few times in the years since. I've watched with interest as he literally reshaped the company into what it is today. I wanted to write a bit about the parallels that I've seen, and how I think Dean's chairmanship will be good for the Democratic Party.
Some of you are saying: "But Drew, Apple doesn't have a lot of marketshare. They are hovering in the single-digit percentages and the market is literally dominated by the other manufacturers. Is that really the model we want?"
You'd be almost right in that concern, but for one thing. Computers and politics are not the same. Computers are expensive physical objects, and there's a lot more inertia in the computer world.
There is one thing Apple did not have in 1997, and now has in spades. Something that is the lifeblood of any political party:
Influence.
More after the jump.
Weapons of Social Destruction
Sat Feb 05, 2005 at 02:06:51 PM PDT
A few days ago George W. Bush got up in front of Congress and gave his State of the Union address for 2005.
He started off by reminding us how wonderfully the economy has been performing. I think he's got a point there. It's certainly true that I've never felt quite the same way about my job security since he was elected.
Without a doubt, the keystone of his speech came when he warned us that Social Security has weapons of mass destruction. Although a shocking statement, this was not a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. The administration has been laying the groundwork for months now.
Remember when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that no federal program "poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world" than Social Security? Vice-President Cheney also stated forcefully that Social Security "is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents," and continues to pursue "an aggressive nuclear weapons program."
George "Irony" Bush: Can't Lead the Country While Undercutting an Ally
Fri Sep 24, 2004 at 02:05:52 PM PDT
Oh man. Ever have one of those moments where someone comes up with something so obviously fake that the sheer ballsiness of their statement makes you laugh out loud even as you grimace on the inside?
That happened to me today, courtesy of President Bush. As you probably know, there was a Bush-Allawi press conference recently which painted a rosy picture of Iraq, despite a lot of doubt from the reporters present. Kerry was quick to respond to it. He blasted Bush and his hand-picked governor Allawi for telling a story that contradicts CIA reports, and released an ad including Bush's awful right-track/wrong-track comment.
Bush's response?
Daily Show TRANSCRIPT: Henry Bonilla
Tue Aug 03, 2004 at 12:38:53 AM PDT
I typed up a transcript of part of tonight's
Daily Show with Jon Stewart, specifically the interview with Henry Bonilla where Jon goes after the "first and fourth most liberal" talking point.
There was a lot of fumbling and crosstalk in the interview, so it wasn't quite as powerful as it could have been, but if you know anything at all about President Bush's "first and fourth most liberal" talking point and exactly why it's utter BS, then it was highly entertaining.
(See Spinsanity and the Daily Howler for more discussion. The short version is that this talking point is based on cherrypicked and wholly unrepresentative data, which as any high school science student could tell you means: it's a deliberate lie.)
If you're feeling generous toward Bonilla you might wonder: is he just unaware of what the data actually say, or is he deliberately lying to the people with one side of his mouth while he tries to call for honesty with the other? But he clearly showed he knows quite a bit about where the data comes from, and when Stewart confronted him and said that Kerry was actually to the right (not left) of Kennedy, and Edwards was to the right of the median Democrat, he said "You're right". Talk about disingenuous.
Transcript after the jump.
Vigilante in Afghanistan: I was following Rumsfeld's orders
Wed Jul 21, 2004 at 09:18:56 AM PDT
Remember the story from a little while ago, about the ex-Green-Beret vigilante - Jonathan Idema - who was arrested in Kabul for
running a private prison, complete with torture chambers? The Afghan government (yes, our Afghan government) kinda took issue with the fact that he was taking hostages illegally, so they went after him.
When this originally broke, the administration was so concerned about bad publicity that a State Department spokesman stated explicitly on July 8th that these guys were not affiliated with the government.
Well, we're now hearing another side of the story - Jonathan Idema's side. As reported by Reuters today, Idema is claiming that he was working for the U.S. government after all.
"
We were working for the U.S. counter-terrorist group and working with the Pentagon and some other federal agencies," Idema told reporters before the opening of his trial.
"We were in contact directly by fax and email and phone with Donald Rumsfeld's office," he said, referring to the Secretary of Defense.
Furthermore, he claims he has proof.
Should we encourage early/absentee voting?
Sat Jul 03, 2004 at 12:28:29 PM PDT
Ran across an interesting article via Yahoo! News today, from Newhouse News on June 22nd.
Experts Predict Big Rise in Early and Absentee Voting With Liberalized Rules.
The headline is tragically unhip, but the meat of the article suggests that as many as 30% of the votes cast in November's election could be early or mail-in ballots. Of particular interest was this paragraph:
Florida, one of the nation's most populous states, completely overhauled its voting procedures after the 2000 election plunged the nation into a protracted recount and court battle that left the presidential outcome up in the air for an agonizing period. This year, Florida will permit any eligible voter to vote beginning in October, by mail or in person.
And indeed, a quick check shows that Florida has this information available on the web. Apparently you will now be able to just walk into an office and vote as early as 15 days before the election, and the offices will even be open on weekends.
I'm a lot more politically aware than many people I know - dKos certainly helps with that - but I had no idea that in some states you can just walk into an office and vote two weeks before election day. (Not in my state, but apparently in many others.) Shouldn't we work to raise awareness of this? It certainly would help with some of the typical problems with voting, such as people who face the choice of either taking time off work to vote or getting crushed by the evening rush hour at the polls.
