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.