Comedy Goldmine XII: A reimagining with Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell

[King]

Tiffanye's ring was a leftover from my first fiancee' back in early 2006.

[Smid]

As you wish:

Regarding the approving states:
Oklahoma: Okie's family, duh
Nevada: approval is concentrated primarily in Las Vegas
Utah: the Age Wave washes over an idealistic youth
Hawai'i: the tourism industry is guardedly optimistic

Anyone who suggests that a poll is suspect must explain why it is suspect.

Fantastic... I particularly enjoy the comments on Utah and the suspect poll...

And the next two posts follow on beautifully!

[King]

Carl

Leif,

Cral,

Fiel,

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Perhaps I've been reading too deeply between the lines whenever Libertas talks about any subject connected to Jews, but perhaps he could put my mind at rest and state for the record that the Jewish Holocaust occurred and was a bad thing.  Please?

[Vepres]

I hope Whitehouse doesn't run, just because of all the terrible puns that would result.

[Vepres]

I sometimes just don't understand people..

If you're talking about me finding yours funny. Well, it was just you responded exactly like he was characterizing you, instead of being insulted, thus making him look like a complete fool.

Now, if you were serious, I'd be worried

[Joe Republic]

Libertas: Freedom and liberty for all!<sup>1

1</sup>Offer does not apply to poor women; other restrictions may apply.

[Psychic Octopus]

A Canadian rightist

I should kill you for being that stupid.

Hashemite's reaction is classic. Quite over the top, I might add, but the single sentence and briefness is just hilarious.

[Torie]

Magic,

Torie is a total fraud! 

He's simply a liberal hates conservatives.
... .

[Psychic Octopus]

p2, liberals always use the cell phone argument, but the fact is that in most polls, democrats outpoll their actual support/margin in elections by 3-4%.  Everyone - not just the young or hispanic has a cell phone now - a republican is just as likely as a democrat to have one.  I don't buy it.

The landline is a past-peak technology, much like VHS tapes were about eight years ago and DVDs are now. It is not an area with potential for growth, and there are more attractive and in some ways economical alternatives that afford profits for investors. Landline phone operators are now obliged to cut costs to keep their customer base. 

The argument isn't that young Hispanics have cell phones; it is that they are more likely than other Americans to have cell phones but not landlines. They are much more liberal-leaning than the rest of America. I don't deny that Republicans have cell phones, too; it's just that people who have landline phones are now older and whiter -- and thus more Republican-leaning than those who have cell phones but not landline phones. Given a choice (and I am 54 and white) I would go all-cell, too.   

The 2008 election showed that most pollsters who had used methodology that got the 2000 and 2004 elections right got 2008 elections wrong. Electoral behavior in 2008 was different in 2008 from 2008; it is either an anomaly that will go back to Earth with close elections that the Republicans win in 2012 (including the Presidency) or that voting behavior has predictably changed to the benefit of Democrats for the next few electoral cycles. The 2006 elections showed the trend.

I try not to make extrapolations except of phenomena that offer some evidential basis. Look at it this way: if the Arizona Diamondbacks start the season 12-18 and win three blowout baseball games, then does that suggest a trend that they have suddenly become the 1927 Yankees? Hardly! But what if they win ten straight games, some close and some not-so-close? Bingo. Bad baseball teams do not win ten straight baseball games.  They might have a 7-3 stretch on occasion (six of the games in the stretch are with the Washington Nationals, and the Diamondbacks are uncharacteristically lucky in a meeting with the Phillies).

It is just as easy to claim that pollsters are missing certain voters because of their methodology as that the supposed support for Obama or for Democrats is vanishing. Example: Rasmussen typically has polls of "likely voters" in polls asking for approval of Obama. That is more conservative-leaning than "adults" or even "registered voters".  In 2008 the "likely voter" approach underestimated the Obama vote. Also, Rasmussen tends to use robo-polls on the grounds that they are more neutral because in a personal call the person asking the questions might suggest things even without knowing so, leading the polled person to make one choice over another. Many people reject robocalls because they are often canned sales pitches "We can save you hundreds on new siding/windows/groceries" or recorded political messages. I don't know how that affects things.     

The political situation of November 2012 will be considerably different from what it is now.  Most of us expect Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee, and few of us can predict who will be the Republican nominee. The electorate on the average will be born four years later than the electorate of 2008. The electorate will be just as old, but it will be less white, and it will have many new voters born between 1990 and 1994 -- and current trends expect that those age groups will be just as Democratic-leaning as those born between 1986 and 1990. There will be an active campaign complete with ads --  content yet undetermined.

