Fair and Balanced
Some folks may feel that I violated my creed by calling out FOX News as a tool of the conservative propaganda machine. However, this is not merely my opinion or that of other liberals; Harold Meyerson reports that a group called the Program on International Policy Attitudes has just completed a study supporting this claim.

Meyerson summarizes the results as follows. Given the following three false statements:

• The United States has uncovered evidence of a strong working relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
• Weapons of Mass Destruction have been discovered in Iraq.
• Most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein.

the researchers studied how likely a person was to believe one or more of them based on that person's primary news source.

The results show that

• 80% of FOX viewers believed at least one of these statements; 45% believed all three.
• 71% of CBS viewers believed at least one of these statements, while only 15% believed all three.
• Only 23% of PBS viewers/NPR listeners believed at least one statement, and only 4% believed all three.

Meyerson goes on to make some conjecture that FOX News is really an organ of the Republican Party. I won't go that far. I'll simply point out that FOX News is run by Roger Ailes, described by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting as "one of the savviest and most pugnacious Republican political operatives in Washington."
3:35 PM | Link

 
The New Model Republican Party
I'm accustomed to receiving email from folks pointing me to one link or another, but I was really quite surprised yesterday when two people independently sent me this link from Calpundit. I mean, these supermarket worker strikes are a serious issue, but it's not exactly the kind of thing that makes you want to quit your job and take an unpaid internship at MoveOn.org just so you can be sure you've done all you can to get the word out to people.

So, apparently there was something goofy going on with Calpundit yesterday, because I eventually learned that my two fellow travelers had meant to point me to this link, which I'm sure you'll agree is much more compelling.

To summarize, Kevin Drum found a copy of the Texas Republican party platform, which he accurately summarizes as follows:

      "(We) won't rest until abortion is completely outlawed, Social Security
    is abolished, the welfare state is completely rolled back, the book of Genesis is taught in science
    classes, and the federal income tax is abolished."

His basic thesis is that pretty much everyone should be worried about this. Liberals should be worried about it for obvious reasons, and conservatives should be worried about it because even though such views don't represent mainstream conservatism, it is precisely these Texas Republicans, in the persons of George Bush, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, who are in control of the national Republican party and the country.

They may sugar-coat their agenda in the guise of "compassionate conservatism", but their agenda is spelled out in black and white in the Texas GOP platform, and it's something that probably at least 85% of the country doesn't want.

So I join with Calpundit in sounding a call to arms not only to all liberals, but also to all conservatives who care about their party and their country: LET'S GET RID OF THESE EXTREMISTS! I recommend courses of action:

1. Broadcast the original Calpundit post as widely as possible, so that as many people as possible will understand the threat we're facing. This means blogs, ordinary web sites, letters to the editor, word of mouth, call-in radio/TV shows, the works.
2. Work to eliminate the conservative propaganda machine. For conservatives, that means you need to stop listening to Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and FOX News, and stop reading the Washington Times. For everyone else, this means that we need to challenge media spin whenever we encounter it. Write letters to the editor pointing out factual inaccuracies and misleading statements, and write to columnists who willingly distort facts to serve a political agenda (even a liberal political agenda). No party can slime it's way into power if we have a fair, impartial and accurate media, but unfortunately we don't have one currently. See The Daily Howler for a daily account of how dysfunctional the media are.
3. VOTE the extremists out of office. It's easy enough to tell liberals and independents to vote against Bush, harder to persuade conservatives. That's okay, you don't actually need to vote against him; you can stay home instead. If you really can't refuse your support to an incumbent GOP president, read the synopsis of how Bush and his dirty tricksters screwed sensible Republicans out of a decent candidate in 2000. Hey, it's not too late to try to draft McCain for 2004; if enough conservatives are willing to reject Texas-style conservatism, he might even get nominated.

11:27 AM | Link

 
Ahhhnold!!! (Take three, and hopefully the last)

Well, I guess I can't blame Arnold's election entirely on the hypocrisy of California Republicans (none of whom, incidentally, wrote to explain their rationalizations to me). It seems that a small number of Democrats, and a healthy number of independents voted for him as well.

