Thursday, September 27, 2012

Media Polls: The Newest Negative Campaign Ad


Mike Flynn:
None of the factors driving Democrat turnout in '08 exist today. Recent polls from AP, Politico and the daily tracking polls from Rasmussen and Gallup, all of which assume relatively lower Democrat turnout in November, show the race essentially tied. Only those polls showing an electorate with equal or greater numbers of Democrats show Obama with any sizable lead.

Yet, it's these polls that are driving the political narrative. Every day the media launches a number of stories about Romney's "struggling" campaign. They cite anonymous GOP sources who wring their hands that the campaign is losing ground. The only real evidence of this, however, are the polls which heavily over-sample Democrat voters. Without these skewed polls, the media's narrative would be untenable.

Quite simply, and apart from past years, the media have decided to weaponize the polls.
There's an obvious question here. "So what?"

Here's "what." There has been much discussion on the right, among those opposed to this President's policies, of the potential for a "preference cascade," for millions of on-the-fence Americans to recognize that yes, their concerns about this administration's competence and policies are shared by millions of their fellow citizens, that they are not bad or racist or greedy or alone in their disapproval of what's gone on in Washington for the last four years. No one wants to be alone in his position; no one wants to be the only one who can't appreciate the emperor's new clothes.

This 2002 piece from Glenn Reynolds is right on point.
[Totalitarian] regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don't realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it - but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.

This works until something breaks the spell, and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers - or even to the citizens themselves. Claims after the fact that many people who seemed like loyal apparatchiks really loathed the regime are often self-serving, of course. But they're also often true: Even if one loathes the regime, few people have the force of will to stage one-man revolutions, and when preferences are sufficiently falsified, each dissident may feel that he or she is the only one, or at least part of a minority too small to make any difference.

And more than that, everyone wants to play on the winning team. Marginal voters are much more likely to show up at the polling place to check the box or pull the lever for a candidate that is likely to win than for one that has no chance.

So putting out reports that the Romney campaign is struggling, running skewed polls that show Obama pulling away, isn't just "news." It's propaganda. It's propagating the storyline that Obama is just fine, Romney's a bad guy, running a bad campaign, no one wants to vote for him, so you don't want to vote for him, etc. It's propaganda intended to marginalize and depress the Romney support.

If, that is, they're wrong. And that's really the question. Are they? If the Democrats have a better year in 2012 than they did in 2008, they are. Look at all that's happened over the last four years, and ask yourself if that seems likely...


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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The 10% President


President Barack Obama, annotated by the Wall Street Journal.
When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history.[1] And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90% of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren't paid for,[2] as a consequence of tax cuts that weren't paid for,[3] a prescription drug plan that was not paid for,[4] and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.[5]

"Now we took some emergency actions, but that accounts for about 10% of this increase in the deficit,[6] and we have actually seen the federal government grow at a slower pace than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower, in fact, substantially lower than the federal government grew under either Ronald Reagan or George Bush.[7]
Click the link for context.

Short version: As Mary McCarthy famously said of Lillian Hellman, "every word [he says] is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."

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Monday, September 24, 2012

A picture I like


From the opening ceremonies of the 300th anniversary celebration of the town of Lexington, MA.

© tkishimoto - All Rights Reserved

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Monday pythagorean, 9/24/2012

The 2012 Red Sox feel like a series that the network has cancelled, but they're burning off the remaining episodes during low ratings periods...
  • Hey, look at that - they overperformed their Pythagorean this week! Yeah, they should have gone 2-5, but went 3-4 instead.
  • Woo-hoo.
  • How closely have I followed the team for the last month? Let me answer this way. I watched a little bit of the game yesterday afternoon, and my son said, "who is Danny Valencia?" To which I responded, "I have no idea - never heard of him."
  • Seriously, in many circumstances, a game like Thursday's, in which they gave up six ninth-inning runs to lose a walk-off to the Rays, 7-4, would be a devastating defeat. In these circumstances, it carries the emotional heft of a mid-March split squad game against the Pirates.
  • The 2012 Red Sox feel like a replacement NFL officiating crew...
  • Red Sox Player of the Week - Go ahead. Try to make a case for someone. I dare you.
  • Red Sox Pitcher of the Week - Another outstanding start from Clay Buchholz gave them their third win in four games in Tampa. Until the bullpen gave it back...
AL Pythagorean Projection Report - 9/24/2012
ProjectedActual
R/G(rank)RA/G(rank)Pythagorean(rank)WLWLLuck
Tampa Bay4.31(10)3.64(1)0.576(1)88658370-5
Texas5.03(1)4.25(8)0.576(2)886490622
New York4.84(2)4.16(4)0.569(3)876588641
Oakland4.28(11)3.8(2)0.554(4)846886662
Los Angeles4.75(3)4.22(6)0.554(5)85688469-1
Chicago4.62(5)4.2(5)0.544(6)83698171-2
Detroit4.53(6)4.24(7)0.531(7)81718072-1
Baltimore4.39(9)4.43(9)0.496(8)7577876512
Boston4.65(4)4.87(12)0.479(9)74806985-5
Seattle3.75(14)3.98(3)0.472(10)728172810
Kansas City4.24(12)4.54(10)0.468(11)71817082-1
Toronto4.43(7)4.85(11)0.459(12)69826685-3
Minnesota4.4(8)5.18(13)0.426(13)65886489-1
Cleveland4.05(13)5.2(14)0.388(14)599463904
Top 5 projections (using current winning %)
Texas9666
New York9468
Baltimore9369
Oakland9270
Los Angeles8973
Top 5 projections (starting with today's record, using Pythagorean winning %)
Texas9666
New York9468
Oakland9270
Baltimore9270
Los Angeles8973
Standings for the week
ProjectedActual
R/G(rank)RA/G(rank)Pythagorean(rank)WLWLLuck
Tampa Bay7.57(1)3.57(3)0.798(1)6152-1
Baltimore5.17(5)2.83(1)0.75(2)51510
Los Angeles4.67(7)2.83(1)0.714(3)42420
New York5.33(4)4.17(7)0.611(4)42511
Detroit5.57(3)4.71(10)0.576(5)4334-1
Cleveland5.67(2)5(11)0.557(6)3324-1
Minnesota4.5(8)4.33(8)0.517(7)33421
Kansas City4(10)4.5(9)0.446(8)33421
Oakland5.17(5)6.33(13)0.408(9)24240
Texas3(11)3.83(4)0.39(10)24331
Boston4.14(9)5.86(12)0.347(11)25341
Seattle2.67(12)3.83(4)0.34(12)24240
Chicago2.29(14)3.86(6)0.277(13)25250
Toronto2.67(12)7(14)0.146(14)1506-1

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Friday, September 21, 2012

Romney Taxes - Information and a question



First, the information, in the form of a Note From Trustee Brad Malt with highlights from the Romney's accounting firm:
Regarding the PWC letter covering the Romneys’ tax filings over 20 years, from 1990 – 2009:

In each year during the entire 20-year period, the Romneys owed both state and federal income taxes.

