Some additional reading November 19th from 09:12 to 20:40:
- Media still trying to delegitimize MN recount – "Media outlets don't typically emphacize how much elections cost; they certainly don't emphacize how much individual aspects of elections cost. (When was the last time you saw a newscaster announce "election workers rolled voting machines out of storage this morning, at a cost to taxpayers of …"?)
And that's all this recount is: it is one part of the elections process. Its cost is, simply put, irrelevent. Elections are worth doing correctly no matter how much they cost. Not only that, but $86,000 is, even in the midst of a struggling economy, an utterly trivial amount of money for the state of Minnesota to spend in order to get the results of an election right.
How trivial? The $86,000 cost comes out to 1.7 cents per Minnesota resident. One point seven cents. It's a mere three cents per vote. Anybody out there think making sure each vote is counted correctly isn't worth three cents? Anyone at all?
- Auto officials nailed on private jets: The Swamp – "Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee asked at today's hearing on a potential bailout for the struggling U.S. auto industry asked the Big Three's chief executive officers which of them had flown by private jet into Washington for the hearing. All three raised their hands.
Then he asked which would be heading home commercially. None of the three raised his hand."
- FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right: An Interview with John Ziegler on the Zogby "Push Poll" – Republican mind-set, encapsulated. Wow, just wow.
"Ziegler was responsible for commissioning a Zogby International survey of Barack Obama supporters, which took the form of a multiple choice political knowledge test, stating a "fact" to the respondent and asking them which of the four major candidates (Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin) the statement applied to. Because I believe that many of the statements on the survey are questionable or false but are misleadingly presented as factual to the respondent, I characterized the survey as a "push poll" in an article posted early this morning."You should read this transcript if you are up for a good laugh. The RNC pays this guy Ziegler?