Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Is Ohio a must-win for Obama?

Big Lizards makes the case.  If Romney takes Florida, NC and Virginia as expected, he's at 248 electoral votes.  Ohio's 18 would give Romney 266.  Winning any one of the many remaining swing states would then be enough to give Romney the big W.  Ohio is crucial for BO.

Sandy and Global Warming

There are storms like Sandy all over the world every year.  Apparently, the global warming wackos whose religion has them desperately seeking a sign of the impending apocalypse just know, they just KNOW, that Sandy is proof of their religious beliefs. 

Sad.

Davidson to the Title Game?!

Benjamin Miraski  with an interesting quote:


Davidson comes in at No. 51, in a cluster with VCU, Murray State, St. Mary's, Cincinnati and Oklahoma. The Wildcats are definitely ready to have one of those dream seasons. Heck, I think they might be ready to go to the NCAA Championship game.

Sporting News story features Davidson

RPI encourages the big boys to play teams like DC.  The Cats love it.

Law of Unintended Consequences

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the media's desperate attempt to keep a lid on the Benghazi scandal is that the media may accomplish the opposite of their intent.  That can be no doubt that the MSM is trying to protect Obama and help him win the election.  They've forfeited all credibility and have become an embarrassment to sluts and whores.  The failure to cover the story, however, may well end up hurting the president even more than would have been the case had it been covered competently and honestly. 

Election day will be almost two months after 9/11/12.  Had the story been covered properly, Obama might have had a chance to deal with it, take his lumps and move on.  Instead, the anger and outrage that permeates through the nation is peaking in the week before the election (a time when a lot of people are voting in early voting periods).

In the era of talk radio and the internet, the old, establishment news outlets no longer have a monopoly on news.  They can't keep the lid on stories they don't like; certainly not really important ones.  And the Benghazi attack and Obama's failure to respond, or rather his active interference with our military's efforts to respond, is a huge story.

The effort to bottle up the story has only delayed its transmission to the public.  It has leaked out slowly and with devastating effect.  As facts come out day after day, a few at a time, the anger builds and builds.  The story has lasted for weeks now.  And the regard that independents have for Obama continues to collapse.  The MSM refusal to cover the story has only resulted in it becoming an election issue at the worst possible time for the president.  And with even greater impact.

One note -- ultimately, this is the president's responsibility.  He chose the coverup option.  The MSM has only been following his lead and playing the hand as he has directed.  It is his own petard upon which he finds himself.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Sports Bank ranks Davidson #41

Preseason picks of the 75 BCS teams plus the best mid-majors.
With all eight rotation players returning from a team that won 26 games a year ago, the Davidson Wildcats will be one of the more dangerous mid-major teams in the country.
2012-2013 Outlook:
All five starters averaged at least ten points per game last season so Bob McKillop returns a balanced line-up.  The biggest asset of that group is that all five guys on the floor can stroke it from deep.
...
 A major conference team would be incredibly fortunate to return as much proven talent as Davidson does this season.  With that being said, they are without question the team to beat in the SoCon and will be a very difficult out come March Madness.


Wildcats get 5 votes in preseason AP poll

Here.

Panetta's bizarre foolishness

Jonah  is correct.  Panetta's explanation for not responding precludes the US military from ever responding.  And I would point out that any attack in a city or any other environment with the potential for non-combatants to be present is similarly precluded.  Frankly, I don't know how the US military could operate in Iraq or Afghanistan under the Panetta doctrine.

Jonah:
If the circumstances in Libya didn’t meet the “enough information” threshold for a rescue attempt or some other form of intervention, then what does? And, note, Panetta & Co. make it sound as if the decision to let the Americans on the scene twist in the wind was sort of a no-brainer, not a difficult decision. So what happened in Libya didn’t even come close to the threshold for intervention. 
What does that mean? Well, it seems to me that any embassy or consulate subjected to a surprise attack will likely catch the administration off guard. That’s why they call them “surprise attacks,” after all. According to the Panetta doctrine, the very essence of what makes a surprise attack a surprise attack likely precludes any commitment of U.S. forces to repel it. The message to our diplomats and troops: You’re on your own. The message to terrorists: As long as you keep your attacks minimally confusing, you win.  
That’s outrageous.

Will Romney lose Ohio, win election?

One of the least appreciated expressions by far too many analysts in far too many contexts is "ceteris paribus".  The expression is generally used in economics, but it's application applies to nearly all areas.  It is translated as 'all other things remaining equal or the same'.  For example, someone might claim that their economic model predicts that a change in interest rates will produce some calculated change in economic growth (all other things remaining unchanged).  Of course, all other things never remain unchanged.

We see a failure to appreciate this important caveat in a lot of current economic analysis.  The Fed, and a number of economists who support quantitative easing, point to models which predict that large increases in the money supply with spur growth.  But the models assume a normal economy with functioning markets, typical regulatory burdens, typical attitudes by business owners toward their future prospects and a lack of fear by said owners that the government is going to destroy their businesses. So -- if ceteris ain't paribus, throw the models out the window.

Political pundits are in full pontification mode as the election looms just days away.  Everyone wants to focus on Ohio.  We hear all kinds of observations about voters in Ohio being a good microcosm of voters in the US, that Ohio is crucial in the electoral college calculations and other assorted reasons involving various historical trends as to why Ohio explains everything.

Just one small problem.  Ohio may not be typical this year.  First, because Ohio was the focus of both campaigns from the beginning, the amount of money spent, the number of visits by both campaigns, and the intensity of the get-out-the-vote effort have and will dwarf any normal election.  Ohio has become an atypical, special case election.   There may be an extraordinarily high percentage of casual voters who make it to the polls.  This tends to favor Democrats.

A lot of polling now seems to point to the likelihood that Romney will carry the national vote.  A lot of states that were once thought to be Obama locks are now viewed as tossups.  If Romney wins the national vote by any kind of significant margin, some of these tossups will likely end up in his column.  Especially if they haven't been subjected to a great deal of spending and attention from either campaign.  They become better barometers of the national mood than Ohio.

So here's a possibility -- what if Ohio goes to Obama in a squeaker because of an extraordinary amount of money and organization focused on the state by the Democrat, but Romney, as the winner of a national wave election wins a number of other tossup states and wins the electoral college by a comfortable margin?


Saturday, October 27, 2012

Obama as Father Figure??!!

This  may be the most absurd crap I've ever read.  Anyone who thinks that an undecided voter is going to view Obama as more fatherly than Romney has lost all touch with reality.  Mean, nasty, snarky, thin-skinned, narcissistic, dishonest, irresponsible, disengaged, ignorant, unfeeling, incompetent and hubristic are not qualities that most people think of when they consider attractive father figures.

Unforgiveable

Bruce McQuain  explains why the 'answers' we are getting from the administration are unacceptable.  Good men died in Benghazi because assholes didn't give a damn.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Dog Wagging?

It appears that the Obama White House must be freaking out about now with the breaking story that repeated requests to save the men fighting for the lives in Libya were turned down. 

Does BO launch some kind of missile strike or attack in Libya and claim he's killed the perps?

Distract from the stench of the scandal and give him a chance to spike the football.

Michael Mann and Barack Obama

Anyone else notice all the ways they seem similar?  The hubris, the thin skin, the narcissism, the fawning from sycophants, the lies, the lack of talent, the elevation of politics over duty .....

Coaches, Media pick DC to win

And place three players on the all-conference team.

Vote Suppression by Dems in Florida?

