– More anti-abortion bullshit coming out of Texas.
– So far The Stranger’s map of free outlets is pretty bare. But it’s a good start.
– The Up Garden.
– I don’t know about you, but I think Lindy West wrote the greatest opening paragraph in the history of words.
In yesterday’s Open Thread, some commenters found fault with Rasmussen’s polling method because it samples likely voters. One of the less informed commenters:
http://horsesass.org/?p=44052#comment-1156366
and
http://horsesass.org/?p=44052#comment-1156372
Opinion is one thing but opinion based on fact is more valid. People yesterday weren’t interested in my explanation.
Nate Silver offers one of his own:
First, the polls showing a tie there were mostly conducted among registered voters rather than likely voters. Republicans typically improve their standing by a point or two when polling firms switch from registered voter to likely voter polls, probably because Republican voters are older, wealthier, and otherwise have demographic characteristics that make them more reliable bets to turn out.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n.....advantage/
To summarize, polls based on LIKELY voters aren’t lies. They’re different. They skew Republican because the average Republican voter is more likely to vote than the average Democrat voter. If a Democrat registered voter can’t be bothered to actually vote, do we really care what that voter thinks?
There might be valid reasons to smear Rasmussen for one thing or another. Rasmussen’s choice to sample likely voters isn’t one of them.
Oh. Almost forgot. In Silver’s piece linked in @ 1, check out the paragraph about Oregon:
If there is an unheralded state that could be in play this year, it might be Oregon. Oregon has been sparsely polled, but the most recent survey found a tight race there, and the state has been extremely competitive in the past — like in 2000 when Al Gore won it by less than a full percentage point.
Oregon discussed here as well:
http://www.blueoregon.com/2012.....sidential/
I guess this might mean Obama will be making more trips to Seattle to pick up bucks from you blue suckers, since he’ll be playing defense just south of the border. Time spent defending Oregon – and Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan – is time not spent trying to hold the major states like OH, PA, and FL.
This ain’t 2008, peeps.
And there’s bub, out of the gate with his patented poll concern trolling…defending the House of Ras, the polling equivalent of FoxNews.
Oh, yes, DOOM and GLOOM for Democrats – BE AFRAID, BE VERY VERY AFRAID, AND DEMORALIZED.
Bub, no one here takes you seriously.
How about this! Bruce Bartlett trumpeting Congressional Budget Offices findings that George W. Bush is FAR more responsible for the present state of national debt than is President Obama.
Thank you Bruce Bartlett – welcome to the land of the rational.
Republicans should NEVER be trusted with the national credit card
Republicans should NEVER be trusted. Period.
@ 3
Why does Darryl include Rasmussen polls in his analyses?
What do you guys think about Mittster’s comment that he “likes to fire people.”
Do you think that that represents a cold, rational posture, one that is the culmination of a pure business interaction that did not go Mitt’s way? (and has the added economic advantage for “Job Creators ™” of increasing the ranks of the unemployed)?
Or do you think it represents the sociopathic tendencies of a powerful man who likes to see weaker people suffer? Is it the natural progression of a bully, one who gang-gay-bashes and who impersonates a cop in order to hold power over people, however fleeting?
I guess it comes down to, have the Republicans nominated a cold, calculating power broker, or a twisted empathy-free sociopath?
Discuss.
@5
Because he has objective criteria that he adheres to, and does not judge the ‘value’ of one pollster over another.
Now, is Mitt a cold hearted economic opportunist, or a twisted sociopath?
@ 6
I think that you are recycling something from two months ago, and that if you don’t have anything better to work from, you’re in a lot of trouble.
@ 7
I’m not a psychologist so I am in no position to answer your question.
Did you know that in Romney’s first year as governor his state was 51st out of 51 (DC incl.) in job creation, but that by his fourth year his state was 32nd in job creation? In four years he climbed 19 spots.
I’ll take ‘cold hearted economic opportunist’ if along with it comes ‘competent’.
@ 4
Barlett specifically mentioned the Clinton tax increase in 1993 and the result that followed.
Here’s the result of that tax increase:
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02.....t-new.html
Lib Sci, how do you feel about the middle class again bearing the brunt of the effects of the tax increases?
I feel that if tax increases are enacted, they should be across the board and everyone should feel it.
If you exclude the middle class, how can you be sure that higher taxes only on the highest earners will move the needle, Lib Sci?
Oh, and try not to despair too much in your response.
Of course you think that – you’re desperate for this not to be about who Rmoney is – but that’s exactly what is going to turn people against him – just like the whole Republican primary field was a cast of lunatics no one wanted, punctuated with the “booing” of soldiers and calls of, “Let him die!!!”, who the real Mitt is is a decidedly distasteful choice between calculating Bain vulture or sociopathic gay-basher.
Nice choice.
@ 12
This will be about what Obama has done in office. Your side keeps trying to point to 40 year-old recollections from people who nearly always seem to be Democrats.
It’s about the economy. It’s not about trooper uniforms and forced haircuts.
Keep bringing up all the distracting stuff. We’ll keep bringing up the economy.
I like our plan better.
@10
Wow. Gotta hand it to you – you’ve got a great oppo file at the ready – there to deceive at a moment’s notice.
Your post is to a NYT piece from 1993. It COULD NOT be what you purport, an analysis of the results of a tax increase in 1993 – because it occurred at the same time!
Moreover, you’re swimming against the very strong current of what we know about how the budget and debt improved throughout the Clinton Presidency.
You’re a liar, which is not unexpected, but not a very good one, at least among people who pay attention.
And you’re misrepresenting NYT opinion pieces from 1993!
I would like to see The Boy Scouts of America end its longtime opposition to allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the organization. “The Scouts will consider that proposal to allow local charter organizations to decide for themselves whether to accept gay members and leaders.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/b.....9dfU8qO6So
True. But gnawing nagging worries about whether Mittens is a vulture or a fly-wing-picker will doom him to many, appropriately so.
He is utterly unfit to be President.
I think that mitt is mostly a cold hearted economic opportunist who secretly does not like gay people. 95%/5%
That’s cute. Are you incapable of saying, “Gay bashing”? How about “Gang gay bashing”?
Leaks are bad when the GOP is in the White House.
Leaks are good when a flailing Democrat in the White House needs to show his Chuck Norris cred.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/....._blog.html
Kudos to The Nation for having the stones not to cheer-lead for Obama on this.
http://www.thenation.com/artic.....not-option
Actually, they don’t need to cheer-lead. They’ve got the RRs and the Rujaxes of the world to do it for them.
