Let’s wade into some poly-ticks.
The British media is having a field day making fun of Mitt Romney’s recent stumbles in London, where he insulted his hosts by criticizing their preparation for the 2012 Summer Olympics. (The Guardian‘s headline yesterday: “Mitt Romney’s Olympics blunder stuns No 10 and hands gift to Obama”.) This has lead some bloggers and journalists to reprint this passage from Romney’s book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness:
Every once so often, I get sucked into a political argument on Facebook. Sometimes someone will post one of those “share this if you agree” pictures, and I don’t agree with it. Sometimes one of my liberal friends’ conservative friends will make a comment, and because (I’m not proud to admit) I sometimes suffer from the tendency illustrated by xkcd #386, I will feel moved to respond. Every one of these encounters has left me increasingly convinced that Facebook is not a good forum for political arguments. I’ve identified two reasons:
- The way Facebook displays comments is poorly suited for discussion.
- People who post political content don’t necessarily want to spark a discussion, and it’s hard to tell.
The word “socialism” has been frequently misused recently, mostly in hyperbole about the recent health care reforms. However, socialism is alive and well in another sector of the economy, in a number states in which the government has a monopoly on retail sales of spirits. The New York Times describes the liquor control system in the state of Washington, a system which will be eliminated on Friday:
State control, in turn, made generations of civil servants tastemaking critics — their decisions on what to stock dictating what people could order in bars or buy in the stores.
“[I]n the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.”—Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Florida), explaining his opposition to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Rep. Webster should hope that his campaign advisors have a better understanding of sound polling methodology than he does.
(Via Matthew Yglesias.)