(1 unsatisfied Democrat) * (1 unsatisfied Republican) –VotePact–> (2 happy independents) “VotePact: The Next Phase of the R3VOLution” “VotePact, it‘s like getting your vote and eating it too.” “Freeing the Public, Two at a Time” “Don’t cancel your vote with your friend’s — double your votes together.”
Video Your VotePact
You would vote for Obama. Your neighbor would vote for McCain. You would cancel each other out. Instead, you decide to team up and magnify your votes by both voting for other candidates. Now, video it. YouTube is teaming up with PBS, encouraging people to “Video Your Vote”. I can’t say I embrace the politics […]
Addendum on the “Blind Taste Test”
Back in December 2007, Matt Waterman, who set up one of the blind taste test web pages for the primaries told me: Five months after launch we’ve had over 200,000 people use the tool to find out how well candidates’ views match up against their own. Records from the submissions have shown the most common […]
The Spiral of Silence
While speaking with Philip Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina a while ago, he mentioned the “spiral of silence” to me, not sure if I’d ever heard of it. It was coined by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann asdf– people who think that they are elizabeth be-neumann failure to speak up — didn’t […]
Open Debates?
It’s all rather late in the game — what isn’t? — but Third Party Ticket is organizing a more inclusive debate, for Sunday October 19th, 2008 from 7pm to 9pm ET. The group has invited Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, Barack Obama and John McCain. For a taste, see Democracy Now’s simulated […]
Pundification of the Populus and the Blind Taste Test
Several decades ago, the German pollster Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (who worked for a time at a pro-Nazi paper) put forward the notion of the Spiral of Silence, in part to explain why people in Germany went along with the Nazis: Observations made in one context spread to another and encouraged people either to proclaim their views […]
IndyKids and Political Compass
It’s remarkable that McCain and Obama agree on the Wall Street bailout, increasing the military, civil liberties restrictions (Patriot Act re-authorization, FISA), corporate trade deals, support for Israel, increased militarization of Afghanistan, threats (“all options on the table”) against Iran, against a single-payer health care system. On many of these issues, they are opposed by […]
Will the Political Spectrum Breakdown?
It unfairly ignores Chuck Baldwin, but IndyKids otherwise puts mainstream media to shame in breaking down some of the positions of various candidates, esp see their PDF newspaper. Reminds me of Jesus saying of children: “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Would be happy to link to other breakdowns of positions of […]
Almost Fair Media
It unfairly ignores Chuck Baldwin, but http://www.indykids.net otherwise puts mainstream media to shame. Reminds me of Jesus saying of children “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
GRITtv Covers VotePact
See today’s GRITtv segment on voting issues including VotePact.