• In an AOL online Presidential poll done about 10 days ago (see below) one of the few surprises was that Bill Richardson consistently placed just behind the Democratic Big Three (Obama, Edwards and Clinton).



• In the Daily Kos straw poll, although Edwards and Obama are the clear favorites, Richardson is the candidate who came in third in the most recent iteration. As Kos noted, that makes 6 out of the last 11 polls that Richardson's numbers have improved, and he's now drawing double what he was back in August 2005. (He's also beating Clinton -- although they're both well behind Edwards and Obama.)



• Richardson's relative popularity with the Netroots is confirmed by the MyyDD March poll, which also had Richardson in third place.

While this is quite interesting, it's not enough to start considering Richardson to be one of the top contenders -- the Big Three remains a trio -- but it is enough to begin to think of him as a legitimate Second Tier candidate, the first one in the Democratic field, in fact (unless you count Wes Clark, who's hampered by his apparent inability to declare his intentions). While I've been saying for a while that the big ones were the only really serious candidates, I think it's a good idea to keep an eye on Richardson and not count him out quite yet.

Here were the results for that AOL poll when I looked at it with about 100,000 votes counted:

Ranked by overall support (adding together those who would "Absolutely" vote for the candidate and those who would "Maybe" vote for the candidate):

1. Obama - 55%
2. Edwards - 53%
3. Clinton - 43%
4. Richardson - 40%
5. Biden - 32%
6. Dodd - 25%
7. Kucinich - 18%
8. Gravel - 14%

Ranked by strength of support (percentage of those who would "Absolutely" vote for the candidate):

1. Obama - 31%
2. Clinton - 23%
3. Edwards - 19%
4. Richardson - 11%
5. Biden - 6%
6. Kucinich - 5%
7. Dodd - 3%
8. Gravel - 1%

Ranked in inverse order of negative approval (those who said they would not vote for the candidate):

1. Obama - 45%
2. Edwards - 47%
3. Clinton - 55%
4. Richardson - 60%
5. Biden - 68%
6. Dodd - 76%
7. Kucinich - 82%
8. Gravel - 86%

On the Republican side, there were no surprises at all -- their Big Three dominated:

1. Giuliani - 65% support, 32% strength, 35% negatives
2. McCain - 58% support, 20% strength, 42% negatives
3. Romney - 48% support, 15% strength, 52% negatives

If I were an unscrupulous and immoral GOP political consultant, I think I would advise John McCain that he'd better start smearing Rudy pretty darn soon.

757) Predict the worst and you will be hailed as a sage.

Benjamin Franklin (attributed)
posted by Gilbert Payson [IQM] (4/21/95)

758) Suppressed panic turns him into a prick every time. It's what he does instead of running in circles screaming. A way of coping I suppose.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Mirror Dance (1994)
posted by Vickie Cooper [UAQ] (4/21/95)

759) [He is] one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

Saki (H.H. Munro)
"The Feast of Nemesis" in
Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914) [ODQ]
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (4/24/95)

760) It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
"Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" in
Following the Equator (1897) [CQ]
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

761) The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

Bernard M. Baruch (widely attributed)
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

762) There is more to life than increasing its speed.

Mohandas K. Gandhi (widely attributed)
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

763) All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

James Thurber
"The Shore and the Sea" in
Further Fables for Our Time (1956) [WQ]
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

764) The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

Jane Wagner
for Lily Tomlin's act [WQ]
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

765) Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.

Robert Pirsig (attributed)
posted by George Osner [IQM] (4/24/95)

766) So it is something of a homiletical commonplace to say that the outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where one question grew before.

Thorstein Veblen
"Evolution of the Scientific Point of View"
Lecture at the Kosmos Club, U. of California (5/4/1908)
University of California Chronicle (v.10 no.4, 1908)
posted by Don Fearn [IQM] (4/24/95)

767) The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

Arthur C. Clarke (widely attributed)
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [IQM] (4/23/95)

768) Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Lord Chesterfield
Letters To His Son (1774) (11/1/1750) [B16]

769) The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James
The Principles of Psychology (1890) [B16]

770) Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they made be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.