Over the entire 20-year period, the average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.20%.

Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%.

Over the entire 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income.

Over the entire 20-year period, the total federal and state taxes owed plus the total charitable donations deducted represented 38.49% of total AGI.

During the 20-year period covered by the PWC letter, Gov. and Mrs. Romney paid 100 percent of the taxes that they owed.
Now the question.

Assuming that the information in question is accurate, does someone want to try to make the case that the Romney's have not paid their "fair share"?

Ok, one more question - how despicable is Harry Reid?

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Les Misérables - Extended First Look



I don't remember the last time I looked forward to a movie with such anticipation...

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Genius or insanity?



Don't click on this unless you've got a few minutes. Don't click on this if you're in any immediate danger of carpal tunnel syndrome.

xkcd: Click and Drag

It's been said that there's a fine line between genius and insanity. Well, sometimes, there's no line at all, because this is both...




(If you want the "cheat" version, it's found here.)

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Thursday, September 20, 2012

"The Fallacy of Redistribution"


Have I mentioned recently that I love Thomas Sowell?
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler’s Holocaust in the 1940s.

How can that be? It is not complicated. You can confiscate only the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally have kept tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.

People in industry are not inert objects either. Moreover, unlike farmers, industrialists are not tied to the land in a particular country.
Exactly. "You can confiscate only the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated."

I love Sowell's ability to express important truths in a concise and understandable manner. Read it all...

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The Obama campaign just keeps getting better and better...



So the latest way that Obamanauts are showing their support for the President is by writing their prayer requests love notes to the Anointed One, and posting pictures on the internet. Like this one, from Democratic National Committee Chairperson Debbie Wasserman-Schulz.


(Jim Treacher says, "Not shown: Left hand, “Tax.”")

Or this extraordinarily creepy contribution from Campaign Manager Jim Messina.


(I'm thinking a pre-emptive restraining order, keeping him 500 yards away from small children, is a good idea...)



But it seems to me that just two years ago, when Sarah Palin was spotted doing it, being photographed with writing on your hands was a rich source of mockery. My, how times change...

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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Why "fair" isn't...


In one compelling graphic, we see why the "fairness" argument for increasing tax rates on the "rich" are anything but fair. And why, if we really insisted that people pay "their fair share," taxes on the poor would have to go up...


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This is rich...



President "I won" disparaging Romney as divisive...

Twitter / BarackObama: Being President of the United ...


And I know he said much the same thing on David Letterman last night.

I don't really expect the fact checkers to call him on it. But he is the most divisive man who has held that office in my lifetime, possibly ever.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

"A Campaign On The Edge (And it's not the one you think)..."

Rick Wilson
The delta between the world as Obama and his legion of fanboys describe it and the world as it is grows more spectacular and more impossible to sustain by the day.

Which is why stories about surreptitious videos and of Romney's campaign being on the precipice of destruction from internal tension and fights over strategic messaging are missing the most important point: there's only one campaign at real risk of destruction right now, and it belongs to Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney is running against Barack Obama.

But Barack Obama is running against Mitt Romney, and against a domestic economy in almost existential peril and from an Arab world sinking into chaos and darkness from Algiers to Aleppo, and from two of the world's economic superpowers about to start a hot war in the Pacific and from his “good war” in Afghanistan warming up to become a genocide at the hands of the Taliban as American troops inevitably withdraw, their decade of sacrifice and heroism squandered.
A good piece - read it all...

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Media dictionary - 2012 edition


gaffe
Pronunciation: /ɡæf/
Forms: Also gaff.
Etymology: French (see gaff n.2).

Old usage:
A blunder, an instance of clumsy stupidity, a ‘faux pas’. [OED]
Current usage:
A statement by Mitt Romney, esp. one that would be damaging to the political prospects of Barack Obama if allowed to stand unchallenged.

