Nixon's Job Approval Ratings

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Monday April 04, 2005 · 3:11 PM PDT

2005/04/04 · 15:11

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. Read More

Spitzer prank on Drug Company

drewthaler

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Thursday March 10, 2005 · 12:32 PM PST

2005/03/10 · 12:32

In the New York Post, via Boing Boing:

WRONG SCRIPT FOR THIS PARTY

THE prank worked better than its evil mastermind could have hoped for Sunday night at the Hard Rock Café in Phoenix. Express Scripts -- one of the participants in a National Council of Prescription Drug programs confab at the nearby Hyatt Regency -- was throwing a dance party. Express Scripts is being sued for $100 million in damages by Eliot Spitzer, who claims the firm inflated the cost of generic drugs, pocketed rebates intended for customers and sold patient information. Between songs, someone handed the lead singer of the Starlight Band a note. "I have an announcement. It's someone's birthday today, Eliot Spitzer," the clueless frontman said. "Where is Eliot?" The place went silent. Express Scripts executives started rushing to the stage and someone yelled, "He's in goddamn New York." But too late -- the band had launched into a version of "Happy birthday, dear Eliot." One witness said, "It was the funniest thing I ever saw."

drewthaler

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Tuesday February 15, 2005 · 1:22 PM PST

2005/02/15 · 13:22

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. Read More

Weapons of Social Destruction

drewthaler

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Saturday February 05, 2005 · 2:06 PM PST

2005/02/05 · 14:06

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." Read More

George "Irony" Bush: Can't Lead the Country While Undercutting an Ally

drewthaler

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Friday September 24, 2004 · 2:05 PM PDT

2004/09/24 · 14:05

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? Read More

Daily Show TRANSCRIPT: Henry Bonilla

drewthaler

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Tuesday August 03, 2004 · 12:38 AM PDT

2004/08/03 · 00:38

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. Read More

Vigilante in Afghanistan: I was following Rumsfeld's orders

drewthaler

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Wednesday July 21, 2004 · 9:18 AM PDT

2004/07/21 · 09:18

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. Read More

Should we encourage early/absentee voting?

drewthaler

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Saturday July 03, 2004 · 12:28 PM PDT

2004/07/03 · 12:28

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.

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