And you are here why?

Politics — it’s everywhere, even (or is that “especially”?) in your company. Mind you, I’m not referring to politics in the  government  /  political parties  sense. Here, I’m referring to politics in the sense of “ activities within an organization that are aimed at improving your status or position ”. Mind you, these are typically considered to be devious or divisive, but that isn’t necessarily the case — think of this as everything you need to know to make sure that your career progresses. When it comes to playing politics, there are two extremes — call them “ Enterprise Politics ” and “ Startup Politics ”. The key to survival and growth is to understand which is which, and to know where, on this spectrum, your company sits. Enterprises , in this case, refer to really large companies — thousands of peoples, many many layers of management, and complex products/services in which any individual’s contribution is  de minimus . The last bit is key, since i...

So, the above is the home page for Fox News right about now (10:13 pm, on Oct 7th, 2016).   And, for the sake of posterity, this is a few hours after the Washington Post released the Trump Recordings On Women . Notice anything? And nope, I'm not talking about how the lede is (kinda) buried in small print on the home page. Here, i'll help Yup.   BigFoot has equal billing with the Trump Tape on the page. "News" it is....

In the presence of limited good, and of corruptible man, what is our responsibility? Is it to use present evil on behalf of present good and thereby to ensure the continuation of evil? Or is it to deny present gain in an effort to destroy evil itself?  The above questions are the underlying theme of  The Lord Of The Rings  (and has been happily appropriated from here ), and are as true today as they were back then. The more things change...

Really, no comment on the awesomeness that is the UK Parliament MPs are to hold an emergency debate on the Wilson doctrine, amid fears the convention designed to prevent politicians' communications being spied upon is "dead". The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has ruled the convention has no legal basis. Shadow Commons leader Chris Bryant led a successful application in the Commons for an emergency debate in response to Wednesday's judgment. M r Bryant said the judgment had resulted in an ``ambiguity'' which needed to be cleared up urgently, adding it had also cast doubt on the protections supposedly afforded by the convention  

/via Wondermark

President Obama just announced that Mount McKinley was going to be "renamed" Denali. Why the quotes around renamed ? Well, it turns out that the whole Denali / McKinley thing has been controversial for quite a while. OK, to be really precise, its been controversial in (some parts) of Ohio where McKinley is from ( Tod from Ordinary Gentlemen explains this in gory detail). See, the thing is, everybody called the mountain Denali right up to the 1890s, when, as usual, politics intervened.  As part of the "Gold vs Silver" battle of the 1890s (the whole " crucify mankind on a cross of gold " bit by William Jennings Bryan), Denali was renamed McKinley to stick it to William Jennings Bryan, and only to do so. No other reason (Bryan's opponent in these wars? McKinley...)   In 1897 an Alaska-based gold miner named William Dickey penned an opinion piece for the New York Sun, saying that the federal government should rename Densmore to Mt. McKinley, a...

via C hristopher Ingraham , we have this interactive visualization of Ideology (and party unity) in the House from 1857 to 2011 . It was created by  Christopher Ingraham . Data from  Voteview.com . Inspired by work by  Brian Resnick, Brian McGill and Ella Krivitchenko of the National Journal . All together now -- this plot combines data from the  party unity graph  and the  graph of dw-nominate scores . The bottom line - its pretty much always sucked, it just sucks a lot harder nowadays...

Words of wisdom from Paul Ryan yesterday , when he voted "No" against increasing the debt limit . "Today’s legislation won’t help us reduce our fast-growing debt ... this isn’t a breakthrough. We’re just kicking the can down the road." Yes, because clearly, if we sink the world's economy, that will entirely solve all of our problems... Gah.

The Guardian (of course) has a pretty neat chart up comparing the political knowledge of men vs. women .  The results are pretty weird - fascinating, yet weird. Basically, regardless of the state of gender-equality in the country, women know less about politics than men. It doesn't matter whether its a developing country, a developed country, Asian, European, or American, its pretty much the same. In fact, there seems to be a correlation between increasing gender equality and greater gaps - Professor James Curran, Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre at the University of London, was surprised to find that gaps in political knowledge are wider in countries that have done the most to promote gender equality. These gender gaps in Norway, the UK and the US are as large, or larger than gaps in South Korea and Japan The most likely reason seems to be a male bias in media - Professor Hayashi concludes that the main reasons for  the gender gap in po...

