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UNDERNEWS July 19, 2000 For more than 35 years, Washington's most unofficial source THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW Editor: Sam Smith 1312 18th St. NW #502, Washington DC 20036 202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - WORD I was going to buy a copy of "The Power of Positive Thinking," and then I thought: what the hell good would that do? -- Ronnie Shakes MARGINS OF ERROR The margin of error of journalists talking about political polls is far greater than that of the pollsters themselves. For example, the sainted Chris Matthews last night masticated at length on a poll that showed Bush only 2 points ahead and what this turn of events might mean for the election. There was one small problem: at the time, three other surveys were showing Bush with margins of 5, 6, and 9 points, the last from the tracking poll of Rasmussen Research, which did the best job in the primaries, according to an exclusive Review analysis. Conventional journalists make two big mistakes in reporting on polls: (1) they sometimes report only the polls their employer has paid for or (2) they treat each poll as a full story in itself independent of other available data. The Review -- alone in the nation, so far as we know -- provides a running average of major polls in key races. This procedure compensates for different techniques used by pollsters. For example, Gallup -- which gave Bush the two point lead -- pushes undecideds to select a candidate while Rasmussen does not. Using our five poll average, Bush is ahead of Gore by 5.6 points. Amazingly, the average of all polls since April is 5.75. In short, based on available surveys, nothing much has happened in the race between Gore and Bush. Meanwhile, our latest projection gives Bush 135 more electoral votes than Gore. In the Senate, it looks like the GOP and Democrats will each pick up one seat and there are four GOP seats in doubt. Most interesting poll of late: Bush has developed an 8-point lead in Wisconsin after being virtually tied with Gore. Nader now scores 9 points in the state. GROWING GREEN TPR has added to (and collated) a number of web pages on the history of the American Green movement, producing a scrapbook of items written along the way by your editor, one of the founders of the Association of State Green Parties. (For the best comprehensive treatment of Green history get John Rensenbrink's "Against All Odds") Among the items of interest is a brief review of the proto-Green Provos, the Dutch anarchists of the 1960s, who not only raised environmental issues, but, in the words of High Times journalist Teun Voeten "set the stage for the creation of the Merry Pranksters, Diggers, and Yippies. They were the first to combine non-violence and absurd humor to create social change. They created the first 'Happenings' and 'Be-Ins.' They were also the first to actively campaign against marijuana prohibition. " When Princess Beatrice announced plans to join a former member of Nazi Youth, the Provos opened a bank account for an anti-wedding gift and started a 'White Rumors' plan, encouraging such imagined threats as LSD being dumped in the city water supply or the mass drugging of the royal horses. Then, a few days before the wedding, the Provos simply disappeared in order to avoid arrest. Responding to the White Rumors, however, the government had stationed 25,000 troops along the parade route. The Provos, foreshadowing problems that would face the German Greens, did not handle well the transition from street theater to political success. Writes Voeten, "A Provo Politburo emerged, consisting of VIP Provos who began devoting most of themselves to political careers." GROWING GREEN http://prorev.com/greengo.htm HIGH TIMES ARTICLE ON THE PROVOS http://pdxnorml.org/HT_provos_0190.html AGAINST ALL ODDS http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0966062914/progressiverevieA/ ECO NOTES SPOKANE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW: Hordes of disease-bearing ticks. More shellfish contamination. Frequent landslides and floods. Dirtier air, rising oceans and severe summer droughts. Zeroing in on Washington state after a decade of the hottest weather on record, the Nobel Prize-winning group Physicians for Social Responsibility is warning about major public health consequences from global warming over the next century . . . The report warns of several problems, including: More turbulent weather. Floods, droughts, storms and heat waves may increase deaths among children, the poor and the elderly and cause economic dislocation . . . Rising seas may threaten fresh-water supplies and displace coastal residents. The ocean near Seattle has been rising 8 inches per century and is likely to rise another 19 inches by 2100 due to climate change, the report says. Deteriorating air. Ozone alerts, pollen and gaseous chemicals would increase. The trend could be especially harmful to the 600,000 Washingtonians, including 150,000 children, who
[CTRL] Fwd: UNDERNEWS Jul 19