Personally, I think Obama is right to target as he has. He’s absolutely wrong to talk about it. Some things we should agree are necessary decisions for a president to make, and they may not be pretty. Using them for political gain is inappropriate, tasteless, and emblematic of an administration struggling mightily to justify itself.
The republican plans to keep giving tax cuts to the rich, paid for on the backs of the middle class and the poor is not good for the country.
I love the suggestion that if Steelman is elected, that the voters get to decide if she gets paid less than her colleagues.
Republicans, as RR regularly opines, are all about wage theft and free labor. It’s all about exploiting resources, and the weaker and more vulnerable, the more easy to strip mine a worker’s rightful wage.
Hey NTfF, isn’t it funny that no one is responding to bub’s provocateur-ism?
I think Mrs. Rabbit’s comments the other day did him in here. How much time before he moves on to greener, er, less informed, pastures?
@ 13
By your logic, then, I could not state that raising taxes on those in the 28% bracket to, say, 31% would be an increased burden on the middle class, because I would have no objective data by which to measure that burden?
You’re an idiot. The link I provided was not an itemized analysis. It was a statement that the income levels subject to the tax increases would include middle class income levels.
Over time, Lib Sci, I become more convinced that you have no ability to intelligently digest what you read and that your referral to yourself as a scientist cannot be accurate.
I’m outta here for now – got to run the cat6 cable in the basement this morning.
Remember gentle readers – weigh in – is Mitt a vulture or a sociopath?
@ 22
I predict shortly after the first Wednesday in November.
But I’m here now, and you claim no one is responding after responding, yourself, no fewer than seven times just this morning.
I reiterate @ 23: You’re an idiot.
I think bob is paid to post here.
@ 26
I think you hear black helicopters while you sleep.
This past couple of weeks has been so much fun I would PAY to post here. Watching your ilk melt down and claim that Wisconsin meant nothing has been priceless.
Your line item of the day:
Privately, senior Obama advisers say they are no longer expecting much economic improvement before the election. …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
Yet another Clintonite giving Obama that help only a Clintonite can provide:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/06.....ic-growth/
That’s right libbies. Keep talking about everything and anything EXCEPT the economy. Lib Sci has it @ 24 right, and apparently has borrowed Rujax’ specially made Obama kneepads to assist in his/her efforts.
If it’s about the economy, and things don’t get measurably better in the next couple of months, your candidate is toast.
@1 I wonder how much those polls are affected by Rethuglican voting suppression efforts? The GOP invests a lot of money and effort in keeping American citizens — and sometimes even U.S. troops deployed to combat zones overseas — from voting in their own country. They value democracy more in Iraq (they’re willing to spend your child’s life for it) than here in America.
Speaking of U.S. troops deployed overseas, the unemployment rate among veterans is 50% higher than in the general population. It seems our employers, on average, are something less than patriotic.
http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.....erans?lite
Republicans don’t love all wars. They have a marked preference for wars that kill people whose religion or skin color (preferably both) is different than theirs — especially Muslims. They were against the Bosnia intervention (which resulted in zero U.S. combat fatalities) that stopped a genocide (by “Christians” against Muslims), and they also opposed President Obama’s support (even though it was peripheral) for Europe’s intervention in Libya, which toppled a brutal thug who had bombed an American jetliner (and now was killing his fellow Muslims). So it seems predictable they’ll oppose any U.S. involvement in Syria, too (where Muslim factions are, as usual, killing each other). Republicans seem to actually like genocide. Which makes you wonder why anyone votes for them?
“Children were slaughtered, tortured, sexually attacked and used as human shields by pro-government Syrian forces, according to a damning United Nations report released late on Monday.”
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com.....syria?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Here’s an opportunity for all the chest-thumping, big-talking, hip-swaggering xenophobes to show us what they’re really made of! It’s for a good cause, too. I volunteer Ted Nugent. Go save them Muslim kids, Ted! Or at least sing about someone else saving them if you don’t have the balls to do it yourself.
@ 30
You do realize, do you not, that polls are disconnected from voters? A poll taken in May or June has nothing to do with whether a ballot mailed in October or November arrives at the destination before the legal deadline.
Jesus, RR. Until you’ve had at least two cups of coffee, maybe think twice before hitting ‘submit’?
Iowa, virtual tie:
http://www.rasmussenreports.co....._president
Only 500 polled and a wide MOE.
Not such good news for The One.
The good voters of Middleborough, Massachusetts — where direct democracy is practiced by residents themselves voting proposed ordinances up or down in town meetings — have adopted a schedule of fines that prioritizes offenses against public order and decency according to their heinousness:
Swearing in public – $20
Littering – $50
Shoveling snow into street – $50
Smoking pot in public – $300
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....ublic?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Yep, you guessed it, smoking a joint in a public park is six times as offensive to the town’s morals as blocking public streets by throwing your unwanted snow into the byways! The good citizens there must be really serious about the degradation of behavior that is occurring in our country. I wonder if they sold their state liquor business to private grocery chains, too? You know, so they can buy booze on Sundays, which is what it’s really all about. And not necessarily only after church. Because many groceries open at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. they have the option of getting drunk before church, which seems like a good way to go when you’re struggling with issues of faith, i.e. trying to reconcile belief in a loving God with how shitty this world is.
Here’s one issue on which we can all agree that Obama has been a complete success:
In the first 12 days of June, Obama has attended 21 fundraising events. All told, he has now attended 163 re-election fundraisers for his campaign and the Democratic Party – almost double the number George W. Bush attended in his entire first term (86) and more than any other president in history.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po.....ndraisers/
Liberal Dirtbag–
I’ve decided it’s better to vote for the MORMON that the MORON you idiots bow down to.
Republicans leave no stone unturned to turn surpluses into deficits. North Dakota, a solid-red state of farms, small towns, and oil gushers, has a budget surplus thanks to all that gushing oil. This must not be allowed to stand! Next week, the good citizens of North Dakota will vote on an amendment to the state constitution that would abolish property taxes forevermore. Gone in the wind with it will be $812 million of state revenues, and nobody has a plan to replace them. Some folks just can’t stand seeing a balanced budget.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47.....ork_times/
Eric Holder’s not having such a great month of June, it seems.
Last week he was caught telling a House member that the Fast and Furious emails didn’t refer to Fast and Furious, even though they specifically mentioned Fast and Furious.
Meanwhile, Obama reiterates his full confidence in Holder.
