Pacific Views

Shrub is blowing it again! If he had bothered to do any studying while in school, he might have learned something from a master political machinist:

What tells in holdin your grip on your district is to go right down among the poor families and help them. I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire in Ninth or Tenth or Eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the day or night, I'm usually there with some of my election district captains as soon as the fire engines. If a family is burned out I don't I don't ask them if they are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the Charity Organization Society, which would investigate their case in a month or two and decide if they are worthy of help about the time they are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for them, buy clothes for them if their clothes were all burned up, and fix them up until they get things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics too - mighty good politics. Who can tell me how many votes one of those fires brings me? The poor are the most grateful people in the world, and, let me tell you, they have more friends in their neighborhoods than the rich have in theirs...

Another thing, I can always get a deserving man a job. I make it a point to keep track of jobs, and it seldom happens that I don't have a few up my sleeve ready for use. I hear a young feller that's proud of his voice... I ask him to join our Glee Club. He comes up and sings, and he's a follower of Plunkitt for life. Another young feller gains a reputation as a baseball player in a vacant lot. I bring him into our baseball club. That fixes him. You'll find him working for my ticket at the polls next election. I rope them all in by givin' them opportunities to show off themselves off. I don't trouble them with political arguments.

--George Washington Plunkitt, Politician, New York, 1889

GeeDub is known for prizing loyalty. I guess he's very loyal to corruption?

You might find this interesting. A few days ago the results of a Gallup poll were published in the NYT/AP Newswire. According the poll, which was cited favorably by Dick Cheney, a majority of Baghdad residents thought the liberation of Iraq was "worth it." Unfortunately, the newspaper articles (which I confess to having read online) did not include links to the raw data.

It is my policy to not mention polls where I have no access to the raw data or methodology.

Here is a story in the Washington Post explaining how the poll results were misrepresented. One of these days somebody should post about how poll results can be misconstrued or misrepresented.

Having said that, I want to add that the NYT is frequently maligned unfairly. The Washington Post had a photo spread about the Iran-Iraq War which was chock-a-block full of errors and bizarre photo selections. A particularly egregious example was the photo caption which said, "In 1980 Saddam Hussein invaded his western neighbor Iran."

...Saddam Hussein invaded his western neighbor Iran.

Details, details. Actually, for that year, Iraq and Iran decided to switch places on the globe and Iran really was further west....

I question both the NYT and WaPo. The NYTimes reporters have been less than stellar for awhile. And I don't have much confidence that Bill Keller, Bush enthusiast, will encourage people to look closer. And WaPo was positively blood thirsty when beating the drums for war. Although their reporters seem to be working hard to get some real news. In my opinion, Krugman is worth the NYTimes especially when you throw in some of the other oped columnists like Maureen Dowd, but WaPo has done a better job of reporting on the Bush corruption despite the editorial collusion with the White House.