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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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Joe, for Medicaid in 2009 (most current data) in the U.S. of who receives medicaid benefits. 23% are the 'aged' (65 and older), 42% are 'disabled', 14% are 'adults' and 20% are 'children'. If you wonder what each category actually consists of, I quoted from the medicaid website.
So 65% of people 65 and over are people using medicaid. Not medicare, medicaid. Joe, I think I can say this without a doubt.
You. Are. Talking. Out. Of. Your. Ass.
Because if there's one thing we've learned, neither party would ever stoop to stealing an election. But, yeah, 330 to 8 is right around what you'd expect with a 97% for Obama. You're not gaining anything. You either go zero, or boost his total, as someone else suggested.
Romney's formula was a lot simpler: Give me a few hundred million for my campaign, and I'll see that you save a few hundred billion in your taxes. Can't beat that for a quid pro quo that no corporate dirtball could ever refuse.
Christ, did we ever dodge a bullet with this slimy motherfucker last week. Just go back to the Cayman Islands and stay there for the rest of your ####### life. You can throw your money up in the air and play with it like Scrooge McDuck, but just leave the rest of us alone.
Many people don't realize it, but Medicaid is what pays for those old people who can't take care of themselves anymore to stay in those second-rate nursing homes.
Considering the stories about ORCA, I'm no longer that concerned about voting machine tampering.
You jumped from 23 percent to 65 percent in the space of three sentences. Let me know when you decide on the correct number.
This proves what? Food stamp usage was already very high before the eligibility was relaxed. No surprise the biggest gains (by percentage) were in different demographics that had much lower starting baselines.
***
Anyone know what this guy is talking about? I haven't said a word about the Petraeus story, but apparently he thinks otherwise.
That's the joke that went whistling past Joe and Co. a while back when they refuse to countenance the idea that everybody paid taxes. FICA isn't a general tax, it's a payroll tax, they yodelled, without pausing to recognize that those desginated taxes have been going into the general fund for ages. But when you got a destination in mind, you'll go with any lie that will take you there.
Huh? The part you quoted says this:
Perhaps so, but you'd at least think that these folks might STFU about our "food stamp president", or at least have the pride to refuse the offer, if only to show the world how "independent" they are from "government handouts." Of course it doesn't seem to occur to them that by their chosen candidate's definition they're part of his "Taker Nation".
Educate me -- how much of Social Security being a separate fund that makes giant loans to the federal government is reality? Or is it like you said, just another tax with lip service paid to this separate fund?
Am I a lunatic for believing the former, and seeing a Social Security default being like MF Global, but 1000000x larger?
Well, failing to pay out wouldn't be a default since the federal government can unilaterally change the terms of the loan. (Well, they can just not send out the social security checks, or change the way they calculate benefits, etc.) There aren't two separate parties involved, which is why it isn't really a loan. It's like saying you made a loan to yourself when you took a $20 out of your left pocket and put it into your right pocket.
FICA taxes are collected specifically as a down payment on future benefits that recipients almost always get more from than they paid in. It's absurd to credit people who *only* pay FICA with helping to keep the military running, etc., etc., even if accounting gimmicks mean that some of the cash is used for that purpose on the front end.
You guys need to decide what you want to argue. Either Social Security and Medicare are earned entitlements, or they're not entitlements at all. If the latter, it's dirty politics to accuse reformers of trying to "break a promise" or otherwise take something away.
You're assuming a lot of facts not in evidence. Just because the biggest gains were in "Republican" areas doesn't mean Republicans were disproportionately the new recipients. Unlike the Philadelphia precincts we've been reading about, there aren't many places were Republicans outnumber non-Republicans 100-0. Beyond that, a big part of food stamp growth has been among the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, the latter of whom can't vote. The Obama administration has been aggressively trying to increase the enrollment numbers in that demographic.
I think that's a funny line. Well done!