Today, anyway.
re 1: “Opinion is one thing but opinion based on fact is more valid. People yesterday weren’t interested in my explanation.”
Considering that the polls in question measure opinions, this is an interesting position to take.
Contrary to not being ‘interested’ in your explanation, people simply aren’t buying your explanation. It is a very slippery argument that you offer by way of explanation that polling ‘likely voters’ (Republicans) is actually much more accurate than a representative sample of voters, because you are measuring people more likely to vote — instead of their lazy Democratic counterparts who are ‘too lazy’ to vote (or, have cell phones, or have no picture ID, or, have no voting machines — remember Ohio, 2004, or, can’t take off from work).
Why does your side work so hard to SUPPRESS votes that, according to your calculations, aren’t going to happen anyway?
We’re not past your original Rasmussen BS. Not by a long shot. If the methodology of Rasmussen is so good 5 months BEFORE an election, why do they CHANGE their methodology close to an election?
@ 38
Seems to me that a lot of Republicans warned Gregoire that increasing spending by 35% over a biennium when times were fat wasn’t sustainable and that the revenue source couldn’t be predicted to last indefinitely, even though the spending certainly would.
Maybe the Dems in ND could bring that up as a way of convincing people to vote against the amendment.
Whaddya think?
# 31: Yep, a good friend of my son, a Marine whom we have known since both boys were in grade school together, has been out of the service for three years and is STILL looking for a job. In the meantime he’s been using his veteran’s benefits to take college classes which should reward him in the future, but he’d really rather have a job right now, rather than spending another year as a student.
Of course, it was Bush and his Secty of Defense Rumsfield who tried to do away with college benefits for our military, on the argument that it made it “too easy” for veterans to get out of the service. Rumsfeild wanted them to have a choice between signing up for extended tours or no job at all upon discharge. Fortunately, was so impressed with his own intellectual achievements that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and he bragged about this plan before he could put it into effect – which was part of the reason he had to resign.
re 1: Now you can spend the rest of the day trying to find some additional prop for your asinine assertion that polls weighted in favor of Republicans are actually much more accurate and desirable to those that use correct methodology.
I suppose if you commission a poll to release to the public to support your a priori viewpoint, getting the desired result is a better use of your campaign dollars.
But don’t pretend that your fake Rasmussen poll be taken as anything but propaganda that is meant to SWAY public opinion — not scientifically reflect it.
Gee, everytime I get upset with the Democrats and consider voting against them, the Republicans get in charge of something and I am reminded of the alternative. That’s pretty much kept me a Democratic voter for life.
The Next Solyndra
This company, A123, received an Obama administration grant to build a plant to produce futuristic energy products (like Solyndra did), in this case batteries for electric cars.
“On Tuesday, A123 Systems unveiled a new battery technology that the company says is a breakthrough in the industry. The advance uses a new chemistry that could permit the creation of a simpler, lighter, longer-lasting battery pack that does not require a system to cool or heat it.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47....._business/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It’s probably a hoax. You know, floated by the company’s managers as a tactic to stave off bankruptcy. The battery equivalent of “fusion in a jar.”
But what if — just suppose, what if — it’s a real breakthrough that proves wildly successful, makes tons of money, and revolutionizes car transportation? (And also revolutionizes foreign and military policy because the Arabs could then take their oil and shove it!)
Well, that would be just about the worst thing that could happen to the bleating nabobs of negativism on the right who are against government funding of technological progress (or anything else that improves human existance).
Many years ago, I heard a story about a guy who invested in 100 different businesses 1 of which made him filthy rich. The other 99 were failures, but he didn’t care about that. The only thing that mattered to him was that one of them — just one, but sometimes it only takes one — was a huge success. And everyone admired his entrepreneurial spirit immensely — he became an iconic American hero.
Why is it okay for the private sector to fail 99 times out of 100, but if the government bats 1 for 2 people shriek, tear their hair, and claw at their faces? There must be something besides rational thinking going on here.
@ 43
And you can spend your time finding valuable quotes from people like Dr. Lawrence Britt.
@ 45
A123 could really use a battery that doesn’t need to be cooled:
http://green.autoblog.com/2011.....g-problem/
@ 40
Darryl changes his methodology closer to an election. He narrows the window of dates during which poll data are included.
Do you have a link so I know what changes Rasmussen makes to which you object?
Bleating Bob @33: ” … whether a ballot mailed in October or November arrives at the destination before the legal deadline.”
Let me make clear what I’m talking about, since you don’t get it:
“The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.
“A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.
“Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.
“One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.
“Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, ‘Do not forward’, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as ‘undeliverable.’ The lists of soldiers of ‘undeliverable’ letters were transmitted from state headquarters … to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.
“One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. … [See this scrub sheet at
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.g.....038;size=o ]
“A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be required to vote by ‘provisional’ ballot. Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. …
“The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican’s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, ‘Caging.xls.’ Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses. A check of the demographics of the addresses on the ‘caging lists,’ as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.
“Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County (Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: ‘The only thing I can think of – African American voters listed like this – these might be individuals that will be challenged if they attempted to vote on Election Day.’ …
“The Republican National Committee in Washington refused our several requests to respond to the BBC discovery. … The party has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having ‘bad addresses’ subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad. … Setting up such a challenge list would be a crime under federal law. … While the party insisted the lists were not created for the purpose to challenge Black voters, the GOP ultimately offered no other explanation for the mailings. …
“Soldiers sending in their ballot from abroad would not know their vote was lost because of a challenge.”
http://www.gregpalast.com/mass.....-soldiers/
Do you get it now, Bob? No, of course not, you’re too busy shifting into full-denial mode.
@ 49
None of that, correct or otherwise, has anything to do with polling results in May and June, dumbfuck.
In @ 30, you linked to me at @1 and then went off on whether voter suppression had anything to do with it. You specifically mentioned ‘those polls’.
No, dumbfuck. Voter suppression that might or might not occur close to an election has nothing to do with poll results taken MONTHS before the conventions are even held.
It is stunning how incredibly stupid you can be with such regularity.
The multimillion-dollar GOP effort to block black soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan from voting in their home states of Ohio and Florida is merely one small facet of the GOP’s massive voting suppression effort.
Republicans know they can’t win a fair election, so they try to keep people from Democratic-leaning demographic groups and neighborhoods away from the polls. Massive amounts of money and manpower go into this effort, and some electoral observers believe it may give the GOP as much as a 4 million vote in presidential races.
