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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Come next Tuesday night, we’ll get a resolution (let’s hope) to a great ongoing battle of 2012: not just the Presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, but the one between the pundits trying to analyze that race with their guts and a new breed of statistics gurus trying to forecast it with data.
In Election 2012 as seen by the pundits–political journalists on the trail, commentators in cable-news studios–the campaign is a jump ball. There’s a slight lead for Mitt Romney in national polls and slight leads for Barack Obama in swing-state polls, and no good way of predicting next Tuesday’s outcome beyond flipping a coin. ...
Bonus link: Esquire - The Enemies of Nate Silver
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The simple fact is more voters, a more engaged electorate, should mean a better democracy (And no I don't intend on writing a thesis on how and why). I want people to vote. I would love to have everyone vote. I am in favor of measures like early voting and even mail in voting to reduce the influence of natural disasters like Sandy impacting elections. But unlike the various GOP voter suppression laws and tactics there is not much I can do to legislate against storms.
Who's the Dem you're trying to unseat? I'm saddled with Dick Mell and the truly odious Toni Berrios.
I meant everything governmental. And yes it is a simplistic summary of Libertarianism, but still far more correct than the "What Liberals really ..." bs normally put out on this thread - though I admit that is a really low bar to clear and I do apologize for not including my governmental qualifier.
And they can certainly have that philosophy codified in society, just not this society. Off you go lads, the heavy lifting of building your new utopia from scratch will do you good.
Go Galt, go now. I am positive it will work out great.
The complete lack of good examples of Libertarian societies functioning in the real world is kind of a hint in my opinion.
So go back and do it again.
Might makes right -- now there's a sophisticated political philosophy.
You're right in one respect, though. American society probably isn't ready for libertarianism. But that's more American society's shortcoming than libertarians'.
Near as I can tell, both the state and federal governments are doing everything possible to make voting as easy and accessible to as many people as possible... if you have proposals or ideas to make voting more accessible, I'd wholeheartedly support them. Hell, Long Island was hard hit and that's generally a red area of NY, isn't it?
You think you can legislate against storms? I kid. I'll write my thesis if you lay out yours for why a smaller less engaged electorate makes for a better democracy. Representative democracy works best when fewer people are represented?
I just looked at a list of the 18,839 most common surnames in the 1990 Census, weighted by frequency. These 18,839 names account for 79.59% of the total US population. By this list, and ignoring population change since 1990 and the local surname environment, the ideal groups would be:
AARON-EATON
EAVES-LAKE
LAKES-RITTENHOUSE
RITTER-ZYLSTRA
A group including Hank Aaron and Adam Eaton is going to result in a hell of a lot of home runs! By letters, the ideal is:
A-D
E-K
L-P
R-Z
Kurt's list:
A-C -- 20.46%
D-H -- 22.74%
I-M -- 20.98%
N-Z -- 35.82%
Just like every society in the history of the world (unless I spot you Iceland for at most a few thousand people hundreds of years ago). So at what point does it become clear the philosophy is not going to happen?
Don't be bringing your crazy stats into this discussion. For years, election experts have known that dividing up the names the way they do is the right way. Any spreadsheet-geek who thinks they can do it better is obviously too busy crunching the numbers instead of looking at the lines.
Ours was A-M, and it was at least 2-1 in line size. We were asking if this was a fluke, and these numbers illustrate it wasn't.
Who said anything about might? Maybe you libertarian fancy lads are getting a mite sensitive.
No society is - that's why you have to go out and make your own, so you aren't encumbered by the corpse of failed non-libertarian philosophies. No government roads and infrastructure for your rugged types, you can codify your pay-to-play ethos every step of the way, from your constitution written on hand-pulped hemp paper to your giant monument of Ayn Rand standing majestically on your highest mountain.
So go, get to it, I'm rooting for y'all, I really am.
So if it hasn't been tried yet, then it can't be a good idea? I guess no one should have ever bothered with democracy! Or for that matter, trying to solve any problem ever.
