Republicans Better Informed

A new Pew survey shows a rather steep "Partisan Knowledge Gap," with Republicans and Independents generally better informed than Democrats. Mary Katharine Ham finds this quite amusing and also notes that, "if the polling had gone the other way, the NYT would shout it from the rooftops."  She provides examples of the mainstream press doing just that on previous occasions. We'd need ...

Twitter Memes

Becks observes, "I suspect many Twitter memes that I find annoying (one letter off movie titles, failed children's books, etc.) would have been quite hilarious Unfogged threads." The post title, "The Medium Is The Message," is appropriate.  Several Twitter memes  (created by adding a hashtag such as #failedchildrensbooks) of the sort mentioned can be amusing if one is in the mood.  ...

Fineman: Chicago Style Isn’t Working

Howard Fineman piles on to the burgeoning -- if thus far unfounded -- Obama overexposed and Obama fatigue memes with an uncharacteristically harsh column. In addition to contending Obama gives too many speeches with too little substance, her goes further: There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George ...

Anti-Abortion Activist Murdered

A man carrying an anti-abortion sign was murdered this morning. A well-known anti-abortion activist was shot multiple times and killed Friday morning in front of a Michigan high school and another man was shot and killed just miles away in what police are investigating as related incidents. Michigan State Police have taken a suspect into custody but have not released the name ...

RSS is Dead, Long Live RSS

A discussion that has been going on for a while among the tech bloggers and Twitterati is the idea that RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is dead. A study published last October found that 78% of U.S. online adults did not use it and only 19% of those who didn't had any interest in using it in the future.  Then again, as ...

Hilary Clinton’s Congo Outburst and the Media

Hillary Clinton's Congo blow-up is a story that just won't go away. Even those sympathetic to Obama and Clinton, like Jon Stewart, are having a field day with this. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Hillary in the Congo www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance Mrs. Clinton’s answer on Monday has quickly become the No. 1 sound bite ...

Hillary Clinton’s Congo Blow-Up

Hillary Clinton chewed out a Congolese student for asking what "Mr. Clinton" thought about a public policy issue: ABC's Kirit Radia: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost her cool Monday after a Congolese student, speaking through a translator, asked her what "Mr. Clinton" thought about a Chinese trade deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "You want me to tell you what ...

Are Americans Stupid?

Bill Maher has a piece at HuffPo arguing that Americans are a bunch of idiots who should just shut up and let people who know what they're talking about make decisions on tough issues like health care reform. [T]ake the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their ...

The Future of News(papers)

Craig Henry surveys two pieces from the recent "How to save the dying newspaper industry" meme that's been going around and sounds a much more optimistic note than generally seen in the blogosphere. He points to a February TIME piece by Walter Isaacson ("How to Save Your Newspaper") that advocates a micropayment system.  While pretty much every blogger who wrote about ...

Obama Going Gray!

The Old Gray Lady has another of the epic scoops that made them the Newspaper of Record. Ace correspondent Helene Cooper breaks the news in a piece of journalism titled "For Young President, Flecks of Gray." Well, that didn’t take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray. It happens to all of them, of course ...

Jefferson Defeated by 1st Vietnamese Congressman

William "The Freezer" Jefferson, who has been under federal indictment for three years, narrowly lost a hurricane-delayed election yesterday to Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao. Nine-term Democratic Rep. William Jefferson, who has been battling scandals and a federal indictment for the past three years, lost his bid for re-election on Saturday. Republican challenger Anh "Joseph" Cao, an attorney and community organizer, defeated ...

Iraq WMD’s Revisited

Bernard Finel, to say the least a fan of neither the Bush Administration nor the Iraq War, throws cold water on the Bush Lied, People Died meme that refuses to die: I’d like to urge folks to think through what standards should be applied to inherently ambiguous information. Here is what we knew in 2002: (1) Saddam had a WMD program in ...

Twitter Revolution Will Not be Televised

Kathleen Parker seems vaguely annoyed by the Twitter phenomenon. Shorter than a blog posting, a "tweet" consists of a concise sentence or two and essentially answers the question: What are you doing? [...] On Planet Facebook, nothing in one's life is not worth mentioning. To what end, one can only surmise. I am, therefore I am, therefore I am. But what are friends ...

Obama and Bush Economic Advisors Compared

Greg Mankiw, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2003 to 2005, takes exception to Paul Krugman's assertion "Isn’t it amazing just how impressive the people being named to key positions in the Obama administration seem? Bye-bye hacks and cronies, hello people who actually know what they’re doing."  He points to the standard RePEc data, ranking ...

Palin Derangement Syndrome

Two lawyer-bloggers who I've followed for years are upset with me for buying into the "Sarah Palin was in over her head" meme. Xrlq accused me of drinking "the anti-Palin Kool-Aid" for buying into claims that Palin didn't know which countries were in NAFTA while Bill Dyer is "genuinely concerned for [my] mental health." As to the more "outlandish" ...