Your Comedic Interlude I

Your Musical Interlude XXXI

Hurricane Sandy. Unprecedented As Long As You Ignore The Precedents

The loonies are out in force.

“I’ve never seen anything like this and I’m at a loss for expletives to describe what this storm could do.”

Yes, I’ve never seen anything like it either nor have our modern meteorological tools. As I wrote yesterday afternoon, we don’t know whether our tools are up to the task because no storm of this nature has occurred in the modern meteorological era….


“Isn’t it strange that a hurricane in the Bahamas would somehow turn into a monster mega-storm and slam into the Northeast at the end of October? Aren’t hurricanes supposed to weaken as they move north over cold water? What the hell is going on?
The answers are… yes, yes, and we’re not completely sure. This is a beyond-strange situation. It’s unprecedented and bizarre.

What a crock of shit.  I spent five minutes and found three October storms with similar profiles to Sandy. All three originated in the same spot in the Caribbean. All of them intensified as they moved north. Two of them plowed straight into the North American continent. Hurricane Irene, in 1999 (ancient history I guess) intensified into a Category 2 hurricane over the same water Sandy has held (barely) its Category 1 status.
Hurricane Hazel, in October 1954, intensified as it moved north through the Bahamas to strike the Carolinas as a Category 4 storm. Hurricane Isabell, in October 1964, also intensified into a Category 3 storm as it moved north over the same waters as Sandy before striking near the North Carolina/Virginia border.

Just imagine what I could have found had I looked before 1950?

Who Is More Civil?

I just did a little Google experiment by searching for the following terms:

"X should be shot"
"X should be killed"
"X are evil"

Where "X" is either the word Republicans or the word Democrats.

Using the word "Republicans" returned 217,400 responses.
Using the word "Democrats" returned 85,100 responses.

Just sayin'.

A Confession

I have a confession to make.

I have not voted in an election, of any kind, since 1998.

I fell out of the habit on voting when I lived in Washington, DC. Voting in DC is a pointless prospect (for everyone) as there are no competitive elections there, and, besides, the local pols are hopelessly corrupt. After I left DC I lived in five different places in three years. Not a situation that encourages civil engagement to any great degree.

In the meantime, I continued to think about and, once I started this blog, write about politics. However, I found I was content to leave things in the realm of opinion. Sure, I had a rooting interest, but not at a level that required my participation.

I began this election cycle with no intention of that changing. Romney was always the most likely to emerge from a decidedly lackluster group of Republican candidates and, for me, there was nothing all that appealing about the prospect. It must be said, in all honesty, my feelings concerning Romney really haven't changed over time. I will never think, "Wow! I get to vote for Mitt!"

So what happened to get me motivated to register and vote? In a word, Benghazi.

I have not written much of anything about the attack and its aftermath, mostly because it would have been a string of invective fit to make a longshoreman blush. The initial responses of the Obama administration (to blame a YouTube video, and to attack Romney in a bid to gain a temporary political advantage) were bad enough, but as September wore on I was still content to criticize and stay on the sidelines. However, by the dying days of September, as the ineptitude and duplicity of the Obama administration became increasingly apparent, my disgust level reached an intolerable level. Writing out my opinions and standing on the sidelines was not going to cut it anymore.

In a sense Obama will accomplish the impossible on election day; he will make it possible for me to vote for Mitt Romney with enthusiasm.

A Tale Of Two Polls

I mentioned last time out that the more Obama friendly polling assumes Democrats will enjoy similar advantages in enthusiasm compared to Republicans that they did in 2008. You can see this assumption built into some of the polling. For example, this recently released Time magazine poll which shows Obama up 5 points in Ohio and which many lefties are convinced means the election is over.

If you look at he internals of the poll you discover the pollsters have broken down the Ohio electorate as follows:

Democrat: 37%
Republican: 28%
Independent: 29%

(The numbers don't add up to 100% in the above because 40 something respondents answered something else.)

