August 2003

The Adlai Stevenson Award

ArchPundit August 20, 2003 0 Comment

Look, I like Barack Obama a lot and I think it would be amazing for Illinois to send another African-American to the Senate. While I haven’t made up my mind amongst a very strong field, Obama is an excellent candidate. Steve Neal slobbered over Obama on Monday though, saying, "What gives Obama hope is that he is the clear favorite of informed voters."

To which, one can only break out Stevenson’s line,

"Mr. Stevenson, you have the support of every thinking voter in America." To which Adlai Stevenson replied, with his characteristic wit, "Well that’s great, but what I need is a majority of voters in America."

So one has to wonder if being the favorite of informed voters is damning one with faint praise.

Breaking Views

ArchPundit August 20, 2003 0 Comment

Eric Zorn joins the Blogosphere with Breaking Views. A name he is already apologizing for. Two minor quibbles, he has no permalinks and one has to register to get to the blog. I am registered so no biggy, but it doesn’t fit the traditional blogosphere very well. Bill takes issues that he doesn’t have comments and points out he doesn’t understand why
Instapundit gets away without having them. Reynolds actually did have them, but got rid of them because managing trolls was simply too much. I imagine the same is true of a big media journalist at a large site. Another example of the problem is The Temple Report by former Missouri Democratic Executive Director Roy Temple. He faced some challenging trolls and while he seems to have it under control, not having comments will have to do for many new entrants. .

Otherwise, I think his Pundit Patrol will be a great niche to build off of–I’m already using it daily after two days. Zorn makes the most sense of any of the columnists at the Trib because he has a very conversational voice and has expanded that to his own web site. The blog was the next likely choice.

Wanting to take credit for it (like any good blogger regardless of how silly the claim) , I looked around my archives and find that I never did suggest him, though I did suggest the Red Eye incorporating Nathan Bierma as a blogger. Nathan does a fair amount of free lance work for the Trib.

Interestingly, Zorn had said it would be a great honor to get the Tempo slot vacated when the Trib fired Bob Greene. I think he may have found a far better gig in the long run. Especially with his conversational voice he should be a prime example of how a columnist can connect readers to the print and electronic editions of a paper and give readers a personal stake in the publication.

Up DATE: Butchered link and text fixed. Don’t blog on bleary eyes.

Quick Hits for the Rest of the Week…

ArchPundit August 20, 2003 4 Comments

Hit the Capitol Fax for an update on the ICC rate hearings–not surprisingly the Commerce Commission has cut the refund…

Jack Ryan makes women swoon…

And Blagojevich’s numbers are falling according to some private polls. Besides that, Blago uses his hard hitting style to proclaim that cheaters won’t be tolerated when it appears that a 4-H kids just messed up the paperwork. He also offers up an interesting history of 4-H cheating. I had several cousins who earned most of the spending money for a year by how well their steer did in show. So while the cheating wasn’t commonplace, it wouldn’t be surprising to see cheating, but embarrassing a kid statewide is pretty damn obnoxious.

Oh, and Rich Miller sports a new pic at the Daily Southtown. Take this with a grain of salt from someone who doesn’t even use his name on his web site, but it is a huge improvement over his pic on his site.

Coincidence: I Think Not

ArchPundit August 18, 2003 0 Comment

Fair and Balanced week here at ArchPundit was cut short by the effects of the blackout–coincidence, I think not. Roger Ailes shut down power to stop my service provider from broadcasting the truth I tell you.

Is the above any wackier than your average Fox hack?

I report, you decide…

Anyway, at least the beginning of the week will be slow. Real life intrudes, you know. Come back tonight for some links to some of the more interesting stuff.

MBC and William Jewel at Odds over Evilution

ArchPundit August 13, 2003 0 Comment

Nodding to the former workers at the Saint Louis Science Museum who may or may not be out there,
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) reports the Missouri Baptist Convention has voted to withdraw support if William Jewel continued teaching evolution. As is per usual with such pronouncements, the MBC seems horribly confused about what it wants,

Although the MBC?s Burnett told the Sun-News that the MBC’s board was advocating that Genesis be taught as fact in theology classes but not in biology classes, the chair of the MBC’s executive board, the Reverend Jay Scribner, was quoted as saying that creationism was appropriate for science classes as well: ‘Any Christian school needs to embrace and espouse the tenet of creationism.’