Matt Stiles @ NPR puts together the definitive chart on Inaugural Speech lengths (also, quite possibly, the only such chart, but whatever). Soooo, whats up with W. H. Harrison?

Via Jack Ohman (hat-tip Barry Ritholz )

Today's bit of idiocy by St. George takes the cake, what with it not just containing the usual bad logic, ridiculous statements and obtuse language, but going quasi-Godwin in the process . According to Saint George, The (evil?) Obama's drive to federalize voter registration is part of his master plan to make voting compulsory Holder's comment " We should rethink this whole notion that voting only occurs on Tuesday " is " loopy " because, wait for it, in most states people vote before Tuesday. (Yeah. I don't get it either. But it makes sense to St. George) Takes a statement from the Heritage foundation (Fair! Balanced!) that voter registration rolls are in poor shape with more registered voters than actual people as gospel, and proceeds to use it as evidence that justifies the long waits in line to vote (strangely, only in tossup states. Hmmmmm), while blaming it on the Federal Govt. (I wonder if St. George has ever been to a - state run - D...

Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake have an exceedingly silly article up at the Washington Post entitled " Why the GOP needs Jeb - right now ". I could go on about the sheer ridiculousness of the GOP pining for Yet Another Bush when they have pretty much decided that any mention of anything to do with any previous Bush is heresy punishable by ex-communication and torture by wet-noodle, but as it turns out, Hunter has the perfect fisking of this story up at DailyKos - " Pining for Jeb Bush is the new saddest thing ever ".  I can't quite do justice to this, you'll have to go read it yourself.  A sample below... 2. Organize/headline a series of immigration forums around the country: There is no more pressing electoral problem for Republicans than the party’s seeming inability to make any real inroads in the Hispanic community. Ah, the continuing conundrum: Why do these minority groups continue to vote against people who make "minority groups are co...

The Washington Examiner meets w/ Romney , and junk-science ensues (italics mine).  CARNEY:   What role should government have in promoting certain industries or economic activities such as homeownership, or manufacturing, renewable energy or fossil fuel energy, exports, or just advanced technology? What sort of subsidies and incentives do you favor? You had some of these in Massachusetts, I know. ROMNEY:   Very limited -- my answer to your first question. I’m not an advocate of industrial policy being formed by a government. I do believe in the power of free markets, and when the government removes the extraordinary burdens that it puts on markets, why I think markets are more effective at guiding a prosperous economy than is the government. So for instance, I would not be investing massive dollars in electric car companies in California. I think Tesla and Fisker are delightful-looking vehicles, but I somehow imagine that Toyota, Nissan, and even General Motors w...

Staggeringly cynical, and just about as true. Sometimes, I weep for my country :-( ( from Non Sequitur )

The NY Times has the scoop on a plan by Ricketts (TD Ameritrade founder) et al to mount " the most provocative campaign " yet.  Supposedly, it will " attack President Obama   in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from. " Its actually a pretty fascinating glimpse into the new, and quite uncharted territory that Citizens United has taken us, i.e., the impact of BigMoney on politics. Oh, by the way, BigMoney is to Big Money what BigData is to Big Data , i.e., Money at a wholly new scope, scale, and size. Anyhow, per the article, the plan is ... Timed to upend the Democratic National Convention in September, the plan would “do exactly what John McCain would not let us do,” the strategists wrote. [...]“Joe Ricketts is prepared to spend significant resources in the 2012 election in both the presidential race and Congressional races,” Mr. Baker said in an interview Wednesday. “He is very concerned about the future direction of the country and ...

The above chart answers the question.  It is a nice chart, right? "So, what the heck is it?  And how do I read it?  And why do I care?" Ah, I'm glad you asked - let me explain. It is a chart representing the Awesomess that is the United States of America, and it basically shows how liberal vs conservative co-relates with who gives and who gets (to the Federal Gummint, that is).  For the purposes of this chart, Aaron Carroll chose the top 10 conservative and liberal states ( the chart of the states is available here ) The Green circle in the middle  is the Average across the entire country, i.e., revenue neutrality The further to the right of the green circle you get, the more conservative the states get - defined as an increasing ratio of conservative to liberal voters. Basically think, Red States . Conversely, going to the left means the states are more liberal, i.e., Blue States The further above the green circle you get, the more you are o...