Now, lets compare this to the Suffolk University poll which found the race a dead heat.

Democrat: 39%
Republican: 35%
Independent: 27%

Very, very different samples, you will agree. So different, in fact, that the Time sample seems to be measuring an "Ohio" in a alternate universe (presumably one in which the sky is always fuchsia.) Indeed, no other poll listed by Real Clear Politics is claiming Independents outnumber Republicans in Ohio. However, that is the sample Time is using. When you look at the exit polling from 2008, when everything, and I mean everything was breaking in Obama's favor the partisan split between Democrat and Republican was only +8D. That's right, Time is telling us this election will break even more favorably for Obama than 2008 at +9D.

The way they achieve this "result" is by skewing the gender numbers. In the Time sample a full 65% of Democratic respondents are women, in the Republican sample its a 50/50 split (exactly.) The only way they make the whole thing not look ridiculous is by making the Independent sample skew male heavy at 57%.  As males as a group break heavily for Romney this gender imbalance has the effect of depressing Romney's vote total among Republicans and pumping up Obama's score among Democrats. Time has Romney winning among Republicans by 84% to 11%, while McCain won 92% to 8%.  Meanwhile they have Obama winning amongst Democrats 92% to 6%, while in 2008 those numbers were 89% to 11%.

Among Independents Romney is ahead 53% to 38%. In 2008 Independents went for Obama by a 52% to 44% margin.

Any way you want to slice it, it don't add up.

What A Difference A Month Makes

I put together a little chart looking at ten prominent "battleground states" to see what the last month or so has meant for the poll numbers. (Positive numbers = Obama lead; negative numbers = Romney lead).

It certainly looks like there has been a lot of erosion of support for Obama, doesn't it?

(Note: There has been no recent data released for North Carolina as Obama is no longer viewed as being competitive in the state. I used the latest available data, October 18th, for the later North Carolina average. All data gleaned from Real Clear Politics.)

As a point of comparison, here are the current poll numbers compared with the actual results of 2008.

Many of the "predictive models" have been assuming 2008 levels of enthusiasm for Obama in the tailoring of their samples. However, its difficult to see that enthusiasm when you look at the numbers.

An Analogy (Presented As If Tweeted)

Grapes are like twelve pressure treated 2x4s.

If you don't understand why that is you must be an idiot.

#shitobamasays

Thank Goodness. I've Been Delisted.

There is something kind of quaint about "blogrolls" in this day and age. Those of us who have been writing these sorts of things for awhile can certainly remember a time when getting added to this or that blogroll was viewed with a generous amount of satisfaction.

As the technology has changed so has the need for hyperlink collections diminished. I still use my blogroll to quickly jump to sites, but even I largely use Twitter and aggregators like Memeorandum to see what is new. Still, I try from time to time to clean up my links. You will notice I break the links up into two groups. The first group, the "Roll of Honor" included those site which reciprocated with a link back to The Iconic Midwest. The "Link We Life (Mostly)" section includes sites that have not reciprocated.

Today, I am rather relieved to remove The Moderate Voice from my roll of honor. Once upon a time this would have been a melancholic occasion, but those days have long since passed. Whatever TMV was back in the day, it has become the kind of site I feel like I need to take a shower after visiting. The kind of tin foil hat wearing conspiracies you would expect to find only in the bowels of The Daily Kos have become the everyday fodder at TMV. They have become so warped that they consider places like Little Green Footballs and Kiko's House as "centrist voices." Look, I link to Kiko's on my blogroll, but I wouldn't call "centrist" a blog that routinely has posts such as "America's Most Dangerous Organized Crime Family: The Republican Party". (As for the hate-fest that is LGF, the less said about it the better. Rank partisanship of the Kiko's House variety is fine. The dehumanizing rhetoric of LGF is not. It's more than a little scary that TMV sees no distinction worthy of making here.)

Ah well...sadly it is the way it is these days.