Tampa Tribune
Attention voters! We have begun to witness locally, and at least in 14 other counties, efforts to suppress Republican votes in the upcoming election.
Suspicious letters questioning voters' legal status and citizenship began arriving in Florida over the past four days with a postmark from Seattle, Wash., accompanying a $.45 stamp.
...
Much has been made of efforts to suppress the vote in recent months, but this effort is most disturbing. First, it is clearly well-funded and widespread as evidenced by the sheer number of counties and individuals involved, as well as the use of stamps. Second, the effort is targeting a crucial swing state that has been at the center of recent close elections and had elections called into question in the past. Third, the research necessary to conduct such an operation and the money needed to fund the research and stamps to send these letters from Seattle to Florida are enormous.
This is not a small effort — it is, in fact, a very calculated and detailed effort needing money, knowledge, technology and a motive to influence the outcome on a grand scale.
Finally, it is important for all to understand the seriousness of voter fraud efforts. This election, like all federal elections, stands to place into power those individuals who will have the ability to direct billions of taxpayer dollars in a multitrillion-dollar budget.

Civil Rights Lawyers for Voter Fraud?

Christian Adams  explains that there is so much more to the active assistance of Congressman Moran's son in a vote fraud scheme:

the clearest and most revealing part of the Pat Moran tapes is the extent to which the left’s election protection lawyers are seen as a tool to consummate voter fraud. At least one top operative saw these lawyers as polling-place muscle to ensure that every fraudulent vote is counted, rather than caught.

Sarcastic, Insulting, Hateful, Scornful, Contemptuous

Matthew Continetti   has a good piece titled "A brief history of Obama: how sarcasm and insult took over the Democratic Party.  Read it all.
The untold story of the last four years is President Obama’s squandering of that good will. There’s no need to go into every detail here. Part of it was the spending. Part of it was not abandoning his unpopular health care law after Scott Brown’s shock election to the Senate in January 2010. Part of it was the failure of his economic policies to produce a durable recovery in line with historical norms. But the most important part of the story is the gradual unmasking of Obama—not as a Kenyan Marxist, but as a thoroughly typical liberal Democrat who believes there is no trouble in the world not created by George W. Bush.
...
It turns out the people who supposedly knew better did not, actually, know better.
...

Even a narrow win for Obama, though, would not reestablish anything like the mandate and amity the president enjoyed on his Inauguration Day. The reason is that, as the Obama coalition diminished, Obama no longer disguised the prejudices, inflections, outlook, and approach of the progressive movement. A confessed reader of Andrew Sullivan’s hysterical web site, the president has taken on the maximalist characteristics of the liberal blogosphere. He is scornful and contemptuous of Romney, as could be seen in his patronizing lecture on aircraft carriers and submarines during the third debate. His campaign seizes on the most trivial comments—“I like Big Bird”; “Binders full of women”—to engage in juvenile jibes that would not make the first cut at the Late Show writers’ meeting. His rallies have become self-congratulatory comedy hours in which the assembled Democrats laugh heartily at the insults and zingers the president throws Romney’s way. Obama has been on a seemingly nonstop tour of television shows hosted by late-night comics. His new attack line that the Republican nominee has “Romnesia” was, as the vice president might say, literally taken from liberal blogs. The vice president even asked his audience at a recent rally whether it had watched The Daily Show the night before. The men who hold the highest offices in the most powerful country in the history of the world have been debased to the point where they look like fill-in guests on Up with Chris Hayes.

"slashing, interjecting, interrupting, desperate"

Charles Krauthammer  provides his own adjectives to describe our incredibly shrinking, melting president:
Obama would have made a very good Bourbon. He’s certainly not a very good debater. He showed it again Monday night.
Obama lost. His tone was petty and small.
...

Throughout the debate, Obama kept it up, slashing, interjecting, interrupting, desperate to gain the upper hand by insult if necessary. That spirit led Obama into a major unforced error. When Romney made a perfectly reasonable case to rebuild a shrinking Navy, Obama condescended: “You mentioned . . . that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”
Such that naval vessels are as obsolete as horse cavalry?
Liberal pundits got a great guffaw out of this, but the underlying argument is quite stupid.

Boston Globe ouchie

Howie Carr  leaves a mark or two on the Boston Globe:

Here’s how old I am. I can remember when the Globe was a newspaper, not a pathetic rag and errand boy for the Democrat Party.
The bow-tied bumkissers have suffered through a lot of lows during the past few years — the plagiarizing and fabricating columnists; the porno picture they claimed was U.S. soldiers raping Iraqi women; the sob story about a cop killer who couldn’t get a good job; the Vietnam veteran junkie killer who’d never been to Vietnam; identifying the wrong killers of the Dartmouth professors; the phony poll that had Scott Brown losing by 15 points; the Whitey-kept-the-drugs-out-of-Southie meme, etc.
And he keeps putting the hurt on.  Good read.

Aggressive, mocking, trivial

Michael Gerson:
Barack Obama has chosen to end his final campaign with an appeal both sour and small — Big Bird, binders and Romnesia. It is little wonder that Mitt Romney’s personal favorability rating now exceeds the president’s. Obama’s closing message is remarkable for its aggression, mocking tone and sheer triviality.

"Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself"

Peggy Noonan  on BO:
A great and assumed question, the one that's still floating out there, is what exactly happened when Mr. Obama did himself in? What led to it? ... Maybe what happened isn't a mystery at all.  That, anyway, is the view expressed this week by a member of the U.S. Senate who served there with Mr Obama and has met with him in the White House. People back home, he said, sometimes wonder what happened with the president in the debate. The senator said, I paraphrase: I sort of have to tell them that it wasn't a miscalculation or a weird moment. I tell them: I know him, and that was him. That guy on the stage, that's the real Obama.

This is the Obama that Bob Woodward wrote about in his new book.
The portrait it contains of Mr. Obama—of a president who is at once over his head, out of his depth and wholly unaware of the fact—hasn't received the attention it deserves. Throughout the book, which is a journalistic history of the president's key economic negotiations with Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama is portrayed as having the appearance and presentation of an academic or intellectual while being strangely clueless in his reading of political situations and dynamics. He is bad at negotiating—in fact doesn't know how. His confidence is consistently greater than his acumen, his arrogance greater than his grasp.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Petulant, Small-minded, Arrogant, Condescending

Bruce McQuain gives us thoughts on Barone's latest.  Is this election a slow mo repeat of the preference cascade of 1980?

More on BO's Ignorance of the Navy

Ignorance or Intent.
said a much simpler way, and despite Obama’s ignorant claims, we don’t have enough ships to cover all the contingencies that his failed foreign policy has helped foment.  Technology still can’t have you in two places at once.
Instead, we have a Commander-in-Chief who apparently thinks those things we call aircraft carriers are like magic unicorns.  You kind of wave one toward a crisis and everything works out.  He has no concept of force protection.  He has no idea how a carrier strike group operates.  He just knows we have these things called aircraft carriers and they’re apparently magic because, you know, we have this “technology” and we’re much more “capable” than when it was all about horses and bayonets.  Or something.
Reality?
Yet in 2010, the Navy could only fulfill 53% of the requirements for presence and missions levied by the combatant commanders (e.g., CENTCOM, PACOM).  Cutting this Navy will reduce further its ability to fill warfighter requirements.
This guy is dangerous, folks.  His ignorance is both appalling and frightening.
He needs to go.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Obama's breathtaking ignorance

BO's ignorance may be exceeded only by his hubris.
Obama the arrogant had quite a time last night … being arrogant, that is.
And, as usual, anyone who knew reality had to laugh at his posturing, since it revealed a horrendous level of ignorance.
What am I talking about?  His quip about “horses and bayonets” and his nonsense about the size of the Navy.
We’ve all heard, I’m sure, the line that “amateurs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics”.

