Applesauce
Pat Cunningham offers an unabashedly liberal perspective on national politics. A note of caution: The language gets a litttle salty on some of the sites to which this blog links. So, don’t say you weren’t warned. By the way, this blog’s name is inspired by the Will Rogers quote, “All politics is applesauce.” |
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6 comments September 16th, 2008
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen had always been a great admirer of John McCain, whom he saw as a man of courage, honor and integrity.
Cohen includes himself among what he calls “the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain.” And then he says, “Guilty.”
But now Cohen is out of that tank, as he explains HERE.
1 comment August 25th, 2008
This meta-analysis stuff from a neuroscience professor is pretty arcane, but the payoff for our purposes can be found by clicking on the last of the five links in THIS PIECE.
The bottom line is that Obama seems to have picked about 20 electoral votes from John McCain’s embarrassment of domicile riches.
1 comment August 13th, 2008
I’ll be away from Applesauce for a few days, but a few pre-timed posts and perhaps a recycled oldie or two will appear in my absence.
Responses to comments from readers will resume upon my return. Until then, argue among yourselves.
4 comments August 3rd, 2008
Try this one on family or friends:
What one thing comes to mind when you ponder these words as a group?:
Black, white, brown, gray, strong, moody, chase, hunt, stone, field, woods, story, burger, brewer, frankfurter, butler and day.
To be fair about this, you should not turn to Google or any other Internet search engine. Register your guesses in the comments section, and I’ll acknowledge the first correct answer (which, of course, has to match the one thing that was on my mind when I put that list of words together).
This little quiz is just for entertainment purposes. No wagering, please.
UPDATE: After nearly 12 hours, nobody has even ventured a guess.
The answer is that all those words are surnames of former U.S. Supreme Court justices.
1 comment July 30th, 2008
About 20 years ago, before the rise of the World Wide Web, I wrote a column about what I called “the nudge factor” in public opinion polls.
My focus was on surveys concerning issues rather than political races. And my theory, though doubtless not original, was something that just somehow came to mind rather than from any hypothesis advanced by an expert on the subject.
I argued that lots of people who are surveyed on certain issues, especially those issues that have not been the subject of intense national debate, haven’t really given them much thought and therefore haven’t formulated any serious opinions.
Wouldn’t such people merely declare themselves undecided or indicate that their responses belong in the “don’t know” category? I think not. Many people don’t want to admit ignorance on any but the most arcane matters. They don’t want to look like dummies.
Consequently, as I argued in that column, pollsters tend to unintentionally nudge some people toward giving answers to questions they’ve never previously considered. In such cases, the responses break down, one way or the other, into percentages that are not necessarily representative of the public as a whole. The polls become skewed by the nudge factor.
Something akin to my theory seems to be part of a forthcoming book (above) in which David W. Moore, a former senior editor at Gallup, argues that polls often fail to differentiate between “those who express deeply held views and those who have hardly, if at all, thought about an issue.”
There’s more about the book HERE.
2 comments July 25th, 2008
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7 comments July 24th, 2008
Jonathan Martin of Politico has an INTERESTING PIECE on how liberals have stolen a march on conservatives by using the Internet for reporting news rather than just commenting on it.
Add comment July 16th, 2008
(Hat/tip to The Swamp)
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1 comment July 15th, 2008
Some politicians are just EASIER TO MOCK than others.
10 comments May 17th, 2008
I borrowed the question from an online poll on DailyKos, but I’m not much interested in a tally of votes on one side or the other.
Of greater interest to me is your explanation of why you would or wouldn’t take the cash offer.
So, what say you?
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