Word blogging...
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Will the Right ever run out of phony outrage?
No, of course not. For a political branch which has no ability to be funny, they sure have shown a sense of imagination when it's come to manufacturing outrage. The latest? Apparently the Obama administration has had the temerity to add links to the end of presidential biographies on the White House site, drawing connections between past presidents and current Obama policies. For instance, this one on the Richard Nixon page:
Did you know?
Now, that is some pretty strong stuff, putting your policies in a historical context. But the Right is outraged! It's as if Obama is trading on the Richard Nixon brand, hitching its star to one of the kindest, most beloved Presidents of all time.
That, however, is not the example which has most upset the Right: it's Ronald Reagan. Apparently only the Republicans are allowed t find similarities between themselves and Ronald Reagan. Which is kinda weird, seeing as how Reagan wouldn't get past the primaries today. I mean, we all know Reagan would have been too smart to sign the Grover Norquist pledge; Reagan was far too tractable to sign a pledge. (Heck, we know that from his willingness to trade arms for hostages, in order to fund the contras and circumvent the law. Not exactly a rigid man, he.)
Link | | 8:53 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Monday, May 14, 2012
OMG, 7th Avenue is completely empty! 
I work on the 27th floor of an office building in Chelsea. My office has a great view, but I work with my back to the windows (less distraction for this photographer... and I can see Brooklyn's Williamsburgh Bank Building, which is a mere 10 minute walk from home). And I keep the blinds down so there isn't glare on the monitor. And if I'm not working hard enough the monitor will glare. Nyuk.
This afternoon I raised my blinds because I knew rain was in the forecast and the sun shouldn't be too bright: lo and behold, 7th Avenue is completely empty! And vehicles with sparkling lights driving down it! And NYPD cars blocking feeder streets... And barricades keeping people on the sidewalks, no pedestrians crossing the avenue. And then, oh yeah, Obama is in town to give a commencement speech to Barnard. And then more cop cars, an ambulance, a tow truck, more cop cars, a phalanx of cycle cops, and then eight or more black SUV's (so then no one knew which one he was in...)
The shot on the right was from the return trip up Seventh Avenue. Obama's fleet is not in this shot, but you can see a group of motorcycle cops. If you want to see it in greater detail, click the picture.
(When I texted our daughter to say Obama's motorcade just went by, on Seventh Avenue, she texted back, "I knew he was at Barnard. By why is he in Brooklyn?" [We live near Brooklyn's Seventh Avenue.])
Link | | 7:58 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Mitt Romney's commencement address to Liberty University.
He covered a lot of ground. And I was actually thinking of giving it a thorough review. But then I realized he'll probably revise all his positions before the week is out.
Link | | 8:44 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Friday, May 11, 2012
It's against the laws of marginal utility, I say!! Law breaker!!
Marginal utility, you'll recall, says that for anything you like on your first go, your desire wanes as you get more, and your second peanut butter and jelly sandwich isn't as valuable to you as your first; and your 17th isn't as valuable to you as your 16th, etc. That's how it applies to goods of consistent qualities; if it were goods of variable qualities (like a symphony by a composer) you might actually value your fourth purchase more than your second.
Now, a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. And you would expect the same marginal utility law to apply. Which is why most people who buy lottery tickets buy a portfolio of number sets, hoping that one of them will win. Back in the 1980's I knew someone with a different theory: rather than maximize the chance of winning something by playing a variety of numbers, he chose to play the same set of numbers multiple times for any drawing: his point was that if he should win, and there were multiple winners, he'd garner a greater share of the winnings. The probabilities were the same, until you consider the expected value (PxV) and consider that winning a second million shouldn't be as valuable as winning the first million.
Yeah, well, it panned out for a guy in Arizona, who won six shares of a recent drawing on this strategy, collecting $6 million.
Congrats to him, but imagine if he'd deviated on one of those tickets and actually collected on the big prize? It would have garnered him over $65 million.
Link | | 7:49 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Thursday, May 10, 2012
O'Neill. Clarke. And now, Powell.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill (.288, 281 HR) said in Ron Suskind's book The Price of Loyalty that Bush was planning the Iraq invasion almost immediately after arriving at the White House.
Richard Clarke described how Bush and Rumsfeld quickly sought to pin 9/11 on Saddam Hussein, to justify bombing Iraq.
And now Colin Powell, Secretary of State from those years, says there was never really any debate about invading Iraq.
Hey, you know what, America? Some decisions really are worth re-litigating. And there ought to be some billboards in Dallas making Bush feel really welcome.
Link | | 7:51 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The... excuse me... gay thing.
The kabuki this week over whether or not Obiden (yes, deliberate) supported gay marriage was interesting to behold. Biden went on the record long ago as saying he thought that allowing gay marriage was "inevitable," so this whole hooha last weekend over what Biden thought versus what Obama thought seemed, to me, as just an exercise to create click-throughs. (Does anyone talk about "selling papers" any more?)
My only question is whether Obama deliberately held back until today because of the NC vote. Did he hold back out of fear that his approval of gay marriage would spur the amendment's passage? Or was his willingness to speak today a reaction to the resounding margin with which the NC amendment passed? If you've read David Corn's Showdown you have a greater sense of the caginess of Obama as a politician.
But of course there's the possibility that Obama would not have come out at all had it not been for Biden's remarks. I only know what I know from my source in the White House who has told me, with complete confidence so long as I don't identify him, that the Teapot Dome thing happened before Obama was even elected.