Better than Curry?

West Virginai Gazette  in an article on the difficulty of the schedule Bob Huggins has put together this year:
In that Old Spice Classic, WVU could face Vanderbilt or a very good Davidson team in the second round. The latter is said to have a better team than when Stephen Curry was there. Coach Bob McKillop has a formidable frontcourt of Jake Cohen and De'Mon Brooks.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Obama -- evolved communist for modern times

Most people have a totalitarian view of communism that harkens back to Stalin, Mao and Lenin.  The lesson of history, however, is that this type of totalitarian control fails.  Modern American marxists who once favored violent revolution, such as Barack Obama in college, finally became convinced that the American people would never embrace such a revolution.  Instead, as the Soviet empire collapsed, a new vision for the American Left emerged.  They would achieve victory slowly, by taking control of the culture and the levers of power.  The goal became not government ownership of the means of production, but rather government control.  The rights of the individual memorialized in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution wouldn't be repealed.  They would be eroded gradually via the use of a 'living' Constitution.  The people would be induced to sell away their rights to life, liberty and property by bribing them with their own money.  The result would be the same -- control by the enlightened, powerful few.  But it wouldn't be 'communism'.  It would be collectivist and corporatist, and hide behind the name social democracy. 

America has been moving down this path for several decades now.  Leftists have acquired a stranglehold on many of the influential organs of culture and education (movies, television, publishing, the arts, charitable foundations, the schools, universities, mainline protestant religious denominations, private sector unions, civil rights organizations, environmental and conservation groups, old line news publications, tv news, and public sector unions).  Obama's presidency has been a four year journey to solidify as much of their goals as possible. 

To understand how Obama thinks and how his actions and rhetoric are consistent with these goals, I urge you to read this four part series prepared by a New York lawyer who was educated at Harvard Law just after Obama.  In Part I  he describes the essential difference between corporatist collectivism and traditional socialism:
The crucial distinction between corporatism and socialism is that socialism demands public ownership and operation of businesses and other major institutions, whereas corporatism tolerates private ownership while insinuating pervasive government control.
 ...
If the natural enemy of the collectivist system in general is the free individual, the natural enemy of the corporatist system is the free institution - the private business (from small businesses to large corporations), the free church, the independent trade union, the private civic or charitable organization (e.g., the Boy Scouts), the private hospital, the homeowner's association or neighborhood watch, the unregulated newspaper, TV channel or political action committee - in short, any way in which individuals can associate with each other or participate in the life of their communities without the intermediation of government telling them how to do so. ... Corporatist systems do not seek the abolition of these institutions - the fascists, unlike the Communists, did not reflexively ban Christian churches or private corporations - but rather to co-opt, compromise and control them, to ensure that a combination of financial enticements and regulations saps them of their independence from the state. The same impulse, in the American federal system, extends even to the independence of state and local governments; as long as things like health and education are the province of many and varied governments, corporatist systems fear that they will not be able to impose their policies universally and must contend with competition from approaches that may prove more attractive in practice.
In Part II  he compiles a long list of examples of the ideology and rhetoric of Barack Obama that demonstrates how committed Obama and his allies are to this world view.  The post is long, but must reading. 
Barack Obama is well-known for his polished oratory, his delivery off a TelePrompter of carefully prepared and vetted speeches. Unsurprisingly, these prepared texts generally seek to cast his ideas and programs as consistent with the American traditions of free enterprise, free markets, free people and free institutions. But there is a long history of mostly unscripted statements from Obama and his wife Michelle - which I supplement here with just a few choice examples from the party he commands - that reveal a consistent strain of his thinking that is hostile to private business and the private sector, favorable to redistribution of wealth, and collectivist in worldview. Together, they illustrate the rationalizations behind Obama's policies.
(my emphasis).  Read it all.

In Part III  he examines the stimulus, the bailouts and Obamacare and demonstrates how each of these fits into Obama's corporatist/collectivist ideology.  Again, must reading.

"The stimulus, bailouts and Obamacare are the most egregious and well-known examples of the corporatist tendencies in Obama's policy portfolio. But there numerous others." .And in Part IV  he  discusses some of them -- entitlement reform, education policy, labor policy, student loans, housing and suburbs, the BP shakedown, the defense sequester, and the Warn Act.
As I noted at the outset, corporatist tendencies are on some level unavoidable in modern government, and certainly the Republican party at both the national and state levels has engaged in corporatist excesses at times. A major part of the Tea Party movement has been about combatting that within the GOP. But the Tea Party has a constituency within the GOP because its mission is consistent with the opposition to collectivism and reduction in government interference in the economy that is necessary to pare back corporatism. Democrats may conduct sporadic fights against the surface corruption, but always come back to expanding the underlying system that produces it.
The pattern of behavior laid out above really only scratches the surface of the Administration's record - I'm not even touching here on complex areas like telecom and tech policy, or the status of other entities trapped either temporarily (like GM) or permanently in semi-public limbo, neither free private companies nor totally public - Amtrak, the Postal Service, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc. That pattern may look, at first glance, inconsistent. How can Obama be hostile to private enterprise, yet in bed with big business? Why is he sometimes operating through private companies, and sometimes through direct government action? But the point of a corporatist system is to retain governmental control, through private entities if possible, through government action if necessary. The more private businesses and semi-private "public private partnerships" are kept off-balance and wondering whose honey pot will be taken away next, the more incentive they have to keep donating, keep playing ball, and keep their objections to themselves. It's a highly sophisticated system, honed by years of experience in the operation of political machines, and it inevitably, quietly politicizes everything while stifling public dissent as it does so.
The Obama Administration's embrace of collectivism and corporatism at the expense of individual economic liberty, free markets and free institutions has been on a level unprecedented in the United States since at least the mid-1930s. This is not mere run-of-the-mill liberalism, much less "moderate" Democratic policy; it is a pattern and practice of undermining all the bulwarks we possess against thoroughgoing national politicization of the entire economy. Its defeat is the necessary first step in reclaiming space for free individuals, private enterprise, and the free associations that make up our communities - the American way of life.

 (my emphasis)

Monday, October 22, 2012

Obama -- red diaper baby

I don't know why this is just now coming on Paul Kengor's radar screen.  I thought it was obvious given his parents, Davis, his marxist activities in college, and his mentors -- Ayers and Dohrn.
the question of Obama's red diapers was just posed to me. I discussed it with Ron Radosh, a fellow historian of the Cold War and communism. Radosh himself, in his youth, was a communist. He wrote a terrific memoir called Commies. Radosh knew Red Diaper Babies by the nursery-load, and he understands the phenomenon not only personally but historically and as a scholar.
"I and everyone else who uses the term 'Red Diaper Baby,'" says Radosh, defining his terms, "do so to define anyone whose parents were either CPUSA members or fellow-travelers, and who therefore grew up in the milieu of the Party and its front groups." Radosh, a professor emeritus of history at the City University of New York, adds: "Obama fits that definition."
I wouldn't worry about trying to carefully distinguish that the children of communists can be red diaper babies without being communists themselves.  A college professor who was an active marxist revolutionary as a student at Occidental when Obama was there has said that he met Obama then and BO was clearly a marxist at the time.

He's also mentioned that most people who break with the red movement have wrenching personal stories.  He wondered why we've never heard anything about BO's break with the movement.

How much is Romney winning by in Ohio?

