The Princeton Election Consortium website run by Sam Wang (a Princeton University neuroscientist who has taken on a second interest in statistical analyses of US elections) has been my go-to site for the last few election cycles because I like his down-to-Earth looks at the state of the polling race, free of hyperventilating over the this or that latest poll. He does not post often but his website contains up-to-date information based on poll aggregation and is well worth keeping track of. If you enjoy statistics and its application in politics, this is the site for you.
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I mentioned before that Donald Trump’s main personality feature is his desire to be the dominant person in any situation. That can work well in some situations such as in the testosterone-soaked world of business or in Republican primary politics. But it can also work against him in other situations.
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If any one still has any illusions that we are a nation of equals, this long and detailed expose by the Guardian about the way that wealthy individuals and corporations buy influence will help shatter it. (Thanks to reader Jason for the tip.) The looks at how the current campaign rules were exploited by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker at a time when he and some Republican state senators were facing recall elections. The money was laundered through a group known as the Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCfG).
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The first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is due to take place on Monday, September 26. These are not debates in any real sense of the word but more like joint press conferences where occasional direct exchanges break out. The target audience for these debates is neither the people in the auditorium nor those watching at home or even the moderators asking the questions. Instead it is the talking heads who will, immediately following the event, blanket the airwaves for the next week or so, giving us their verdict about who won and who lost.
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I can’t stand it. This election has reached a stage where, for me at least, the sheer shallowness of the campaign and coverage has become so sickening that I can barely stand reading election news any more. All we seem to see and read about are surrogates trash talking in the media and getting smacked down in turn by the online commentariat. Even the comedians are losing their appeal for me which is the real sign that I am just sick of it all
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Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and elsewhere and there were many commemorations of that somber occasion. But it is also good to remember that it generated a period of mass fear and hysteria in the US that has resulted in endless, cruel, and needless wars, and accelerated a massive increase in the powers of the national security state and severe erosions on people’s privacy and civil liberties, all in the name of fighting terrorism.
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In a long article that appeared in the Canadian National Post, two Hong Kong lawyers Robert Tibbo and Jonathan Man describe how they hid Snowden from the Hong Kong and US authorities and the media while they devised ways to get him to safety. This story has not been told until now and it is timed to coincide with the release of the Oliver Stone film Snowden that premiered yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival and goes into general release on Thursday, September 15.
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