Polls Polls Polls

August 30th, 2010 | Ronald A. Rowe
There sure have been a lot of polls lately. The one that got everyone’s interest, of course, was the recent national poll saying that nearly 1 in 4 Americans believe that President Obama is a Muslim. Whenever I read a statistic like that, I can’t help but wonder about the context and the subtext.

The context is important. The way the question is presented can have a heavy influence on the answer. Consider the following question: “Is a potato a vegetable?” The correct answer is obviously, “yes”. But what if I were to spend a minute discussing my diet and Read More

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Fox News: Fair and Loathing

August 23rd, 2010 | Jason Lightner
By now it's no secret that Fox News parent News Corporation had donated $1 million to the Republican Governor's Association in June. You wouldn't know it by reading the Fox wikipedia entry, however, as the blurb about it has allegedly been removed by Fox's "scrubbers."

According to Daily KOS:
"On the Fox News main page, someone put this inocuous little statement, heavily referenced, under the controversy section:

'In June 2010, News Corporation donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association'

... Two FNC scrubbers were on the case and according to the history page had that puppy removed."

It's not uncommon to see companies editing their own Wikipedia entries and the ethics of that is a debate for another time. What I would like to address here is the "fair and balanced" appearance that Fox News insists on pushing, when it is obviously not.

Let me get this straight: Your parent company donates *one million dollars* to the RGA and we're expected to believe that you, one of the largest entities owned by News Corp., Read More

Primary Season 2010

August 16th, 2010 | Ronald A. Rowe
The 2010 Primaries are under way in some states and rapidly approaching in many others. There has been a lot of talk about the mid-term elections and what they mean for President Obama’s administration. But the mid-terms are still a few months off. First, each party has to select their candidates for that election. What can we learn from this mid-term primary season, half way through the first term of the Obama Administration?

• The anti-incumbency movement isn’t as mighty as once thought. There’s a huge theoretical groundswell against incumbents. There’s no doubt about it. Read More