Josh Jordan says that the most recent two polls in Ohio are big news for Mitt.  The polls say it's close, but they have to assume a much bigger Democratic turnout advantage to get the race close.
Romney leads Obama by 19 percent among independents, 52–33, and holds 92 percent of his base compared to Obama’s 87 percent. Obama is underwater in job approval, 44–50, and independents disapprove of him overwhelmingly, 31–58. And the poll has a Democratic advantage of 9 percent, which is a 4 percent jump from 2008 — no one believes that Democrats can match their 2008 turnout advantage, let alone almost double it.
PPP (a Democratic firm) released their new poll yesterday showing Obama only up one point, 49 to 48. Just a week ago PPP had the race at 51–46 for Obama. But the four-point gain for Romney is even more impressive when you look at the poll’s findings:
This week’s poll has a Democrat sample advantage of 8 percent; last week’s advantage was 4. Romney gained four points on Obama in a week despite the sample’s having four percentage points more Democrats. Romney leads with independents by 7 percent, up from a 5 percent last week. Obama’s approval is underwater at 48–50, and independents disapprove of him by a 41–54 margin.

Question Authority

Ed Driscoll --


In the 1960s, the left insisted that we “Question Authority.” Now that the reactionary left is authority – ancient, sclerotic, calcified though it may be, they seem to be having second thoughts about that notion.

Unexpectedly, of course.

Macbeth on Obama

Obama has said that his only weakness as president is that he hasn't done a good enough job telling stories to the American people.  As with just about everything with this president, the reality is just the opposite.  His story the last four years is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Rabinowitz-- an unreal four years

At WSJ, Dorothy Rabinowitz does an excellent job of describing how BO's ridiculous lying on Libya are simply a microcosm of his four years in power.  Her reference to the 1967 film "A Guide for the Married Man," is perfect.
For much of the past four years, the Obama administration's propensity for asserting views of reality wildly at odds with those evident to most rational citizens has looked increasingly like a page from that film script.
All administrations conceal, falsify and tell lies—this is understood—but there's no missing the distinctive quality of the prevaricating issuing from the White House in these four years.
It's a quality on vivid display now in the administration's mesmerizing narrative of the assault on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Here's a memorable picture, its detail brutally illuminating, of Obama and company in crisis mode over their conflicting stories about who knew what when. The resulting costs to truth-telling and sanity, or even the appearance thereof, are clear. Nor can we forget the strong element of farce—think U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on those five Sunday talk shows, reciting with unflagging fervor that official talking point regarding mob violence and a YouTube video. Farce, but no one is laughing.
 And she scores again with this:
Attorney General Eric Holder ... heads the most openly politicized Justice Department in the nation's history. Among his more recent noteworthy pronouncements, this one relevant to the coming election, Mr. Holder declared that photo ID requirements intended to prevent voting fraud were nothing less than a "poll tax." He was referring to an infamous institution from the days of Jim Crow, whose aim was to suppress black voting. Mr. Holder—so famously fastidious about group sensibilities that he has never been able to bring himself to utter any description identifying a terrorist as Muslim—has apparently had no inhibitions about smearing whole segments of the population as racists.

Time for an adult

America elected BO because he was supposed to be one of the cool kids who sat at the best table in the lunchroom.  While we've since learned that BO ain't nearly as cool as we were led to believe, it really doesn't matter.  We aren't picking a student council president.  America and the world don't have the luxury of a principal and teachers to keep the kids from driving their kiddie car out into the busy street.  Reality has intruded. Crisis looms.  Time to get serious.  Obama, Biden, Pelosi and Reid -- that joke has gotten old and stale.  It's time for leadership.  Real leadership.  Serious leadership.

It's time for an adult.  A proven leader, a man of accomplishment, a person of demonstrated integrity, Romney is the adult in the race.  We can't afford four more years of disaster accompanied by excuses, lies, and the slandering of others.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Binders

Romney aide Beth Myers:
“I had to be available when my kids came home, in those ‘bewitching hours’ [late afternoon].” She discussed it with Romney, who told her simply to be flexible. She would come in early and work through lunch. Then after her kids had gone to sleep at night, she recounted, “I cleared my virtual desk.” She said simply, “We made it work.”
As for the binders, she laughs at the notion, propounded by some media figures, that they didn’t exist. “In 2002, there was no monster.com,” she related. Romney was new to government and made clear he didn’t want to recycle the same faces. “Mitt wanted to reach out beyond state government in every way,” she said. They created an Internet portal (from a 2012 vantage point, she acknowledged that this sounds “quaint”) to solicit resumes and went around the commonwealth to search for candidates. One part of that hiring search came in the form of “thick three-ring binders, with tabs” filled with information on potential candidates, which had been compiled by an outside nonprofit group called the Massachusetts Government Appointments Project (MassGAP). In the debate this week, Myers said, “Mitt remembered that.”
Myers said that since Obama’s campaign has made an issue of the remark, “I have an inbox that has been flooded from women who say, ‘I think it’s great he reached out and understood you have to be flexible.’ Not a single one has been anything but positive.” She scoffed at the Obama campaign’s suggestion that this was somehow insulting to women. “That’s not the reaction of normal men and women,” she told me.

Climate Attribution

This is funny.  Steve Goddard nails the only attribution issue in climate science for which the evidence is sufficient to reach a conclusion:

Until now, it has been impossible to link specific junk science papers to excessive amounts of climate research funding.
However, we do know that the availability of billions of dollars to fund climate science, loads the dice for academics to generate worthless, dishonest and misleading papers.
For the first time, we can specifically tie peer-reviewed junk science papers to the availability of junk-science money.

Does Liberalism Impair Cognitive Function?

Remember in 2008 when liberals fell in love with BO during the primaries?  All of a sudden they realized just how hateful and nasty the Clintons are.  Normal people had known since 1992.

Now, more and more voters are beginning to notice that BO has been really nasty.  He lies and he slanders.  Even some liberals are beginning to have second thoughts.  Of course, normal people recognized BO's nasty side in 2008.

Liberalism seems to impair normal cognitive function.

ESPN -- Tom Brady's not clutch

Michael Smith discusses how horrible Brady has been in the clutch the last four years.

Nate Silver -- playing the game?

Matt Lewis examines the Nate Silver predictions and raises an interesting point from Ben Smith.  Is Silver, a loyal Obama supporter, working hard to keep Obama lovers from descending into full panic mode?

Did Nixon win more votes in 1960?

Sean Trende fleshes out the details of Alabama's voting that year.  He makes a good case. 

I wasn't aware that the better analysis goes all the back to the Congressional Quarterly in 1960.  Interesting stuff.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Time for Panic?

Jennifer Rubin follows up:
The Obama team is showing signs of stress. VP Joe Biden is out gaffe-making again. The president goes on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and says, “When four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal.” (Oh. My. Goodness.) He is falling behind in state and national polls. So is it time for Democrats to panic? Well, many signs point that way.
Mary Chastain  notes that the debates are showing what has been known for some time:

The debate was another win for Governor Mitt Romney, but it also broke down President Barack Obama’s character and showed America a little bit behind the mask. He does not do well when he loses control.

