Posts by Neil Morrison
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
- too many people hate her and not enough people like her, no matter how much money she raises.
That's the line being taken by the more left-leaning activists in the Democrat party (and the Reps unsurprisingly) but that's just projection. They hate her. That's no indication of the electorate's opinion and the poles have consistently had Clinton out in front and she's at present extending that lead. The poles also show she will loose to Giuliani but not as badly as Obama.
Yes early days, I expect her to win against Giuliani, but don't put your faith in the wishful thinking of the anti-Clinton faction of the Dems. She's got by far the most powerful campaign organisation and really the Democrat activists are a small minority that just talk amongst themselves.
-
Gore-Obama is just not going to happen. Gore has given enough indications that he is not running to make that a certainty. (If he does, look forward to a very nasty shootout with the Clinton gang).
The contest is between Clinton and Obama which from a liberal perspective is something to celebrate but it makes life a bit difficult for the Dems. What an ideal team it would be for Pres and VP - a woman and a black. The problem is voter appeal redundancy. Clinton will get the black vote without Obama. There is no need for her to have him on the ticket. She would seek someone to broaden her appeal.
One intriguing possibility is if Obama can get a significant amount of white conservative Christian votes to make him an asset. He's done very well at the few appearances he's made with that audience.
But looming in the background is Giuliani who poles show will beat them both. Which goes to show that disillusionment with Bush doesn't necessarily equate to success for the Dems, especially now that the Reps have lost their monoply on power.
-
someone has come forward as the creator, appears to be genuine.
He see this is the start of a new people-taking-back-politics-from-the-system movement. I tend to think these sort sof ads just preach to the converted even if they are amusing. But this guy wasn't trying to be funny, he meant it.
-
So you've got a viral video by an anonymous Democrat made into news by a longtime conservative hitman on the internet.
There's a more prosaic and less conspiratorial explanation than Greg Sargent's - the story took two weeks to gain momentum, to move from internet fringes to the mainstream. It became news not because of the evil Drudge but because both Clinton and Obama started to talk about it once it became the phenomena it did.
Or there's a vast right wing conspiracy to convince people that Clinton and Obama are in comptetion.
But its an interesting development in viral political advertising.
-
'The Departed' in particular seems hopelessly mediocre
Saw it on DVD (that's replaced the bulk of our TV viewing too) and had the same reaction.
But did see a brilliant film at the film society L'Esquive
Low budget, shot on video, young actors.
Also worth catching is Alain Resnais' latest Coeurs which showed in Auckland recently at a French flim festival.
-
I think both Drudge and Mediamatters need to sit down and have a few Marlborough chardonnays.
Reading the NYTs article it doesn't strike me as being either a slam dunk for the skeptics or a hatchet job on Gore. It's more a look at opinions surrounding Gore's global warming campaign. It's just reporting opinion.
I haven't read what Drudge has to say but Mediamatters takes great offence at this from NYT:
He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.
Gosh, criticism of Gore both foul and treacherous. But in order to maintain their outrage they conveniently forget to quote the very next paragraph:
“We need to be more careful in describing the hurricane story than he is,” Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Gore. “On the other hand,” Dr. Hansen said, “he has the bottom line right: most storms, at least those driven by the latent heat of vaporization, will tend to be stronger, or have the potential to be stronger, in a warmer climate.”
That doesn't exactly sound like some sinister oil-industry-inspired attack on Gore.
-
Callen also described the new reality format as "moving beyond the magazine style programmes of the past."
If it's such a good idea then I look forward to TVNZ going this way with all of its current affairs and news programmes. Perhaps One News could base itself in the offices of Investigate Magazine.
This really does reek of the same patronising approach as Kiwifruit.
I really doubt that behind the scenes at Express is so enthralling that a weekly TV show can get enough material. Maybe that's why the sudden appearance of a "young programme makers' initiative" segment - very worthy but the easiest way to get other people to make your show on the cheap.
And what is wrong with magazine shows FFS.
-
The president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change is Eileen Claussen who has a pretty impressive CV -
-
How would Darwinian thinking be brought to bear on social policy?
If one accepts that the mind, our moral faculties and our very ability to socialise rely on in-built mechanisms that evolved then it makes a great deal of sense that an understanding of evolution should have a role in social policy development. Even if only to promote caution - the attempts last century by both the Left and Right to change society without regard to our innate human condition lead to horrendous consequences.
But people like Singer are arguing more positively, that the Left can be invigorated via Darwin after the disaster of Marxism. I've read about a Darwinian analysis of government department restructuring which is very interesting.
-
This really seems like false equivalence
I'm being a bit provocative but if you look at the influence of social constructivists on the social sciences then I think that there is a reasonable case to made that left-wing rejection of Darwin has had a substantial, negative, effect.
I agree that these days people like Rose have been proved wrong and are but a small and not very influential group but not so long ago they were far more influential. I certainly don't lose sleep worrying about it.
I bring this up because generally it's the Christian right's views on evolution that come in for scrutiny but there is another conflict which has been more significant in many ways. There was a very bitter battle not so long ago, which Rose and co. are still fighting, over evolution that gets a bit overshadowed.