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Monday, September 17, 2012

Monday Pythagorean - 9/17/2012

As they limp towards the finish line, the only remaining question is, which is a better analogy for the 2012 Red Sox - the Titanic, or the Hindenburg? The former was a much more expensive failure with a higher casualty count, but the latter is almost the archetype of "crash and burn," so it's a tough call...
  • A couple of good individual offensive performances, albeit in short at-bats, were offset by a whole lot of nothing from most of the team. And they continue to underperform. Offensively, they "created" 23 runs this week, yet managed to score only 19. And their best offensive player (Pedroia) was on paternity duty, limiting his time on the field.
  • 60% of their at-bats this week went to players who produced less than a .300 ob-base percentage. Those nine players hit a cumulative .171/.208/.260/.468. They were lucky to score 19 runs.
  • I don't care how much of a defensive wizard Jose Iglesias is, he can't hit Major League pitching (.000/.250/.000/.250 for the week, .133/.235/.167/.402 for the season). And he's shown nothing to make me think that he ever will.
  • Small sample size, right? Just a few Major League at-bats, too few to make that judgement? True. Here's what he's done above low-A ball: AA (.285/.315/.357/.672) AAA (.251/.302/.287/.589) Above low A (.259/.305/.304/.609)
  • And if you're a position player who can't hit, I don't want you on my team.
  • Red Sox Player of the Week - Dustin Pedroia (.500/.533/.786/1.319) and Jarrod Saltalamacchia (.400/.438/.867/1.304) each played well, but each also only played in four games. The best performance in six games came from Jacoby Ellsbury (.360/.429/.400/.829), who was fine but not award-worthy. So this goes vacant again.
  • Red Sox Pitcher of the Week - Five relief pitchers made at least two scoreless appearances. Junichi Tazawa, Andrew Bailey, Craig Breslow, Christopher Carpenter and Andrew Miller pitched 12 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing only five hits and four walks while striking out 16. So they each get 1/5 of a Pitcher of the Week award.
AL Pythagorean Projection Report - 9/17/2012
ProjectedActual
R/G(rank)RA/G(rank)Pythagorean(rank)WLWLLuck
Texas5.11(1)4.27(7)0.582(1)856187592
New York4.82(2)4.16(4)0.567(2)836383630
Oakland4.25(10)3.7(2)0.563(3)826484622
Tampa Bay4.15(12)3.64(1)0.559(4)82647868-4
Chicago4.73(4)4.21(5)0.553(5)80657966-1
Los Angeles4.75(3)4.27(8)0.548(6)81668067-1
Detroit4.48(7)4.21(5)0.528(7)776877680
Baltimore4.36(9)4.49(9)0.486(8)7175826411
Boston4.67(5)4.82(12)0.486(9)71766681-5
Seattle3.79(14)3.99(3)0.477(10)707770770
Toronto4.5(6)4.76(11)0.475(11)69766679-3
Kansas City4.25(10)4.54(10)0.469(12)69776680-3
Minnesota4.39(8)5.21(14)0.423(13)62856087-2
Cleveland3.99(13)5.2(13)0.38(14)569161865
Top 5 projections (using current winning %)
Texas9765
Oakland9369
New York9270
Baltimore9171
Chicago8874
Top 5 projections (starting with today's record, using Pythagorean winning %)
Texas9666
Oakland9369
New York9270
Baltimore9072
Chicago8874
Standings for the week
ProjectedActual
R/G(rank)RA/G(rank)Pythagorean(rank)WLWLLuck
Chicago5.83(1)3.17(1)0.754(1)5142-1
Baltimore4.67(5)3.17(1)0.67(2)42420
Kansas City5.83(1)4.17(9)0.649(3)4233-1
Texas5.33(3)3.83(8)0.647(4)42420
Toronto4.17(6)3.5(3)0.579(5)3324-1
New York4.17(6)3.5(3)0.579(5)33421
Detroit4.83(4)4.17(9)0.567(7)33421
Los Angeles4(8)3.71(6)0.534(8)4334-1
Oakland3.71(9)3.71(6)0.5(9)43521
Boston3.17(12)3.67(5)0.433(10)33330
Seattle3.67(10)5(11)0.362(11)24331
Tampa Bay3.17(12)5(11)0.302(12)2415-1
Cleveland3.29(11)5.29(13)0.295(13)25250
Minnesota3.14(14)6.29(14)0.22(14)25250

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Thursday, September 13, 2012

What does homeschooling look like?


Here's one of the things that it can look like. 


High school student in English class:


Reading Walden...

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

U.S. ambassador to Libya killed in Benghazi attack


Reuters
The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad.

Gunmen had attacked and burned the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, a center of last year's uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, late on Tuesday evening, killing one U.S. consular official. The building was evacuated.

The Libyan official said the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire.

"The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets at them," the official in Benghazi told Reuters.
The US consulate is United States sovereign territory. That is an attack on the United States. An act of war.

What are we - and by we, I mean, of course, the Federal Government, the "only thing that we all belong to," the "things we do together," under the Commander in Chief - going to do about it?

You know, other than apologizing for offending Muslims with our freedom of speech.  Oh, and attacking the Romney campaign for having the nerve to comment on it...

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In which Santayana is cited. Again.



As we watch the economy tank, unemployment soar, and Islamic radicals attack US Embassies in the middle east, I'm reminded, again, of a remark made shortly after the 2008 election, to the effect that
there are two kinds of people in this country - those who remember the Carter years, and those who are about to learn.
Yeah...


 

As I noted a year ago,
You know, for some reason the events in Egypt are not making the Obama/Carter comparisons less compelling...

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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

New CNN poll - more manufactured Obama support



There was a new CNN/ORC poll released yesterday afternoon, and it has President Obama up by 6 points over Governor Romney, 52-46.  But there are some curious numbers in it.  Such as how it's possible that Governor Romney could be trailing by six points in a survey that finds him with a 14-point lead among independents.

Since they don't include most the raw numbers, and every respondent did not necessarily answer every question, there's some guesswork required, but there's a lot of information, and it doesn't all add up.

To start with, they give us the following information about their sample:

Sample information
1022Adults
875Registered voters
709Likely voters

In 2008, according to the census bureau, about 64% percent of the voting-age population voted, as opposed to the 69% of this survey tabbed as "likely."  Other sources suggest that 61% is closer to correct.  Given that those who are not registered and not at all likely to vote are also less likely to take the time to respond to the survey, their likely voter screen, whatever it is, is producing a  number of "likelys" that might be a little high but isn't too unreasonable.

So they ask the question:  Obama or Romney?  And they tell us, in question 1, that the voters responses are:

Ballot test
LikelyRegistered
Obama/Biden5253
Romney/Ryan4145
Neither22
Other**
No opinion11

So far, so good.  No, that doesn't add up to 100, but there are rounding errors, so, close enough. And, as one would expect, Obama's lead is bigger among registered voters than among likely voters (though not as much bigger as one might expect.)

Next, they ask Obama voters whether they are voting for Obama or against Romney, and then ask the converse of Romney voters.  Here's where it starts to get interesting. In the preface to the questions (pg 3), they reveal how many people chose each candidate in question 1.

Respondents
LikelyRegistered
Obama voters351441
Romney voters340409
Total691850

Here's the first problem.  A serious problem.  The 691 voters for Obama and Romney combined is about 97.5% of their advertised 709 likely voters, which is what we'd expect.  But they're touting a 6-point Obama lead; when they give the number of respondents who chose each of the candidates, what we see is an 11-voter lead for Obama, (351-340) out of 691.  11/691 = ~1.5%, not 6%. 

