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Friday, December 07, 2012
Let's Not Do This
Charles Krauthammer has a recommendation:
What should Republicans do? Stop giving stuff away. If Obama remains
intransigent, let him be the one to take us over the cliff. And then let
the new House, which is sworn in weeks before the president, immediately introduce and pass a full across-the-board restoration of the George W. Bush tax cuts.
Focusing on the tax cuts lets the Democrats off the hook on the spending front. Let the Bush tax cuts expire; it's a face-saving way to allow a tax increase without technically raising them ourselves. The people will see the tax increase, and we can claim that we met Obama partway. Then we can focus the public's attention on the need for spending cuts.
Plus, I think longer-term we've got to stop being a buffer between the rich and tax increases. The plain fact is that we are not gaining enough of the wealthy votes. The states with the highest median incomes, in order: Maryland, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, New Jersey, Hawaii, Colorado, Minnesota and Alaska. Only the last-named voted for Romney; Obama got a clean sweep of the top nine states in median household incomes.
Why does this happen? Well, partially because the rich don't tend to vote their pocketbook, because they don't have to. They can rely on the GOP to protect them from the consequences of their vote, which they base on their socially liberal inclinations.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Some Observations About the 2012 Elections You Won't Read Elsewhere
1. Mitt Romney improved on John McCain's net votes against Barack Obama in 47 out of the 50 states plus DC.
2. The states where Romney didn't improve on McCain's net are actually pretty interesting: Alaska (no sitting governor on the ticket), Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. None of those states were battlegrounds, but it is interesting that aside from Alaska and Maryland, the other three are pretty much Bible Belt territory. Oklahoma bills itself as the buckle of the Bible Belt and Romney did about 10,000 votes worse on net that McCain did in 2008.
3. Obama got fewer votes in 2012 than in 2008 in every state but Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.
4. Although there has been a lot of gnashing over the fact that Romney got fewer votes overall than McCain this ignores the impact of Sandy. The states with the two biggest dropoffs in voting were New York (-23.5%) and New Jersey (-17.3%) ; if those two states had been average for dropoff in 2012, Romney would have had a net increase over McCain's total.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
But It's Too Late, Baby...
I got a chuckle out of this headline at the LA Times:
Rush vindicated: A Rock Hall of Fame berth for Canadian rock band
Can we say the obvious here? This is a bid for vindication of the Rock Hall of Fame, not by the RHF. By that I mean simply that Rush's absence in the RHF has become more of an embarrassment for the latter than the former. Ditto with some of the other bands not yet inducted, like the Moody Blues or Deep Purple.
I visited the RHF in 2005; to be honest it was one of the most boring museums I have ever seen. How many sequined outfits and electric guitars can you look at before you say, enough? Jim Morrison's third grade report card was actually one of the highlights.
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
Riot Only Late in the Day?
Heh.
“My warning, we need to stay calm for much of the day,” Stephanie
Cutter, Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign manager, said, touting thousands of
early ballots already submitted by voters.
“My warning, we need to stay calm for much of the day,” Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign manager, said, touting thousands of early ballots already submitted by voters.
Monday, November 05, 2012
Slate does its quadrennial story on whom its employees are voting for and why:
Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Stein (Greens), Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Romney, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Nobody, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Johnson (Libertarian), Romney, Obama, Obama, Johnson, Obama, Obama, Obama.
Obama 29, Romney 2, Johnson 2, Stein 1. The two Romney voters are business and management-oriented people: managing editor and publisher. Johnson promises to legalize pot, which probably explains his appeal.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Standardized Tests Only Measure the Ability to Take Standardized Tests....
Except when they can be used to support public school teachers. In the midst of an otherwise fatheaded analysis of the Chicago teacher strike, Richark Kahlenberg lets the mask slip a bit:
Although 88 percent of charters are nonunion, giving principals in those schools the flexibility that reformers prize, the most comprehensive study of charter schools
(backed by pro-charter foundations), concluded that charters are about
twice as likely to underperform regular public schools as to outperform
them.
And how did the study determine that? By comparing standardized test scores! Of course, Kahlenberg doesn't mention that in his article, because later on he rails against using standardized test scores to grade teachers:
Kudlow and other union critics are enraged that the Chicago teachers
balked at having their livelihoods placed at the mercy of student test
score results. But does it really make sense for a teacher to be held
entirely responsible for the performance of a student who is evicted and
becomes homeless in the middle of the school year or a student
devastated when her brother is shot dead in the street?
