QOTD

"If God had meant us to be vegetarians, He would have made broccoli more fun to shoot."
                            Seen on a T-shirt at the range today.

Some fruits and vegetables are fun to shoot. Problem is that there's very little to eat afterward.

Impending Disaster

This Wednesday the 3rd, 6 miles of the major interstate highway through Denver will be closed during rush hour for the presidential debates in case the Bungler gets a call that his favored tee-time has opened up.

But not to worry, the five-lane interstate will be re-routed onto a putative 3-lane secondary roadway and a 2-3 lane urban boulevard. What could go wrong?

Oh yes, the 3-lane road is effectively a 2-lane road during rush hour due to a carpool lane which I expect will be roundly ignored. Also the only exit from the 3-lane to the boulevard is a one lane exit a short distance beyond a traffic light that on a good day takes 3 cycles to get through.

 Look for headlines the next day along the lines of "Soccer Mom Eats Children To Fend Off Starvation on Sante Fe"

Free Colonoscopies

Free Colonoscopies are being touted to seniors in Florida as a sort of election bribe.

Joe, what your boss has been doing to us is only considered a colonoscopy in certain districts of San Francisco, the Florida Keys, and Fire Island.

The Denver Post On Guns

This last Sunday the Post ran an editorial calling for more gun control. Nothing excessive, mind you, just the usual "reasonable" bits like magazine limits and assault weapons bans.I clipped the article and went down it paragraph by paragraph, and noticed a couple of things.

While most of it looked like a cut-and-paste job from Brady Bunch press releases, note this:

True, polls in recent years have consistently affirmed that Americans believe it's more important to protect the right to own guns than to enact gun control. In fact, a Denver Post poll published a week ago revealed the same pattern in Colorado: 56 percent of those asked said it was "more important" to protect the right of Americans to own guns than "to control gun ownership."

Politicians have cushy jobs and are loathe to lose them by crossing their constituents on hot button issues like guns. Hope springs eternal, however just a few paragraphs later:

So, yes, it's important for elected officials to understand that Coloradans for the most part remain strong supporters of Second Amendment rights even in the wake of the mass shooting in Aurora. But that doesn't mean those same officials shouldn't take the lead in promoting sensible reforms that reduce the likelihood of such crimes — or at least the likelihood of their success. 

The message here is to ask the pols to stab their constituents in the back in order to curry favor from  the "better sort" of constituent who buys ink by the barrel.

The pols for the most part are no dummies and know fairly well that the dead tree pundits aren't buying nearly as much ink as they use to and for good reason. Still, it doesn't hurt to remind them of this with a friendly e-mail or letter from time to time.

I'm with the 56% and I vote.

QOTD

A double header today,
First:

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.
             Barack Obama

Second;

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.                    First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

They go well together, don't you think?

Correcting The Polls 2

The results you get from polling depend on who you ask, and how you weight each subgroup among those polled. In a poll of 1000 adults found randomly walking the corridors of the New York Times building, Obama is favored to win in a historic landslide. As mentioned earlier, most polls give a heavy bias to Dems when they add up the results and the interesting part is that they tend to call things a tie.

Rassmussen has data on how people self-identify which is not really subject to jiggering if the sample is widely enough based. Self-identification changes over time with more people being willing to identify with one party or the other depending on how the party is seen. This produced the following:

Based on extensive surveying, Rasmussen calculates that 35.4 percent are Republicans, 34.0 percent are Democrats, and Independents are 30.5 percent.

The above is from the methodology page at UnSkewed Polls which, interestingly enough is close to the same  basis for my initial prediction calling for a 5 point win by Romney based on data from a left-leaning polling company. I assumed an even 33% across the board split.

UnSkewed Polls has taken this data and applied it to 12 different polls and come up with an average of 7.8% in Romney's favor.