They Got Nothing

You know things are getting bad in Democrat-land when their only response to people who are worried about getting a job or holding onto the the multiple jobs they are taking just to make ends meet is to say "Romney said 'Binders of Women'!"

Wow. They must really disdain the American people to believe they would be swayed by such crapola.

On the other hand, it isn't like they have any ideas to offer.

Do No Harm

If someone were to try to pin me down about why I view the world, and in particular the American political landscape, the way I do it would most probably boil down to a few main points. Some of them would touch upon my own eccentricities (e.g. I am an incorrigible contrarian), but mostly my political principles stem from a belief that ideology is neither inevitable nor desirable. This is the reason that while I am certainly right of center as such things are measured in American political discourse, you will find no Randian nonsense here.

My biggest beef with ideology is that it acts as a replacement for thinking. When presented with a question or with a situation in the real world that needs addressing, the ideologue responds automatically with a canned answer. Wed this approach with a belief in the moral superiority of their brand of ideological thinking and you have a recipe for disaster on a large scale.

Affirmative action is a classic case in point. The confluence of ideology and rampant moralizing has produced a toxic brew that has positively harmed minority students in this country despite the "best intentions" of the Left. Tragically the ideologically fevered are simply unable to see the truth of this and are therefore doomed to keep inflicting this harm upon minority students.

There is now increasing evidence that students who receive large preferences of any kind—whether based on race, athletic ability, alumni connections or other considerations—experience some clear negative effects: Students end up with poor grades (usually in the bottom fifth of their class), lower graduation rates, extremely high attrition rates from science and engineering majors, substantial self-segregation on campus, lower self-esteem and far greater difficulty passing licensing tests (such as bar exams for lawyers).

The most encouraging part of this research is the parallel finding that these same students have dramatically better outcomes if they go to schools where their level of academic preparation is much closer to that of the median student. That is, black and Hispanic students—as well as the smaller numbers of preferentially admitted athletes and children of donors—excel when they avoid the problem of what has come to be called "mismatch."

... Even as social scientists have transformed our understanding of affirmative action, universities don't seem to be paying attention. Consider the University of California system, which since 1998 has been legally precluded (by Proposition 209) from considering race in admissions. Throughout the past 15 years—most recently in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court—university officials have denounced race neutrality and pointed to the substantial drop in freshman black and Hispanic students at the system's two flagship schools, Berkeley and UCLA.

Yet race-neutrality has produced stunning benefits for minorities in the UC system as a whole, as shown in a data set that economists obtained from UC administrators. Black, American-Indian and Hispanic students made up 26% of all U.C. freshmen in 2010, up from 16% in 1997; the number of B.A.s earned by black and Hispanic students in four years rose 55% between 1995-97 and 2001-03, while the number with GPAs above 3.5 rose 63%.

So, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that not mismatching students via affirmative action has led to dramatic improvements for minority students in California, the ideologues still want to impose their failed ideas upon everyone. It is as if they are saying, "We would rather harm minority students than have them succeed on anything other than our own terms." I'm sorry, but there is nothing noble or moral about such a position. The only thing that should matter is what is best for students, i.e. under what conditions are they most likely to succeed? Nothing else matters very much. Lousy ideology matters not at all.

Happy Columbus Day

And I mean it. No, holier than thou crapola here.

Maureen Dowd Reaches New Low: UPDATED

It's amazing the way liberal anti-Semitism has becomes so blatant in our day. Once upon a time these bigots used to just whisper it amongst their confidants. Now, they proclaim it in the pages of the New York Times, as in Maureen Dowd's "Neocons Slither Back." Slithers. Nice. For those not up on such things:

...criticism of neoconservatism is often a euphemism for criticism of Jews, and that the term has been adopted by the political left to stigmatize support for Israel. In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Robert J. Lieber warned that criticism of the 2003 Iraq War had spawned[80] "a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how [American] foreign policy... has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal. A small band of neoconservative (read, Jewish) defense intellectuals... has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their ideas over on [Bush]... Thus empowered, this neoconservative conspiracy, "a product of the influential Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s" ([Michael] Lind)... has fomented war with Iraq... in the service of Israel's Likud government (Patrick J. Buchanan and [Eric Alterman)."