Cracks started at the beginning, but it finally broke during the assault weapons question. Governor Romney had the nerve to bring up Operation Fast & Furious, the government gun walking operation that placed 2,000 weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. These guns are linked to the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and 300+ Mexican citizens. There was another gun walking operation out of Dallas and those guns are linked to ICE Agent Jaime Zapata’s death.
President Obama interrupted Governor Romney by getting Ms. Crowley’s attention. She obliged and turned the debate back to President Obama. He decided to stray into education and when Ms. Crowley tried to gain control of the debate he snapped.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

The melting continues as Obama panics

I first wrote back in early June of the possibility that Obama would meltdown and that the most likely impetus would be in a debate with Romney.  Jen Rubin at the Wash Post writes that panic is causing Obama to act irrationally in claiming that he labeled the Benghazi attack as terrorism the day after:
Like individuals, when things go very wrong very fast, presidential campaigns can act irrationally, doing things that are counterproductive. In the frenzy to do something, decisions are rushed and cooler heads are ignored..... Now it’s happening to “no drama Obama” and his Chicago and White House staffers.
...
Why in the world would the Obama team insist on this narrative? It is worse for the president.
If Obama figured out in a day that this was a planned terrorist attack, why was Jay Carney sent out on Sept. 14 to insist it was all about an anti-Muslim video? Why didn’t someone tell U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice before she went on five Sunday talk shows tying the murder of four Americans to a protest growing out of a video? Why did the president repeat this in his Sept. 20 Univision appearance and then dwell on the anti-Muslim videoat the United Nations? Declaring that the president knew full well on Sept. 12 that he was dealing with terrorism makes him and many in his administration liars.
So why push this story line? Well, the president made a big deal of it in the debate. Maybe his ego got the best of him and he couldn’t allow himself to be taken for a fool for not seeing the terror connection on 9/11 . Whatever the reason, both the White House and the campaign are now insisting on an unhelpful timeline, which in turn will require more quibbling, trimming and prevaricating.
This isn’t the only instance of a panic attack descending on Chicago (and the Oval Office). The Obama administration and its pundit spinners are running with the notion that Mitt Romney defamed all womanhood at the debate by talk about “binders full of women [job candidates].”
He's melting.  The heat of the debates is getting to him.

27 Mil for Pottery Classes in Morocco

Stupid

Gergis slithers away

The ridiculous Gergis Hockey Stick has been withdrawn.  The lesson -- don't tug on Superman's cape and don't mess with Steve Mc.

China's future

I just watched a very heated debate on CNBC about the stock market in China.  While everyone knows about the ghost cities that have been built to stimulate the economy (newly built, but empty), and most acknowledge the likelihood that the official economic data released by the nation's rulers are likely to be no more accurate than what we used to get from the Soviets, some argue that the only thing that matters is whether the stock prices go up or not.

Uhh, no.  If the market is a bubble built on fake numbers, a crash is inevitable.

The problems are many and varied.  Via Meadia points out that wealthy Chinese are becoming better at breaking the rules:
“We all noticed what we suspected, which is that there was significant capital flight,” says Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University who witnessed capital flight up close in his previous career trading Latin American distressed debt. “It’s not a good sign when local businessmen begin to think it’s better to take money offshore, especially when the world economy is in such bad shape.”
What was once a manageable trickle of cash leaving the country has become an untamable river. More and more wealthy Chinese are circumventing the law to pay for foreign goods...
...
 China is quickly finding out that a wealthier population is often more demanding. The past few years have seen a spike in domestic unrest, as millions of Chinese demand higher pay, better living conditions, and an end to government corruption. Now wealthier Chinese are skirting the rules too, finding ways to avoid the restrictions the Communist Party counts on to keep the country under control. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for Beijing to keep the lid on the tensions around the country.
This is a serious change for China and it’s not yet clear how the ruling party plans to deal with this transition. How Beijing handles this is one of the biggest questions of the 21st century. Watch closely.

Journalism's Fools are Dying Off

WRM writes on the decline of Newsweek and points out that the problems go far beyond the magazine and include the network news shows and CNN:
It’s rather a case of institutions thinking that their gatekeeper status was a commercial asset to be exploited rather than something that had to be earned day by day. Time and Newsweek lost their must-read status for people interested in news more than two decades ago; is there still a decision-maker in the business, political or cultural world for whom reading either is a normal and necessary part of their weekly news diet?
The Economist stole the serious audience years ago. Time and Newsweek stopped mattering as news sources for important people and have been living off reputation and momentum for a very long time.
These publications have become case studies in a professional journalistic elite that lost touch with the needs and interests of its audience.

At Issue -- "video", not "terror"

Far too many people have gotten their panties in a wad over whether BO used the word 'terror' to describe the Al Qaeda assault on 9/11 that killed our ambassador when he spoke in the Rose Garden the next day.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is that Obama and the administration knowingly lied to the American people for weeks by pushing a story about a video enraging Muslims.

The video explanation was total BS.  That's the story.  He lied.  His people lied.  He and they lied repeatedly.  For weeks.

The President Begs

Paul Mirengoff writes about BO's unpresidential behavior when Candy Crowley rode to his rescue:
After Crowley opined that President Obama was correct in saying that, early on, he declared the Benghazi attack terrorism, Obama asked the moderator to repeat her assertion. Did anyone think it was presidential for Obama basically to beg a CNN personality to vouch for his truthfulness? I didn’t. To me it looked childish.
To make matters worse, Crowley declined Obama’s entreaty. Unwilling to be exploited further, she began walking back her statement vouching for the president (later, she would walk it back some more). So Obama was shot down to some extent by the CNN personality. That’s not presidential either.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Solid Debate Analysis

Baseball Crank, has some solid analysis of the second presidential debate.  Read it all.  Each candidate met some of his goals, but missed as well.

His last point bears repeating:
Romney's strongest moments were two. One, he just buried Obama in response to an African-American man who declared himself a disheartened Obama '08 voter; Romney responded with a blistering indictment of Obama's economic record. And two, he offered a great answer on American competitiveness. He also came away with a good answer on immigration, albeit one that won't please many of his own primary supporters.
One more point: I think Romney did a much better job of remembering, as the debate wore on, that an audience of Long Islanders was not the real audience. Obama's attack on the NRA in particular is unlikely to play well in key swing states.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Parallels in scientific fraud (and establishment wagon circling)

Steve Mc has an interesting blog post on the many parallels between the Duke cancer study scandal and the Mann hockey stick scandal.

Neoliberals

The Economist has an interesting review of Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones.

The Best Use of SuperPac Cash

If some conservative group wants to spend a chunk of money for the purpose of helping Romney win the election, I would like to suggest that there is a better option available than paying for additional advertising.  My suggestion is that someone contemplating spending some serious cash should announce an intention to hire lawyers and investigators to track down all evidence of election fraud in swing states by either party.  Pledge a very large sum of money, make the announcement prior to the election, and follow through after the election -- win or lose.

Hugh Hewitt once noted that "if it's not close, they can't cheat".  Well, it looks like it is going to be close.  At least in some states.  Telling any miscreants who might be thinking of cheating that a large number of determined investigators will be tracking down all the evidence might very well give them pause.

I suspect that keeping the fraud level to manageable levels is likely the best way to help Romney secure victory.

ESPN's Chris Carter

Chris Carter is good.  Really good.  I will confess that I was never a big fan of him as a player.  I don't care for the Big Ten, particularly Ohio St and Michigan (going back to the big 2, little 8 days).  So I wasn't a fan from his Oh St days.  And as a NY Giant fan, I never cared for him as an Eagle.

By the end of his career, no one could deny that he had been an outstanding player with a penchant for making the tough catch especially in the red zone.  The guy was clutch.  But I don't remember thinking he was a particularly bright or articulate interview.

He just finished up his weekly gig with Mike and Mike on ESPN2 and he's just so damn solid.  And I realize that I've been thinking that for a while.  He's insightful.  You don't get standard jock cliches from him.  He's so much better than Tom Jackson that it's scary.  I like Tom Jackson as a person, but he just doesn't bring the same A+ game as an analyst that Chris Carter is bringing.  He's better than Keyshawn Johnson, too.