"I'm unpersuasive and can't make my case in a way that will convince even a plurality of the electorate; it's not fair!"
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But I think my thesis can be nice and short anyway: "People are dumb."
I am shocked, shocked to find that FoxNews is unfair and unbalanced.
In fact Nate and Wang wound up projecting identical EV outcomes (Obama by 303-235), at least according to the WaPo pundit survey posted yesterday evening.
----------------------------------------
I dreamt last night that I was watching election returns and Romney had been called the winner because he'd won West Virginia and Tennessee. I actually woke up and had to remind myself that of course he's going to take West Virginia and Tennessee. Sheesh.
On Sunday night I dreamed I went into a small town general store with a rack display of current newspapers. Right on top there was an oversized Washington Evening Star** with a headline "OBAMA BEATS NIXON".
I then went to pay for the paper, and it turned out that Nixon himself was at the cash register, looking vaguely like his Oliphant cartoon....but when I said "What do you think, Dick?" (I guess he'd been there before and I already knew him), he just grunted and I woke up, vowing never to eat that dad-gummed cheese again.
**which in non-dreamland went kaput in 1981
Final tally: Obama 293 - Romney 245
Romney Wins - CO, IN, VA, NC, FL
Obama Wins - NH, WI, OH, IA, MI, MN, NV, 1 in NE and ... with the help of record-breaking Hispanic turn-out (thanks Sheriff Joe), AZ.
They sure are. They sure are.
That's what I called "the local surname environment". Realistically, if officials made a spreadsheet of the last names of all the voters registered in the local precinct, it would take about 30 seconds to figure out what the lines should be.
E-K
L-P
R-Z
Those were almost my lines. The only difference is that it went L-R and S-Z
I think we've moved on from that to "hilarious".
(In my view, the healthiest society is one in which nobody votes because it doesn't matter -- not because we're choosing between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, to use Nader's formulation, but because the government plays so little role in society, and choices are made at the individual level.)
¹ People are dumb, but I just like writing that; the real issue is that they're ignorant. (Rationally so, I might add.) Adding in the votes of a lot of people who don't know anything about policy -- even if they're smart enough to understand it if they invested the time and energy to do so -- does not improve the policy.
Nate actually has Obama as an exceptionally slight favorite in Florida (50.3% chance of winning, 49.8 - 49.8 predicted vote breakdown), which would give Obama 332 EVs. Nate's "official" EV number is actually 313, incorporating all of his various probablities.
Dorothy Brown -- virtually every one of my friends who practice law in Chicago, including the liberals -- are not big fans...
The other Republican -- technically, more in name -- that I voted for is Lori Yokoyama for Cook County states attorney. I have no real issues with Anita Alvarez - and I expect her to win handily - but I've met Yokoyama a couple of times at various functions and discussed a few issues with her (the recent marijuana decriminalization for one) and came away impressed.
I'm actually relatively happy with alderman (44th ward, Tom Tunney) -- though, I used to be in Scott Waguespack's ward and I was a much bigger fan of his...
EDIT: Are you talking about Joseph Berrios? I know he's got a lot of family, but my condolences regardless -- poster children for machine corruption.
So if it hasn't been tried yet, then it can't be a good idea?
That's what the Maoist apologists said when confronted with the gulags in the USSR, what Castroites said when confronted with mass starvation in China, what the North Vietnamese supporters said when confronted with Cuba's little iron curtain, etc....."There's nothing wrong with Communism. It's just never been properly tried."
Nate actually has Obama as an exceptionally slight favorite in Florida (50.3% chance of winning, 49.8 - 49.8 predicted vote breakdown), which would give Obama 332 EVs. Nate's "official" EV number is actually 313, incorporating all of his various probablities.
As I said, that 303-235 projection of both Nate and Wang was posted (and still is) on the Washington Post's pundit predictions page. I realize that it's been updated since then.