UNDERNEWS Sam Smith July 19, 1999 The Progressive Review 1739 Conn. Ave. NW Washington DC 20009 202-232-5544 Fax: 202-234-6222 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INDEX: http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS: http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINE NEWS: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm THE REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/letters.com DONATIONS AND ORDER FORM: http://prorev.com/order3.htm UNSUBSCRIBE: Reply with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. For a free subscription to our e-mail updates send your postal address with zip code. Copyright 1999, The Progressive Review. Matter not independently copyrighted may be reprinted provided TPR is paid your normal reprint fees, if any, and is given proper credit. Because of its quantity, TPR's mail is not always answered, but it is always read. The editor is cheered or remorseful as appropriate and posts some of the more interesting messages at http://prorev.com/letters.htm -- OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL PLATITUDES The grotesque over-coverage of the Kennedy-Bissett deaths is further evidence of the degree to which the media has replaced the church in America. It picks our gods, tells us for whom and how to mourn, defines our rites of passage, hears confessions, grants absolution, prescribes our creed, and asks for money before the sermon. Unfortunately, it is ill-fitted for any of these tasks. A few minutes of the bland grieving for the bland on MSNBC or Fox News is enough to start one yearning for the Council of Trent. The media at such times becomes an intrusive, leering, necrophiliac at the wake. Since the contemporary media believes that history extends no further back than the last ratings sweep, such hyperbolic assessments serve mainly as a form of self-justification for shocked commentators who have shared the elite lifestyle of the diseased and who, for one brief moment, realize that they too might die We learn nothing at such moments about Joe Kennedy Sr.'s connections to the mob, nor that if Jack Kennedy had lived to complete his term he might, at best, matched the record of a Carter or a Ford, or that John Kennedy Jr. was putting out a magazine of minimal import and maximum deficit, whose owner was thinking of closing it down. None of this would have been necessary to mention had the media handled the story with integrity -- as a simple tragedy involving some well-known and attractive people. But it chose instead to instruct us once more as to who our heroes are and what our values should be -- something that even at a more appropriate moments it is woefully unqualified to do. The Kennedy family spent the weekend in silence and solitude -- attending two private masses. It is becoming harder to remember but this is what real people used to do at a time like this. SIGHTINGS BUMPER STICKER: Save America. Close Yale Law School FBI SPIED ON GEORGE CARLIN Add George Carlin to the list of Americans upon whom the FBI spied. Carlin made it into the files, according to government documents obtained by APB News, because of a 1969 spoof on the agency and J. Edgar Hoover. Included in the file are several letters to Jackie Gleason complaining about Carlin's appearance on his show and calling him "an alleged comedian" and "a third-rate hanger-on." In other rooting about, APB News finds that the National Enquirer, a tabloid that prides itself on printing what others will not, in 1976 withheld publication of a photograph -- subject unknown -- at the behest of the CIA. The memo from Thuermer to then-CIA Director William Colby was primarily about the agency's relationship with Generoso Pope Jr., the former publisher of the Enquirer who died in 1989. It confirmed that Pope was a former CIA employee but not a "distinguished" one. It says he served with the agency in 1951 but left "for personal reasons." APB NEWS http://www.apbonline.com TALKING ABOUT TALK [Even before Talk Magazine could hit the streets, a web site is up lampooning Tina Brown's new toy.] "Talk is a small child staring out a big window, looking at a dog, or a plane, or a poster supporting the campaign of Hillary Clinton for U.S. Senate. Talk is F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bjork, funny black people, stoic Filipinos and daring Asians. Talk is astronauts and Kremlinologists, people who read the New York Times Book Review but don't actually read books, and Helena Bonham Carter. Talk is a foreigner, often a mysterious foreigner, who kills for pleasure. Talk is gay people, and lesbians. Talk is civilians who've slept with celebrities. Talk is celebrities who have died. Talk is celebrities who are more interesting than other celebrities who have died. Talk is celebrities who have died but still sleep with other celebrities, some of whom of have died, others of whom have yet to die, and still others of whom will never, ever die...ever." TALK ABOUT TALK http://www.talkmagazine.net ECO NOTES ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE: Construction of a completely