Did their sample require that much manipulation?  On page 5, we see that they found 441 registered Democrats and 397 registered Republicans.  That breaks down to a 52.6-47.4 advantage for the Democrats in the two-party sample.  That's smaller than the 55-45 advantage in the two-party electorate that they had in 2008 (39-32), and maybe the pollsters are trying to match that.  On the other hand, that was a best-case result for Democrats (2004 was 50-50 [37-37]), and there's no reason to expect them to match it in 2012.  Obviously, there's a science, and an art, to coming up with the best analysis of the raw numbers, but this looks like a gratuitous thumb on the scale somewhere.



I mentioned the other anomaly at the top.  On page 21, they've broken the vote down by demographics.

By Party Affiliation
TotalDemocratIndependentRepublican
Obama/Biden5297402
Romney/Ryan4635496
Other****
Neither2*42
No_opinion1*2*

Obama has a commanding lead among Democrats. To be expected. Romney has a commanding lead among Republicans. To be expected.

But what about those unaffiliated with either party? Where much of the Presidential contest is actually "fought"? Romney has a very large lead there, too, 14 points, 54-40. If that's the case, how can he be trailing by six?

Well, 441 registered Democrats plus 397 registered Republicans equals 838 register voters out of their  875 registered voter survey.  838/875 = 96%.  Given that Republicans and Democrats have made up 70-75% of the voting electorate in the past few Presidential elections, and that they make up 96% of the registered voters in this sample, it seems that they have undersampled independents.  There just are not a significant number of independents in this sample.

Which answers the question of how Romney could be trailing by 6 points in a poll that shows him leading independents by 14 points.


All in all, this looks like a poll result designed to be used to depress Republicans and promote the "inevitable reelection of the President" storyline.  This looks like news-making, rather than news-reporting. 

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9/11/2001


It was a beautiful Tuesday morning, 11 years ago.  Just like this morning...

My 911 story...


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Steyn: "A Nation of Sandra Flukes"


The always brilliant Mark Steyn, on one of the Democrats prime-time speakers...
So this is America’s best and brightest — or, at any rate, most expensively credentialed. Sandra Fluke has been blessed with a quarter-million dollars of elite education, and, on the evidence of Wednesday night, is entirely incapable of making a coherent argument. She has enjoyed the leisurely decade-long varsity once reserved for the minor sons of Mitteleuropean grand dukes, and she has concluded that the most urgent need facing the Brokest Nation in History is for someone else to pay for the contraception of 30-year-old children. She says the choice facing America is whether to be “a country where we mean it when we talk about personal freedom, or one where that freedom doesn’t apply to our bodies and our voices” — and, even as the words fall leaden from her lips, she doesn’t seem to comprehend that Catholic institutions think their “voices” ought to have freedom, too, or that Obamacare seizes jurisdiction over “our bodies” and has 16,000 new IRS agents ready to fine us for not making arrangements for “our” pancreases and “our” bladders that meet the approval of the commissars. Sexual liberty, even as every other liberty withers, is all that matters: A middle-school girl is free to get an abortion without parental consent, but if she puts a lemonade stand on her lawn she’ll be fined. What a bleak and reductive concept of “personal freedom.”
Another Steyn must-read.

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Monday, September 10, 2012

Monday Pythagorean Report, 9/10/2012

Some say the Red Sox are struggling, but that the Patriots are fine - well, how badly can the Red Sox be struggling if they won as many games this week as the Patriots did? And, over the last two weeks, they've won twice as many!
  • So, you think this weekly report was a lot more fun to read before the team cratered? More interesting, amusing, better written, more informative? You should be writing the things. Oh. My. Lord...
  • In their last 162 games, one full season's worth of games, from 9/8/2011-9/9/2012, the Boston Red Sox are a staggering 68-94. Most bad teams aren't that bad. They've scored 782 runs and allowed 826, and underperformed their pythagorean projection by seven games.
  • What makes all of that truly stunning is that in the first 141 games of the 2011 season, they were 85-56, the second best record in the AL, having scored 761 runs and allowed only 598. The pitching has cratered, but, as I've noted many times before, the offense has had outbursts which hide how mediocre-to-poor they've been on a consistent basis.
  • Long-time readers know that I have little patience for armchair psychoanalasys of professional sports teams. Teams that don't play well tend to look bad. They make mistakes that reek of not being mentally "into the game." It's hard to look like you're working hard if you're walking back to the dugout after striking out, or turning right at first base. It's hard to look like you're "caring" if the opposition is hitting line drives over the outfielders' heads. If there's a way to legitimately determine that a team isn't "playing hard," as opposed to just playing badly, I'm not aware of it.
  • But. If I've ever seen a team which has the appearance of having given up, it's this one.
  • Red Sox Player of the Week - Cody Ross (.381/.458/.667/1.125) and Dustin Pedroia (.318/.400/.636/1.036) created over 11 runs. The rest of the team created fewer than 8. If I were giving an award this week, either Ross or Pedroia would get it. But I'm not. There may not be another this year.
  • Red Sox Pitcher of the Week - None. But let's note that Clayton Mortensen has had a nice rookie season.
AL Pythagorean Projection Report - 9/3/2012
ProjectedActual
R/G(rank)RA/G(rank)Pythagorean(rank)WLWLLuck
Texas5.16(1)4.28(7)0.585(1)785579541
Oakland4.31(9)3.68(2)0.572(2)765776570
Tampa Bay4.2(11)3.63(1)0.567(3)76587361-3
New York4.79(3)4.14(4)0.567(4)755876571
Chicago4.67(5)4.19(5)0.55(5)73607261-1
Los Angeles4.75(4)4.42(8)0.533(6)716371630
Detroit4.55(6)4.26(6)0.53(7)706372612
Boston4.83(2)4.87(12)0.496(8)67686273-5
Seattle3.87(14)3.96(3)0.49(9)66696570-1
Toronto4.53(7)4.8(11)0.473(10)63706073-3
Baltimore4.25(10)4.51(9)0.473(11)6370745911
Kansas City4.15(12)4.54(10)0.459(12)61726073-1
Minnesota4.37(8)5.14(13)0.426(13)57775579-2
Cleveland4.04(13)5.22(14)0.385(14)528256784

