Public Opinion
Hillary's "Politics of Parsing"
The one debate I decide to skip is the one debate that becomes the one to watch. Had it not been for Tim Russert's Botoxed eyes, I would have grabbed a mojito and enjoyed the truthiness, but I did not.
Which is why I am aghast by this clip put together by the John Edwards campaign. This one is too good to pass up.
Wow.
Now I can see why there's so much clucking about this debate. She really flip-flopped badly, didn't she?
Politics | Public Opinion | Public Speaking | Rhetoric | Triangulation | 2008 Presidential Elections | Democratic Party | Hillary Clinton | John Edwards
Hillary, Rudy and the ghosts of Immigration policies past
The Pew Institute for Research is probably the largest non-for-profit public opinion survey group in the United States. Many people from both the left and right look at them as the source for number crunching anything having to do with elections, media use and the socio-political impact of market demographics.
So it is not shocking to see the reaction around a recent survey they released that pits Hillary Clinton against Rudy Giuliani; especially after the hyperbolic headline published at Politico.com.
I just have to wonder though, how those numbers read when compared to Quinnipac's similar survey for New York state. Giulini's advantage over her is of only 2%. Considering that most surveys have a 2-5% margin of error, that means they are in a dead heat in the Empire state.
Given New Yorkers do know how much of an asshole Rudy is, all I have to say that these polls are more about name recognition and public perception than anything having to do with the facts about either candidate's career.
Which makes it even more depressing to realize that most people really don't vote with the facts; they really just vote with their intuition. Whomever controls the gut instinct wins.
Which is why, this would make for an interesting pairing because, as John Gandelman points out over at The Moderate Voice, it will all come down to immigration.
Polling | Public Opinion | Statistics | Surveys | 2008 Presidential Elections | Hillary Clinton | Pew Research Center | Quinnipac College | Rudy Giuliani
Climate Change / Language ethics
From: Mike Hulme
Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Source for full statement: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6115644.stm
Partial quote:
cont....
But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country - the phenomenon of "catastrophic" climate change.
It seems that mere "climate change" was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be "catastrophic" to be worthy of attention.
The increasing use of this pejorative term - and its bedfellow qualifiers "chaotic", "irreversible", "rapid" - has altered the public discourse around climate change.
This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as "climate change is worse than we thought", that we are approaching "irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate", and that we are "at the point of no return".
It seems that we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics
I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric.
cont....
End quote.
Mike Hulme is Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Media methods | News | Poltics | Public Opinion