We all know the standard GOP voter suppression tricks: Photo ID laws, closing voter registration offices in Democratic counties (see, e.g., Scott Walker in Wisconsin), not enough voting machines or voting machine breakdowns in certain precincts, robocalls telling people they don’t have to vote if they’ve already signed a recall petition, flyers distributed in poor neighborhoods telling people the election is on Wednesday, etc. — there’s no dirty trick they won’t use to keep American citizens from voting in their own country.
That’s what I was talking about, Clueless Bob, not lost mail. But if you want to talk about lost mail, that’s really a problem of mail having to chase addressees through the military mail system as their unit moves from one battlefield to another. That’s a side effect of modern mobile warfare; a grunt can be in Fort Benning today and Kandahar Province by Thursday. When Republicans demand changes in voting laws so absentee ballots must be received, not postmarked, by election day what they’re really trying to do is disenfranchise military voters — especially those deployed overseas in war zones.
Why would Republicans want to keep our soldiers from voting? Because some of them — actually, a lot of them — vote for Democrats, that’s why. With them, it’s party above everything else, including country.
It’s always that way in everything Republicans do. They’d screw a soldier out of his citizenship rights if it means they win an election.
And, needless to say, polls become less reliable when thousands or millions of Americans — including those risking their lives for our country — are being prevented from voting in their own country by a party that’s so partisan they would even fuck over our own soldiers. Sadly, for them, that’s all in a day’s work.
Blockhead Bob @50: “correct or otherwise”
Oh, it’s correct, all right. You may wish it wasn’t, because it makes Republicans look worse than bad, but it is.
“Voter suppression that might or might not occur close to an election has nothing to do with poll results taken MONTHS before the conventions are even held.”
What we have here, folks, is a troll so stupid he can’t connect two dots so close together they’re almost touching each other.
I’ll try to keep this explanation as simple as possible, so even Brainfart Bob has a chance of comprehending it.
When you poll a population that leans, let’s say, 51% Democratic and 49% Republican, and then the Republicans keep 5% of the Democrats from voting so the election comes out 49% – 48.5% in favor of the Republicans, it looks like the polls were off when they weren’t off. Thus, voting suppression makes polls less reliable in predicting the outcome of elections. Comprende?
No, of course not, you still don’t comprehend and never will, Bob. Because you’re either too stupid or obstinately in denial about how Republicans “win” elections.
@52
Again, you incredibly stupid individual, you linked it to a poll result and wondered whether there might be a correlation. You’re so into your voter suppression line that you fail to realize that there is no correlation between the two.
Read @ 1 again and ask yourself if June poll results correlate in any way with what you characterize as voter suppression efforts in the Fall.
Hint: they don’t.
@48 “Darryl changes his methodology closer to an election. He narrows the window of dates during which poll data are included.”
Seems to me that happens automatically if he uses the latest polls and more polls are done closer to the election.
Which is generally true. Many polls are paid for by media companies, most of the rest by candidates. The latter are for internal consumption and usually not released to the public, so we only see the media polls.
Media companies are businesses trying to make money, and they do so by broadcasting or publishing news the public wants. Their audiences get more interested in elections as election day approaches, so they do more polls closer to the election.
Does this make sense to you, Bob? No, of course not, because it doesn’t conform to your belief that Darryl is gaming the polling data to get the interpretation he wants. And perhaps also because a simple explanation fails to satisfy your conspiracy hunger.
I look at the bright side. Market’s less than two hours from closing and RR has yet to regale us with his daily stock-trading exploit.
And this dolt calls me a “clown” and a “dumbfuck” …
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
I don’t use “HAR”s or F-bombs in the HA comment threads as much as I used to. I now save them for special occasions.
@ 54
No, it doesn’t happen automatically. Read his FAQ’s.
I never said he gamed the data because I believe he doesn’t. He’s consistent and his tortured inclusion of SC as a blue state is due to his adherence to his own rules, laudable if occasionally inconsistent with electoral reality.
I only pointed out in response to another commenter who stated that Rasmussen changes their approach closer to an election that Rasmussen is not alone. That’s all.
And that’s twice, today, you have misunderstood what has been written.
@55 That’s because the market is going up today and I’ve made $1,575 this morning, which isn’t what I want to happen, and isn’t worth talking about.
I still have too much cash, so I want the market to tank, then I can buy stocks cheap. The trick to this game is buying cheap, not watching stock tickers to pass the time. Any fool can make money in a rising market simply by sitting on what he’s got, so there’s nothing to brag about there.
It’s crucial to understand the “buy cheap, sell dear” approach doesn’t work without a shitty market at some point in time. A shitty market is what makes it possible to buy cheap, and buying cheap is what makes it possible to sell at a profit. Furthermore, the timing of a shitty market has to coincide with when you’re in cash, or the shitty market doesn’t do you any good.
I still have a substantial amount of cash to spend on stocks, so I want the market to get worse, not better. A SCOTUS decision throwing out Obamacare would help. So would a GOP victory in November. The Europeans seem to be doing a fine job on their own, and don’t need my advice; they’re the best thing going for me right now. But damn Obama for talking the Israelis out of bombing Iran; that would’ve been an 800-point Dow drop right there. It’s mostly up to the Europeans right now, until the House Republicans block another debt ceiling increase, but that won’t happen for several months yet.
Bob, I’ll get back to you on this when MMM is $60, CVX is $80, and KO is $65. It would be good to see BA at $55, too, but I don’t think that will happen unless everybody in power completely blows it.
Bob @58 There’s no misunderstanding on my side. You said @1, “the average Republican voter is more likely to vote than the average Democrat voter.” I explained why. That’s pretty simple.
The pre-election polls are off because voting suppression skews the election results. That’s pretty simple, too.
Why are you having so much trouble understanding why polls are disconnected from election results?
There’s nothing for me to do, and therefore nothing to talk about, when the market’s going up. Simple explanation for a simpleton.
I’m not given to braggery, it’s not my style, but if anyone wants my credentials:
Retired in mid-50s;
House is paid off;
No debts or loan payments;
Low expenses and taxes;
Fat stock portfolio;
No boss, no commute, no job hassles;
I spend my time as I please.
Give these accomplishments whatever cred you wish. I don’t consider myself “successful” in the conventional sense that’s so widely admired by the Bob-types. I’m lazy, indolent, and unproductive; how can that be regarded as “successful”?
I don’t want to be “successful”; would rather not be. Life is good. Isn’t that the goal? Not to live a “successful” life, but to live a good one?
I think so.
@ 62
I’m not given to braggery,
100,000+ posts to the contrary.