Top 5 projections (using current winning %)
Texas9666
Oakland9369
New York9369
Baltimore9072
Tampa Bay8874

Top 5 projections (starting with today's record, using Pythagorean winning %)
Texas9666
Oakland9369
New York9270
Tampa Bay8973
Chicago8874

Standings for the week
ProjectedActual
R/G(rank)RA/G(rank)Pythagorean(rank)WLWLLuck
Los Angeles5.5(3)1.67(1)0.899(1)51601
Tampa Bay4(7)2.67(2)0.677(2)42420
Minnesota6.5(1)5.5(13)0.576(3)33330
Baltimore6.14(2)5.29(11)0.568(4)43430
Kansas City4.71(5)4.86(9)0.486(5)34340
Texas4(7)4.43(6)0.454(6)34431
Toronto4.33(6)5(10)0.435(7)33421
Chicago5(4)5.83(14)0.43(8)33330
Detroit2.67(12)3.17(3)0.422(9)3315-2
Oakland3.5(9)4.17(5)0.421(10)33330
Cleveland3.5(9)4.67(7)0.371(11)24331
New York3.23(11)5.38(12)0.282(12)49581
Seattle2.17(14)3.67(4)0.276(13)24240
Boston2.67(12)4.83(8)0.252(14)2415-1

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Friday, September 07, 2012

Clint speaks. Again...


In a story in the Carmel Pine Cone, Clint Eastwood addresses his appearance at the RNC.
After a week as topic No. 1 in American politics, former Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood said the outpouring of criticism from left-wing reporters and liberal politicians after his appearance at the Republican National Convention last Thursday night, followed by an avalanche of support on Twitter and in the blogosphere, is all the proof anybody needs that his 12-minute discourse achieved exactly what he intended it to.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” Eastwood told The Pine Cone this week. “Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know. I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle.

...

Eastwood’s appearance at the convention came after a personal request from Romney in August, soon after Eastwood endorsed the former Massachusetts governor at a fundraiser in Sun Valley, Idaho. But it was finalized only in the last week before the convention, along with an agreement to build suspense by keeping it secret until the last moment.

Meanwhile, Romney’s campaign aides asked for details about what Eastwood would say to the convention.

“They vett most of the people, but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say,’” Eastwood recalled.
It's a fun read...

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Romney's message to Obama voters: He let you down


Good piece, with some interesting, if anecdotal, information from Byron York:
The important thing for Romney, aides believe, is not to rub the voters' noses in their decision from four years ago. Don't bash Obama, don't even harp on how he's not up to the job -- that carries the implication that they should have known that when they voted for him. [LB: I can bash him and harp on how he's not up to the job and how that was obvious four years ago. But Romney can't.] Just focus on the point that his policies have not made things better. "You've got to be careful in terms of how you talk about the president," says a top Romney campaign aide. "It's his policies and performance voters are concerned about -- that's the focus."
Yup. And that's clearly been the focus, as all of the content of the RNC speeches showed.

As I wrote in my RNC wrap-up,
[T]he "more in sorrow than in anger" tone of Ryan's speech...continued with Romney's. And again, that's the hand they've been dealt. Americans are understandably touchy on the subject of race, and, the protestations of the media and the Democrats to the contrary, they do not want to be "unfair" to "the black guy." It felt good to go into the voting booth and pull the lever for a black man, to personally repudiate the ancient history of slavery and the more recent history of Jim Crow. Americans do not want to be racists, do not want to think of themselves as racists, and will bend over backwards to give the first black President the benefit of the doubt. ... What the Republicans are doing, out of necessity, is trying to give the undecided middle permission to vote against him, without feeling bad about it. Hence the tone, which is just the right tone.

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Thursday, September 06, 2012

Truth


This is obviously true, which makes it shocking to see someone actually writing it...

Verdict is in: Obama levels more personal attacks
A crabby, negative campaign that has been more about misleading and marginal controversies than the major challenges facing the country? Barack Obama and Mitt Romney can both claim parenthood of this ugly child.

But there is a particular category of the 2012 race to the low road in which the two sides are not competing on equal terms: Obama and his top campaign aides have engaged far more frequently in character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign.

With a few exceptions, Romney has maintained that Obama is a bad president who has turned to desperate tactics to try to save himself. But Romney has not made the case that Obama is a bad person, nor made a sustained critique of his morality a central feature of his campaign.

Obama, who first sprang to national attention with an appeal to civility, has made these kind of attacks central to his strategy. The argument, by implication from Obama and directly from his surrogates, is not merely that Romney is the wrong choice for president but that there is something fundamentally wrong with him.
As noted. Repeatedly.

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Fitting


Planned Parenthood distributes anti-Romney-Ryan condoms
A Planned Parenthood rally outside Charlotte’s NASCAR Hall of Fame featured Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, contraception activist Sandra Fluke, and actress Aisha Tyler — and Romney/Ryan-themed condoms.
...

Volunteers at he event handed out colorful condoms in packages with the slogan “PROTECT YOURSELF FROM ROMNEY & RYAN IN THIS ELECTION.” The package’s inside flap advised the user to “LEARN THE FACTS ABOUT ROMNEY & RYAN.”
Crude, crass, obnoxious? Certainly.



From that group, I'd expect nothing better...

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Three political gifts for Romney-Ryan


Does the new Bob Woodward book shine a glaring light on the limitations of President "Dunning-Kruger" Obama? Jen Rubin suggests that the answer is, "yes."
But the most alarming news for the Democrats, I think, came in the early release of excerpts from the new book by The Post’s Bob Woodward, “The Price of Politics.” The day after former president Bill Clinton spoke, reminding us of a gregarious, deal-making and effective president, and the day of Obama’s big speech to plead for four more years, comes an account that suggests the president failed to lead in the debt-ceiling fight, has been manhandled by Congress and is frankly not well liked.

The retelling of the debt-ceiling negotiations, and of Obama’s decision to up the ante by $400 billion on taxes, reminds us that Obama, in essence, spiked the deal.

...

