He's baaaaaaack...

Cal Ulmann, one of the few equally appreciative of phat beats AND free markets, hath returned.

Good. Twas gettin' worried...

Building a better poll

Just thought of this a moment ago. Dunno if this is already being done or not, if it is then let me know, if it ain't then give your two cents as to why not.

Suppose, to gauge public confusion/contradiction on things like Social Security, foreign policy & whatnot, polls were done where it started off with a short but detailed description of the situation, and then followed with a list of things to do to address that situation and allowed people to pick multiple answers? And then rather than just release the numbers, they ran them by a non-partisan range of experts in that field to analyze what the respondents knew about the situation and/or what they had been convinced about it that was inaccurate or outright nuts? It'd be sort've like a "public awareness" survey, with the aim of finding out not merely what people think but what they know.

Also, there could be a takeoff of this that would ask people how best to raise the public profile of the issue, how to get the general public paying attention, thinking, discussing. Asking in effect "what would we have to do to get you to look into this deeper?"

Again, I don't know if this has been done or not, just throwing it out there. If it has been done, then I'd like to be pointed in the direction of an example.

Better late than never

People are coming around, I guess...

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, people are finally getting fed up over the war in Iraq:

For the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes the fight there has not made the United States safer, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll....Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the number of casualties in Iraq is unacceptable, while two-thirds say the U.S. military there is bogged down and nearly six in 10 say the war was not worth fighting -- in all three cases matching or exceeding the highest levels of pessimism yet recorded. More than four in 10 believe the U.S. presence in Iraq is becoming analogous to the experience in Vietnam.

Perhaps most ominous for President Bush, 52 percent said war in Iraq has not contributed to the long-term security of the United States, while 47 percent said it has. It was the first time a majority of Americans disagreed with the central notion Bush has offered to build support for war... (All emphasis mine)

We went in looking for WMDs and found zilch. We felt it our duty to liberate the Iraqi people, and they seem to be hovering at a point where they're equally as likely to simply shift to another form of domination as they are to figure out democracy. We said it would make us safer, and the jury is still out.

For awhile I figured it'd at least be reasonable of us to stick around until the country stabilized itself. Over time, I've come to realize: the current state of affairs just may be what stability looks like for now. It simply must be asked:

Why are we still there?

That must be some FIRE...

Apprently the Supreme Court got a hold of some good ish & smoked themselves retarded:

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the medical marijuana movement yesterday, ruling that the federal government can still ban possession of the drug in states that have eliminated sanctions for its use in treating symptoms of illness.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Congress's constitutional authority to regulate the interstate market in drugs, licit or illicit, extends to small, homegrown quantities of doctor-recommended marijuana consumed under California's Compassionate Use Act, which was adopted by an overwhelming majority of voters in 1996.


Uh, yeah, very funny. Extremely ill people growing a couple plants in their back yard for personal use are part of the "interstate commerce" that Congress may "regulate", haha, good one...

Next thing you know there'll be federal guidelines on how many times I can scratch my ass in one day.