Damn market is up 120 Dow points and I’m now up $2000 for the day, so there’s nothing to do around here. I’m going back to bed. Later.
“And this dolt calls me a “clown” and a “dumbfuck” …”
We’re approaching the point in a thread when Bob will start whining about all of the leftist namecalling and swearing.
We’re also approaching the point in a thread where Bob, who presently has 25 comments in a 60 comment thread to his credit, will caustically remark about how often Roger posts comments here at HA.
@63 Posting isn’t bragging, especially when I spend 95% of my posts trying to explain simple things to idiots like you.
Also, as Dizzy Dean said, “it ain’t bragging if you done it.”
@65 Maybe we should give him 75,000 bonus posts so he has a chance of catching up with me. That seems more important to him than it is to me.
Yawn. Later.
Bob, why are you resorting to name calling? Conservatives do that when their arguments are weak and they are failing to win the argument.
@ 70
When do liberals do it? It’s so hard keeping up with the rules around here. Steve does it when he doesn’t know whether to use a comma or a semi-colon. You have two names. It’s all so confusing.
I like this quote:
People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as “parasites” fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by it’s host, one that can make it’s host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society.
Divorce Rates Are Highest Among Evangelical Christians
Barna’s results verified findings of earlier polls: that conservative Protestant Christians, on average, have the highest divorce rate, while mainline Christians have a much lower rate. They found some new information as well: that atheists and agnostics have the lowest divorce rate of all.
The data showed that the highest divorce rates were found in the Bible Belt.* “Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma round out the Top Five in frequency of divorce…the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average” of 4.2/1000 people.
http://www.alternet.org/newsan.....ngelicals/
Four months old, but a good example of why the public has had it with public sector unions:
Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
http://articles.chicagotribune.....aren-lewis
Wisconsin was only the start.
Romney Confirms He Will Deny Insurance To Millions With Pre-Existing Conditions If Obamacare Is Struck Down
“You have two names. It’s all so confusing.”
This must be the “Is RHP really NTfF?” conspiracy theory you’ve come up with recently. The real problem is that you’re just too easily confused, Bob. Reality seems to do that to you guys.
Between 1948 and 1979, a period of strong overall economic growth and productivity in the United States, the richest 10% of families accounted for 33% of average income growth, while the bottom 90% accounted for 67%. The overall distribution of income was stable for these three decades. In an extreme contrast, during the most recent economic expansion between 2000 and 2007, the period that led up to the Great Recession, the richest 10% accounted for a full 100% of average income growth.
http://www.epi.org/publication....._this_way/
and
http://stateofworkingamerica.o.....8;end=2008
However, the proposed wage increase is in line with the 27 percent salary hike union leaders said months ago would be the fair raise for extending their workday. The contract proposal also includes other incremental salary boosts such as those granted for adding a year of experience, referred to as a “step” increase, and for getting credits beyond a bachelor’s degree, referred to as a “lane” increase, provisions that are in the current contract.
Flanked by educators and community organizations such as Parents United for Responsible Education, Lewis said the city has the tax base to properly support public education. She called for nearly $800 million in new funding directed to CPS by raising taxes on the wealthiest Chicagoans, closing tax loopholes for corporations, instituting a 6-cent premium on certain financial transactions and steering as much as $159 million in unallocated tax increment funding to the district.
90 percent of Chicago teachers authorize strike
Conservatives do not support eductation, yet they will spend billions on wars in other countries. We pay teachers to teach our kids, our children. Why woudnl’t we want the best for them. Conservatives must want Americans to be stupid, or maybe just everyone elses kids to be stupid. I don’t know why. If I was in charge, public eduction funding would get a much much bigger share of the budget to reduce class size and increase teacher pay and quality.
Why shouldn’t the public sector get paid a fair wage? Why do conservatives hate workers?
@ 78
When did Chicago declare war on other countries? Shouldn’t it have to ask the governor of Illinois to declare war? Or does it ask the legislature?
I’m wondering what the Chicago teachers issue has to do with conservatives and foreign wars when they’re primarily bitching about what a Democrat mayor, Rahm Emanuel, did to them last year.
@ 79
Fairness is relative, I suppose:
At a time when 10.2 percent of Chicagoans are out of work, the CTU is demanding a pay increase that would bump the average Chicago teacher salary up to $92,606 from $71,236. That’s nearly twice the amount of the $46,877 average annual income of a family in Chicago. The teacher salary figure is only for 9 months and also omits the generous benefits and perks that have been negotiated into the contract over the past years.
http://www.illinoispolicy.org/.....ource=4685
Why would the Republicans prefer to use voter-suppression tactics to exclude service-men and women from voting?
About the time of 9/11, they relied upon patriotism and wrapping themselves in the American flag to portray themselves as the respresentatives of G.I.s and veterans. But as the Iraqi war expanded, they tried to rely upon military indoctrination. Commanders were required to give enlisted men access only to Fox News and other “approved” news sources, which were made readily available, to the exclusion of others. But by 1994, even that wasn’t enough – the mistakes they made in Iraq were so obvious that formerly Republican service-men and women recruited form “red states” questioned the mental capacity of those dictatigng strategy (the Bush cabal). So that’s when the caging effort was created – first to exclude the votes of minority servicemen and women, and then later expanded to include white veterans who came from any Democratic area. They were suprised to find out that after putting them in harm’s way for three + years, with a ridiculous excuse for a strategy and public talking points that had no relationship with the events on the ground, and extending enlistments long beyond their term, that these veterans had the temerity to vote against them!
@78 “The district has proposed a five-year deal that guarantees teachers a 2 percent pay raise in the first year and lengthens by 10 percent the amount of time teachers must spend at school, from 7 hours to 7 hours and 40 minutes.”
That looks like a pay cut to me.
@80 “I’m wondering what the Chicago teachers issue has to do with conservatives and foreign wars …”
Bob, it’s about priorities. Money spent on foreign wars can’t be spent on schools.
@ 83
God forbid teachers should have to put in a full fucking workday over a nine-month year:
Chicago public school students have the shortest school day — 5 hours and 45 minutes — among the nation’s 50 largest districts, according to a 2007 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality — part of the reason Emanuel moved to lengthen it.
I guess ‘It’s for the children.” is only useful to you if it can be used as a union rallying cry and not as a request by the school authority for teachers to work a little harder, while staying 100% employed in a difficult economic climate.
Priorities. Funny.
The teachers’ priority is maintaining the cushy work day and the cushy 9 month work period.