I can't remember hearing Carter do a game, but I think he'd be good doing color commentary.  He's certainly better than most of the ex-jocks doing pre-game and post-game analysis.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Glenn Hubbard

Romney's chief economic advisor was just on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo.  Absolutely solid and convincing.  The Romney campaign should just take the tape and turn it into an ad.

Fundamental goof hurt Cano on blown call?

The proper way to make the tag is for Cano to put the glove right in front of the base.  Instead, he reaches out toward the runner to make the tag -- a mistake common to little leaguers.  Note -- Cano clearly tagged the runner out.  But the umpire was obviously confused about what he saw.  If Cano had been fundamentally sound in his technique, the play would have evolved as the umpire expected, the fact that the runner was out would have been more obvious, and the play more likely would have been called properly.

Fundamentals matter.  Do it the right way.  Every time.  All the time.


Poor fundamentals may have played a part in blown call on tag at 2B

Swimming in Oil?

New oil discoveries in Oklahoma
“We’re accessing what were once considered just source rock.”.  Many oil reservoirs are pooled from seeps out of source rock where the oil formed.  Pooled reservoirs are not the whole of the reserve, but only the easily accessed and freest flowing of the petroleum.
We’re still learning about subsurface oil and gas.  The amounts of oil and gas to be recovered are still incalculable.  The extent of petroleum to be discovered isn’t known.  How much oil is in source rock from the reservoirs already found is still a big question without hard answers.

Incompetent or Corrupt?

More evidence that climate science is completely untrustworthy.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

More Climate Cheating

Goddard



Social Priming and Climate Drivel

Steve McIntyre has a great comment on social priming (a psych concept whose academic research underpinnings have been shown to be highly questionable) and climate research involving his favorite sad sack academic, Stephan Lewandowsky (who, of course, deserves all the grief he gets and more):

As partial support for the concept of “social priming”, it seems to me that there is a statistically significant increase in the incidence of drivel in writings by activists after being primed with words that relate to “climate skeptics”. This hypothesis will be more difficult to test among authors where the incidence of drivel is already high, even without social priming.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Charlotte Observer preview

Observer preview has some good quotes:
McKillop is guarding against overconfidence as the Wildcats prepare for a season in which they’ll be the Southern Conference’s marked team.
“Practice – and what it entails – can never become routine,” he said. “We understand the monotony of routing is as challenging an emotional experience the preparation for an actual game.”
...
“… To think that the Wildcats need to have that one star player would be to discount everything Bob McKillop has built has built. Instead of the one-hit wonder team – a team with one star that everyone revolves around – he has built a contender with a true team mentality.
“This Davidson team entering this season might be better than that (Stephen) Curry-led squad that made a deep run into the (2008) NCAA tournament … ” – SB Nation’s Benjamin Miraski.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594132/davidson-has-ingredients-to-win.html#storylink=cpy


Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/12/3594132/davidson-has-ingredients-to-win.html#storylink=cpy

CBS Sports on Davidson -- Cinderella

Can DC be Cinderella in March?


Normally, it's tough so see Cinderella from so far away.
But it's already clear. Davidson has a real chance at winning one or two games come next year's NCAA tournament. The Wildcats made it to last year's Dance, their first appearance since 2008. And now it's looking like this team could have its best assembly ever. Yes, that's even including the Stephen Curry years. Bob McKillop's team is loaded and brings back its two best players in Jake Cohen and De'Mon Brooks, a frontcourt one-two punch that's unlike anything this league has seen in years.

...
D eMon Brooks, Davidson. ... this guy. I love Brooks' game. He's such a stud junior wing with ability to score and rebound and play without fear. The thinking here is the man listed below and Brooks will be so good, they'll cancel each other other out for POY.
Jake Cohen, Davidson. Cohen's game is even more versatile than Brooks'. He can pass, catch, shoot the 3 and finish inside. And he's almost 7 feet tall.

Climate Science really IS that corrupt

Example #12,987.

Temperature adjustments:

Stay vigilant

Diplomad:
Following last night's VP debate, I found myself extremely uneasy. After all that I have said against the current occupants of the White House, their economic and foreign policies, their governing philosophy, and their ethics, I realized that I have been way too easy on them.

Despite efforts to assist him by the atrocious debate moderator, in 90 minutes last night, Joe Biden proved over and over that neither he nor his boss should be anywhere near the levers of power of our country.
And he explains why.  Stay vigilant my friends.  Stay vigilant.

Biden fit for office?

Scott Johnson renders his verdict in a discussion of some of the many whoppers Biden told in his debate.  Each whopper listed below is rebutted in his post:
1. Biden said: “With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution—Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital—none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.”
...
2. “[The recession] came from this man [Ryan] voting to put two wars on a credit card, at the same time, put a prescription drug plan on the credit card, a trillion dollar tax cut for the very wealthy….I was there, I voted against them. I said, no, we can’t afford that.”
...
3. “[T]hat’s exactly what we were told…by the intelligence community. The intelligence community told us that [the Bengahazi assault arose from protests outside the consulate]. As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment.”
...
4.  “Well, we weren’t told they wanted more security [in Benghazi] again.”


These seem to me the most consequential of Biden’s whoppers, though it does not exhaust the list of Biden’s whoppers including the assertion that Ryan and House Republicans “cut” embassy security by $300 million, that Biden heard about “death panels” in his debate with Sarah Palin in 2008, or that Syria is five times as large as Libya.
I said at the top that these whoppers raise a profound question of Biden’s fitness for office. In my view, they also answer it.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Climate Science Reality

Roger Pielke, Sr. is a climate science who is more of an alarmist than a skeptic.  But he has the rare quality of being an honest alarmist.  I disagree with some of his faith in the value of peer-reviewed research without transparency and replication, and I disagree with some of his conclusions about the seriousness of some threats that he sees.  He recognizes, however, the shoddiness that underlies much of the alarmist thinking.  He writes a basic summary of his thoughts on climate in this post.

Worth a read.

Corker on Libya Lies

Jennifer Rubin interviews Sen. Bob Corker.  Corker may be the straightest shooter on Capitol Hill.

This morning, I spoke with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who had just returned from Libya, about the Benghazi debacle. He was animated and clearly flabbergasted at the administration’s reaction. “It baffles me that the vice president of the United States would continue to say things that don’t square with the facts on the ground, “ he said in reference to VP Joe Biden’s remarks in the debate Thursday night. He reiterated, “There was no protest. There was no reaction to the [anti-Muslim video], and they knew it in 24 hours. I don’t understand what they are doing.”
This week he had extensive meetings with the FBI and intelligence officials on the ground in Benghazi as well as officials from the Libyan government. He was emphatic: “What I know is our intelligence officials on the ground in real time and also in Washington within 24 hours knew what had happened.”
...
In this case, he was both irate and insistent: “When four Americans are killed, it’s just not possible that the president didn’t know [it was a terrorist assault].. . . There is not a cell in my body that doesn’t earnestly believe that the administration didn’t know within 24 or 48 hours.”
Biden’s effort in the debate to lay this off on the intelligence community isn’t winning over national security experts either. The Romney campaign put out a statement by former CIA director Michael Hayden and former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff that read: “During the Vice Presidential debate, we were disappointed to see Vice President Biden blame the intelligence community for the inconsistent and shifting response of the Obama Administration to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. Given what has emerged publicly about the intelligence available before, during, and after the September 11 attack, it is clear that any failure was not on the part of the intelligence community, but on the part of White House decision-makers who should have listened to, and acted on, available intelligence. Blaming those who put their lives on the line is not the kind of leadership this country needs.”

