ArchPundit

Truly Fair and Balanced

ArchPundit May 30, 2007 2 Comments

Perhaps I was short below.

There is an important element to the story I’m missing.  A view that hasn’t been taken into consideration.  There are vital reasons to block inspection of cattle for E. Coli.  After all, what about the E. Coli?  Don’t they have 4th Amendment Rights Against Unreasonable Search and Seizure?  The cattle too? Aren’t they covered by ADA since it’s an illness?  Don’t they have a right to be slaughtered and eaten?

What if?

ArchPundit May 30, 2007 3 Comments

Rick has a contest going to outdo the story.  His first entry is pretty good

The Assault on Parody

ArchPundit May 30, 2007 4 Comments

Forget Al Gore’s Assault on Reason, the administration is carrying out assault on parody:

Via Chicago’s own Rick Perlstein we find that the USDA is fighting to stop a company from testing all of its beef for E. Coli:

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect Friday, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal — effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.

Mad cow disease is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.

There have been three cases of mad cow disease identified in cattle in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow.

The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn’t have the authority to restrict it.

The best line is this one:

The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry

I have about a billion snarky things to say, but really the straight story is the funniest.

Slight Delay on the Site Changeover

ArchPundit May 30, 2007 No Comments

However, while I fix the technical stuff and get life back to normal, Charles Franklin has ended classes and produced a fine piece of work on the prevalence of the name Monica since the Lewinsky scandal.

Also, while everyone has been getting hyped by plummeting Bush poll numbers, up until the last few days, there hasn’t been much movement.  You can have your Pony now with the blue (more stable) estimator at 32.2% and red (more sensitive) at 31.2%.

As Charles says though:

The bottom line: The model is not yet unambiguously insisting on a new downturn in approval. And it would be well to remember that we’ve seen this kind of a dip more than once this spring, only to quickly see a return to the recent equilibrium. So before declaring that decline is a certainty, we should remember that such a prediction has been wrong recently.

He also gives some good discussion on why immigration is unlikely to hit Bush any harder since last year it didn’t have much of an effect.  For Bush to go any lower he’ll need to significant losses in his base–so far he’s hanging around 70% approval amongst Republicans as Charles pointed out in comments.

I can imagine some scenarios where Bush loses more support as Republican candidates run against him as the election nears, but I think he’s hit the floor for now. That’s entirely speculation, but I just don’t see how the political environment leads to a true crack-up of the Republican base.  I can also imagine a scenario where Bush’s approval stays the same throughout the election and Republican Presidential candidates who abandon Bush lose significant primary support thus creating the situation where the guy (and they are all old aging white guys) who wins has to figure out how to attract people other than the base while not distancing themselves from Bush.  I’m thinking the best illustration of that would be the medieval stretching machines used for torture.