The rest of the article is just as bad. Kahlenberg replies to those critics who feel that somehow the students might be better served by being in school:
Moreover, a brief strike can have its own educational value for
children. As labor attorney Moshe Marvit told me, “In Chicago, 350,000
public school students are experiencing, first-hand, how workers can
band together and demand a voice in the workplace.” Noting the many
children present on picket lines, Marvit suggests, “These teachers are
teaching their students, through action, the power of collective action
and solidarity.”
Hey, if a labor attorney says it's all good, who am I to quibble. BTW, it turns out that Kahlenberg and Marvit are used to collaborating:
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, is author of Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy, and coauthor, with Moshe Marvit, of Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy By Enhancing Worker Voice.
Friday, August 24, 2012
I Got Push-Polled
It started out pretending to be a robo-poll, asking me whom I intended voting for next Tuesday, in the Republican primary for Congress, Dave Schweikert or Ben Quayle. I responded Quayle. Then it started getting ugly. If I knew that Ben Quayle had done X nefarious deed, would that make me more likely, or less likely to vote for him? I pushed the button for more likely. There were three "If then" statements; by the end I was expecting them to ask me if I'd still support Ben Quayle if I knew that he supported marriage between a man and a sheep.
Schweikert's negative advertizing has gotten quite a bit of publicity in the last week or so; both Jon Kyl and John McCain have denounced his ads, as has former governor Fife Symington.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Gotta love this one:
The key thing is that Obama is angry, and he’s talking not in his normal voice but in a “black dialect.” This strikes at the core of Obama’s entire political identity: a soft-spoken, reasonable African-American with a Kansas accent. From the moment he stepped onto the national stage, Obama’s deepest political fear was being seen as a “traditional” black politician, one who was demanding redistribution from white America on behalf of his fellow African-Americans.
He doesn't have a Kansas accent, perhaps because he never lived in Kansas. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, remember?
And second, who says that's Obama's greatest fear? It may have been his greatest potential liability; that he would be seen as just another in the long line of grievance black politicians.
For hilarity, it's hard to top this offering from Tim Noah:
In the Aug. 1 Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick asked, "[C]ould Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?" Most Americans, Chozick points out, aren't skinny. Fully 66 percent of all citizens who've reached voting age are overweight, and 32 percent are obese. To be thin is to be different physically. Not that there's anything wrong, mind you, with being a skinny person. But would you want your sister to marry one? Would you want a whole family of skinny people to move in next-door? "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," an "unnamed Clinton supporter" wrote on a Yahoo politics message board. My point is that any discussion of Obama's "skinniness" and its impact on the typical American voter can't avoid being interpreted as a coded discussion of race.
I mean, seriously. When you hear skinny, do you think "black"? And anyway, I hadn't thought a lot about Obama being unnaturally thin. Among recent presidents, most have been reasonably trim; only President Clinton battled his weight. But, you see, to Noah, any discussion of Obama being physically different inevitably reminds people of the skin color difference:
It might be argued that body weight differs from certain other physical characteristics (apart from skin color) in that it has never been associated with racial caricature. Chozick wasn't asking (and, I feel sure, would never ask) whether Americans might think Obama's hair was too kinky or his nose too broad. But it doesn't matter. The sad fact is that any discussion of Obama's physical appearance is going to remind white people of the physical characteristic that's most on their minds.
Well, what about Obama's ears? Surely any discussion of those jug-handles (or use of them in caricatures of the President) must be a subtle form of racism, right?
I've already talked about fatman (he's white, and therefore overweight) Mike Lupica's ridiculous take:
There will be so many things to talk about with Obama vs. Romney from
here to November, but the one that nobody will want to talk about very
much in polite society, even in what has a chance to be the meanest
presidential campaign for all times, is race.
It works against the President this time, in a big way.
Last time, there were just weren’t enough reasons for enough white
voters to vote against the black guy, as much as they wanted to. This
time there are plenty.
What more reason does a racist need to vote against a black guy, than the fact that he's black? It's absolutely insane to suggest otherwise:
Racist 1: I ain't voting for no n****r.
Racist 2: Me neither. But what other choice is there?
Racist 1: You're right. But I'm gonna hold my nose when I vote for him.
Michael Medved, no surprise, has the right take:
How is it that candidate Obama
managed to overcome racism so handily in 2008, only to feel crippled by
its renewed ravages in 2012? Did a big group of bigoted Americans only
belatedly wake up the shocking discovery that the nice young man with
the pretty wife and daughters who had recently moved into the White
House was actually (shudder!) black?
Or
do Democrats want us to believe that voters only temporarily overcame
their biases in response to the euphoria of the hope-and-change campaign
and then fell back into their nasty old prejudices at some point during
his first term?