UPDATE: News accounts generally suggest that Obama's announcement was provoked by Biden's statements on Meet The Press.
Link | | 10:11 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Here's to all the left-behind military moms and dads.
Imagining something in the abstract is not anything like knowing it in the reality. Not at all. It's not until this past month that I've even had the vaguest inkling of what an on-state military wife or husband goes through (or, for that matter, a single parent: I should tip my hat to them, too).
For the past 5-plus weeks Ab has been down in Florida, tending to her Dad after partial hip replacement. A one or two week stay has been extended, as these things sometimes do. I've felt some of the same burdens which a stay-behind spouse has endured, but they are too few to mention compared to all the differences. Yes, I can't share the paperwork of paying bills; yes, I need to take extra steps to schedule a plumber. But I have only needed to tend to two cats and make them feel loved; I'm not making sure they get their homework done or cheering them up after a hard day.
I just want to say thanks to all the families in our forces. And to all the single parents, too: it's not easy. My hat's off to you all.
Link | | 9:41 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Let's be fair to North Carolina's GOP politicians.
They probably wouldn't be birthers if they thought it wouldn't be popular.
Link | | 9:17 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Dammit, missed it again.
Yesterday was Kierkegaard's birthday (okay okay okay, anniversary of his birth). I don't always understand WTF he's writing about, but when I've been able to get it, he's clearly wonderful. Ten Upbuilding Discourses is a great starter. Next year I want to go to Copenhagen, hit the Kierkegaard Theme Park; I hear the Sickness Unto Death ride is soo excellent, as long as you don't do it right after lunch.
Link | | 11:15 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Using a Rasmussen poll to support your argument isn't credible.
Over at The Nation, Ben Adler sets his crosshairs on conservatives' efforts to defend voter ID laws, using faulty logic as well as Rasmussen polling results. Adler's column is spot on, but brief with respect to Rasmussen. His "in a nutshell" dismissal of Rasmussen's polls are "Republican leaning." Adler doesn't get into the weeds on this, so it bears repeating. It is difficult to assess all the potential sources of bias in Rasmussen's polls because he isn't transparent about his methodology, and adamantly refuses to meet AAPOR transparency standards. Consequently we don't know to what extent his robo-calling surveys attempt callback interviews when people aren't home; if you don't do a sufficient number of callback attempts, you risk never speaking to people who lead more active lifestyles. This might not be a problem with Rasmussen, he just won't tell anyone what he does.
But one thing everyone in the polling industry does know is that he doesn't call people on their cell phones. (It's against the law to use an automatic dialer to call cell phones. Cell phone numbers have to be dialed by hand, and this is more expensive.) When you don't call people on their cell phones, it's not just that you're leaving out 20-25% of the country, you're left with a sample that's not representative of the US at large. It skews older, less urban, less minority, and so on. You can try to correct for that by using demographic weighting, but even when you do that you're left with a sample which skews Republican. (I use the linked article a lot, it's a clear and simple description of the phenomenon.)
Rasmussen has tried to take an additional step to compensate for that, though, and the I think the best we can say is "nice try." To compensate for not interviewing people on cell phones, Rasmussen supplements his robo-survey process by using Internet panels. The reason it's only a nice try (read: feeble effort) is that Internet panels aren't probability samples, and as a result of that the concept of "margin of error" isn't pertinent. Harris Online is pretty clear about this when they release online results: it's not that there is no (zero) margin of error, it's that there is no way to measure it.
So, Rasmussen's patch is of questionable value. I'm really not sure it adds anything, frankly. There are lots of other causes for concern with Internet panel samples (frequency of their being surveyed, how many panels they might belong to, whether they've adopted an "educated respondent" mindset, etc.).
It's not difficult for Rasmussen to do a whole lot better, it would just cost money. But to repeat, since he's not transparent about his methodology, there could be other hurdles too. His polls, basically, are the devil you don't know.
One more thing: Adler had other points, so, as they used to say in the late 90's, click here.
Link | | 11:01 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
Friday, May 4, 2012
Romney shows his ignorance of economics with an outrageous promise.
 In response to this morning's disappointing jobs report, Romney laid down a ridiculously high benchmark for successful job growth, 500,000 hires a month, a level of growth which has occurred only four times in the last 50 years.
This is from the financier with the pitiful record on job creation as governor of Massachusetts. Creating jobs as a governor is relatively easy, as Rick Perry has shown: it's easier to poach jobs from other states than it is from other countries, and it's easier to get pre-existing American companies to move their factories to your state. So what makes Romney think that even he could deliver to such a standard?
His policies seem to be those of the Bush administration, which have been shown to be unsuccessful: further deregulation and even lower taxes on the wealthy. They didn't work under Bush (and let's be honest, some of the financial deregulation happened under Clinton and contributed significantly to the finanial crisis). Returning to those policies and giving them even greater emphasis is fraught with peril.
Romney himself is dangerous. His marker is fallacious, he doesn't understand the economy, and if he tries to put us on a course doomed for failure, well, that's nothing but trouble. I presume the Obama messaging people are able to show how outlandish Romney is here.
(I intended to embed a YouTube of Merle Haggard singing "Rainbow Stew" here, but embedding has been disabled. Sorry. Hope you get the point.)
Link | | 8:09 PM
(DISCLOSURE: I work for Abt SRBI. My company does polling. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.)
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