I don't know if I'd use Dick Mell as an exemplar, but I'm in a little skin tag at the bottom of his ward. I would wager he's never set foot in my neighborhood. What sux is that the redistricting starts to happen in 2011, our alderman knew he was losing us and had no incentive to provide services, while the new guy takes his opportunity to spend all his menu money on the core of the ward. We get bubkes.
I think Ozzie Guillen would agree.
The question wasn't directed to me, but you're apparently in my ward.
Me. You need might to enforce and fund the collective's whims and involuntary seizures of property.
Yeah, if the collective gets its hands on the guns, it's going to be tough to implement libertarianism. Stipulated. Not sure why that's seen as such a "gotcha."
He's probably never set foot in mine, either, and I live a few blocks away from him (I think).
I agree with Gold Star that AZ isn't going blue this year, but I'd say the above statement is accurate if you replace "flip" with "make it close."
EDIT: I meant replace "flip" as to Arizona. Colorado wouldn't be a "flip," since Obama won it last time.
Just saw this, I voted against Brown, too. I've voted in every election (save a primary or two) since 1990, and this is only the third time I've voted for a Republican for any office. I hate what extremes Brown has driven me to.
I voted at about 7.45 this morning in Uptown. Took ten minutes. Would have taken less, but I had to wait for my ride to finish filling out his ballot.
Obama gets Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Romney gets Colorado, Florida, and North Carolina.
It's more a function of people really liking to tell other people how to live.
In reality, you want bits of every philosophy hanging around government. I'd prefer one heavily leaning toward libertarianism but with enough socialism and fascism to keep the peace and defend against outsiders.
Our lines were A-L, M-Z. No one in the M-Z line.
What's her deal?
Well you finish arguing with yourself and then come find me when you've won.
The saner among the rightwingers know that Obama is favored - or at best think it is even - so they won't go crazy with an Obama win.
EDIT: Fixed.
There may be an unwarrented assumption in this post :)
Toni's his daughter. Enormously underqualified-a "Board of Governors" degree from NEIU and working on her MBA from some for-profit degree mill Won her primary by a tiny margin (<100 votes) but the guy (an erstwhile Green) didn't want to contest the general, even though he likely would have won. Tunney's good-a bit of a developer tool, but that's inevitable in that ward.
They don't call her Dotty for nothing.
Misprint. You said might makes right. See the rest of the post you cherry-picked.
A-G (super long), H-M (my line, nobody in it) N-S (nobody in it), U-Z (nobody in it). I also think there were probably some people standing in the wrong line because they misunderstood the system.
I don't want to live in a society where my vote is crucial. That kind of society scares me.
I don't even want you voting for the Hall of Fame, much less for my government!
:)
Mike Quigley's (5th Cong. district) local office is literally one block from my house, and my block was just redistricted into Luis Gutierrez's district (4th Cong. district).
The saner among the rightwingers know that Obama is favored - or at best think it is even - so they won't go crazy with an Obama win.
Nice sleight of hand, to refer generically to "the left" in the first part (I assume by "wins" you meant "loses"), but limit the second part to "the saner" members of the right (as if there won't be significant numbers on the right who freak out at an Obama reelection).
I think that was some weird Freudian slip on Ray's part.
I like how you've implied that more liberals would flip out if Obama lost, when right-wing websites have been having precriminations involving charges of voter fraud since before the election even started.
But yes, I think it would be ugly from the people on the left, the twitter feeds, the facebook feeds, the people in media and on tv, etc.
Would be fun!
I think that would scare everybody.
Well, maybe the remnants of the Symbionese Liberation Army who are still hiding up in some Telegraph Avenue dumpster. They might think that Obama stole the election from Cinque.
From Wiki:
No I didn't (#2805). You did (#2812).
Hey, you're part of the earmuffs now!
Hey it will still run with fewer folks voting, it just runs better if everyone votes.
Anyway, my thumnail thesis is ... people are not dumb despite doing dumb things (Calculus, going to the moon, e=mc2, and so on). And even when individuals are unwise, ignorant, or whatever then diversity of opinion and wisdom of the crowds helps ameliorate the dumb.
