Excellent post. I'm as much a political junkie as the next person, but Jesus! Go wank off to occupy your time. Don't let the MSM or talk radio or political blogs make you think that who moved your cheese is really that important. It's not. Not yet. What's happening in online comments is like complaining about a soccer team 10 minutes into the game when the score is still 0-0.

Posted at July 1, 2008 10:31 AM in response to TPM Community, STOP LOOKING AT THE SQUIGGLES!!!

Has anyone seen this yet? John McCain admits that he can't use a computer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R9wnMVZE_Q

Are you kidding me?

He says, when asked whether he uses a Mac or a PC, "neither, i am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that I can get."

I think being computer-illiterate should disqualify almost anyone from being the chief executive of a company, for-profit or non-profit, much less of a government.

Posted at June 15, 2008 6:04 PM in response to Obama Helps Midwestern Flood Victims

I guess the software doesn't let me embed a Youtube video... ah, well.

Posted at June 10, 2008 12:13 PM in response to McCain: America Established As A Christian Nation

More of Rasmussen's explanation:
"for Senator Clinton, the challenge is not convincing Superdelegates that she’s more electable. Even if she could convince every single Superdelegate of that fact, it’s not enough. The standard now is much higher--Clinton also needs to convince Superdelegates that the party will stay unified behind her if Obama is denied the nomination. Unfortunately for Clinton at this time, that’s a question she cannot answer."

Posted at May 13, 2008 12:20 PM in response to Rasmussen stops tracking Clinton's numbers, declares Obama nominee

The reason I ask is to find out how much this 527 spending bursts Clinton's talking point of Obama spending 3 times as much.

Posted at March 6, 2008 10:24 AM in response to Pro-Hillary 527 Spent Big In Texas

Are there any figures estimating what the campaigns themselves spent in Ohio or Texas?

Posted at March 6, 2008 10:23 AM in response to Pro-Hillary 527 Spent Big In Texas

The following was in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

“It is true,” Tim Goeglein wrote to The Journal Gazette in an e-mail. “I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses.”

He said he wrote to the author of the essay, Jeffrey Hart “to apologize, and do so categorically and without exception.”

http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080229/NEWS/194943667

Posted at February 29, 2008 11:49 AM in response to White House Aide Plagiarizes in Newspaper Column

I apologize, testing, for leading you astray to such a wonderfully delivered rebuttal, but the point you're rebutting was not my point.

Here's my point:

Let's take a hypothetical timeline.

10:30 a.m. - A blogger, Maximillian, writes a post with a title "Chris Dodd is an idiot!"

10:40 a.m. - Lots of commenters write in objecting to the title.

11:00 a.m. - Maximillian then changes the title of his post to "Chris Dodd endorses Obama"

11:10 a.m. - A random websurfer reads the post for the very first time and concludes that all of the commenters from 10:40am to 11:00am are crazy for objecting to the title of the blogpost, "Chris Dodd endorses Obama"

More importantly, random websurfer does not then understand the bias of Maximillian and can't factor that bias in when reading subsequent posts by Maximillian.

Posted at February 26, 2008 4:55 PM in response to Rewriting TPM history

In response to a comment:

No, the author of the initial blog post is often not acknowledging anything. What I refer to is many commenters objecting to some particular text in the copy of the initial post, and then later in the comment log those commenters thank the author for changing the initial text.

So, let me paint you a picture of what the late reader of a post sees. Assume the post has been edited to be reasonable. This hypothetical late reader then:

1. Reads a reasonable post,
2. Scans through the first few comments and sees that lots of people are objecting to whatever (the headline, the bias of the text, the inclusion or exclusion of a quote, etc.).
3. Finds no objection him or herself to the post (because it's already been edited), and leaves that post with the conclusion that the commenters are over-the-top in their objections.
4. Can not reach a conclusion about the slant of a particular blogger (gasp! bloggers have their own bias?) because all the data is not available to them

Who knows how many posts may exist that have been edited after their initial post because of commenters objecting but now can never be pinpointed because those commenters never bothered to thank the original author for a subsequent edit.

Posted at February 26, 2008 4:44 PM in response to Noting trends for Andrew

Well, I'm speaking of a trend, Andrew, but the post which finally sparked my posting comments and deciding to start a blog that might serve as The Horse's Mouth in regard to TPM was this post: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/ap_obama_more_about_speeches_t.php

And this comment, among others, was the only indication that the title of the post had changed:
"Thank you for changing the title to the post eric. Still negative of course, but it's better than it was." - http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/ap_obama_more_about_speeches_t.php#comment-2617573

I'll collect a list of blog entries here, Andrew, to let you see the trend for yourself and make it another blog post.

Posted at February 26, 2008 3:33 PM in response to Rewriting TPM history