In fact, if anything, Obama benefited from his race, as many people voted for him simply to make the statement that they weren't racist.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Cheap Dope
That's Matt Yglesias, who checks in with a silly article on how inexpensive pot would be if it were legal:
That implies costs of less than $20 per pound for high-grade sensimilla and less than $5 a pound for mid-grade stuff. Another way of looking at it, suggested by California NORML Director Dale Gieringer, is that we should expect legal pot to cost about the same amount as “other legal herbs such as tea or tobacco,” something perhaps “100 times lower than the current prevailing price of $300 per ounce—or a few cents per joint.”
This would make pot far and away the cheapest intoxicant on the market, absolutely blowing beer and liquor out of the water. Joints would be about as cheap as things that are often treated as free. Splenda packets, for example, cost 2 or 3 cents each when purchased in bulk.
Completely missing the point. In fact, alcohol is very cheap to produce; the reason it costs so much is largely the taxes the government throws on it. And don't think for a moment that the government won't impose substantial surcharges on marijuana, especially since a) the consumers are used to the high prices; and b) the feds and the states need the money.
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Obamacare "Only" the 10th Biggest Tax Increase In History?
And virtually tied for the seventh biggest ever. Now, it's tempting to just let it go at that, because after all, getting the liberals to admit it's a very big tax increase is a win in itself. But let's take a harder look at the data. Note that the size of the tax increase is defined as a % of GDP. But what else do we note?
Seven of the nine previous largest tax increases in history came under Democratic presidents. And there's an asterisk next to the "Reagan" tax increase of 1982; it partially undid the Reagan tax decrease of 1981, so net between those two years, taxes were actually cut substantially. Realistically, the only tax increase by a Republican president that exceeds the Obamacare tax increase is the Bush I deal of 1990, and that only by a fraction of 1/100th of a percent.
It's pretty obvious, too, that if you look at it in raw dollar terms, the Obamacare tax increase is the largest ever, as the GDP was much smaller during those earlier tax increases. It may be the largest ever even in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars. I haven't run the numbers, but it seems pretty likely just by eyeballing it. Labels: Barack Obama, Obamacare, Tax Increases
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Check out this article from 2010 in the New York Times on a school founded by the mime troupe the Blue Man Group:
The school, which is entering its fourth year, has remained true to its
progressive roots, with “imagination stations” and “glow time.” Children
help direct the curriculum, and social and emotional skills are given
equal weight to reading and math.
And:
After a teaching candidate read “The Great Kapok Tree” to a class of first graders, they took interest in the rainforest.
A provocateur built the classroom into a rainforest, replete with a
kapok tree whose (plastic) leaves cover the ceiling. The children have
studied the animals that live in the rainforest and are now exploring
whether the Littles, characters from another story they read, might live
in the kapok tree. They write letters to the Littles and even create
math tests for them.
Well, two years later, and the predictable result has occurred:
Parents are yanking their kids out of the “progressive,” $32,000
per-year private school founded by the Blue Man Group — which has no
books and no tests — because their kids are barely learning to read, The
Post has learned.
Yes, but they are doing great in rain forest. You can't put a pricetag on that kind of knowledge! Well, you can ($32K), but apparently the philistine parents are more concerned with Bush's old formulation: "Is our children learning?"
Friday, June 08, 2012
Lupica: We're All Racists if We Don't Vote for Obama
I always knew this guy was a jerk, from way back in the 1970s, but this just seals it:
Last time, there were just weren’t enough reasons for enough white
voters to vote against the black guy, as much as they wanted to. This
time there are plenty.
Well, I certainly agree with the second part of that formulation; there are plenty of reasons to vote against Obama. But what the heck is it about that first sentence?
Last time, there were just weren’t enough reasons for enough white
voters to vote against the black guy, as much as they wanted to.
Ummm, if we were all as racist as Lupica believes, wouldn't the fact that he was black be enough? And this part is laughable:
Two things that nobody will want to talk about so much in the months between now and November? Race and Romney’s religion.
Pshaw. You seriously don't think we won't hear about golden plates and polygamy thousands of times between now and November?
In Bloomberg's Defense
Somebody had to write it, and Tim Noah apparently drew the short straw:
Yet, even as liberals and conservatives profess to hate the idea of government paternalism, both practice it. Liberals support restrictions on harmful things individuals do to their bodies, like smoking, driving without a seat belt, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Conservatives support restrictions on actions they deem harmful to the soul, like having abortions, using contraception, and marrying a person of the same sex.
I don't think conservatives oppose abortion because of what it does to the woman having it; the focus is more on the child. And conservatives (mostly) don't oppose contraception.
This part is pretty silly:
The government doesn’t want me talking on the phone while I drive? I can’t say I’ve given that vice up completely, but fear of getting ticketed makes me do it a lot less than I used to, and I may live longer as a result.
For the most part that's not to protect you; it's to protect the people in the other car.