Children are only a priority if they can be brought along as co-protesters.
They may not hate them per se, but they certainly hate paying them. Anything.
Not sure about Chicagoland, but in Washington State teachers get paid for a 180 day contract. Want them to work more, pay them for more work days.
From the Mittster:
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!
@ 88
Much is probably open to negotiation. If Chicago has a relatively short workday, it’s to management’s advantage if they want to increase day length.
What is laughable is that Illinois is in a world of trouble and likely will need a bailout sooner than California. In this economic environment, teachers want a 29% increase over two years and they’re threatening a strike over it.
I’m just here for a moment – between meetings and more mancave construction – I just read through the thread and note that once again, whoever ‘bob’ is, he is posting relentlessly, all day long.
That had me thinking, what does one get out of such an endeavor? Is he really that jazzed about posting taunting, semi-factual dingleberries and being rightly called as asshole for doing so? Is he so dedicated to his cause that he will both put up with endless abuse, and spend all day doing it? If he indeed works daily and manages the people he says he manages, how does he really do that and post here as much as he does, especially with the ‘richness’ and variety of the links he posts?
As noted above, some of his links are, um, obscure, like 1993 NYT pieces on the projected effects of early Clinton-era tax increases. Pretty esoteric stuff, not what you’d immediately get with a simple, contemporary google search.
Now some have posited that he is paid to show up here and be a dick, perhaps by the word. It’s hard to fathom any other reasonable explanation, though a campaign, (beyond that of the suggestions posted on RedState that Mrs. Rabbit found the other day) to recruit ordinary people to show up on liberal blogs and act like ordinary people with an opposing opinion, would likely be hard to keep camouflaged. Someone would have gotten wind of it, it would be ‘out’ in a short time, I think, at least if it were at all widespread.
No, while maybe ‘bob’ is a regular guy with a great amateur oppo research file who just loves to come by here and taunt the liberals, I think it much more likely that he is regular staffer with some conservative organization – Washington Republicans? McKenna campaign? Timmeh Eyman? That way, he indeed gets paid to do this, and has research at his disposal, and he can sit around and do this all day long, not despite of his job, but because it is his job, though it is difficult to imagine that any of those organizations had the competence to put this together, particularly the Washington Republicans (I mean ‘prefers GOP party’ Party).
I would also explain his facility with weasel words, and the general tone of his posts.
What do you guys think?
Oh, and don’t forget – is Mittens a vulture or a sociopath?
It’s good to be a public sector employee. Until the gravy bowl is empty, that is:
San Jose spends $142,000 per FTE on wages and benefits, up 85 percent from 10 years ago. As a result, the city shed 28 percent of its workforce over that period, even as its population was rising.
A lot of that increase is due to rising required pension payments, as the assets in the city’s pension funds have lost value. But much also had to do with what Mayor Chuck Reed, a Democrat, describes as “irresponsible policy actions” over the last 15 years. Here’s his list:
1. Giving out raises faster than revenues were growing.
2. Giving out raises and increasing benefits when revenues were falling.
3. Giving out raises and benefits retroactively.
4. Allowing employees to cash out unlimited amounts of sick leave when they retire.
5. Providing lifetime health care for retirees.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/.....fine-.html
re 48: “Do you have a link so I know what changes Rasmussen makes to which you object?”
I don’t object to the change. I approve of the change. It’s what they should have been doing all along.
As for providing you with links to prove my point, I don’t think that I will do that for you, and here’s why: You come to the table with youur mind already made up. Any proof that I give you that Rasmussen’s method is faulty, you will only use to find a way (fair or foul)to controvert that point.
In short, I’m not going to help you refine your talking points.
re 92: “A lot of that increase is due to rising required pension payments, as the assets in the city’s pension funds have lost value.”
What does that mean?
@ 91
Amazing. I guess @ 22 has gone bye-bye and has been replaced by a FBI-style profile of who this serial conservative might be.
What if I’m a self-employed individual with a job that has me in close proximity to a computer and a fair amount of control over my workday, and I just like needling liberals? Especially the ones, like Steve and RR, who think that all conservatives are alike and are fascists, homophobes, Bible-huggers, and gun-clingers? Could that be or does it have to be a conspiracy theory-related endeavor on the parts of all of you?
Maybe I’m just trying to get you to think. To realize that the re-election of Obama isn’t the slam-dunk you all have been posting it to be, at least until, say, June 5th. To realize that all conservatives are not alike and that you might be interacting with a conservative who is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, atheist or at least devoutly agnostic, and who has grown to think a lot more of people like Bill and Hillary Clinton over the past decade or so.
Maybe you’re interacting with someone who believes just as strongly that the country is headed the wrong way under Obama as you felt the country was headed the wrong way under GWB43.
Or maybe it’s just the black helicopters you’re hearing. Again.
Lib Sci, get over it. Some people who think differently than you do come prepared to argue. You should arm yourself similarly, and yet you haven’t. Or perhaps can’t, as your posts have devolved over the past several days.
Is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-IXwrP_LSk
you, dude?
@ 94
I read it twice. I think the city is required by statute to contribute to a certain level, and they are hit by a double whammie:
1. Greater withdrawals as the number of retirees increases
2. Smaller fund balance as the assets decline in value due to market changes.
So the city has to put increasingly large amounts in while its own revenues are declining.
I think.
@91 Bob is a racist. That is enough for him to earn contempt and scorn in these threads. That’s the only kind of conversation I’ll have with a racist – to heap some scorn on the bastard.
“Oh, and don’t forget – is Mittens a vulture or a sociopath?”
Both. Oh, and dogs seem to have an issue with him for some reason.
http://www.dogsagainstromney.com
Dogs probably don’t like Bob much either.
@ 93
Bad call.
1. You have Dr. Lawrence Britt to make up for.
2. If you don’t tell me what you mean by linking, you have zero chance of convincing me that you have a point. Especially if it seems that you are afraid to because it might be used against you.
3. I have no idea why you are here. Part of why I am here is to learn something.
Don’t be a pussy. Prove your point.
@98 “Part of why I am here is to learn something.”
Coulda fooled me. You come across as just another bloviating troll spewing tired falsities emanating from the wingnut noise machine.
re 95: Or, maybe not. Are you saying explicitly that you believe in those things (as Barry Goldwater did) or is this a guessing game?
Why don’t you think about that and get back to us.
Maybe I think that you are full of crap. Then again, Maybe I don’t. I’m just trying to get you to think about it.