Which is all well and good. The voters of California have had their say for the second time in a little under a year. And I sincerely hope that Schwarzenegger is a great governor, in spite of the fact that he's given no one any reason to think he will be. I say this for two reasons.

First, California has the world's fifth largest economy, and it's in pretty bad shape. It's the main reason the recall supporters were able to get the recall on the ballot in the first place. I don't know a whole lot about economics, but it's a pretty sure bet that it can't be good for the world economy, let alone the U.S. economy, if California's economy is mismanaged. One reason to be optimistic is that Schwarzenegger has retained financial genius Warren Buffet to be his economic counselor; however, it seems that Arnold feels free to ignore his advice when it's politically unpalatable.

Second, I believe that this recall could be just the first step in making American politics even more poll- and personality-driven, if such a thing is possible. Schwarzenegger got a surprisingly high percentage of the vote, about 47 percent of the votes cast. However, considering that the electorate ousted Gray Davis principally on the basis of his perceived incompetence, that 47 percent approval rating could plummet if Arnold doesn't deliver some results and soon.

Put another way, as I understand it, it only takes a petition with a number of signatures equal to 12 percent of the votes cast in the previous election to force a recall. That's a bit less than a million signatures. I expect we could find a million Californians willing to order a recall on Schwarzenegger immediately if someone would only bankroll the effort --- think about how many folks probably stayed home in disgust over the whole recall circus. And even 53 percent of those who did vote voted against Schwarzenegger, though admittedly that doesn't automatically mean that they would sign up for another recall.

The point is, there is no reason to think Arnold will do any better than Davis did. Considering

1. His complete lack of experience in elected office,
2. Not to mention that he's a Republican governor facing a Democrat legislature, and the fact that
3. Thanks to the initiative process, the governor and legislature have very little discretion in writing a budget

there's a good chance his approval rating will drop quite a bit in the next 8-12 months.

What's to prevent someone from bankrolling a recall for Schwarzenegger? Thanks to the frankly ludicrous manner in which recalls are decided (the incumbent needs 50 percent plus one vote to keep his/her job, while the replacement simply needs more votes than anyone else), partisan politics will make it very easy to play the recall game once or twice a year, allowing California voters to continually vent their frustration on the incumbent while doing nothing to fix the actual problems. And of course, such a system acts very well to discourage anyone from making the tough decisions necessary to fix the state.

Seems to me that the best way to prevent such a nightmarish scenario is for Governor Schwarzenegger to accumulate some successes over the next 8 months or so. Things need to get better, or there's a good chance they will get much, much worse.

So, best of luck to you, Arnie.
3:14 PM | Link

 
Hi hi hi there! Did you miss me?

My trip to St. Louis was great. If you ever go, and you have young kids (ages 3 to 12), be sure to visit the City Museum. It's a child's paradise.

Speaking of St. Louis, whenever I drove someplace there, I couldn't help but notice two things:

1. That city has traffic jams pretty much 24/7, and
2. The staff at three different supermarket chains are on strike for some reason.

One might naively think that I would be able to determine the reason by watching the local news. But no, while the news quite happily reported on the effects of the strike (more people are shopping at farmers' markets!), it gave no explanation as to why the workers were striking in the first place.

I guess they assumed that all of their viewers already knew all about the reasons for the strike, and only cared to hear a handful of 'shopper on the street' soundbites.

Anyway, when I got back here to my computer, I had email awaiting me from Dr. Doug, who demanded that I post this link, and then, after thinking things over for a minute, said "ummm please".

I'm always happy to oblige. This offers some insight into why workers in St. Louis and Southern Califonia are striking (actually, the workers of at least one St. Louis chain are locked out rather than striking, but the long-term effect is the same).

As long as we're on the subject of worker's rights and labor actions, there's also this article about a looming threat to the software industry. This one hits a bit closer to home for me.

It's probably worth noting at this point that the Bush administration has not exactly been the friend of the working person, or the underemployed person, or the unemployed person, or the homeless person. Take a look at In These Times or this piece by Iowa senator Tom Harkin in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Kind of depressing, huh? It makes me wonder whether anyone's job is safe, apart from a handful of already wealthy CEO's. I think Bush should be concerned about his hob as well.
10:19 AM | Link