The government wants me eating less salt? I don’t live in New York, but, when I heard Bloomberg was tightening the noose, I reexamined my attachment to sodium chloride and found it to be fairly weak.
I suspect Tim doesn't know how much NaCl is already in the foods he eats.
Indeed, the 16-ounce limit might actually enhance individual liberty by compelling restaurants and bottlers to sell soda in the smaller quantities that people often want but can’t get. It might become possible once again to order a Coke at a movie theater in something less than a Jacuzzi-sized tub.
I haven't checked at the local theater in awhile, but I suspect a 16-ounce soda is still available there. And by 16-ounce soda, I mean about 6 ounces of soda and 10 ounces of ice.
Friday, June 01, 2012
What Liberal Media Bias?
You gotta love this report from the NY Times on the effort to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, which appears to be headed to defeat.
With more than $30 million raised from conservative donors, many of them from other states, and visits from a who’s who of high-profile Republican governors (Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Bob McDonnell), Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign to survive a recall vote has the feel, the money and the stakes of a national race.
Notice, no mention of the outside union money pouring into the Democrats' candidate. No mention of Bill Clinton's visit (that comes deeper into the story).
Check out this paragraph:
Mr. Walker’s Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee, who holds the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents who began seeking Mr. Walker’s recall just a year into the governor’s first term, has trailed in some public polls, though Mr. Walker’s lead has generally fallen within each poll’s margin of sampling error.
No mention about the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents who support the Republican, needless to say. And I love the "trailed in some public polls" bit. In fact if you look at the RCP summary of all polls, you'll see that "some" is about 87%, and all of the last 11 polls.
Monday, May 28, 2012
The Ronulans Have Not Gone Away
Much as we might wish they would. Read this:
Twelve of 13 available national delegate spots went to Paul supporters
Saturday. They join the 20 Paul supporters among 24 delegates elected
previously at GOP congressional district conventions. The Paul forces
might have made a clean sweep Saturday, but for Paul backer Don Huizenga
stepping aside to assure U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, a former
presidential candidate, a seat with her state's delegation.
What's the big deal about that? Well, the Paulbots, frustrated at the polls, are turning their attention to state conventions, attempting to steal the nomination.
Consensus delegate projections for Ron Paul:
Safe Paul (14); Texas, Alaska, Washington, Oklahoma, Nevada, Colorado,
Minnesota, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maine, South Dakota, Montana,
California
Likely Paul (3); Hawaii, Idaho, Virginia
Leans Paul (4); West Virginia, Missouri, Michigan, New Mexico
Toss Up (8); Oregon, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska, Vermont
Leans Romney (8); New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, North Carolina, Indiana, Utah, Wyoming, Pennsylvania
Likely Romney (6); North Dakota, Wisconsin, New York, Delaware, Arizona, Alabama
Safe Romney (7); Florida, Ohio, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, Kansas
The person who posted that is a crackpot Holocaust Denier and Ron Paul supporter, but.... he was right about Minnesota.
A Ron Paul supporter posts at Hot Air:
Ron Paul delegates to the RNC will support the nominee. However,
integral to that support is holding the candidate and the party to the
fundamental principles of limited government and personal and economic
freedom. Constancy to principle is the ultimate loyalty.
Note, however, what he carefully does not say: Ron Paul delegates to the RNC will support Mitt Romney. They have no intention of supporting anybody other than Dr Paul. Their goal is to get to the convention, change the rules so that they are not bound to the primary winner in their state, and subvert the will of the Republican voters.
Ron Paul supporters are committed, and they ought to be. They are determined to win this nomination by hook or by crook, and so far crook seems to be leading. Labels: 2012 Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul
Friday, May 25, 2012
The Brett Kimberlin Story
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, there are no second acts in American lives. Mr Fitzgerald, meet Brett Kimberlin:
Brett Kimberlin had quite a first act. In the 1970s, he smuggled tons of pot into the country. When questioned by a grand jury about this, he committed and was convicted of perjury. Before he graduated high school.
Okay, a couple tons pot, who cares? But later on, Brett Kimberlin set eight bombs around the town of Speedway, Indiana, the town where the Indy 500 is held every year. One of those bombs blew off a leg and some fingers from a Vietnam veteran. Who committed suicide several years later when the pain from the resulting injuries became too great to bear.
Why did Brett Kimberlin do this? Well, it is argued that he had a girlfriend, whose grandmother did not approve of him. And the girlfriend was underage, so her grandmother's disapproval apparently mattered. So Granny had to go, and a major pot dealer has some friends who can make that happen.
But murder in a small town like Speedway causes a lot of attention to focus on those who might have a motive to kill little old grannies, and what better way to distract folks than to set off a bunch of bombs around the town.