@ 99
Uh huh. Like passing on the rationale for using likely voter polls written by Nate Silver. Those ‘tired falsities’.
Clown.
Mrs. Zimmerman is in jail for lying to the court. Ask yourself why she’d aid and abet her husband concealing from a judge, in a bail hearing, $137K of cash and a spare passport if he wasn’t planning to run?
@ 100
Tell you what:
As long as you are unwilling to provide me information because you seem to be afraid of how I might use it, how about you stop calling me a coward?
If I were looking to score a cheap point, I might suggest that your behavior is the one seemingly cowardly.
What I found is that Rasmussen pretty much shuts down polling in the last couple of weeks while everyone else polls more frequently. Is that what you referred to?
I’m trying. Work with me.
@ 102
Maybe the prosecutor can answer that question if she agrees to the debate challenge by Alan Dershowitz.
re 98: You’ve passed on every hard question that you’ve been asked and on the ones where you ask for a link to prove my point, it’s something that can be easily found yourself. You just have a predisposition to not believe certain things — so you force the other guy to provide you with ‘proof’.
Prove I’m wrong about Rasmussen’s methodology. You haven’t yet, and by your own definition, that makes you the wuss.
I won’t call you a pussy, because pussies are warm and soft and nice to the touch. You are more like a canker sore.
Incognito Bob @101: “rationale for using likely voter polls written by Nate Silver”
I actually haven’t addressed that issue, Bob, and am not commenting on it at this time, as I’ve been busy with other things.
@ 105
I think I’ve answered most of them.
Questions like ‘Is Romney a vulture capitalist or a psycho?’ or whatever the idiot asked earlier today are too stupid to warrant a response.
I’m sure that in threads 300+ posts long I’ve missed some. I also don’t feel obligated to engage with anyone who might ask me something. I’ve made an awful lot of points that have gone unanswered, or perhaps you have not noticed.
@95 “I just like needling liberals”
@98 “I am here to learn something”
Which is it, Bob? Or are you schizo?
@ 108, see @107
Too stupid to warrant a response. This is what you were @ 106 ‘busy’ with?
Sad. Very sad.
Search: rasmussen’s methodology — About 2,690,000 results (0.35 seconds)
Don’t forget: the only link that you have provided (about Rasmussen methodology) is the article by Nate Silver – who was saying what you already thought:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonath.....en-problem
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n.....-strongly/
http://polipundit.com/?p=37786
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/.....t.php?nr=1
http://www.democraticundergrou....._id=942055
http://www.wbur.org/2010/01/08/payne-rasmussen
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....ll-Results
///////////////////
Let’s talk more about voter suppression, because it’s happening in Florida, where DOJ is suing Republican state officials for violating federal law.
“‘The debate’s over,’ [Gov.] Scott told CNN. ‘We know we have almost 100 individuals that have registered to vote that are non-U.S. citizens. Over 50 of them have voted in our elections.’
“Earlier counts by Florida officials suggested that they’d found 87 non-citizens on the voter rolls, 47 of whom had voted. That was out of a list of 2,700 potential names pared down from an original catalogue of around 182,000. The final list was also judged to have contained 500 names of voters who were legitimate U.S. citizens.”
Wow. Out of 12 million registered voters, a 87 were non-citizens and 47 of those actually voted.
Nothing in this world is perfect, including elections, but Republicans insist elections must be perfect — even if they have to purge thousands of eligible voters to keep 47 ineligible ones from voting.
That, of course, is a smokescreen for the GOP’s real purpose in combing voter registration lists. Here’s the money quote:
“According to a Miami-Herald analysis, more than 60 percent of the voters on the list are black or Latino.”
And blacks and Latinos are far more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. That’s what this is really about.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....f=politics
@109 “This is what you were @ 106 ‘busy’ with?”
Since you ask, yes.
“Especially the ones, like Steve and RR, who think that all conservatives are alike and are fascists, homophobes, Bible-huggers, and gun-clingers?”
Yeah, I’ll tell my dear Ms. Wingnut that she’s a fascist, homophobic, Bible-hugging, gun-clinger. Well, she is those things, of course, but that’s between her and I. Heh. She must have something else going for her.
You haven’t a fucking clue, Bob. I simply don’t cotton to racist and fascist assholes and that puts you on top of my HA shit list.
Hmm, I haven’t talked with my Dear Ms. Wingnut since the Republican State Convention. Geez, I hope she wasn’t too heavily indoctrinated this time.
I’ve never asked her if she’s ever heard a musician named Pudge sing at one of these GOP conventions or picnics she attends. I guess there are some things I just don’t wanna know.
@ 110
Thousands weren’t ‘purged’. Flags came up. For every 5 citizens whose name came up incorrectly, one person ineligible to vote came up.
The others were kept on the voter rolls because it couldn’t be proven they weren’t eligible. That’s far different from being ‘purged’. Didn’t they tell you to be careful with your allegations in attorney school?
If this distresses you, perhaps contact your federal government and ask that the federal database, which is more up-to-date, be shared with the state so that fewer names will falsely be flagged.
Cracks are appearing in the GOP’s “no taxes” pledge.
“Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) broke with anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist on Tuesday, telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl that he supported eliminating tax deductions in order to help get the country back on solid fiscal footing.
“‘We are so far in debt that if you don’t give up some ideological ground, the country sinks,’ Graham said.
“Graham is one of over a thousand Republicans nationwide who have signed Norquist’s anti-tax pledge to oppose and vote against any effort to increase taxes. He … said that due to the country’s poor fiscal climate, the Republican party’s position must evolve.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....90356.html
The pledge is ridiculous. You can’t treble the rate of growth in federal spending and slash taxes on the rich at the same time, as Chimp did, and not end up with deficits. It wasn’t a Democrat who put us in debt; almost overnight, Bush turned Clinton’s surpluses into massive deficits.
To settle the budget impasse, GOPers have offered Democrats their typically one-sided negotiating position: No tax increases or military cuts, it all comes out of domestic programs. Democrats should tell them to take a hike, even if it bankrupts the country, because if Republicans are playing a game of chicken we should call their bluff. And if they’re not bluffing then we should play the same game they’re playing.
Every responsible economist says it’ll take both spending cuts and tax increases to balance the budget. The numbers just don’t work in any other scenario. Even Sen. Graham and other Republicans in Congress recognize this.
Federal taxes, as a percentage of GDP, are at historically low levels. So raising taxes is an obvious piece of the deficit puzzle. Military spending doubled under Bush, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are finally winding down, so military spending cuts are another obvious piece. Beyond that, revamping a tax code riddled with loopholes and favors for special interest groups seems like another no-brainer.