Mostly what comes through in the initial excerpts is the arrogance, a man whose self-image is vastly out of kilter with his abilities. “Woodward’s portrait of Obama, sketched through a series of scenes from meeting rooms and phone calls, reveals a man perhaps a bit too confident in his negotiating skills and in his ability to understand his adversaries.” He considered the speaker a Republican rube. He treated business leaders disrespectfully as well

...

It is not merely a portrait of a man who failed in his most critical domestic challenge; it is a portrait of someone unable to do the job. By putting meat on the bones of the Republicans’ arguments, Woodward, maybe more than Jerusalem and God, has created a whole new problem for the president’s effort to persuade voters to keep him on for four more years.

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Quote of the day


At least so far, is this tweet from IowaHawk.
"Government" is just a word for things we do together.
"Corporation" is just a word for things we do together voluntarily.
That last word makes a difference...

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Public policy, private virtue


A followup to the earlier post about conflating public policy and private behavior in determining one's self worth.  This quote is relevant...
The kind of people we are is more important than what we can do to improve the world; indeed being the kind of people we should and can be is the best, and sometimes the only way to improve the world.
- C.S. Lewis

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"A celebration of failure..."


That's Mitt Romney's assessment of the DNC thus far...
Romney and his allies have pounced on Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's comments over the weekend that Americans are not better off than they were four years ago. The top Democratic surrogate has since walked back those remarks, and officials with the Obama campaign have contended this week that Americans are better off under Obama's presidency.

But the Republican nominee brushed aside those assertions in an interview with Fox News, noting that the "better off" message hasn't been expressed from the stage in Charlotte, N.C.

"You know no one in the convention so far has had the temerity to say that people are better off in America because they realize that’s not the case," Romney said. "The convention so far is a celebration of failure."

Romney cited record numbers of Americans on food stamps, a rising national debt and declining incomes as evidence of a failed presidency.

"This has been a very difficult four years, and they’re doing their best to celebrate something; but it’s a celebration of failure," he reiterated.
Yup.

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Dems cheer abortion, boo God...


Sometimes the story really does speak for itself...
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the convention’s chairman, kicked off Wednesday’s proceedings by trying to clean up a mess Democrats made by omitting from their official party platform mentions of God and of Jerusalem as the preferred capital of Israel.

Villaraigosa called for a voice vote on an amendment offered by former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who chaired the platform drafting committee. Facing boos and nays, he tried again, before announcing that in his judgment, a two-thirds majority had approved the measure. He was booed again as he walked off the stage.

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"The Marriage Problem That Comes Every Four Years"


This passage is something that would seem ham-handed in a novel about modern liberals...
As Isaac Pollak, an ardent Republican, kissed his wife goodbye before heading out on a business trip to Asia several years ago, he handed her his absentee ballot for the coming presidential election and asked her to mail it.

Bonnie Pollak, a Democrat, weighed her options. Should she be loyal to her spouse, respect his legal right and mail the ballot? Or remain faithful to her deeply held beliefs and suppress his vote?

"It was a real dilemma," says Ms. Pollak, 58 years old, a student in a doctoral program in social welfare who lives in Manhattan. "I decided to do the right thing."

Ms. Pollak threw the ballot away.
The one trope missing is that they do actually share the same last name. Otherwise...
 

I'm actually not certain whether I'm more amused or irritated.  But, in addition to illustrating the little liberal tropes (Ms. vs. Mrs., the advanced degree in a questionable soft subject), it illustrates one of the big ones - the conflation of public policy with private virtue.  She is so self-righteous in her public policy beliefs, that she believes the virtuous course of action is to betray her spouse in order to prevent one vote for Republicans,  a vote which would have had no impact on any race.

And that's just one event, one action by one person, so you can't blame everyone who shares her party and policy positions.  But it's symbolic of an attitude that I see expressed repeatedly.

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Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Too dumb to serve?



Democratic Rep. displays ... interesting historical insights.
Colbert was quizzing Clarke on the history of her borough.

"Some have called Brooklyn’s decision to become part of New York City 'The Great Mistake of 1898,' " Colbert said. "If you could get in a time machine and go back to 1898, what would you say to those Brooklynites?"

"I would say to them, 'Set me free,' " Clarke said.

Pressed by Colbert what she would be free from, the black congresswoman responded, "Slavery."

"Slavery. Really? I didn’t realize there was slavery in Brooklyn in 1898," Colbert responded, seemingly looking to give the lawmaker a chance to catch her error.

"I’m pretty sure there was," Clarke responded.

"It sounds like a horrible part of the United States that kept slavery going until 1898," the late-night comedian then quipped.

Colbert pressed on, asking, "Who would be enslaving you in 1898 in New York?"

At that point, Clarke responded, "The Dutch."
How much media attention might that clip generate if it were a Republican that said it, rather than a Democrat?
Just remember, the more power you give government, the more power you give to people who thought that slavery in the United States persisted under the Dutch as late as 1898.
- Glenn Reynolds

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How 'Pro-Choice' are Democrats?



ReasonTV goes to the Democratic National Convention and demonstrates - again - that, for many Democrats, "pro-choice" just means "pro-abortion...."

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"Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To"


As the media tells you how well everything's going in Charlotte, remember this - the Democrats are already actively disavowing a video that Democrats played at the Democratic National Convention, which is presenting Democratic ideas to Democrats in the hall and the American people viewing on television.
The “Welcome to Charlotte” video was solely produced and paid for by the Host Committee’s New American City Fund, which promotes the city of Charlotte and welcomes our guests. The intent of this video was to tell the story of this region and it is completely unaffiliated with the Obama campaign or the Democratic National Committee.
That's right, what possible reason could one have for suspecting that the video actually represents the Democratic Party and its positions?

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Reality-based...

Spotted on Facebook this morning:
You can't have discussions with people who are untethered from reality. You come with facts and they have faith.
True. And ironic.

Where's the irony?

It's from someone who believes that the stimulus worked, and that Obama's been a great President, that Obamacare's going to improve health care while reducing its cost, and that the cause of the financial crisis was too much free market and not enough government.  And that's ironic, from my point of view, because I think those are faith-based positions, not reality-based.