Understand this; Kimberlin was convicted of setting off the bombs, and sentenced to 50 years in prison. Somehow he managed to get paroled, but after he made no attempt to pay restitution to the widow of the Vietnam vet he maimed, he was put back in the joint.
Oh, and while Brett was in prison, he became a minor celebrity among the Nina Totenbergs and Gary Trudeaus of the glitterati, because he claimed from prison in 1988 to have sold pot to Danforth Quayle back in the 1970s. Quayle was later inaugurated as Vice President of the United States.
Here's one of the Doonesbury strips:
I've read the other strips around this story, and it's pretty goofy. For one thing, they have Kimberlin talking about the supposed file on Dan Quayle at the DEA, stemming from the time that Quayle was a US Senator. But how would Kimberlin know about any DEA file to begin with, let alone one that could have been opened at the earliest in 1980, after he was already in prison? Note as well that Trudeau appears to be having Kimberlin lie there; I doubt whether someone sentenced to 50 years in prison would be elegible for parole in less than 7 years. In another strip, the reporter claims that Kimberlin was a model prisoner. But there is reason to doubt that:
On sheets of yellow legal pad, Kimberlin asked another inmate in the Marion County Jail to arrange for the murder of Bernard L. (Buddy) Pylitt, the former first assistant U.S. attorney who coordinated his prosecution.
The offer contained a list of 10 names, including a potential prosecution witness, Robert Scott Bixler. Some names had crosses next to them. These indicated those marked for murder, it was learned. . . .
Among the writers to fall for the Dan Quayle pot story was Marc Singer, who published the allegations in the New Yorker. Singer went on to investigate the story further for a book he wrote. Unfortunately for Kimberlin, he was a diligent reporter, and eventually he discovered that Brett was lying. From the Amazon page on Citizen K, Singer's book:
This book relates a journalist's worst nightmare: of getting deeply involved in a "big story" based on information from a single source who turns out to be a world-class liar.
That, basically is Act I. In Act II, Brett Kimberlin, following his final release from prison in 2000, becomes an online liberal activist, specializing in conspiracy theories about electronic voting. He collaborates with famous lefty bloggers like Brad Friedman, and eventually founds a 501(c)3 which garners lots of donations from folks like Barbra Streisand and Teh-RAY-Za Heinz Kerry.
Time Magazine wrote a story about his unlikely rise:
In the belly of the voting-reform movement is a man who personifies this paradoxical lack of credibility in the service of a credible cause. Brett Kimberlin was convicted in 1981 of a series of bombings in Indiana. By his own account, he dealt "many, many tons" of marijuana in the 1970s. Most famously, he is the man who from his prison cell alleged that as a law student Dan Quayle bought marijuana from him. Quayle repeatedly denied the charge, and it was never substantiated. In e-mails and Web postings from Kimberlin's two organizations, Justice Through Music and Velvet Revolution, he intersperses occasionally useful pieces of information about the problems of e-voting with a hefty portion of bunk, repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true. Kimberlin, in short, is an unlikely candidate to affect an important issue of public policy.
As it happens, Kimberlin attracted the attention of several conservative bloggers, who wrote about his notorious past and his sudden rise to prominence. What followed was a nightmare for those bloggers.
At 12:35 a.m. on July 1, 2011, sheriff’s deputies pounded on my front door and rang my doorbell. They shouted for me to open the door and come out with my hands up.
When I opened the door, deputies pointed guns at me and ordered me to put my hands in the air. I had a cell phone in my hand. Fortunately, they did not mistake it for a gun.
And:
Kimberlin put Aaron Walker’s home and work address into court documents. The inclusion of the work address contributed to Aaron’s being fired, due to the employer’s fear that a convicted bomber might appear at their workplace.
And:
After reporting on “Speedway Bomber” Brett Kimberlin, Stacy announced to the world that Kimberlin had been in touch with his wife’s employer and that he had moved his family out of their house as a result. Quite naturally, this caught people’s attention — and that was before this article from Patterico came out today credibly alleging that Kimberlin and his allies had engaged in harassment that included having a SWAT team called to his house.
Read the links, particularly the Patterico post. Chilling stuff.
Monday, May 07, 2012
Politico reveals that Obama is losing in the latest poll:
Mitt Romney edged out President Barack Obama 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters, a number well within the margin of error, as Republicans rapidly consolidate behind the likely GOP nominee.
Note the bolded portion. That's Politico doing their best to reassure liberals that this poll doesn't really mean what it does. And there's plenty more:
But there are suggestions that these numbers are extremely fluid: Obama holds double-digit leads over the presumptive Republican nominee on issues such as who will better handle foreign policy and who will stand up for the middle class and on “sharing your values.” But enduring concern about the economy — by far the most important issue to voters — keeps the president in a tenuous position despite employment numbers that show slight but steady improvement.