I don't think actually being a food stamp recipient disqualifies you from being critical of a president whose policies you believe are the cause for your needing food stamps. That was always the thrust of the 'food stamp president' argument, was it not? It isn't his willingness to hand out food stamps that's the issue. The issue is that his policies are giving rise to more people needing food stamps.
Of course you can disagree with that assessment of the President's economic policies (as I would as well), but you cannot argue that those who believe in the truth of that argument are somehow being hypocritical by accepting food stamps.
Agreed. People can't opt out of responsibilities, so why they should be expected to opt out of rights?
Homeland Security: $1,146B
Social Security Administration: $815B
Health and Human Services: $363B
Defense: $288B
At the Oct. 2012 rate, the federal government is borrowing $188,000,000 per hour.
Social Security Trust Fund I
Social Security Trust Fund II
The Social Administration administers two benefit programs. Title II (Old Age, Surivivors & Disability) and Title XVI (Suplemental Security Income [SSI]. That's the 1935 FDR program. Title II is funded through payroll taxes and the SE tax. Title XVI is funded through general revenues. Title II is "Social Security". Title XVI is a public assistance program, what used to be Old Age and Disability State Pensions--it is what Nixon nationalized in 1973, effective January 1974--although the states can still supplement the SSI payments.
There are two medical insurance programs the government runs with federal money. They are Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is administered by the Social Security Administration (except under the new Mediare Advantage plans, I think). It does not pay for regular nursing home care. Medicaid is not administered by the Social Security Administration, although one of the way a person becomes entitled to Medicaid is by becoming entitled to SSI. However, many people who in their incapacitating old age that will need nursing home care are not eligible for SSI because as a public assistance program (read "welfare program") their income/resources are too high. So they are not eligible for Medicaid along that pathway. They will have to file with the state (what use to be called the welfare office or public services or something like that) for Medicaid assistance to pay for their nursing home care. Medicaid is funded in partnership by the state and the federal government. It can get tricky.
And Japan is borrowing about $55,000,000 per hour.
Bwa. Haha.
Well, we did have the ominous black panther who was opening doors for old white ladies in Philadelphia.
Jonathan Chait called it back in September:
The Romney campaign was superb? Really? Does anyone believe this? They had one good debate and what else? Their ground game and execution were a bit better than McCain (even including ORCA, which was a train wreeck). But they had issues the whole campaign with effective messaging, wore clown shoes in their trip across the pond, allowed themselves to be defined by the opposition, and overall were terrible.
And none of that is hindsight - I (and others) were saying that as the campaign was going on. Sure it is a throwaway line, but no one can possibly think they ran a supurb campaign. Obviously I am not sure how much it mattered, maybe a point or two. So i theory if Obama had run a terrible campaign and Romney a great one it would have been pretty close.
---------------------------------------------
I don't think actually being a food stamp recipient disqualifies you from being critical of a president whose policies you believe are the cause for your needing food stamps. That was always the thrust of the 'food stamp president' argument, was it not? It isn't his willingness to hand out food stamps that's the issue. The issue is that his policies are giving rise to more people needing food stamps.
Of course you can disagree with that assessment of the President's economic policies (as I would as well), but you cannot argue that those who believe in the truth of that argument are somehow being hypocritical by accepting food stamps.
Sorry, but when you preach "personal responsibility" and then blame someone else (in this case the government) for the fact that you're too lazy to find a job**, the strong temptation is to point out that there are always plenty of jobs out there that haven't been filled. It's also not hard to infer that their real gripe against Obama has a lot more to do with cultural and other factors than it does with their current economic plight, unless these same voters were all voting the other way in 2008, which I doubt.
**Here I'm simply parroting the rhetoric that gets directed against those "welfare loafers".
In addition to the White House petitions to secede from the union, there is now a petition to deport everyone who signed the aforementioned petitions. There's also a petition to allow Austin to secede only from Texas, but not the United States. And there's a petition to force any state to pay its share of the national debt as a precondition of being allowed to secede. I predict that all 53 of these petitions will become law within 6 weeks. I might even be my own sovereign country by February.