Biden sleaze

Top Ten lies in debate.

Just read it.

Negotiating in Washington

In the VP debate last night, Joe Biden was grotesque. One thing that should have been obvious to everyone, liberal or conservative, is the impossibility to work out negotiations with a jerk acting like that.  Bi-partisanship? Next time someone suggests that both parties bear responsibility for not reaching a deal on the fiscal cliff, point to Joe Biden in the debate. A rational, responsible deal requires rational, responsible negotiators. The Democrats just love how Biden behaved. Tells us all we need to know about negotiating in DC.

And note, Biden's bluster is in keeping with Obama's behavior for the last four years.  There's been no effort to reach out or to act with even basic courtesy.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Mid-Major All-Americans (NBC)

After listing a first, second, and third team, NBC Sports lists:
Honorable mention: F De’Mon Brooks (Davidson), F Jake Cohen (Davidson)
among the ten names.  I'm happy to have 2 of the top 25 nationally.

Davidson picked fifth in NBC Midmajor poll

NBC Sports lists the Cats fifth
5. Davidson: This is the best Davidson team that Bob McKillop has had since Steph Curry led the Wildcats to within a Jason Richards three of the 2008 Final Four. The Wildcats are coming off of a season where they rolled through the SoCon with a 16-2 record and went into Kansas City and knocked off the national runners-up in Kansas. Oh, and they bring back every single player that was on that team.
  • Player to know: Forwards De’Mon Brooks and Jake Cohen combined to average 30.0 points and 12.3 boards last year.
  • Can’t-miss game: Davidson will play at New Mexico at 2 a.m. on Nov. 13th during ESPN’s Kickoff Marathon, but they’ll have a chance of landing an upset in Cameron Indoor against Duke on Jan. 2nd.

Gallup rolls over for Obama

Under pressure from the Obama administration, Gallup has changed its methodology  to favor Obama in its poll results.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Conspiratorial Media Incest

Read it all.
Really. 

Read it.

Extremism

Jay Nordlinger makes a good point:
In one of those recently unearthed videos, Obama says, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but rich people are all for nonviolence. Why wouldn’t they be? They’ve got what they want. They want to make sure nobody’s going to take their stuff.”
I’m sorry, but this is not social democratic, or liberal, or McGovernite. I can’t imagine those words out of McGovern’s mouth. Or out of Tip O’Neill’s. Or out of Walter Mondale’s. I didn’t like those politicians, but they didn’t think or talk that way.
Those are the words of an extremist. You can imagine Bill Ayers or Bernardine Dohrn saying them. Your basic liberal Democrat, no.
The above-quoted speech, by the way, was given in 2002. Not when Obama belonged to the Choom Gang, gettin’ stoned. Not when he was at college, drinking in Marxism. When he was a state legislator, soon to be a U.S. senator. Six years before he was elected president of the United States.
He’s been in that office for four years, but really: Who the hell is he?

Businesses Frightened of Obama

Steve Wynn:
I've created about 250,000 direct and indirect jobs according to the state of Nevada's measurement. If the number is 250,000, that's exactly 250,000 more than this president, who I'll be damned if I want to have him lecture me about small business and jobs. I'm a job creator. Guys like me are job creators and we don't like having a bulls-eye painted on our back.

The president is trying to put himself between me and my employees. By class warfare, by deprecating and calling a group that makes money 'billionaires and millionaires who don't pay their share.' I gave 120% of my salary and bonus away last year to charities, as I do most years. I can't stand the idea of being demagogued, that is put down by a president who has never created any jobs and who doesn't even understand how the economy works.
...
I'm afraid of the president. I have no idea what goofy idea, what crazy, anti-business program this administration will come up. I have no idea. And I have to tell you Jon that every business guy I know in the country is frightened of Barack Obama and the way he thinks.

O'Keefe video shows vote fraud

If we had an honest media, we wouldn't need O'Keefe to expose this kind of sleaze.  Former Justice Dept attorney, Christian Adams, notes that O'Keefe challenges Obama's media lap dogs to claim that this is an isolated incident.  Obviously, he is reminding them that the last time they tried that BS (when he exposed Acorn's criminal core) he burned them with more videos showing more criminality.  So he may have more to reveal.

Also:
Encouraging voter participation of marginal legality is nothing new for the Obama campaign. In 2008, they had an elaborate web portal for college students, encouraging some to register to vote where they went to school, discouraging others. The overall goal was to get students attending college in battleground states registered to vote in those states regardless of their actual domicile. If students from a battleground state went to college in a safe red or blue state, they were encouraged to keep their registration in their home battleground state.
The Obama campaign website in 2008 never told the students to cancel their original voter registration. Nor did it provide guidelines for what constituted bona fide domicile. 
Currently, voter watchdog groups like True the Vote are conducting data crunching to determine who may have violated federal election law in 2008 by voting in two states for president. If someone does it again in 2012, it will eventually be caught thanks to the efforts of private parties combing voter rolls.

Obama's "molt"down

Back in June I wrote that there was a significant possibility that Obama would meltdown in the crucible of the campaign and that the debates would provide a likely place as Romney confronted him with the horror of his record without any media allies around to cover for him.  It would seem that BO did not handle the pressure of the first debate very well.

Now, trying to come up with a response to his exposure, the One came up with the now famous Big Bird ad.  This is the kind of error that happens when the pressure is felt intensely and panic is around the corner.  The Big Bird ad looks like Obama is molting.

edit -- here is the link to the June 3 post

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Nooga on SoCon

A look at all 12 teams.  Part II for the South is here.

Today is Obama Voter Freak-Out Day

David Weigel makes a point more liberals would have been advised to remember:
The Obama hyper-optimism never made sense to me. Mitt Romney's favorable ratings and issue ratings were cosmically low, because the Obama campaign's stated strategy -- for 13 months! -- was to make them low. The candidate was never going to show up to the debates as gaffe-prone and soul-less as he seems when media pick the gaffes out of 30-minute speeches and circulate the awkward moments on YouTube. The anger at Obama's debate sleepwalk makes sense. But why were liberals so confident that their pre-debate lead was set in adamantium?

Climate Models are worse than worthless

Pielke the senior:
As I have posted on many times; e.g. see The Huge Waste Of Research Money In Providing Multi-Decadal Climate Projections For The New IPCC Report there is an enormous amount of money being spent to provide multi-decadal regional climate forecasts to the impacts communities. In this post, I select just a few quotes from peer reviewed papers to document that the climate models do not have this skill. There are more detailed on this post also (e.g. see).
He cites a whole bunch of studies which examine their record.  Fail.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Clinton on the Obama fairy tale

Neo has a fascinating video clip from the 2008 primary campaign of Bill Clinton complaining about the Obama attacks on him and the media's complicity in protecting BO's fairy tale.  It really is delicious.  Clinton throws out a lot of his own ridiculous BS and he is probably the last person with a right to complain about media complicity helping a candidate.  He would never have survived to win re-election in 1996 without a news media dedicated to achieving that victory.  But he certainly is correct in describing the narrative around BO as a fairy tale.

 Enjoy



Obama -- trash talking bully

Carol Platt Liebau laughs at all the bizarre efforts by lefty cheerleaders to explain BO's pathetic debate performance (hat tip to Betsy).  She nails it, especially for pointing out how nasty our slanderer-in-chief is:
as someone who knew Obama in law school, and now has observed his presidency, his avoidance of debate does seem to conform to a pattern.  It has nothing to do with a gentlemanly or conciliatory reluctance to be aggressive.  Rather, it has everything to do with a reluctance to be aggressive when his opponent is present -- where he can experience some push back from the person he's demonizing, and where his lack of preparation or knowledge can reveal him as foolish.  (Hence, perhaps, the "decorous courtesy" in face to face encounters, where  might prompt a more vigorous blowback.)

