Pacific Views

Saturday Reading

If you want to understand what is happening with the Dean phenomenum you should read BaseLine's article The Marketing of the President. It explains how the Dean campaign uses the internet and is a great example of viral marketing.

Kucinich has a powerful ad that deserves wide play. (via a dKos commenter)

The following two articles are from older issues of the Washington Monthly, but I'm just reading them now as my mail catches up with me after my move. But I found them quite worth my time.

The first is Mourning Has Broken which talks about how completely Bush blew the opportunity to heal our country's wounds after 9/11. The author believes that Bush squandered the emotions that would have led to a country that would support each other and reduce the cynicism felt by Americans towards their government. He thinks things have gotten back to where they were before 9/11. I'll say I believe things are much worse. I know I was willing to stand behind Bush, but he has proven to be so bad that I worry about every day he is in office. Can we at least try to impeach him?

The other notable article in the Washington Monthly has not been posted online, yet it is worth reading even if you need to go the the library. The article was Malpractice Makes Perfect published in the Oct 2003 issue. It turns out that a number of the prominent doctors who are pushing for caps on medical malpractice insurance rates are some of the doctors that are responsible for the most egregious errors. Only 5% of the doctors are responsible for the "epidemic" of malpractice reports. (They account for 50% of the suits.) This is definitely another case where the Bush administration is fixing the wrong problem because they refuse to look at real evidence.

Finally, drop by Kos' place and read the excellent post by Meteor Blades about openness in government. Man, I really like the completeness of his posts.

Posted by Mary at December 7, 2003 03:10 AM | TrackBack