Aldous Huxley
Time Must Have A Stop (1944) [CQ]
spoken by the character "Bruno Rontini"

[Note: Cf. #286 Dick, #739 Huxley, #2338 Sowell]

771) The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke (widely attributed) [B16]
quoted by Roger Rosenblatt in
"Teaching Johnny To Be Good" in
New York Times Magazine (4/30/95)

[Note: According to both Wikiquote and Bartlett's 16th, although this may be a paraphrase of some of Burke's ideas, after extensive searching it has been determined that neither the quote as given, nor any of the many variations on it, exist in Burke's writings. The Yale Book of Quotations gives the first citation as in the Washington Post (1/22/1950). <[YQ]]

Sources

[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993)
[CQ] - The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[ODQ] - The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edition (1992)
[UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup
[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[WQ] - Wikiquote
[YQ] - The Yale Book of Quotations (2006)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 674 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Suspected members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police. An FBI spokesman said, "Parents and children have nothing to fear."

Asked about the alert notice, the FBI's Rich Kolko said, "There are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern," although law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to watch out for kids' safety.

[#110 CLARKE'S FIRST LAW: If an elderly but distinguished scientist says something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.]

751) Perhaps the adjective 'elderly' requires definition. In physics, mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in the other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory!

Arthur C. Clarke
comment on Clarke's First Law in
"Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in
Profiles of the Future (1962; rev. 1973)
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/23/95)

752) When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion - the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.

Isaac Asimov
comment on Clarke's First Law
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (c.1977)
posted by Joachim Verhagen [UAQ] (4/24/95)

753) CLARKE'S SECOND LAW: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke
"Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in
Profiles of the Future (1962; rev. 1973)
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/23/95)

[#109 CLARKE'S THIRD LAW: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.]

754) Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/23/95)

755) Any sufficiently retarded magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Gehm's Other Corollary to Clarke's Third Law
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/23/95)

[Note: Clarke's Laws - First Law: 110, 111, 751, 752; Second Law: 753; Third Law: 109, 647, 754, 755, 1013, 1057, 1402. Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: 1853.]

756) A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert A. Heinlein
Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long (1973)
posted by Thomas Lundberg [UAQ] (4/20/95)

729) It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.

Robert H. Goddard (attributed)
posted by Jason Cloutier [IQM] (4/21/95)

730) The degradation of the position of scientist from that of independent worker and thinker to conscienceless stooge in a science factory has been far more rapid and thorough than I had believed possible.

Norbert Wiener (attributed, possibly paraphrased)
posted by Victor Yodaiken [AFU] (4/19/95)

731) The independent scientist who is worth the slightest consideration as a scientist has a consecration which come entirely from within himself: a vocation which demands the possibility of supreme self-sacrifice.

Norbert Wiener
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950) [B16]

732) The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence. The world of the future will be an ever more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.

Norbert Wiener
God and Golem, Inc. (1964) [B16]

733) Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not a consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.

John Kenneth Galbraith
"The United States" in
New York (11/15/71)
reprinted in
A View from the Stands (1986) [CQ]

734) I'll not listen to reason [...] Reason always means what someone else has to say.

Elizabeth Gaskell
Cranford (1851-1853) [B16]
posted by Jason Cloutier [IQM] (4/21/95)

735) I don't want to talk. When we talk it means you talk and I listen.

Ain Gordon & David Gordon
The Family Business (play, 1993)
spoken by the character "Annie"

736) Be wiser than the other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.

Lord Chesterfield (attributed)
posted by Jason Cloutier [IQM] (4/21/95)

[Note: Also "Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least." (1/29/1748) Letters To His Son (1774)]

737) A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Knut Rockne
quoted in Reader's Digest (10/1927) [YQ]
posted (with misattribution) by Howard J. Lambert [IQM] (4/21/95)

738) The boy has a fine mind, but it’s overtaxed. That’s the trouble, it’s too good a mind. A weak mind isn’t strong enough to hurt itself. Stupidity has saved many a man from going mad.

Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
A Matter of Life and Death (film, 1946)
(aka Stairway to Heaven),
spoken by character "Dr. Frank Reeves",
played by Roger Livesey

739) Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Aldous Huxley
Proper Studies (1927) [WQ]
posted by Howard J. Lambert [IQM] (4/21/95)

[Note: cf. #286 Dick, #770 Huxley, #2338 Sowell]

740) Drawing a conclusion brings a halt to the thinking process. As an alternative, continue to think the issue through even after you discover an "answer".

unknown
posted by Howard J. Lambert [IQM] (4/21/95)

[Note: cf. #1031 Einstein]

741) Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Self-Reliance" in
Essays: First Series (1841)
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (4/21/95)

742) In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel (attributed)
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (4/21/95)

[Note: "Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics." quoted by Marcel Haedrich in Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets (1971) [CQ]]

743) Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.