That's a rare sandwich; a paragraph that starts out reassuring liberals, but contains the bad news, and then attempts to reassure them on that point as well.
Oh, and get this:
The former Massachusetts governor has opened up a 10-point lead, 48 percent to 38 percent, among independents....A full 91 percent of Republicans support Romney, slightly exceeding the percentage of Democrats who support Obama.
So Romney leads among Republicans better than Obama does among Democrats, and also leads strongly among Independents, and yet Obama's really close? What does that mean, everyone? That the poll oversampled Democrats.
Friday, April 27, 2012
The Puerile Cool Thing Again
I link to this solely because it almost seems like a parody:
When Barack Obama appeared on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon the other night, he walked on stage and gave Fallon a quick pound hug,
that handshake/one-arm hug that we cool guys do these days to express a
sentiment something like, "It is good to see you again, my friend; we
know and like each other, but are not so intimate, nor have been apart
so long, that a full two-arm hug is warranted." When I watched it, the
first thought that came into my head was, "Mitt Romney has never done
that with another man in his life." Which is fine, of course—Romney is
65 years old, and the pound hug really only came along only about 10 or
15 years or so ago. And let's face it, even if he was a lot younger,
it's just not his style.
Dang, and here I thought I was being cool by doing the fist bump.
Look, this is really simple. People who are concerned about being cool, aren't cool. Indeed, that's one of the primary lessons of adolescence.
Paul Waldman, who wrote this sophomoric piece, looks (at a glance) to be in his late-30s; greying at the temples. It reminds me of the columnist who wrote (years ago) an article about how he was still legitimately cool because he had a Limp Bizkit CD in his car. Of course, the impression I had was of a guy who drives past the local high school, trying to impress the young chicks by playing LB with the windows down. Hey babes, I'm still cool! How come you don't seem interested in me anymore?
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Politifact's Pants on Fire
This site is getting mentioned a lot for its supposedly impartial analysis of claims by politicians. But check out today's "fact-checking" for an eye-opener:
On April 6, 2012, Romney’s press secretary Andrea Saul tweeted, "FACT: Women account for 92.3% of the jobs lost under @BarackObama, a claim also made on Romney's website.
They call that statement "mostly untrue", although if you read the analysis, it becomes apparent that what they really mean is "completely true, but hurts Obama, so we're going to say it's untrue".
When we asked for backup for the claim, the campaign cited national employment figures spanning four years. We found that though the numbers are accurate, their reading of them isn’t.
They run through the math, and guess what? It turns out that 92.3% of the jobs lost since Obama took office belonged to women. But they ding it as untrue because, well, counting right from the beginning of 2009 is unfair because he just took office that month and anyway, if you count from the beginning of the recession in 2007, a lot more men lost jobs.
But that does not make Romney's statement untrue. It arguably makes it a little unfair, perhaps a little misleading. But to say it's mostly untrue is ridiculous.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Or is it politically incorrect to point that out?
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Mitt Romney once drove to
Canada with the family Irish setter on the roof of the car.
Sounds quite perilous for the family pooch, until you read further:
The story took place in 1983, when the Romney family made a 12-hour
pilgrimage from Boston to a vacation home in Canada. Romney, his wife,
Ann, and five sons were in the station wagon. Seamus was in a crate, or
kennel, on the roof.
So his crate was tied down to a luggage rack. It's a nothing-burger of a story, trumpeted to make it look like Romney's cruel to animals. But Collins just goes on and on about it:
You could argue that the Seamus story puts Romney in a more human
context. This is not just a quarter-billionaire with approximately the
same gift for the common touch as Scrooge McDuck. This is a real person.
A person who once drove to Canada with the family dog tied to the roof
of the car.
Again, she's trying to give you the image of the dog, with no protection from the elements, tied to the roof; presumably by his paws.
But I will point out that a member of a group called Dogs Against Romney
drove to a protest in Colorado with a model of Seamus on top of his car
and was stopped by the police.
I'm going to guess that the model of Seamus was not inside a kennel. And that Collins could certainly qualify as a member of Dogs Against Romney. Oops, that's so sexist of me!
The Romney camp hates talking about Seamus-related issues, but there’s
no evidence of an actual family dog at the present. If there is one, I’d
hate to think of how it travels when they fly between campaign stops.