What else is he going to say? Do you really expect Romney to publicly crap all over his campaign staff? Well I guess nothing he says would surprise me...
I just wanted to go on record one last time that he was full of it. I do wonder if he really thinks they ran a good campaign? I would guess so, since he was in charge of it.
I think he thinks he ran a good campaign, in part because he ran it and in part because his blame game quotes reinforce that he doesn't live in the world that 99% of us do.
I'm moving to Puerto Rico.
I'm moving to Puerto Rico.
We need to fast-track Puerto Rico to statehood so they can file a secession plea as well.
I just need them to hold out long enough for Newt Gingrich to make his moonbase.
Cool! Austin city limits could become a wall, like West Berlin … complete with great live music and colorful graffiti. You'd enter and leave through Checkpoint Willie.
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/14/janeane-garofalo-was-married-for-20-years-and-didnt-know-it/?hpt=hp_c3
Simply don't know about it.
I really don't see how even Republicans could tolerate a transparently venal amoral figure that gave just as little of a #### about the GOP as his gardening staff. Newt, Perry and the rest all said the same odious things, but at least had the minimal courage of conviction to not try and publicly recant them for 10 minutes in a pathetic effort to dupe a few "independent" voters. Old Man Potter, but even less likable.
Agreed. But by the same token, I don't think being a food stamp recipient disqualifies you from supporting a president (or opposing his opponent) for unselfish reasons.
You are no more or less a citizen no matter what your financial circumstance. The fact that the GOP has spent decades trying to marginalize people who get food stamps or whatever disgusts me.
According to just leaked draft gmails, Checkpoint Willie is what General Patraeus calls his zipper.
I'm not sure this is a valid line of attack. First of all, it seems to me that if you expect to win this election in any case, a plausible test ground for future elections is the extreme precincts. They'd be hard to detect by any kind of statistical analysis.
Sure you're only stealing 8 (irrelevant) votes this time, but you now have an actual proof of concept for future operations.
Second, think back to Watergate. I'm not sure Nixon could have lost if he'd tried in 1972 and they were up to dirty tricks (and would have gone to outright theft of votes if they thought they could get away with it).
The outgoing Maine GOP chair will be investigating reports of "dozens of black people showing up to vote in rural Maine towns".
The horrors... don't those people know we have ghettos for them? Where they damn well better not vote 100% Democratic?
The outgoing Maine GOP chair will be investigating reports of "dozens of black people showing up to vote in rural Maine towns".
This is hilarious. I lived in one of those lily white Maine towns.
Fine, don't count their vote. Nothing changes.
IIRC, at the time leading up to Watergate, Nixon was no shoo-in. Add that to Nixon's famous paranoia ...
Seriously... forget the mythical 'obamaphones'... we ought to be giving free stuff -- obamabullhorns, let's call them -- to the con media and most of its politicos.
I don't think you're remembering correctly.
If you speak of the actual Watergate break-in, that was basically unknown to voters--a piece of trivia that had no effect on the actual election. If you speak of the scandal that eventuated from that break-in and coverup, leading to Nixon's ignominious downfall, that happened after the election.
When Nixon took office in 1969, there were 450,000 soldiers in Vietnam; when he ran for re-election in 1972, there were 45,000. The draft had been ended, civil unrest had abated, and the country was prospering. That's why he won by a landslide.
Nats-Homer, there is no established political class. All American politicians are democratically-elected, selfless individuals who only run for political office to improve the lives of the everyday people in their respective hometowns. If a few have managed to make a career out of politics, its because they have always been faithful and honest to their constituents.
There is no vote fraud, because America is infallible and a beacon of light, hope, truth, love, respect, honour and opportunity for all of the other 200+ countries in the world that are still subject to the base human shortcomings of hate, greed, envy, lust, laziness and the desire for power over others.