UnSkewed Polling Data Monday, September 24, 2012 7:58:05 PM
Poll	Date	Sample	MoE	Obama(D)	Romney(R)	Spread
UnSkewed Avg.	9/4 - 9/20	--	--	44.0	51.8	Romney +7.8
Reason/Rupe	9/13 - 9/17	787 LV	4.3	45.0	52.0	Romney +7
Reuters/Ipsos	9/12 - 9/20	1437 LV	2.9	44.0	54.0	Romney +10
NBC News/WSJ	9/12 - 9/16	736 LV	3.6	44.0	51.0	Romney +7
Monmouth Univ.	9/13 - 9/16	1344 LV	2.5	45.0	50.0	Romney +5
QStarNews	9/10 - 9/15	2075	3.0	44.0	55.0	Romney +11
NY Times/CBS News	9/8 - 9/12	1162 LV	3.0	44.0	51.0	Romney +7
Democracy Corps	9/8 - 9/12	1000 LV	3.1	43.0	52.0	Romney +8
Fox News	9/9 - 9/11	1056 LV	3.0	45.0	48.0	Romney +3
Wash. Post/ABC News	9/7 - 9/9	826 LV	4.0	45.0	52.0	Romney +7
CNN/ORC	9/7 - 9/9	875 RV	3.5	45.0	53.0	Romney +8
IBD/CSM/TIPP	9/4 - 9/9	808 RV	3.5	41.0	50.0	Romney +9
ARG	9/4 - 9/6	1200 LV	3.0	43.0	53.0	Romney +10

LV is likely voters, RV is registered Voters, and MoE is margin of error. Ju8st because the bro's name is on the ballot does not make it 2008 all over again. 

If this turns out to be correct, pollsters in the future will be forced to reveal a bit more of their methodology along with the results lest they be denounced as mere shills for one side or the other.

Correcting the Polls

Over and over I hear the same complaint about the polling data being foisted off on the public by the polling companies. Every time the problem resolves to the same thing: Oversampling of Democrats. Folks there is an obvious solution to this. When a pollster calls, answer the phone, and answer the questions honestly. Except for the one when they ask you about your party affiliation.

Tell them you're a Democrat. Not just any generic Democrat, but a fervent, dedicated, full-of-kool-aid Democrat. They might have some difficulty reconciling some of your answers with this, but that's someone elses job, not yours.

Push polls can be especially fun:
Q: Whom did you vote for in the last elestion, Candidate D or candidate R?
A: Candidate R.

Q: If the election were held today, would you vote for candidate D or candidate R?
A: Candidate R.

Q: If you knew that candidate R squashed baby ducks with a hammer and drowned kittens before cooking and eating them would this influence your feelings for him?
A: Not at all.

Q:.....
Q: Do you consider yourself a D or an R or something else?
A: A D of course.

Q: Do you consider yourself a strong D, a middling D or a moderate D?
A: Strong D.

Q: What is the likelihood that you'll be voting in the upcoming election?
A: I voted here, in Chicago, and in Florida in the last election, and I have no intention of shirking my civic duty in this one.

So when they over sample D's in this poll, your opinion will be counted. It also helps support the narrative that the D+6 bias in party identification we saw in 2008 is still there, and 2010 didn't happen.

Recession Nearly Over

According to Townhall, the recession must be nearly over as the initial claims for unemployment are now down to only 30% higher than they were when the Dems took over the House and Senate in 2006:

Revisionist History

It would seem that the Islamic holy writings have gotten a couple things wrong:

Bukhari (52:177) - Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."

In practice, it's more like the other way around When a stone found in Iran turns out to be saying "O Jew! There is a Muslim hiding behind me building nuclear weapons, so kill him."

All Kinds Of Boobs

The elected kind, and the friendlier kind.. The Daley Rash is reporting:

NEW YORK – New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced today that women who choose to forgo the option of an abortion and give birth will be aggressively persuaded to breastfeed their babies. The mayor has ordered hospitals to put baby formula under lock-down and to only provide it after the mother endures a guilt provoking sermon on the advantages of breast feeding. Stopping short of making breastfeeding a law, Bloomberg said he’ll use persuasive methods for several months before imposing prison sentences for mothers who resist his orders to breastfeed. Mayor Bloomberg appeared on the Maury Povich show where he discussed his breastfeeding crusade:

Which is all well and good, but what about the municipal ban on sweetened drinks over 16 oz? If you're over a size D you could be damned if you do and damned if you don't.

The ladies of New York should be protesting, demanding that Bloomie keep his hands off their endowments. 

Drones

The NYPD is getting drones. This causes the NYCLU to get it's panties in a bunch.