Until Republicans are willing to do all of these things, nothing else they say about deficits and public debt should be taken seriously, because they’re not serious.
@114 “Thousands weren’t ‘purged’. Flags came up. For every 5 citizens whose name came up incorrectly, one person ineligible to vote came up.”
Huh? Where do you get that number? From your ass? Florida flagged 182,000 voters and found that 87 of them were ineligible to vote. That’s not a 5-to-1 ratio by any wild stretch.
More to the point is Florida’s sorry past record of purging qualified voters. Just before the 2000 election, Katherine Harris — remember her? — purged over 58,000 voters on the flimsiest of evidence, such as if your name was John Smith and some other John Smith was convicted of a felony once upon a time, you got purged with minimal to no checking to determine if you were the same John Smith.
For over 30 years, there has been a standing injunction against the Republican Party’s perennial voter suppression activities, which the Republican Party perenially violates. The case is DNC v. RNC, and the injunction — which has been in effect since 1982 — was extended in 2010 for another 8 years.
http://electionlawblog.org/wp-.....ncvdnc.pdf
What kind of asswipe political party has to be enjoined from interfering with American citizens’ voting rights? A gang of racist bastards that’s who. And you, “Serial Conservative,” and “Bob,” and “Puddy,” and all the rest of HA’s sorry crew of trolls, are aiding, abetting, supporting, and shilling for that party. Which makes you asshats as slimy as they are.
Sorry, bub, you’re on the wrong side of this quarrel.
@ 115
You need to argue to raise taxes across the board. Raising them only on the wealthy, even steeply, comes nowhere near what you need to raise to make any dent in the deficit. There’s not a big enough pool of ‘wealthy’ money to do it no matter what you try to take from them, alone.
Until Democrats are willing to accept the concept of shared sacrifice and tax increases across the board, they’re not serious.
@ 116
You misunderstand, yet again.
A catalogue of 182,000 voters was searched, and about 2700 were ‘flagged’. From there, the state used the resources it had. Turns out about 500 were legal voters. About 100 were not legal voters. The rest did not respond to the state query and so no one knows.
What this should tell you is that 1/6 of the voters flagged as suspect were, in fact, illegal voters. The voters that didn’t respond you have zero information to assess. You don’t know. Let me repeat that: You don’t know.
If 1/6th of the suspect names turn out to be illegal voters, that’s a big deal. So what you want to do is reduce the number of false-positives by using a more accurate database. Which the feds refuse to provide.
Shouldn’t that be “Severe Conservative”??
@ 119
Heh.
BULLSHITTIUM from the DUMB WAbbit of Bullshit!
Romney…
And…
As all can see Roger DUMB Wabbit, doesn’t read, doesn’t process and truly doesn’t comprehend!
…the President said, “some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
http://griid.org/2011/03/29/ob.....ing-libya/
Mitt Romney, he who put together a gang to attack and bully a student who was weaker than himself, blocked the publication of an anti-bullying guide when he was governor.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2.....guide.html
Vulture or sociopath? Both.
@118 Where did I say that I’m against across the board tax increases? Or that taxing the rich will eliminate the deficit?
I think the best thing the President and Congress can do for the deficit, from the revenue side, is let the Bush tax cuts expire. All of them.
You can’t support a government spending 23% of GDP by making people pay 16% of GDP in taxes. Historically, tax collections have been in the 18% – 20% range. By any measure, taxes are at a historic low. Meanwhile spending has soared thanks in part to two unfunded wars, an unfunded Medicare prescription drug program, and unfunded tax cuts that mostly benefitted the wealthy. The result has been record-breaking deficits.
To the extent you’re going to tackle the deficits by raising taxes, it makes sense to begin by clawing back Bush’s Tax Cuts For the Rich (TM) that were paid for by borrowing from China, our enemy. But nobody, least of all me, says that will be enough. It won’t.
But let’s start with that, figure out how much money it raises, then go from there in determining what additional revenue enhancements and spending cuts are needed, then figure out who’s going to pay how much in taxes and which programs will be cut by how much.
Every responsible economist says it will take both tax hikes and spending cuts. The GOP’s obstinate insistence on no tax increases under any circumstances is neither realistic nor productive. Even their own electeds have trouble going along with Grover Norquist’s nonsense.
@121 Will you support a U.S. military intervention in Syria?
re 110 — Bob. I thought that you were interested in links explaining what was wrong with Rasmussen Methodology.
You are full of crap.
I guess the Nate Silver article from wingnutville is all the information that you can handle.
@ 127
Thanks for providing but….
I could have done that myself. I thought there was something specific about Rasmussen that you had a problem with. Rasmussen isn’t the only polling organization to use likely voters. Some big names:
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....html#polls
in the past couple of months, included in RCP’s aggregate, also use LV.
I get a sense you just don’t like Rasmussen.
If I only read two of those links (I do have a job and a life), which two?
@ 126
I’ll support an air strike, done overtly.
I’ll support a drone strike.
I’ll support a Mossad-like hit that gives Israel plausible deniability. Obama makes the call, there’s no paper trail and, unlike recent military gains, Obama and his team keep their mouths shut. It’s done and it’s over.
Problem is, if we involved ourselves in Egypt, how do we not do something in Syria? Unfortunately, Romney is hitting Obama on it, which I wish had not occurred. It’s not as if he doesn’t have a lot of other ammo to use against Obama.
@129 I’m for taking that bastard Assad out, and I don’t much care how it’s done or who does it. But if Obama gets off his duff and does something, watch the GOP criticize him mercilessly for it, as they did Clinton for Kosovo. I see Russia is shipping a bunch of helicopter gunships to Syria. We should give the rebels Stingers, like we did when Afghanis were fighting the Soviets. For starters.
I love it. Why? Because Obummer bragged about his prowess in Egypt (few killings) and Libya (more killings) while allowing massacres in Syria. Now that all these Tom Donilon to the NY Slimes to make Obummer look good, these leaks have been exposed and now he has to do something covert and he can’t brag about it.
This guys distain for teachers is amazing
All the teachers I have met work harder and longer than most engineers I work with. They teach our next generation, they teach MY kids, they taught us, and this fool thinks they they have a cushy job? More right wing bullet points, right wing memes. He doesn’t think for himself. He is deserving of pity
And more on the possible strike.
re 128: “Thanks for providing but….
I could have done that myself.”
Duh! That was the whole point.