John G. Pollard (attributed)
posted by Jason Cloutier [IQM] (4/21/95)

744) I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Bill Cosby (attributed)
posted by Jason Cloutier [IQM] (4/21/95)

Sources

[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993)
[CQ] - The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[AFU] - Usenet alt.folklore.urban newsgroup
[WQ] - Wikiquote
[YQ] - The Yale Book of Quotations (2006)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 676 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

724) I, for one, bet on science as helping us. I have yet to see how it fundamentally endangers us, even with the H-bomb lurking about. Science has given us more lives than it has taken; we must remember that.

Philip K. Dick
"Self Portrait" (1968)
republished in
The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995)
Lawrence Sutin, ed.

725) If you have not lived through something, it is not true.

Kabir
fifteenth-century Sufi poet,
quoted by Philip K. Dick in
the Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)
republished in
The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995)
Lawrence Sutin, ed.

726) Spinoza saw [...] that if a falling stone could reason, it would think, "I want to fall at the rate of thirty-two feet per second per second."

Philip K. Dick
"The Android and the Human" (1972)
republished in The Dark-Haired Girl (1988)
and in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995)
Lawrence Sutin, ed.

727) An EEG of a person watching TV shows that after about half an hour the brain decides that nothing is happening, and it goes into a hypnoidal twilight state, emitting alpha waves. This is because there is such little eye motion.

Philip K. Dick
"How to Build A Universe That Doesn't
Fall Apart Two Days Later"
(written 1978, published 1985)
republished in
The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995)
Lawrence Sutin, ed.

728) One long-past innocent day, in my prefolly youth, I came upon a statement in an undistinguished textbook on psychiatry that, as when Kant read Hume, woke me forever from my garden-of-eden slumber. "The psychotic does not merely think he sees four blue bivalves with floppy wings wandering up the wall; he *does* see them. An hallucination is not, strictly speaking, manufactured in the brain; it is received by the brain, like any 'real' sense datum, and the patient act in response to this to-him-very-real perception of reality in as logical a way as we do to our sense data. In any way to suppose he only 'thinks he sees it' is to misunderstand totally the experience of psychosis."

Philip K. Dick
quoting an unknown psychiatric text in
"Drugs, Hallucinations,
and the Quest for Reality" (1964)
republished in
The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995)
Lawrence Sutin, ed.

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 677 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

720) The producers of "The Other Side" (Four Point Entertainment Inc.) [a show on NBC-TV] evidently determined that the time was ripe for a new kind of morning show to combat's the medium's neglect of out-of-body experiences, psychics, UFOs and how-our-government-is-conspiring-to-hide-the-truth-about-them. [...] Clearly the show, like the daytime talk-freak shows generally, is based on the calculation that its audiences will believe any story put before them, however outrageous, if presented with passion and conviction. [...] The arrival of this show - worse, in some ways, then the standard morning assortment of sex addicts, molesters with multiple personalities, and other lunatics - is, in short, not good news. Trial defense lawyers, further, would do well to pray nightly for a jury pool consisting of people devoted to programs like this, people nurtured in the belief that every claim is possible.

Dorothy Rabinowitz
Wall Street Journal (11/14/94)
quoted in Skeptical Inquirer (May/June 95)

721) We are here for this - to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out. We must never feel disarmed: nature is immense and complex, but it is not impermeable to the intelligence; we must circle around it, pierce and probe it, look for the opening or make it.

Primo Levi
"Nickel"
The Periodic Table (1975)
quoted by David Freedman in
The Brainmakers (1994)

722) I have reached the conclusion [...] that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area [obscenity] are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it; and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Potter Stewart
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964)
(concurring) [ALQ]
posted by Fred Shapiro [UAQ](4/10/95)

[Note: cf. #1242 Auden.]

723) Duct tape is like the Force: It has a Light side and a Dark side and it holds the Universe together.

Carl Zwanzwig (attributed)
posted by Alfred M. Kriman [UAQ](4/13/95)

[Note: In the theatre world, it's gaffer's tape that is indespensible, and holds everything together.]

Sources

[ALQ] – The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations (1993)
[UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 678 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

1. Liberal policies can go over well with voters if properly presented; and


2. Politicians who are slapped with the "liberal" label frequently have trouble getting elected.

It all stems from a disconnect between the programs people want and the way they think of themselves politically: they approve of, and want more of, liberal social program, but, at the very same time, more of them think of themselves as "conservatives" than "liberals," by about 2-to-1.

Liberal policies, re-dressed in other clothes are winners, but the politicians who espouse them cannot be seen to be "liberals." I see this as another reason to go for progressive populism, in which a progressive agenda is presented in populist terms, and also yet another reason why the Democrats should shy away from politicians who are, for one reason or another, incapable of shucking off the label of "liberal."