Adam Fields (weblog)

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/11/15/marine_shooting/index.html

Kevin Sites has been doing some fantastic reporting on Iraq via his blog:

http://www.kevinsites.net/

I was inspired to share the following I wrote in response to the thought "if I just did a little bit more (and by extension if everyone did a little bit more), maybe Kerry would have been elected".

My response was this:

That’s wishful thinking on your part. Yes, the grassroots are powerful, sometimes surprisingly so. But I think the blame for this loss goes squarely on the Kerry/Edwards campaign managers. It’s not like they didn’t have enough money or enough volunteers. They simply failed to grasp, on a nationwide scale, what factors bring people to the polls to vote for a particular candidate. The Dems have been getting this up the ass in spades at least since the primaries. That Kerry was a surprise going in is the root of the whole problem. There’s no consistent message, there’s no organization, there’s no coordination, and there’s a lot of uncertainty and misreading of opinion.

Granted, it’s not clear to me that the results are even remotely accurate. But if they are, there are a number of messages there that the Dems don’t get. One of them is that there are a lot of single-issue voters, who really just don’t seem to care about much else (which I personally find very alien). Another is that every
attempt to portray Bush as an idiot, even by himself (think "internets") only gets him more support. Yet another is that telling people to vote for you is much more effective than asking them.

Strange.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/15/nyregion/15allegany.html

At any given minute, is it always snowing somewhere on Earth, or are there times when there is no snow falling anywhere on the planet?

Does this answer differ with the time of year?

‘The FCC’s brief, filed in response to PK’s challenge to FCC’s jurisdiction in the flag matter, is breathtaking. FCC’s position is that its Act gives it regulatory power over all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus "associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received" via all interstate radio and wire communication. That’s quite a claim.’

http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2004/11/11/180969.html

A frightening look at the data collection that Wal-Mart is doing, where it’s going, and how it’s taken control of the retail channel.

A particularly startling excerpt:

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Eventually, some experts say, Wal-Mart will use its technology to institute what is called scan-based trading, in which manufacturers own each product until it is sold.

"Wal-Mart will never take those products onto its books," said Bruce Hudson, a retail analyst at the Meta Group, an information technology consulting firm in Stamford, Conn. "If you think of the impact of shedding $50 billion of inventory, that is huge."

The impact will probably be felt by suppliers, he added, but none are likely to complain.

"You can see the pattern of Wal-Mart’s mandates, and as Wal-Mart grows in power, it is getting more dictatorial," he said. "The suppliers shake their heads and say, ‘I don’t want to go this way, but they are so big.’ Wal-Mart lives in a world of supply and command, instead of a world of supply and demand."

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Is it okay for one retailer to get into a position where it controls a large majority of retail sales, then ask its suppliers to accept all of the risk for not selling things quickly enough?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/business/yourmoney/14wal.html