Like Treder said in his sarcastic way, the mainstream media is 100% committed to delivering the objective truth to its audience, and it is simply inconceivable that they would ever be subject to political or economic interference, because, as I said above, malice and greed simply cannot exist in Americutopia. The only reason they run commercials and sell ad space is to make sure their beloved flocks are fully aware of all of the wonderful consumer goods and services being provided to them by large corporate entities that exist only to improve people's lives. They only charge the advertisers enough to cover production costs.
The GOP disregard for minorities manifests in many ways. Which is why having some Cuban and African American politicians in their ranks doesn't really address the GOP issues with minorities. It is also why Joe K is right that GOP support of the Dream Act won't solve their issues with minorities. It would be a step in the right direction of course, but undoing the damage of many years would need to happen to make in roads among minorities.
Close. There is no significant vote fraud. Also there is much more voter suppression than there is vote fraud, and it is not even close - though of course both are very bad and should be investigated and remediated.
Thing is - even Cuban-Americans are deserting the GOP in Florida...
Virtually every analysis showed that Obama ran nearly even with Romney among Cubans -- and the age demographics ought to be especially sobering to the GOP (while Romney won the older set, he got crushed pretty handily by younger Florida Cuban-Americans).
Pretty good sum-up in the Miami Herald a few days back...
The quote above is from Roberto Casas, a former Republican Florida state senator...
Agree 100%.
Voting laws should be standardized across the nation. There should be early voting, limits for how many voters over how much area each polling place can serve, and a mandated paper audit trail for votes. I am unsure on vote by mail and really unsure about vote over the internet. I love MN and its same day registration.
Oh well.
Yet, somehow, they must have been on the list of registered voters, right?
I mean, they didn't just "swarm" the voting booths and start filling the ballot boxes, did they?
So they must have given a name to the election official, they looked it up, found it, and then handed them a ballot (or access to a voting machine).
If they didn't know who they were, wouldn't they be extra careful about making sure they were allowed to vote?
Even Huckabee noted on TDS the other night that they lost among Asian Americans - the most well off group in the country on average, even ahead of whites, by the same split as Latinos. The economic message might resonate, but stereotyping does even more so, even if it's not "your" minority group.
Agreed. A lot of people don't think they are a good idea. We don't use them in Minnesota.
there is vote fraud, there is voter suppression (probably more of this). We should actively try to reduce or eliminate both. I get that different sides think one or the other is more common and/or more of a problem, but, really, they're two sides of the same coin. Every citizen should be able to vote. Once. No one else should. Counting should be clear, transparent and reviewable.
Spending money on this doesn't seem like a terrible thing to me.
Second, think back to Watergate. I'm not sure Nixon could have lost if he'd tried in 1972 and they were up to dirty tricks (and would have gone to outright theft of votes if they thought they could get away with it).
Nixon certainly had a nice lead over the putative nominee McGovern at the time of the break-in but I don't think anyone saw a 60-37 landslide in the offing at that point. Nixon's election was no sure thing. We saw this year how things swing in the last 3 months leading up to the election.
The Democratic campaign came off the rails with the convention seating fiasco**, the Eagleton selection fiasco, the Eagleton resignation fiasco, ...
** Lots of long-time party operatives were very disgruntled
Gingrich said the same thing on The Colbert Report so either you're thinking of him or they both got the same talking points before going on. I'm guessing you are not mistaken.
When Nixon took office in 1969, there were 450,000 soldiers in Vietnam; when he ran for re-election in 1972, there were 45,000. The draft had been ended, civil unrest had abated, and the country was prospering. That's why he won by a landslide.
Well, in addition to those basics, there was also the whole question of the cultural issues and the identification of McGovern with "acid, amnesty and abortion". It was a year when the white backlash and the backlash against the rhetoric of the New Left was just about at its peak. It didn't die down with the ending of the urban riots.