Even if I stipulated people are dumb though, I hope we would agree not everyone is dumb, and then the problem is determining who is "smart enough" to be allowed to vote is a task fraught with peril. Easier to just help everyone vote.
Queue the "tyranny of the majority" complaints.
Ray, do you want the commentariat here to start linking to ugly pieces being written by the right and published today, even before the election is over? I'm sure they can happily supply many examples. My gf went to highschool in Texas and her FB wall is filled with ugly political messages about Obama from people on the right who would probably be horrified if you said they were extreme. This idea the the left is crazy but the right is measured and cool is kind of beneath your intelligence.
Shocked, I am, shocked.
Until we let the cats take over, this is the best we got.
Ah, but according to the "You didn't build that" meme, we all know that you really meant what you said the first time.
By all accounts (the Chicago Reader's, for instance) the office she's run for the last 12 years is inept, inefficient, and expensive. There were also a lot of things that looked like either corruption or spectacularly bad judgment (she took cash gifts from employees, she had a weird slush fund generated by employees paying $2 for the privilege of wearing jeans to work). She's fully bought into the world of patronage and political hackery.
Finally, the clerk of court isn't really a partisan position. You're supposed to keep records and make them available. Either you're good at it or you're bad at it. She's bad at it. The other guy probably is too, but there's a chance he isn't.
Dude, I love my cats (well I tolerate one of them), but they are amoral predators who give sociopaths a bad name.
Yes, you did -- though not explicitly. It's inherent in the collective enterprise and particularly inherent in the sneering, "We're collectivizing, whatcha gonna do about it???" meme that made up the backbone of your 2805.
I'll again stipulate that, yes, collectivists have their hands on the guns and are thereby able to fund and enforce their schemes. That's never been in controversy, though the collectivists sure like to repeat it.
By Democrat party machine thugs visiting their ethnic neighborhoods and bribing, threatening and lying to them as need be.
Sir, I will happily ask you not to call my cats Libertarians!
I have one cat who would be a good president. He's a worrier and is constantly checking on everyone. It's kind of weird, actually.
Hey now, it's not about being right, it's about being CRAZY right!
That said, I'm gutting on 2 things, that the Hispanic turnout in AZ will be more of a factor than in CO, specifically because AZ's unique position in the foreground of the anti-illegal immigrant movement (SB 1070, Arpaio, Russell Pearce) has specifically energized the Hispanic registration and turn-out in that state, above that of even neighboring states, and I'm not exactly sure how the Marijuana initiative is going to affect the voting at the top of the ballot.
If Hispanic turnout breaks records in Az enough to unexpectedly flip Az, the Joe Arapaio supporting wingnut/voters are gonna go bat####
absolutely true
ignoring your use of "saner" in there- there have been giga-gallons of koolaid dispensed and imbibed this election cycle- the majority of people do not browse 538 or RCP or Pollster or even unskewed- and even if they did so would likely see little reason to take Nate's word over Karl Rove's- I honestly think that a good 40-50% of people think that Romney is either going to win or has a 50/50 shot at it- not all those people are right wingers, there are plenty of pessimistic lefties afterall, but you are gonna have plenty of people who will have read a headline recently ("Romentum," "Romney leading in new Poll" [Ras or Gallup]) and will go into tonight thinking "Romney is gonna win"
The less saner among the rightwingers? They are absolutely mortally sure that Obama is gonna lose...
Heck, just reading the comments on John Mellencamp's FB posts is depressing. Oh yeah, y'all are such big fans, you're just stunned he's voting for a Muslim, Ronald Reagan loved "Little Pink Houses".
Sounds like he's for more big government. No wonder Ray doesn't like pets.
If so, I apologize to Ray. First beer on me next time, big guy. Hopefully with snapper in tow!
Anti-feline bias...
Yeah but uptown is filled with young commie sympathizers who are too cool to vote. I voted in Roseville, inner suburb and bastion of mall shopping and neatly mowed lawns (my neighbor uses a drop cloth when he trims his hedges).
I want to party with that guy!
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