 To judge from the depicted flight path they won't be any more accurate than an NYPD cop with a Glock.

Science Marches Onward

And how. Here is a video featuring working models of several perpetual motion machines:

All guaranteed to work for the life of the batteries.

Word Of The Day - Catastrophiliac

Found here. Refers to someone seeking to play the latest catastrophe, real or imagined, into tyrannical power over his or her fellow man.

Think Global Warming, Global cooling, water fluoridation, marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, the Iron River Of Guns, or whatever. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

Gun Fun

Tried out the new scope on the Remington Nylon 66 last weekend. Carefully held the gun up with one hand and made adjustments with the other until the holes were appearing exactly under the cross hairs. Put the gun down on the soft case on the table and changed targets. Put up one featuring 3 rows of bowling pins on an 8-1/2 x 11 paper. First shot to the upper left hand pin barely touched the edge of the paper. Second shot to pin #2 hit pin #1 dead center. How odd.

I worked my way across the target, left to right and started the second row when I noticed the holes were moving to the right. By the time I got to the last pin, the holes were appearing right under the cross hairs again.

Note to self: Once you've got the sights zeroed, be sure and store the gun under cover or at least in the shade.  It doesn't seem to like extended periods of direct sunlight on one side.

Vote Fraud

Here's a complete how-to. Caveat: It's only guaranteed to work in Ohio, although 18 electoral votes may be worth an all out effort.

Career Management

It's always good to have a backup skill in case your current job disappears.

"...if they want me to walk the dog or wash their car, I’m happy to do it."
                                                      B. Obama

For myself, I'm a machinist, draftsman, or car mechanic.

DeGette Town Hall - PSA

Congresswoman Dianna DeGette (CO-1, D-Blissninny) is having a town hall. This seldom happens, and when it does, you hear about it after the fact. On one weeks notice, this august event will be held at the Evie Dennis Campus Student Union, 4800 Telluride St. Denver CO . This will be Monday Sept 24th from 7 PM to 8:30 PM.

Admission is by ticket, so pick 'em up quick. Call 303-844-4988 or e-mail to Degette.rsvp@mail.house.gov before Wednesday the 19th. Be sure to mention the issue you would like to hear her defend / dodge / whatever.

If you can't get in, there's likely to be a good number of people outside with their own questions for the congresslady, so feel free to join in. I can't make it, sorry.

Creativity points are awarded for holding an august event in September.

Brain Solid Surgery

You may or may not be familiar with the practice of giving muscles a workout through electrostimulation. I understand it's done for people seriously bedridden for long periods to prevent muscle atrophy. It seems that now a similar effect can be achieved in the brain to the point that cognitive abilities can be restored to even overcome the effects of generous doses of Cocaine.

This could become a useful therapy depending on the long term benefits and/or side effects. One is reminded of Larry Niven's wireheads for whom electrostimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain is so addictive that they will starve rather than unplug.

This being a different effect, it could be a useful advantage to put on a stimulative headband before going to bed, and waking up more competitive in the morning. Either sort of thing has the potential for becoming a lucrative if illicit trade as long as the phrase "back-alley brain surgery" doesn't put you off.

Fashion

Who are always the snappiest dressers in the world? We are!  Nothing demonstrates the difference better than these photos taken some 33 years apart. First the notorious un-hip wogs:

Taken in Iran around 1979. Next the snappiest dressers in the world:

Taken in Cerritos California only a week or so ago. Even the man with the blindfold is better dressed.
USA! USA! USA!

Polling - Source Data

What a poll tells you is rooted in the methodology. As I noted a few posts back, if you use the right methodology you can get a Romney victory  in the 64-36 range. Were my assumptions warranted? Maybe. They represent my opinion and it's as good as anyone elses, so there.

Here is an article showing the basis for some of the results we've been seeing, and here is the graph:

Note that even Fox over samples Dems in their polls, giving the Dems a 5-point advantage over the Reps. This may have been true in 2008, but I seem to vaguely remember that there was another more recent election since in which an enraged and motivated right handed the left their heads fairly convincingly.

Note Rassmussin, the lonely outlier, giving the R's a 2 point advantage. This would account for the 2010 election, the continued enthusiasm on the right, and a distinct lack of it on the left.