And then there was also the Eagleton fiasco, which cemented the MSM narrative pretty much for good of a hapless and divided Democratic Party against an efficient Republican machine.
But you're completely right about Watergate, which didn't take off until right around the time of Nixon's second inauguration. I doubt if that affected a single vote in 1972.
EDIT: Coke to Edmundo, though I don't think there was any point that year where barring some unforeseen development, there was ever any serious threat to Nixon's re-election.
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I just can't understand for the life of me how anyone - anyone - would think touchscreen electronic voting machines with no paper record are a good idea.
Totally agree, though we've used them in our precinct ever since I can remember, and even though in our case I'd be more worried if I were a Republican.
All the trappings of selecting a presidential nominee (I mean, Iowa and New Hampshire playing the large role they do? The election starts two years before it's decided. $6 billion--c'mon), then running and voting for president are more than ridiculous (essentially it's all about getting a handful of states and few million votes--most states and votes never change), but like Ol' Man River it just keeps rolling along.
You're a funny guy. But Nats-Homer was talking specifically about individual voter fraud. I highly doubt that any U.S. politician above small local elections could rely on individual voter fraud in any meaningful way.
Then again, I just can't understand for the life of me how anyone - anyone - would think citing Twitter posts as evidence of individual voter fraud was a good idea either, so we obviously operate on different wavelengths.
Sure. And let me interrupt your circle jerk to point out where:
Nobody here on BTF has ever claimed this, ever, a single time, anywhere, in any of these threads, and I challenge you to prove me wrong. If you do, I will donate $200 to a charity of your choosing.
Is it because your Muslim Representative has brainwashed you?
From your posts I suspect (am guessing) you are in Ellison's district. He seems like a good egg.
Why is having consistent preferences ridiculous?
I read it as the process as a whole is ridiculous.
Think about all the straight whites who could have gotten the job instead!
Although somebody will point out that there are documented cases of rigged video poker terminals. As well as successful attempts to cheat them. To the tune of millions of dollars.
So maybe that's not good enough.
An absolute, non software dependent audit trail is really what should be aimed for.
An utter strawman. Nobody here on BTF has ever claimed this, ever, a single time, anywhere, in any of these threads, and I challenge you to prove me wrong. If you do, I will donate $200 to a charity of your choosing.
I'm happy to concede the "perfect" part, since you'll occasionally admit that luck plays a part in financial outcomes. But every time you and your anvil chorus start whining about "givers" and "takers" without acknowledging the vast structural advantages and disadvantages that are built into our economic system and our tax code, you're saying the same thing in so many words.
There are 3 possibilities:
1. Holder is incompetent. (Quite possible, to be sure.)
2. Holder played politics and knew he'd have Obama's blessing to keep Obama in the dark.
3. Holder in fact told Obama before the election.
Let's not forget that Holder and Obama played this game before, when it was ludicrously claimed that Holder himself made the decision to try KSM in lower Manhattan, a decision which was later aborted for obvious reasons that were forseen ahead of time by everyone except for Eric Holder. As with the Petraeus matter, the idea that it was Holder's decision alone to try KSM in Manhattan is fantastical. If Obama left this decision completely up to Holder without weighing in, Obama is incompetent.
I'll happily mark that as an admission that you were wrong, strained as it was.
C'mon BM, aren't these the ONLY possibilities for the Telemprompter Obambi administration?
I'll happily mark that as an admission that you were wrong, strained as it was.
And I'm happy to mark that as an admission that you were saying the same thing in so many words.
You mean other than the one I've pointed out twice previously in this thread?
Did liberals not conclude this with regard to Bush?
Let's be serious now.
And I am speaking about the above two issues only. I will say this for Obama overall: he is a good president who has done a good job, if you like his ideology. And that second part ("if") is not meant to qualify the first part out of existence. I can completely see why people on the left, and some in the middle, think he's a good president. I think he's been good on a lot of issues and I think he "looks and sounds presidential" (which is important to me), but since I disagree with his worldview on things like Obamacare and his approach to the economy, obviously I can't agree that I like a lot of the work he's done.