And, in case you were not aware of the history of anti-Semites comparing Jews with snakes:

Like the cuckcoo, Jews are depicted as stealing other people's homes. They are the foreigners who threaten to displace the Germans from Germany. As hyeanas strike disabled animals, Jews are portrayed as preying upon disadvantaged Germans/Christians. Other animals included in these comparisons are the chameleon (the great deceiver), the locust (the scourge of God), the bedbug (the blood sucker), the sparrow (good-for-nothings), the poodle-mops-dachshund-pincher (an inferior race created by cross-breeding various types of races), the poisonous snake (the viper of humanity, and the tapeworm (the parasite of humanity).

If you are writing on politics for the New York Times you have to be aware of the currents of public discourse AND have a rudimentary understanding of history. Maureen Dowd either, A) Was completely unaware of these historical precedents, or B) Knew all about them and decided to show her assent to them by comparing neocons to snakes. Either way, be she incompetent or downright evil, she should not be writing for a respectable publication.

UPDATE:

Amazingly (or, sadly, not-so-amazingly) there are those who can find nothing wrong with taking a group routinely depicted as American Jews more interested in the well-being of Israel than the United States and calling them sneaky snakes controlling U.S. policy from behind the scenes. In fact, they are saying such depictions are true:

The biggest mistake you can make is getting caught telling the truth on Israeli politics.

 Wow.

Of course some people do have a moral conscience, like Jeffery Goldberg in The Atlantic:

Oy" is right. Maureen may not know this, but she is peddling an old stereotype, that gentile leaders are dolts unable to resist the machinations and manipulations of clever and snake-like Jews. (Later, Hounshell wrote, "(A)mazing that apparently nobody sat her down and said, this is not OK.")

This sinister stereotype became a major theme in the discussion of the Iraq war, when critics charged that Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, among other Jewish neoconservatives, were actually in charge of Bush Administration foreign policy. This charge relegated George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Stephen Hadley and the other Christians who actually set policy to the status of puppets.

Maybe Dowd doesn't know this. But, c'mon. Just how blithering an idiot would one have to be to not know this already?

Krugman Is Still A Lying Sack Of You Know What

From Mr. Duplicity himself:

During today’s round table on ABC, Rand Paul seemed shocked at my claim that government employment is down under Obama. Of course, it is.

Oh, is it? Well, then someone ought to tell the U.S. Office of Personnel Management because they tell a different story:

Federal Personnel (Executive Branch):
2008: 2,692,000
2010 (latest data): 2,776,000 For a increase of 84,000 employees.

Total Federal Personnel:
2008: 4,206,000
2010: 4,443,000 For an increase of 237,000 employees.

 I'm still looking for the decrease here Paulie. But, that's right, Krugman cannot be bothered looking up the real numbers because he is too busy blaming Bush:

But maybe he’s thinking of the fact that since govt employment rose under Bush, we’re still at higher absolute levels than we were a decade ago.

Well, let's look at the Bush numbers, shall we?

Federal Personnel (Executive Branch):

1999: 2,687,000
2008: 2,692,000 For an increase of 5000 employees in 8 years.

So Bush increased the Executive Branch by an average of 625 employee per year. The Obama number? 42,000 per year.

Total Federal Personnel:
1999: 4,135,000
2008: 4,206,000 For a total growth of 71,000, or 8875 per year. The Obama number? 118,500 per year.