I'm sticking with my original call: Romney by 5, except in Illinois where with 110% voter turnout, Obama ekes out a razor-thin win.

The Future Of Transportation - Far Out

Here's a motorcycle with every feature the typical Honda Accord driver could possibly ask for:

Doors, roll-up windows, sunroof, gangsta window tint, electric power, Neon lamps in the wheels, and a pair of gyroscopes in the floorboards to hold it upright even if you forget to put the sidestand down.

For an electric, it has impressive performance, promising 200 miles at a sustained 65 MPH. No word on weather you lean it through corners, or let the gyros hold you up as you turn like a car.

Commenting on the Commentators

James Taranto of the WSJ online has a collection of clips from various newspapers, usually the NYT, which espouse conflicting viewpoints, frequently on the same day. Here's today's example:

Two Papers in One!

• "To be sure, many citizens of conscience find parts of the Brooklyn exhibition repugnant, and it is understandable that many Roman Catholics would find Chris Ofili's image of the Virgin Mary [covered with elephant poop] offensive. . . . Yet a Daily News poll shows that the majority of New Yorkers support the museum over Mayor Giuliani by a ratio of two to one. Those numbers show a broad-based support for New York's role as the nation's cultural capital. The people understand intuitively what Mr. Giuliani ignores for political gain. A museum is obliged to challenge the public as well as to placate it, or else the museum becomes a chamber of attractive ghosts, an institution completely disconnected from art in our time."--editorial, New York Times, Oct. 2, 1999
• "However offensive the video is, it could never justify the violence in Benghazi and Cairo. But Mr. Jones, Mr. Sadek and whoever made the film did true damage to the interests of the United States and its core principle of respecting all faiths."--editorial, New York Times, Sept. 12, 2012 

This only reenforces my position which is that the Catholics, and everyone else for that matter, will get no respect whatsoever from the media until they learn to build a decent car bomb.

Gun Fun, Cuteness Department

An overload of cuteness for sure:

All together now: Awwwwww.

H/T to Robert, who found it at TTAG. Click the link. Read the comments too.

As one of the commenters remarked: Sic vis pacem, para bellum.

This is why writing about guns is so much more fun than writing about politics. Politics is depressing. Guns are fun.

Liking Obama Better

Musical interlude here.

Obie says we'll like him better next year. He may have a point:

Romney 51.8, Obama 47.2

As I've warned before, a clever pollster can produce any result he's paid to produce, and will, up to the last minute when having an accurate prediction can secure continued employment.

In that spirit, here's the Billlls poll shamelessly based of educated guesswork and somebody elses actual data. Here is a look at a CNC/ORC (who ARE these people?) poll featuring the usual questionable breakout. I'm getting around all this by assuming that at heart, about 1/3 of Americans are Dems, 1/3 are Republicans, and 1/3 are independents. I will also go out on a limb and assume that people will vote their normal party. Variations happen when some percentage of the electorate from one party or the other are disenchanted with the party pick and simply stay home.

This leaves the independents to actually decide the election. These folks are split between those who know nothing and vote their long time favorite party, and those who actually know something and don't want to be affiliated with either side, for good reasons. The poll in question assumes a lot of Dems, but ignoring that and calling the base vote even, they note that the independents are breaking 14% in favor of Romney. This adds 18.8 pts to the 33 point base for R and 14.2 pts to the 33 point bade for the D, hence the above figure.

If I wanted to get carried away, I would state that the D's will stay home at the same rate they stayed away from the DNC which would take 20 points away from the D's and from the overall turnout giving R 33+18.8=51.8 and D 13+14.2=27.2 out of a total of 80. This makes the final vote 51.8/80=64.7 to 27.2/80=34.0. Some rounding error is included.

If either of those numbers proves accurate, I'm charging big bucks next election to do the same thing.

Employment

While I was working on nuclear missiles for Giant Aerospace Company, there appeared in Aviation Leak and Space Treachery, an ad for a job opening as a ride designer at Disney World in Fla.