The above is sincerely meant as a compliment to Obama. I don't expect the lefties here to give me any credit for it, or to remember 5 minutes from now that I said it, or to stop calling me a right-wing Obama-hating loon, but that's on them, not me.
I am not horrified that he got re-elected. I expected it, and I think the country generally has been shifting left anyway, so even had Romney gotten elected, that shift - while it would have slowed - wouldn't have changed.
Pretty much everyone ended up concluding this with regard to Bush, given how frequently his name was mentioned by Republicans in the last election.
That said, I find it pretty incredible that the Petraeus story broke just in the normal humdrum course of justice immediately after the election. Somebody or somebodies were sitting on it – Democrats for fear of scandal, Republicans for fear that they'd be seen as politicizing national security if they'd broken it, yielding a backlash, who knows? Obama himself may not have known. I wouldn't blame him for keeping it under wraps if he did.
And I care neither about the Petraeus story nor about who knew about it when.
Credit to you - nearly 10 minutes later :). But I was not calling you a "right-wing Obama-hating loon". I was just not in the slightest surprised you presented your case above as you did. You see things in a very black/white fashion, and when something goes wrong it is very important to find the blame. And if someone did make a mistake, it can't just be a mistake, it is incompetance. And yes you share this with many other people.
But I am impressed by your acknowledgment regarding Obama. I feel somewhat the same about Reagan. Great politician who accomplished many things I am ideologically oppossed to.
Honestly, I am not excited enough by this scandal (other than the hilarious freak show elements of it) to dive into it and figure out blame. If something significant* comes out of it I'll care, but right now it is a bunch of sound and fury IMO.
* For some the words classified, Head of CIA, and so on make for significant on their own. Not so much for me (I stated my opinions on such things previously).
EDIT: Missed a word.
Spycake. Would I take what people said on Twitter to the bank, or to court? No. But if you cannot understand how not one, not two, people, but many Twitter users reported that they either showed up to vote and had been informed they had already voted (when they had not) or bragged that they voted more than once, might be indicative of voter fraud, well, I don't get that. When they told you everything you read on the internet wasn't true, they didn't mean *everything*.
After checking two full pages of searches for "Holder knew about Patraeus", minus the quotes, I found one link that attributed this assertion to unnamed "U.S. officials", while every other link either merely asserted it without any backup at all, or qualified it with "reportedly" or "allegedly". Nearly every one of these search results went either to a Murdoch owned news source or to another right wing paper (The Telegraph, the Washington Times) or a right wing website like Brietbart. None of the results went to any more mainstream source.
That doesn't mean that the report is necessarily false, but at least going by what I found (admittedly not the world's most thorough search), it's certainly not something that should be repeated as unqualified fact, without any further proof.
Why is twitter a more believable than say, the comments section on a Yahoo or newspaper comments section? Because you can find just as many such claims there, too...
I mean, I actually like twitter - but the signal to noise ratio isn't a whole lot better than those older internet forums where we are led to believe that Billy actually does run a Fortune 500 company and does claim X.
We're still talking about unverified internet chatter not attached to a real name or person... if the claims have any merit, then why tweet it? Is there really a big fear of actually going to law enforcement - or - putting up verifiable contact information?
Rants, the internet is absolutely full to the hilt with people who like to F'around to be frank. There are about 30+ celebrity fake deaths a day for god's sake. Would it be suprising that a few that REALLY, REALLY believe that there is voter fraud would make up a story about voting? Would it suprise you that some people who REALLY, REALLY don't like Republican's Voter ID efforts would make up stories about voting multiple times to get Republicans in a lather? People lie and then people on the internet really lie. Relying on internet claims is always a bad strategy.
Coke to zonk who said it better.
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