I've written before about the difficulties that arise when people who need to cooperate cannot come to agreement on the reality of the situation in which they find themselves.
Differing incomplete perceptions of reality result in different analyses.
That remains true, and, unfortunately, it seems to be the case for many of the issues facing the American electorate right now. And it seems to me that those on the left are more disconnected from reality than those on the right. (Obviously, I think I'm right; they think they are.) And there are many little examples. Twice in the last three weeks, there have been posts of indignation and outrage on Facebook from anti-gunners about things that the NRA has (supposedly) done. One was an article from the Onion, and another was some ridiculous site claiming that the Florida governor supported a law that would allow gun-owners to shoot people at the polls that they suspected weren't legal voters. Both stories were utter nonsense, that the slightest amount of critical thinking would have allowed one to perceive as such, but there are those with so little understanding of gun rights advocates that they are willing to believe nonsense of their political opposition.

Or take abortion.  (Please!)  At least a couple of times a month, there are dozens, or hundreds, of "likes" of pictures which say things like, "my uterus is none of the government's business" or "hands off my ovaries."  I want to scream, "no one gives a damn about your ovaries" but that wouldn't be productive.  Of course, those comments aren't productive in the first place.  They impute to pro-life citizens motives that are absurd and unreasonable, while ignoring the true motives.  There may be no way to reconcile the extreme pro-life and extreme pro-choice positions, but assertions such as those don't even address them, and shut off any chance of finding common ground.

So this person marshalls the "facts" that he sees, and assume that they are, in fact, "facts."  Unfortunately, they aren't.  Oh, sure, there are some, and we can dig down and find some facts that we'd all agree on, if we dig far enough, but "facts" don't actually explain everything.  Statistics are helpful, but they don't actually speak for themselves.  Statistics, like history, need to be interpreted.  Times and dates are knowable, actions often are, motives are more obscure, secondary effects are harder to see, and counter-factuals are impossible to know.  Did the stimulus help or hurt?  We can look at the same data and draw different conclusions.
  • Some people say that the stimulus stopped the job loss, strengthened the financial stability of the states, and therefore the country, and prevented a second great depression; that the cash for clunkers program spurred demand and that the auto industry bailout saved thousands of jobs.  

  • Others say that the stimulus exploded the debt, largely supported Democratic constituencies, prevented or delayed states from making necessary structural changes to public sector employment contracts, and is acting as a drag on the economy, resulting in both higher unemployment than the Obama administration predicted, and the slowest growth rates out of a significant recession since the Great Depression.
Who is right?  It's unknowable.  What you believe depends entirely on your world view.  But at least some of the people who believe the former position is correct also believe that those who hold the latter position are "untethered from reality."

On this one point, we are 100% in agreement - the different world-views make it very difficult to have a productive conversation. 

I know what I believe, and I know the epistemology of my beliefs.  I look at everything that's happened since 2000, I look back in history to the 20s and 30s, to the Soviet Union and Communist Cuba and Communist North Korea and Great Britain's socialism, to Adam Smith and Karl Marx and Bastiat and Hayek and Keynes and Maslow and Rand, and it's clear to me that the stimulus was a bad idea, and it made the economy worse.  It's clear to me that Barack Obama had no qualifications for the office, he's been a poor administrator but a consequential President due to the overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress during his first two years.  It's clear to me that the spiraling deficit began to get out of control in 2007 when the Democrats took control of the Congress and George W. Bush utterly failed to push back against their spending demands.  It's clear to me that Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable in their current forms and need to be modified significantly. 

Am I right?  I think I am.  I'm confident in these beliefs.

But I can't prove it.  All of the "facts" are susceptible to alternate explanation.  In my understanding of the world, that's the situation.

It's easy to go out to the Treasury website and find the budget numbers for the last 10 years, it's easy to go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and find the various unemployment rates for the last 10 years.  And we can all agree that, in most cases, the numbers are what they are.  But why are the numbers what they are?  What do they correlate to?  And of course, even if they correlate, does that imply causation?  Was the financial crisis caused by unfettered free market trading in derivatives?  Or by the government's interference in the mortgage markets, pushing banks to make bad loans?  Or some combination of the two?

And how would you go about proving it to someone who disagreed?

In the end, we all bring our world-view to the discussion.  There's no way around that.  In the end, we can look at the same facts, and one thinks the stimulus made the situation better and the other thinks the stimulus made the situation worse.  Since we don't know what would have happened without the stimulus, we do not - we cannot - know which position is correct.  There are facts, but each and every one of us also brings faith.  And failure to recognize that, failing to recognize our own articles of faith, our own biases, makes the discussion impossible.

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Bob Is A Racist


This would be funny if there weren't so much truth to it.

Ok, it's funny anyway...

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Tuesday, September 04, 2012

That didn't take long...



The apology-requiring material started early in Charlotte.



RNC:
"We own this country. We -- we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours."
- Clint Eastwood




DNC video:

"The government's the only thing we all belong to."








Maybe there's a little difference between the parties.

But I'm sure they don't really mean it that way. Just another accidental slip of the tongue...

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The "ouch" quote of the day


Glenn Reynolds on Barack Obama's self-awarded "incomplete" on the economy:
I guess that’s because some people still have jobs...

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DNC pre-game report



As I’ve already noted, my exposure to the events in Charlotte this week will be, if for no other reason than to keep my blood pressure reasonable, limited.  But I’ve got a couple of thoughts on what’s going to happen as they get underway.