Appropriately, William Jewel just ignored them.

For those interested in such issues, the NCSE has set up a blog like news feed for biology education and attacks on evolution.

As a short aside, Sean Carroll hits the Discovery Institute over its collective heads for misrepresenting his work.

Growing Up is Overrated

ArchPundit August 13, 2003 0 Comment

Marie at Disarranging Mine explains

Fire McLarty and Bring In Podesta

ArchPundit August 13, 2003 0 Comment

Oops, I am having flashbacks to 1994. It would appear that someone needs to keep a calendar of important deadlines in the Governor’s office. It’s one thing to miss a deadline, it’s another to anger some of your base over something so small as actually signing the bills.

In more important news, Blagojevich is keeping some priorities straight,

How many candidates are there? Nine, 10? I could probably name them if you forced me to but I could probably give you the Cubs’ starting lineup a lot easier,” he said.

That was in e-mail so I can’t link to the source.

Save Al Franken Day

ArchPundit August 13, 2003 0 Comment

For those that are curious as the the renaming of the site, I’m just getting ahead of Neil Pollack’s Save Al Franken Day

Yes. This Friday, August 15, is Fair And Balanced day on the Internet. You are all hereby instructed to use the words Fair And Balanced in very creative ways on your various websites. My cosponsor in this effort, Atrios, informs me that many of you are already using "Fair And Balanced" in your taglines. Very good. Sometimes, I swear you don’t even need instructions from me. But we can go further. Tell Fox News to take its Fair And Balanced slogan and shove it up its Fair And Balanced hole. Feel free to be more subtle than that, if you wish.

Up DATE: Kenn tells me Cogicophony has joined the party

God Bless Social Conservatives

ArchPundit August 13, 2003 0 Comment

Ready, Aim, Fire in a circle. But no, today is not another hilarious installment of the Illinois Circular Firing Squad Team, but the California version with social conservatives starting their attack on Schwarzenegger.

Lou Sheldon (who was great on TV in an entertainment sense) is quoted as saying,

Sheldon has formed Californians for Moral Government to oppose Schwarzenegger’s candidacy. "It is hard to imagine a worse governor than Gray Davis but Mr. Schwarzenegger would be it," Sheldon said. "California has enough problems without adding a Gov. Schwarzenegger to the mix.

Keep it up!

Not Just Technical Fixes

ArchPundit August 13, 2003 0 Comment

Otis White at Governing addresses the air quality problems many cities are facing again and shockingly the problem is too many cars regardless of technical fixes.

The Return of Bad Air
This has been a terrible summer for air pollution, and it?s probably just the beginning. Take Los Angeles. In 1983, there were 152 days when ground-level ozone reached unhealthy levels. By 1998, that number had dwindled to 40. But by mid-summer this year, the number was at 36 ? with the bad-air season just beginning. Same problem in Denver, which was celebrating in 2002 for having conquered its air-pollution problems. There, air pollution monitors recorded the greatest spike in ozone since 1986. Ditto in Washington, D.C., which is suffering through its worst summer of pollution in years. What?s going on? A hot summer, to be sure, but a much more troubling trend: Air quality experts say that the technical fixes that worked so well in the 1980s and 1990s (catalytic converters, on-board car computers, reformulated gasoline, etc.) have run their course. ?I?m amazed at how we are getting to the end of technology to reduce emissions,? said an air-quality official in L.A. ?It takes more work now to get the same progress.? The technology masked the basic problem of big cities: too many people driving too many cars. In L.A., 70 percent of the pollution comes from cars and trucks, and the number of vehicles has grown steadily. In Washington, some officials blame pollution that blows into the area from the Midwest (it?s called ?transport?), but others say that?s only a small part of the problem. Says one Washington city council member, ?Ozone transport is an issue, but so are our emissions. If we weren?t putting up as much gas as we do, we wouldn?t be arguing about the transport.?