What a stupid column. As I have mentioned in the past, Collins is the editorial page editor at the NY Times. A more perfect example of promoting the least qualified person could not be imagined.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Newt Gingrich Failed Speeling
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Of course, if somebody points out that the cold weather we had the last two winters proves global warming is bogus, they immediately get hit with "Don't you know the difference between climate and weather?" Translation: If it's unusually cold, it's just weather. If it's unusually warm, it's climate change!"
Saturday, January 14, 2012
The Case for Jack Morris for the Hall of Fame
Jonathan Burnhardt does an excellent job of summarizing the case against Morris, so I thought I'd spend a little time summarizing the pro argument.
Let's start with this bit:
Morris racked up 254 wins, which ties him for 42nd all-time. The
milestone he needed to reach was 300, and he fell far short.
Additionally, he had only three 20-win seasons (1981, 1986, and 1992)
over the course of his career.
Winning 300 games is indeed a milestone, but it's a milestone that guarantees induction, not a minimum requirement. Morris' 254 wins ranks him 42nd all-time currently, and he was higher at the time he retired. But let's take a closer look at who won 300 games, by decade of birth:
| 1851-60 |
Pud Galvin |
Tim Keefe |
Hoss Radbourne |
Mickey Welch |
| 1861-70 |
Cy Young |
Kid Nichols |
John Clarkson |
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| 1871-80 |
Christy Mathewson |
Eddie Plank |
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| 1881-90 |
Walter Johnson |
Pete Alexander |
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| 1891-1900 |
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| 1901-10 |
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| 1911-20 |
Early Wynn |
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| 1921-30 |
Warren Spahn |
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| 1931-40 |
Phil Niekro |
Gaylord Perry |
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| 1941-50 |
Steve Carlton |
Nolan Ryan |
Don Sutton |
Tom Seaver |
| 1951-60 |
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| 1961-70 |
Greg Maddux |
Roger Clemens |
Tom Glavine |
Randy Johnson |
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As you can see, there was a 300-game winner born in almost every decade between the 1850s and the 1960s. There were four 300-gamers born in the 1940s and 1960s, but none in the 1950s. Why is that?
Here's my theory. The period from about 1975-1985, when the pitchers born in the 1950s had the heart of their careers, was a time of great change in baseball. Free agency had arrived. In the past, teams had an incentive to keep their players healthy and rested, because they knew they could keep them for a long time to come. After 1975, that no longer became the case, and with salaries skyrocketing, teams quite naturally wanted to get their money's worth. As a result, they worked their players quite hard.
By the time the players born in the 1960s came along, free agency had been established for quite awhile. In addition, the role of the starting pitcher began to change dramatically. No longer was he expected to complete his games; instead an outing of 6-7 innings was considered adequate. Teams developed middle relievers who were not mediocre pitchers in the past, and the closer almost always came in to finish the game unless it was a blowout.
Proof? Let's look at the 300-game winners born in the 1960s. Greg Maddux, a terrific pitcher, completed 109 games in his career. Roger Clemens finished 118. Tom Glavine got the handshake from his catcher only 56 times, while the Big Unit avoided an early shower in 100 games.
Jack Morris completed 175 games. Put another way, he completed more games than Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine combined. Morris finished in the top eight in the American League in complete games every season from 1981-1991 except 1984, and usually in the top five.
Another way to look at it is innings pitched per game started. Jack Morris pitched 7.26 innings per game started. Clemens averaged 6.95 innings per outing, while Johnson managed 6.86, Maddux 6.77, and Glavine 6.47.
I don't have any stats to give you, but I would be willing to bet that Morris' career ERA was quite a bit lower in the early innings than it was late in the game.
And the point about 20-win seasons? Well, they've become increasingly rare for any pitchers at all. Greg Maddux only won 20 twice in his career, Clemens five times (three of which came after his suspicious late-career resurgence), Glavine five times, and Johnson three times. So the three 20-win seasons are actually a point in Morris' favor, not something to be held against him.
Burnhardt notes:
So if he's not in by the old stats, and he's not in by the new stats,
and his playoff stats are inconclusive, then what is the statistical
case for putting Jack Morris in the Hall of Fame?
It's this:
3824 IP
Jack Morris pitched a lot of innings. A whole lot of innings. Once he became a full-time starter, Morris averaged 229 IP
per season, and he was among the top three in innings pitched in the
1981, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1990, and 1991 seasons. Now, these numbers look
more impressive in 2012 than they did in the 1980s because of how the
game and the use of starting pitchers has changed, but in 1983, Morris
topped out at 293 innings pitched—the man was a workhorse, and not
getting injured is as much a physical talent as any tool in baseball.
Yes, but it does lead to burnout eventually. Let's examine the age at retirement for the four 300-game winners born in the 1960s. Maddux made it to age 42, Clemens to 44, Glavine to 42, and Johnson to 45. Morris retired at 39. Clemens didn't have 300 wins at age 39, he had 293, and there's a sizable asterisk next to his name. Glavine had 275 at that age. Randy Johnson had only 230 wins at a comparable age.