Most of us thought this sounded like a real dream job, myself included although there were a couple of requirements which, alas, most of us didn't have. The talk turned to ideal jobs, and my pick was to be a designer of small windup toys for Toomy Toy. The drawback as I saw it was that the company was located in Frostbite Falls Minnesota, so the weather would be a real downer.

Here's another, with Hasbro where some lucky dude gets paid for building larger and larger and ever more powerful Nerf guns. The drawback again is the location, Rhode Island not being high on my list of places to go back to. Yes, I lived there once, a long time ago. It was fun then, but I'm having a hard time finding it all that amusing any more. Still, there's those foam rubber blasters.

Designing and building kids toys has always appealed to me. Now if only someone would do it in a milder climate.

Name That Party

Here's another chapter in the popular party game. The Mayor of Trenton and several of his cronies were arrested by the FBI on corruption charges. Hizzoner is looking at 20 years, although if the case is heard before a state judge, I suspect he won't do 20 months.



Still you can read the whole article and never once is his party affiliation mentioned. Some call it media bias. I think it's because since corruption is so much rare3r among Republicans, everyone assumes the culprit is a Dem unless it's otherwise mentioned.

No Smoking At The DNC

Smoking is not allowed at the DNC primarily because if one liberal doesn't like something, nobody is allowed to do it. The secondary reason, of course is the by-product of being around that much B.S. and here's what happens when someone tries to burn some choom in the boys room, as it were:

Diogenes has more although you might not want to visit from work.

Layoff Notices

This is old news in and of itself, but given the possible consequences it should be getting more coverage. The budget process is rigged so that the country won't run out of money until after the November elections thanks to a generous move by house speaker Boehner.

The resulting The resulting hot steaming pile of budgetary legerdemain calls for sequestration of spending, mostly in Defense, if nothing has been passed by mid January. If the Dems take a beating this year, which it increasingly looks like, you can bet that nothing at all will pass either house before February when the new crop of do-gooders arrives.

The effect of the sequesters will be to bring a lot of defense work to an immediate halt, with large scale layoffs all around. Think Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and others. The WARN act, Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act,demands 60 days notification of large scale layoffs or plant closings. This would be November 2 if everything goes according to plan. Rotten timing if you're in a close race.

Never fear, the Labor Dept. has issued an opinion that such notices need not be sent out if the loss of funding is due to a sequester. Most corporate attorneys disagree, so the pending addition of about 1M new unemployed on Jan 3 will be something the next president can look forward to.

Update: Yup, here they come.

Unemployment Down!

There's a catch, however, it seems it's done by simply having people give up on looking for work. Insty has the dope here.

To highlight though here's the underlying reason:

When the participation rate hits about 58%, unemployment will be zero, so in his own special way, he's bringing the number down.

Party Planks

Or should that be party pranks. For better or worse, the agenda laid out in each party's platform is not actually binding on the candidate, although he or she can certainly come out as strongly in favor, or merely politely acknowledge the existence of any given item.

It seems the Dems have a plank to raise the minimum wage in the midst of a recession. This will guarantee increased unemployment, but the target audience, minimum wage slaves, only hear that their allowance is about to be raised and support the idea.

The Reps, on the other hand have a plank fully endorsing the basic idea of the 10th amendment, and call for the Fed.gov to quit doing anything it wasn't expected to do at the start:

Because the GOP, for all intents and purposes, has just proposed to eliminate the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Health and Human Services, along with a host of other government programs, agencies, and departments.

Works for me although I do wonder under whose auspices the interstate highway system falls as I view that as generally a good idea.

DNC Event Schedule

Not to be outdone by the appearance of Clint Eastwood at the RNC, The DNC also has a celebrity appearance scheduled.

O.K. so Clint's speech probably won't go down in the annals of great speechifying, but when I'm 82, I hope I can speak that well. Hell, when I'm 82, I'll be tickled to be able to speak at all.

Anyway the cat is out of the bag: The Mystery Celebrity Speaker at the DNC will be, fresh from the Betty Ford Clinic, none other than Lindsey Lohan, speaking at length on the topic of "The Impact of Central Banking Marginalization on the Viability of Alternative Energy Planning Variations". The address will run 30 minutes or until Ms. Lohan passes out, which ever comes first.

It may well be the high point of the whole convention.

Update: I may have spoken too soon. Turns out she may well have been a good pick.