Archive of entries posted on October 2012

Random Thoughts: Statistical Models

Posted by on

I lived through three hurricanes while in Florida. Went days without electricity or potable water. It was fun.

I don’t know about the possibility of Minnesota going red. Hard to be more Democrat than being the only state against reelecting Reagan.

Remember when people were really excited when Reagan was elected and then even more excited to reelect him? That’s not at all like Obama.

The NYT has endorsed every Dem since 1956 so that one day when they do endorse a Republican, everyone is going to really pay attention.

Polls show close race, but if somehow Romney wins next Tuesday and the GOP takes the Senate, that would be hilarious.

When trying to hide from the hurricane, remember that they can’t see through lead.

I don’t know why everything has to be a partisan issue. Why can’t everyone of all political persuasions come together and hate Democrats.

My biggest fear about hurricanes is with all those strong winds coming off the ocean you could get airborne pirates.

Burning fossil fuels is causing global blowing.

Poor Nate Silver. He must be burning incense to Numberthor, god of numbers, to protect him.

Anyone figure the percent chance Nate Silver will come out of this looking like a genius versus looking like an idiot?

If Nate Silver comes out of this a laughing stock, he’ll have completed a great origin story to becoming the Batman villain The Statistician.

“What! How did you stop me, Batman?! By my calculations, there was only a 23.7% chance of that happening!”

“You’ll never get away with this, Statistician!”
“Ha! There was an 88.3% chance of you saying that!”

Never miss an opportunity to go yell at a storm.

Because everyone is being mean to Nate Silver, I’m not going to tell you what my mathematical model is predicting until after the election.

Hard to trust the math abilities of someone who isn’t absolutely horrified of Obama’s spending.

I’m not saying Mitt Romney is Batman, but it’s hard to believe he doesn’t dress up in a costume at night and punch poor people.

Maybe NYT should just put an “for entertainment purposes only” warning over Nate Silver’s blog. Or on their whole paper.

I tried to put together a statistical model, but it ends up I accidentally bought the kit for an X-Wing.

Everyone on the east coast stay safe unless you’re a pedophile.

Obama has released a statement about how things are being blow around and flooded on the east coast in reaction to a YouTube video.

Good tweet for Nate Silver on Nov. 7th: “What happened was a possible outcome according to my model.”

The Best Summation Yet of Obama’s 2nd Term Plan, “The New Economic Patriotism”

Posted by on

[High Praise! to Hope n’ Change Cartoons]

In other words, Obama’s plan is to repeat every failed policy of the past four years but with higher taxes – because damn it, if “patriotism” isn’t coerced labor and job-killing tax rates, then what is it?!

Seriously, if Karl Marx had a slicker, better-funded Public Relations team, this is exactly what he would have been passing out decades ago.

Link of the Day: This Is How Strong Nations Fall

Posted by on

[High Praise! to Traction Control and Daily Pundit]

How We Became A Nation of Cowards and Mad Men

Excerpt:

The final bit of this puzzle is the nature of liberalism/leftism itself. It is founded on an essential lie – that government can create something from nothing, and do so perpetually. Liberalism is the supposedly less virulent form of its crystallizing notion, Marxism, which has never worked in any real application of it, and, absent some sort of technological culture of abundance driven by artificial intelligences capable of modeling universes on an atomic level, probably never will. Yet folks continue to believe in it, despite its perfect record of failure. Why? Because they want to believe that you really can get something for nothing, that there really is such a thing as a free lunch, and maybe if they just return to the communist catechism one more time, that will finally, finally, do the trick, open the magical Marxist cornucopia, and flood them with all their dreams come true.

[Think you have a link that’s IMAO-worthy? Send it to harvolson@gmail.com. If I use your link, you will receive High Praise! (assuming you remember to put your name in the email)]

A Moment With Joe Biden: Hurricane

Posted by on

[by Son of Bob]

And now, a moment with Joe Biden…

BIDEN: …Folks, there’s a storm heading our way. And, you can thank the Republicans for this. This Hurricane Sandy. Republicans like Mitt Romney don’t want to do a thing about hurricanes. I’m serious folks. Years ago, guys like Tip O’Neill would go to Ronald Reagan, and they’d say, “Let’s get Joe Biden in here,” and some of the other guys who know how to get things done, and I’d go in there and seven or eight of us – from both sides of the aisle – we would have sat in a room until we had a piece of legislation that would have stopped hurricanes. But now, in the Republican party of Mitt Romney, we can’t get such a simple piece of legislation passed. We can’t even get those guys to agree that hurricanes are bad and need to be outlawed, to sign off on a piece of legislation that would end hurricanes. And these guys want to be in charge? Unbelievable folks, simply unbelievable…

This has been a moment with Joe Biden.

Wisdom of the Day: Remote Frontal Opposite Storms Gas Dangerous

Posted by on

Polls!

Posted by on

So what’s going to happen a week from Tuesday? We have polls to help us figure things out, but they’re just making things more confusing. National polls have been showing a good lead for Romney — a number even have him over 50% — but looking at the electoral votes, it doesn’t look like he’s going to win as he needs Ohio and hasn’t led in one polls there. Nate Silver at the NYT Times looks at the polls and uses numbers magic to say Obama has definitely won it, but his stuff doesn’t completely make sense (like right now he says there is a 71% chance Obama will win the popular vote even though that goes way against the national polling). But if you question Nate Silver’s methods, Paul Krugman says that will offend Science! and destroy the fabric of time and space or something. And Krugman is a very entertaining writer — in the same way it would be entertaining if you dressed up a chimpanzee as an economist and had it do a silly dance for you.

So who knows what will happen. The important thing is if you live in a swing state, make sure to help get out the vote for Republicans and do your usual methods of voter suppression to stop Democrats from voting (like dangling a bunch of shiny things near polling places to distract them). If you live in a non-swing state — like me in Idaho — you can just relax and not care. Man, it’s nice not having any pressure on you.

Oh, I spoke too soon. Romney now leads in Ohio according to Rasmussen, though according to Nate Silver’s number crunching, we’re only imagining that poll.