  • In contradiction to Jonah Goldberg’s prediction, I think we do get the “four more years” chant, on more than one occasion.  The awkward questions that this ought to raise in response won’t be asked by the media.
  • Any mention of the national debt will be made in the context of what a problem George W. Bush and the Republican Congress left.  No member of the mainstream press will opine, or ask  any question which implies, that this is not the correct framework for thinking about the debt.
  • The Democrats will repeatedly, and loudly, proclaim a position on abortion which is far further from the consensus of American public opinion than that held by the Republicans.  They will do this while calling the Republicans’ position “radical.”  At no time will any member of the mainstream media reveal this, nor challenge them on it.
  • The Democrats will convey the message, both implicitly and explicitly, that "real women" have to hold certain positions on certain issues.  The mainstream press will never think to call this position, that women are limited in their thought processes by biological determinism, "sexism."
  • The Democrats will convey the message, both implicitly and explicitly, that African- Americans have to hold certain positions on certain issues.  The mainstream press will never think to call this position, that people with dark skin are limited in their thought processes by biological determinism, "racism."
  • The Democrats will be addressed by a graduate student whose claim to fame is that she previously appeared before Congress to insist that the Federal Government mandate that all insurance policies cover birth control, and, in the process, provoked an intemperate remark from a radio host.  Their advocacy of this position is indicative of either a) their serious lack of understanding of the American body politic or b) mine.  
  • Some people will defend Sandra Fluke, and the contraceptive mandate, as a shining example of "separation of church and state."  Those people have a radically different understanding of the Constitution and the first amendment than I do.
  • The Democrats will claim, repeatedly, that the stimulus bill and other economic measures passed by the Democratic Congress in 2009 and 2010, and signed by President Obama, left the country better off than it would have otherwise been.  The impossibility of proving counterfactuals leaves this as a position that, though wildly improbable, is not necessarily false.  There might actually be some questioning from the media on this, but it will be largely in a helpful, share-with-our-viewers kind of way, with no significant challenges.
  • Joe Biden's convention speech will be filled with the kind of blatant factual errors that the mainstream "fact checkers" tried - incorrectly - to portray Paul Ryan's speech as containing.  The "fact checkers" won't find anything worthy of comment.
  • The storyline going in to the Convention is “Democrats dispirited, unenthusiastic.”  That sounds like the media actually sharing negativity about the Democrats, but that’s not the correct understanding.  (The Republicans are living up to the “stupid party” nickname by gathering and sharing these stories.)  The proper frame for understanding the “enthusiasm gap” stories appearing today is as background context for Friday’s “Democrats united and enthusiastic after great convention” stories. 

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By the way...


...you should expect significantly less commentary from me on the DNC than you got on the RNC.  There may be a few minutes that I'll sit through, but very few, and "none" is probably more likely than not.  I know everything I need to know of the Democrats, and this President, to make any and all upcoming voting decisions.

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"Obama's Dreams"



Have I mentioned before that I love Thomas Sowell?
Barack Obama is one of those people who are often wrong but never in doubt. When he burst upon the national political scene as a presidential candidate in 2008, even some conservatives were impressed by his confidence.

But confident ignorance is one of the most dangerous qualities in a leader of a nation. If he has the rhetorical skills to inspire the same confidence in himself by others, then you have the ingredients for national disaster.
Sowell examines Obama's assumed, and sometimes stated, belief system, and points out some flaws. Excellent piece - read it all...

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2012 Democratic National Racist Convention


By their own standards.

Credential Distribution - 2012 Democratic National Convention
Authorized Pickup

All pickup persons must have a state-issued ID that matches the name submitted below.
Now, I don't believe that requiring ID to do things like board airplanes, purchase alcohol, enter national party convention sites or vote is racist. But the Democrats do, fighting Voter ID laws whenever states attempt to enact them. So, by their own standards, their convention is racist...

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Monday, September 03, 2012

Monday Pythagorean - 9/3/2012

I was getting ready to write about their "perfect" week, when I realized that they'd spoiled it on Monday afternoon, playing a wraparound game against the Royals - and winning it - before heading west. So I'll have to settle for writing about the "perfect" road trip, instead...
  • How bad has the trip been? Every game in Oakland was better than the one that preceded it, and they lost the last game 6-2.
  • Is there really anything else to say?
  • The weak links have been weak. The core players who should be carrying the team are. In the wrong direction.
  • It's tough to see how Valentine survives. That's not to say that it's his fault. But if Francona had to go at the end of last September, how can you not replace a manager under whom the team has played the way it's played this season?
  • Red Sox Player of the Week - Yeah, right.
  • Red Sox Pitcher of the Week - As if...


AL Pythagorean Projection Report - 9/3/2012
ProjectedActual
R/G(rank)RA/G(rank)Pythagorean(rank)WLWLLuck
Texas5.16(1)4.28(7)0.585(1)785579541
Oakland4.31(9)3.68(2)0.572(2)765776570
Tampa Bay4.2(11)3.63(1)0.567(3)76587361-3
New York4.79(3)4.14(4)0.567(4)755876571
Chicago4.67(5)4.19(5)0.55(5)73607261-1
Los Angeles4.75(4)4.42(8)0.533(6)716371630
Detroit4.55(6)4.26(6)0.53(7)706372612
Boston4.83(2)4.87(12)0.496(8)67686273-5
Seattle3.87(14)3.96(3)0.49(9)66696570-1
Toronto4.53(7)4.8(11)0.473(10)63706073-3
Baltimore4.25(10)4.51(9)0.473(11)6370745911
Kansas City4.15(12)4.54(10)0.459(12)61726073-1
Minnesota4.37(8)5.14(13)0.426(13)57775579-2
Cleveland4.04(13)5.22(14)0.385(14)528256784



Top 5 projections (using current winning %)
Texas9666
Oakland9369
New York9369
Baltimore9072
Tampa Bay8874



Top 5 projections (starting with today's record, using Pythagorean winning %)
Texas9666
Oakland9369
New York9270
Tampa Bay8973
Chicago8874


Standings for the week
ProjectedActual
R/G(rank)RA/G(rank)Pythagorean(rank)WLWLLuck
Oakland9(1)2.29(1)0.925(1)61701
Los Angeles6(2)2.5(2)0.832(2)51510
Baltimore4.71(3)3.14(3)0.677(3)52520
Detroit4.17(6)3.17(4)0.623(4)4233-1
Minnesota4.43(5)3.57(6)0.597(5)4334-1
Tampa Bay4(8)3.29(5)0.589(6)4334-1
Texas4.5(4)3.83(7)0.573(7)33421
Toronto4.14(7)4.14(8)0.5(8)43430
Kansas City3.86(9)4.14(8)0.467(9)34431
Chicago3(11)4.57(11)0.316(10)2516-1
New York3.67(10)5.67(12)0.311(11)24240
Seattle2.29(14)4.43(10)0.23(12)25432
Cleveland3(11)6.57(13)0.192(13)16160
Boston2.86(13)7.86(14)0.136(14)16160

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