What about the guys born in the 1940s: Carlton, Ryan, Sutton and Seaver? Well, there, paradoxically, Morris suffers from being underworked. Let me explain. Prior to the 1980s, most teams had a four-man rotation, but almost all went to five starters right around the time Morris was starting his career. His career high in games started was 37 (twice). Ryan had consecutive seasons of 41 and 42 games started (which, by the way were the only two seasons where he won 20 games). Carlton had five seasons where he started 38 or more games, Sutton had 4 (and only one 20-win season). Tom Seaver was comparable to Morris in starts, although obviously more effective.
The point is not that Morris is the equivalent of any of these guys. All of them were better than Morris, with the arguable exception of Don Sutton. The point is simply that Morris' record is a product of the circumstances of his era. Compared to other starting pitchers that were born in the 1950s, Morris clearly belongs on the top shelf. Bert Blyleven, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame last year, had 33 more wins. And 64 more losses. I believe Frank Tanana is third in wins among players born in the '50s; he had 14 fewer wins and 54 more defeats. Really, the only pitcher born in that decade I would rate above him is Dennis Eckersley, and that's obviously a quite different story.
Morris also has several positive asterisks. He won 7 postseason games. He was clearly the ace pitcher on three different World Series champs; that's gotta count for something. He threw a no-hitter in a nationally-televised game in 1984. He was the World Series MVP in 1991 and wouldn't have been a bad pick in 1984.
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Friday, January 13, 2012
Answering Your Own Question Department
The Times runs a headline today:
Colbert for President: A Run or a Comedy Riff?
If you don't know the answer to that one, you're a fool.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Yes, the Times Should Selectively Fact-Check
But only Republicans:
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news
reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they
write about.
Get the examples he cites:
One example mentioned recently by a reader: As cited in an Adam Liptak
article on the Supreme Court, a court spokeswoman said Clarence Thomas
had “misunderstood” a financial disclosure form when he failed to report
his wife’s earnings from the Heritage Foundation. The reader thought it
not likely that Mr. Thomas “misunderstood,” and instead that he simply
chose not to report the information.
That is not a fact, it is an opinion, and an unsupported opinion at that. And the second example?
As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call
out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news
reporters do the same?
If so, then perhaps the next time Mr.
Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country,
the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:
“The
president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S.
policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions
rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”
Yes, how could anybody possibly consider this an apology?
So we must be honest with ourselves. In recent years we've
allowed our Alliance to drift. I know that there have been honest
disagreements over policy, but we also know that there's something
more that has crept into our relationship. In America, there's a
failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead
of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you
to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has
shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.
And it was only a few months ago that we learned that in 2009 the Japanese government had to nix Obama's plan to apologize to Japan for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Come the revolution, there will be no Mercedes.
Check out this weeper about a Belgian tourist getting busted for a crime he didn't commit:
He wound up arrested one afternoon at gunpoint, taken to the 34th
Precinct station house, held for several hours and accused of lying
about a crime that he not only had nothing to do with, but that hadn’t
even taken place.
Sounds like a flustercluck, but when you read the story deeper, it turns out that a man had reported a burglary, and identified the Belgian as one of the burglars. So there was very good reason for him to be arrested. On further review, it turned out that the complainant was a nutcase, who subsequently admitted that he had made up the story about the burglary, but that had yet to be determined. And get this gratuitous bit at the end:
Mr. Vansintjan knew nothing of this until I told him on Tuesday. When he
was in the holding cell, he was the only white; the 10 others were all
being held on pot charges. “If I weren’t white,” he said, he might have
been held overnight.
Might there be another reason than color that he was not held overnight? Like, specifically, that the cops found out that the accuser rescinded the charges? Note as well that the Belgian does not know for a fact that the other detainees weren't released before the night was over.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
The yearning for a non-Romney candidate has gotten ridiculous:
While I have issues with his record as Governor, it is much more
conservative than Mitt Romney’s and he has a much, much greater
cross-party and independent appeal than Mitt Romney. People kind of
like he doesn’t give a crap about pandering.
It's the usual "something for nothing" argument. We can get both a more conservative candidate and someone who appeals to independents and conservative Democrats!
Look, the world doesn't work that way. In order to get something, you have to give up something else. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Maybe, given Obama's abysmal performance as President, we don't need as much cross-party and independent support as might otherwise be the case, and we can afford to go with a more conservative candidate. I'm not sure either way on that one. But I for damn sure know that neither choice is all-positive or all-negative.
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