Politics, Mad Cow and A “Miserable Failure”

Mad cow resources, more political websites and Google’s “miserable failure.” Time for another round-up of reader tips:

Robert A. Cox, the managing editor of TheNationalDebate.com, suggests several other good politics blogs and sites worth adding to last week’s list (in addition to his own site):

CNN MORNING GRIND: CNN’s version of ABC’s The Note daily political memo. Not as well-known, but better organized and more concise.

BLOGGING THE PRESIDENT: The complete audio from a Minnesota Public Radio show about the impact of blogging on the presidential campaign.
 
PROJECT VOTE SMART: Indeed, a great site. Here’s a column I wrote about it last year. 
 
MSNBC.com’s ROAD TO THE NOMINATION: An interactive guide to the nominating process and a state-by-state look at the delegate system. (Disclosure: I am Managing Producer at MSNBC.com.)

Alan Rawlinson, a senior lecturer in online journalism at the University of Central Lancashire in England, sends along a few other useful websites in response to my recent column on mad cow disease resources:

A lot of sites offering useful BSE background have fallen asleep over the past couple of years, but some I used to use for classroom exercises in the UK include: a Danish site, the Independent Agricultural Observer bovine spongiform encephalopathy collection, and a U.S. site, The Official Mad Cow Disease Home Page. But the most authoritative and the one the students agree would be most useful is the site of the UK government-sponsored BSE Inquiry.

“Go to Google,” she says. “Type in the search terms ‘miserable failure.’ Instead of a normal search, use the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ search function.”

As of a few weeks ago, it took you automatically to George W. Bush’s biography on the White House website. Now, it goes to MichaelMoore.com (with Bush second, Jimmy Carter third, and Hillary Clinton fourth).

Looks like the “Google bomb” arms race is heating up.

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