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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Roman Berry
Published Letters: 198 Editor's Choice: 10
It's interesting to see the difference in the way media covers this election elsewhere. YouTube has a clip from Russia Today. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzVE0AiH5G0 (or click my sig.)
The RT clip opens with the claimed Ahmadinejad win, voter turnout and input from (Iranian?) election analysts explaining the result. But before the clip is finished, it also visits the controversy over the results and the protests.
My point in posting this boils down to the desire to get people to look at over perspectives rather than just those that tell them what they want to hear. That was also the motivation for the link to Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight.com in my immediately previous letter concerning the graphs and "statistical analysis" that's so quickly make the rounds on various US blogs and web sites.
Short version: Step back, look anew, and think again.
Fair enough. That was a poor choice of words on my part.
I agree with you that the results are (at best) suspicious. But as I said in my previous letter, given that the presidency in Iran is apparently so weak and the nation is under the control of religious rather than elected leaders, I'm not sure exactly why they would go to all the trouble of so transparently engineering such an obvious fraud.
"why don't all of you just pack your bags, and jump on a plane, and move to a different country. No one is forcing you to live here."
Sounds exactly like what we used to hear from the Bushbots. 'Cause it is exactly what we used to hear from the Bushbots.
Ya know, there is absolutely nothing wrong with honorable dissent. Dissent is what this nation was born of. Dissent is what pushes politicians to shift and to sometimes do the right thing. Are you suggesting that we all hop on board the Britney Spears theory of politics and "trust our president in every decision"? (Before you say yes, remember that she was talking about GW Bush. See http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/cnna.spears/ or click my sig.)
eBay traffic? Down and still trending down for months on end.
eBay profits? Not bad, but coming at the expense of things like 21 day holds on PayPal withdrawals by sellers (huge float to draw interest there), increased fees and just generally the generation of a lot of ill will among all but the largest sellers.
Evidence of turnaround? Apparently the stock price. And what does the price of a stock really tell us? I submit that except in the case of a company in severe distress, it tells us nothing more than stock investors still move in herds.
eBay turning around? Ya know, from my perspective as a small occasional seller there in days gone by, the answer has to be a resounding no. eBay has well and truly lost touch with its roots. It's on the way to doing what all corporations seem to do eventually and that is utterly forgetting who they are, where they came from and what it was they originally set out to do.
Turning around? No. A blip in the stock price? Sure.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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