Slashdot reports on a Rasmussen Poll about American preferences regarding equal-time enforcement and the fairness doctrine for various media. "Nearly half of Americans (47%) believe the government should require all radio and television stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary".  The most interesting part was that they also polled what percentage would like to see websites forced to manage a similar balance.  The overall number: a shocking 31%.

The slashdot summary:

30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging

"In a recent Rasmussen poll looking at the public's attitudes toward a possible revival of the fairness doctrine by the Democrats, a surprisingly large percentage of those polled seek fairness doctrine mandates (originally intended for public airwaves) to cover the Internet as well. It is encouraging that a minority of people feel that way, but Democrats say 'hands-off the Internet ... by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Democrats oppose government-mandated balance on the Internet by a 48% to 37% margin. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content along with 67% of unaffiliated voters.'

I'm not sure I trust the results of this poll, given its source and the fact that it's very hard to poll about complex technical issues like this.  The Rasmussen analysis seems to have a conservative bias, and since they don't offer the raw data up to nonsubscribers, it's hard to see if its justified.  Assuming these numbers are anything like true, it's discouraging that so many Democrats feel this way about the internet.  It's hard for me to believe that anyone who uses the web could believe this kind of enforcement is even possible.  The sheer number of independent sites online would be utterly infeasible to police without a giant Ministry of Information.  And what about user-driven websites where the administrators have little control over who writes what?  I have no problem with news programs being required to offer equal time, but the poll focuses a lot on talk radio and the web; mainly opinion-based media.  Controlling the expression of opinions is about as antidemocratic as it gets, no matter who it benefits.

The difference between Obama's and McCain's response to the Georgian crisis tells us a lot about what kind of president each would be.  Obama wants everyone to calm down and talk things over; McCain would rather make aggressive speeches that seem to threaten a massive nuclear power.  No one thinks we're going to war with Russia, and even the Obama campaign agrees that save for McCain's belligerent tone, both candidates' actual positions on the matter are very close.  Still, it's disturbing that the McCain campaign has responded so unilaterally.  That their angry, threatening response lacks the nuance and calm of Obama's, and that it fails to take Georgia's own actions into account, isn't surprising when you consider that McCain's top foreign policy advisor is part-owner of a lobbying firm in Georgia's employ.  After all, this is exactly the sort of thing we've come to expect from them.

But this latest statement is just funny:  

"In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."

Matt Yglesias says what any rational person who sees this is thinking:

We all recall, of course, John McCain's outrage when the United States violated this rule back in 2003.

Of course, we're different;  we're America.  Invasions are only allowed if the other counrty has something you want.  Or if they tried to kill your president's dad.

John McCain talks a lot about energy. It's one of the issues he hopes will win this election for him. He likes to talk about how his energy plan for America includes "all of the above." Maybe at some point in the past, McCain did actually care about energy that we didn't dig out of the ground, but today the truth is that he has become indistinguishable from his Republican congressional colleagues, a friend to the oil companies who thinks that if he uses the word 'green' enough, the American people will not bother to examine his record.

He puts images of windmills in his advertisements and pays lip service to renewables in his speeches, but seems unwilling to back his talk up with substance. The entirety of the GOP plan which he has made his own is summed up by his call at the Sturgis rally to "drill here, drill now", with a thousand motorcycles revving in the background. If he really cared about green energy, why has he missed the vote 8 times in the past year on a vital bill to renew the investment tax credits that renewable technologies desperately need to compete with fossil fuels? John McCain is blatantly greenwashing his record and his policies, when in reality they're nothing but an glass of texas tea with a lump of coal for garnish.

(Edit: crossposted at Daily Kos)

I don't usually write diaries, but the current excess of meta issues on the site has driven me to write about a story circulating today that I think people might be interested in.  

The New York Times is reporting on something that's not surprising but for its shocking scale -- the government of Iraq is sitting on a huge pile of money that they are not using for reconstruction, while Americans in increasingly dire straits continue to foot a bill that only a few of our leaders want to continue paying.

The soaring price of oil will leave the Iraqi government with a cumulative budget surplus of as much as $79 billion by year's end an American federal oversight agency has concluded in an analysis released on Tuesday.

[...]

"The Iraqi government now has tens of billions of dollars at its disposal to fund large scale reconstruction projects," said Mr. Levin, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in the statement. "It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves. We should not be paying for Iraqi projects, while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank," Mr. Levin said.

It looks like Exxon isn't the only one benefiting from oil prices lately.  There's nothing shocking or wrong with the fact that the Iraqi government has collected oil revenues from the last 3 years totaling $156 billion, but the way they've chosen to spend (or rather, hoard) this windfall does raise some important questions.  More below the fold.

Sorry if it bothers anyone to read about stuff that has nothing to do with politics, but I thought some folks might find this interesting, or even useful, especially if they read this site a lot.

If you're a news junkie like me and you've never heard of Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, you're missing out.  It's essentially a system that lets websites publish their stories in a standardized format so that readers can easily check what's new on their favorite sites  from a program that's similar to an email client.  RSS saves me a boatload of time when satisfying my addiction, because I don't need to load a whole website to see whether there are new stories available -- I can skim story titles and summaries very quickly and if I want to see the full story it's just a click away.  You can even get a beep when there's a new article to read.   If you browse the web on a PDA or phone RSS is just about the only way to get by withot going insane from the wait and/or being robbed blind by data overage fees,

MyDD makes use of RSS, even though as far as I can tell there aren't any links to the feeds anywhere on the site.  This is a shame, but some googling reveals that the main feed is located at: http://www.mydd.com/rss/index.rdf

and the diaries feed is at: http://www.mydd.com/rss/diary.rdf

Instructions for using these feeds are available all over the place, but if anyone has questions, feel free to ask in the comments.  If you need a good web based client, I use both Google Reader(which is more like a dedicated program) and iGoogle(a portal, it only shows story titles, so you can fit more feeds on a page), Either one should provide a pleasant introduction to this essential tool which makes using the internet a lot easier.

As part of its $1 Billion lawsuit against Google, the parent company of YouTube, a judge has ordered the video sharing site to hand over its entire database containing the history of all user actions, including what videos each visitor has watched and uploaded. This database includes users' IP addresses and their usernames, if applicable. This decision represents a hideous breach of privacy and brings to light several very important, and scary, issues.

That's 15 points.  Survey stats: 1,010 people polled nationwide, 4% Margin of error.  Granted, this is the only poll so far showing such a wide margin, but is it possible that, as the article says, that "Barack finally has his bounce"?

I just tuned in five minutes late to Air America's The Rachel Maddow Show, which simulcasts MSNBC's Race for the White House in it's first hour, only to hear that Maddow is taking David Gregory's post as moderator today (I missed the explanation for why at the beginning).  This is very interesting, not least because Gregory is one of the front runners to take over Meet the Press.  It also speaks to the increasing inevitability that Maddow will soon get her own show on the network.  Race will be around until November, presubmably.  If Gregory does get MTP, it is possible they'll make her the moderator until then?