Think about it.  There's never seen such a trash-talking campaigner -- one who accuses his opponent of lying, who allows his campaign to call Romney a murderer and a felon, one who calls Americans with whom he disagrees "fat cats," or accuses doctors of performing unnecessary surgeries.  He has no problem going after Romney the day after the debate, when he's no longer there face-to-face, and when Obama's trusty teleprompter is back.  In fact, President Obama is one of the least gentlemanly and most uncivil men to occupy the Oval Office -- certainly publicly (Richard Nixon's private utterances put him in the running, too).

Notice that the only time Obama apparently shrinks from throwing a punch is when his opponent can punch back.  That's not a guy who's just too "conciliatory" to get down and dirty -- that's a guy who's afraid to get down and dirty when it means he might have to suffer the consequences.
In my book, that's what's known as a "bully" -- full of big talk in the locker room (or on Letterman) . . . but considerably less cocky when he actually has to address his opponent face to face, unprotected by the friendly aid of the MSM.

Matt Ridley -- Confirmation Bias

GWPF has Matt Ridley's "The Perils of Confirmation Bias":
The modus operandi of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) has been to accumulate evidence to champion rather than challenge a hypothesis, namely that rising carbon dioxide levels will in future cause dangerous climate change.
The climate models reliance on fudge factors is a particularly egregious example.  The reason that climate science is broken?
Every important new idea in science is “replicated” or tested by another team than the one that put forward the idea. And it is this process that has gone missing in climate science. It is unreasonable to expect a climate scientist to seek evidence against his favoured hypothesis; but it is not unreasonable to expect governments to back the partisans of other hypotheses: that man-made climate change may be real but not dangerous because of lack of positive feedbacks; that it may be less powerful than some natural causes of change; or that there are negative feedbacks that reduce the effects of man-made warming.
Instead of this, anybody who champions one of these hypotheses is often accused of “denial” or of not “believing” in climate change, and frequently subjected to a surprising level of abuse.
Climate scientists and their media champions equate such scepticism with scepticism about, say, the theory of evolution. Yet evolution is an explanation of facts; dangerous man-made climate change is a prediction about the future. Theories about the future are always less reliable than theories about the past. I can have confidence that the reports that it rained last Tuesday are true, while doubting the forecast that it will rain next Tuesday. Besides there are many examples of scientific orthodoxies that brooked little dissent in their heyday and yet were often wrong, such as behaviourism and Freudianism. In one case, the parallel with climate science is uncomfortably close.

Tigerhawk explains

 Why they don't get it.   On 'you didn't build that':
 The very argument is disingenuous. Neither mainstream Republicans nor the Tea Party activists who drove the 2010 election are against public roads, public education, police departments, firefighters (Warren) or, even, technology spin-offs from necessary spending on national defense (Obama, re the Internet). There has been a broad national consensus around each of these for between 100 and 200 years (I am sure we all remember that Eli Whitney's invention of interchangeable parts was in the context of defense spending). To suggest otherwise is to erect and demolish a straw man -- an argument your adversary never made -- the last and worst tactic of a lawyer with a losing case.
 ...
 Beyond the roads, cops, honest courts, and firefighters, government is an obstacle to entrepreneurs, not the helpful partner that Warren and Obama imply. Liberals, and especially President Obama, think that "business" is best represented by the Fortune 100 and its "chieftains". Most people who "built that" know otherwise, that government serves to entrench huge bureaucratic businesses at the expense of the upstarts that actually create new jobs. First, there are now so many regulations associated with being a "government contractor" that few small businesses can feast at the taxpayer's trough even if they had the political stroke to get the contract in the first place. Second, the ever larger pile of federal, state, and local regulation favors the large over the small, the mature business over the growing.
...
 the most frustrating aspect of all of this to business people is that these points seem so obvious as to be self-evident, so when the chattering classes do not recognize them as such we distrust their motives and assume they are all a bunch of cynical parlor pinks. Increasingly, though, I believe that there are a great many people, especially in the educated elites, who are profoundly disconnected with the reality of commerce, and actually have very little idea how small and growing businesses struggle to create the wealth that we all need to support our prosperity. That is to America's great misfortune.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Michele Bachmann effect

According to this academic study, Republican women look more like women than Democrats. You can take a short version of the test here.  The Michele Bachmann effect:
The undergrads were significantly better at guessing than would be expected by chance, and they were especially accurate with women. The likely reason, according to the study: Republican women are more likely than Democratic ones to have stereotypically feminine facial features.
In another experiment, Carpinella and Johnson used a computer program to measure how “sex-typical” the faces of male and female Representatives were, looking at characteristics like jaw shape, lip fullness, and cheekbone placement (they discounted things like hair, makeup, and jewelry). They found that Republican women were more likely to have stereotypically feminine faces — and the effect was more pronounced the more conservative their voting records were. The reverse was true for Democrats — the more liberal their voting records, the less traditionally feminine their faces. The study authors call this “the Michele Bachmann effect.”


Climate models wrong -- at all levels of atmosphere

A German scientist demonstrates that the climate models aren't just wrong.  They are wrong for all levels of the atmosphere.
Climate model trends have been providing prognoses (scenarios) for temperatures for the various atmospheric layers for about 2 decades: near the ground surface, troposphere and stratosphere.
According to the CO2 hypothesis, the atmosphere from ground level to the upper troposphere is supposed to warm up while the stratosphere is supposed to cool. However, meteorological measurements show that just opposite is occurring!

The immaturity of scientists

Judy Curry notes that academics have no incentive to get it right and no experience at making decisions in the real world.  One of her commenters (Latimer Adler) wrote about a couple of academics of his acquaintance:


they are both proud that they have never really left the institution that they arrived at as 17/18 year old undergraduates.
In the commercial world it would be extremely rare for anybody approaching ‘elder statesman’ status to have had such a limited breadth of experience. It would be seen as far too narrow to give the wide perspective that is needed in such a role. And in many other spheres of public life, appointments to leadership positions are made taking due account of breadth as well as depth of experience.
So it seems to be a bit of a paradox how ‘climate scientists’ have somehow abrogated to themselves the conceit that they are and should be the only parties allowed to speak on the issue. And even odder that ‘we’ have let them get away with it for so long.
He is, of course, correct.  She adds:

The reward system for academics is to have a provocative idea get published in a high impact journal, and increasingly to garner some media attention for the research.  Whether or not the idea turns out to be correct is not of particular importance in the reward system for academics.
For professionals in engineering, finance, the world of regulations, etc., there are typically serious penalties for getting it wrong, i.e. if the bridge collapses.  As a result, due diligence, verification and validation, uncertainty analysis, auditing etc. are essential elements of the profession.
Now if the principal activity of a field of science is to push the knowledge frontier, then being right in a long term sense isn’t all that important.  However, when a field of science is operating at the policy interface, e.g. climate science, then that field could learn some valuable lessons from the professions.
 [my emphasis added]

Hubris. 

Redistribution

The liberal instinct for redistribution is not about helping those with less.  It can't be.  Those with more do not have enough more to make any significant difference when redistributed.  In reality, it's all about punishing those who have "too much".

Check out this story from that liberal hotbed of socialism, Sweden:
A talented head cook at a school in central Sweden has been told to stop baking fresh bread and to cut back on her wide-ranging veggie buffets because it was unfair that students at other schools didn't have access to the unusually tasty offerings.