So, how does Krugman get his numbers? Well, by lying. Krugman adds in all of the local and state government jobs lost since the start of 2009 because of the horrible Obama economy, and portrays them perversely as evidence of Obama's penny pinching ways. So, your local government had to lay off teachers because property tax revenues have plummeted? Well, says Krugman, you can thank Obama. And, hey, all you protestors in Wisconsin! According to Krugman you've got it all wrong. Scott Walker isn't to blame. Any changes in state spending and hiring are all Obama's doing!

I'm sorry, but in the real world President Obama controls the Federal government and its hiring practices. The Federal government has increased since Obama came to office and at a rate many times that of President Bush. President Obama has nothing to do with whether your local government has to lay off its librarians, except in the generic sense of being to blame for the state of the so-called recovery that has put state and local governments in the bind they are in. 

 I'm sure Paul's hesitation when confronted with the Krugman statement on the Sunday talk shows was caused by his not being able to believe that A) Anyone could make as stupid or dishonest an argument as Paul Krugman has made, or B) That there could be anyone so stupid as to believe it.

Get A Grip People: UPDATED

I don't know if this is an entirely new phenomena, but when did we all devolve towards the memory ability of hamsters? CNN moves O'Brien, Cooper to NOLA

In a move that signals how Tropical Storm Isaac threatens to eclipse the Republican convention, CNN has announced that it is sending Soledad O'Brien and Anderson Cooper to New Orleans. The storm, which is bypassing Tampa and on course for the north Gulf Coast (and very possibly New Orleans), could now pose far bigger problems for the Republicans than high winds and waves ever would. There is a very real fear among Republicans that a natural disaster in New Orleans (seven years after Hurricane Katrina) or nearby could all but eclipse the convention -- or, worse, create an unfavorable "split-screen situation" in which images of Hurricane damage are juxtaposed with the theatrics of Mitt Romney's nomination.

Oh, for crying out loud. I know it has been awhile since we have had a hurricane of note make landfall in the United States but this is downright stupid. For starters, Issac has somehow managed to become a media star despite the fact it has not actually become a hurricane. Most forecasts had it gaining enough strength overnight, but it hasn't happen yet.

SUMMARY OF 100 PM CDT...1800 UTC...INFORMATION ---------------------------------------------- LOCATION...26.1N 85.9W ABOUT 255 MI...410 KM SSW OF APALACHICOLA FLORIDA ABOUT 280 MI...450 KM SE OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...65 MPH...100 KM/H PRESENT MOVEMENT...NW OR 305 DEGREES AT 14 MPH...22 KM/H MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...984 MB...29.06 INCHES

Secondly, the idea that this storm could cause the same trouble as Katrina is just laughable. Katrina spent a good part of its life cycle as a Cat 5 storm, though it hit the coast as a more pedestrian Cat 3. Because it had been so strong the storm surge piled up ahead of it to the tune of 26+ feet. To put this in perspective the National Hurricane Center puts the possibility of even a 10 foot storm surge in New Orleans at under 5%. (The most likely upper end is around the 4 foot level.) All indications are Issac is going to be a pretty wet event and the dangers of flooding in low lying areas, including New Orleans, will always be with us when these kinds of rainmakers come ashore. However, there is no indication there is a major natural disaster brewing in the Gulf.

One wonder if there is some "wishful" thinking going on at CNN.

UPDATE:

4PM CDT advisory:

SUMMARY OF 400 PM CDT...2100 UTC...INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...26.4N 86.2W
ABOUT 320 MI...515 KM SSE OF MOBILE ALABAMA
ABOUT 255 MI...415 KM SE OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...70 MPH...110 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NW OR 305 DEGREES AT 12 MPH...19 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...981 MB...28.97 INCHES


WATCHES AND WARNINGS
--------------------
CHANGES WITH THIS ADVISORY...

THE HURRICANE WARNING FROM THE FLORIDA-ALABAMA BORDER TO DESTIN HAS
BEEN CHANGED TO A TROPICAL STORM WARNING.

 Still not a hurricane and they are downgrading some of the warnings.

Yep, sounds like the apocalypse to me.