As a challenger, President Obama had a strong campaign apparatus; in 2012 he will take that out of mothballs (and he might take it out of mothballs in the late summer to aid any Democratic colleagues then in trouble). That won't be enough to rescue a failed Presidency should he have a poor-to-execrable one, but it will be enough that if he is even modestly successful as President, then he will win. Not one failed to win re-election because he was "too liberal" or "too conservative". I remember what many liberals said of Ronald Reagan in 1982 and 1983 -- one term because he was too "right-wing".

Need I discuss the failures?

1. William Howard Taft. Temperamentally unsuited to the Presidency. He was perfectly fit to be a Chief Justice, though. (The next step for Barack Obama is probably either as a  Justice of the US Supreme Court, membership on the International Court of Justice,  or Secretary-General of the United Nations -- but I think after two full terms as President).

2. Herbert Hoover. Everything that could go wrong in peacetime did go wrong.  America went from bright-and-cheery when he was inaugurated to dreadful. (With Obama the time began as dreadful and ominous, rest of the story to be known by November 2012).

3. Gerald Ford. Got to the Presidency through the back door, having never been elected to any office other than representative. Ford had no idea of how to campaign beyond a Congressional district until too late, and he lost to a weak challenger.  No analogy here.

4. Jimmy Carter.  The weak challenger to Gerald Ford. He accomplished little as President because he was always an outsider who tried to bring Atlanta ways to Washington.  He lost to someone who exuded confidence in his own abilities and presented himself as more moderate than his early reputation.

Obama was and remains very much a political insider, and his political skills look more like those of Ronald Reagan. He has not tried to impose Chicago political ways upon Washington. Carter doesn't look like much of a comparison to Obama.

5. George H. W. Bush. A successor to a successful President, he achieved about everything he wanted to achieve during his Presidency but failed to offer a coherent vision of what he would do in a second term -- nothing but platitudes. This, I think, is now the most likely model for a failure of President Obama to be re-elected. 

Remember -- incumbent Presidents running for re-election since 1900, inclusive, have won 13 of 18 elections in which they ran. At this stage of the political calendar, random chance says more than almost anything else. Incumbency has its advantages for a candidate. There will be economic vicissitudes; there will be wars and threats of war elsewhere. Any prediction of the future requires some vagueness. But that said, the best prediction now is that President Obama has roughly a 72.2% chance of being re-elected. Divide 13 by 18, and such is the result.

Cell phones, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Obama has a 72.2% chance of being re-elected, etc.

[#CriminalizeSobriety]

Click for context.

No freaking way. Hillary is way hotter.

[The Mikado]

Round 2?!  2?!?!

[The Mikado]

     Yes, most definitely.

eww we don't want to see you nude. no need to give people heart attacks.

I'm grinning ear to ear right now.  Ice burn!

[Magic 8-Ball]

     Yes, most definitely.

eww we don't want to see you nude. no need to give people heart attacks.

I'm grinning ear to ear right now.  Ice burn!

God, PiT must cringe every time she logs on.

[k-onmmunist]

     Yes, most definitely.

eww we don't want to see you nude. no need to give people heart attacks.

I'm grinning ear to ear right now.  Ice burn!

God, PiT must cringe every time she logs on.

She? PiT is a dude.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

     Yes, most definitely.

eww we don't want to see you nude. no need to give people heart attacks.

I'm grinning ear to ear right now.  Ice burn!

God, PiT must cringe every time she logs on.

She? PiT is a dude.

I guess he mean Annie

[k-onmmunist]

     Yes, most definitely.

eww we don't want to see you nude. no need to give people heart attacks.

I'm grinning ear to ear right now.  Ice burn!

God, PiT must cringe every time she logs on.

She? PiT is a dude.

I guess he mean Annie

D'oh!

[Lief 🗽]

Well in lieu of the real thing, sure. You know, sometimes there are scheduling conflicts.

[Countess Anya of the North Parish]

     Yes, most definitely.

eww we don't want to see you nude. no need to give people heart attacks.

I'm grinning ear to ear right now.  Ice burn!

God, PiT must cringe every time she logs on.

I am messing with him. He knows I do it out of love.

[Platypus]

I am living your dream.

[Sewer]

I don't consider pro-abortionists anything more than anti-life, really.

[Countess Anya of the North Parish]

I don't consider pro-abortionists anything more than anti-life, really.

lol the dumbness in that.

[Lief 🗽]

Pretty classic opebo:

Unlike most hardcore posters here, I actually live in the United States.

Yes, we could notice by the horrible signature you sport, fascii.  And anyway, you have my sympathies.  Are you a fat yet?

[Ban my account ffs!]

     Yes, most definitely.

eww we don't want to see you nude. no need to give people heart attacks.

I'm grinning ear to ear right now.  Ice burn!

God, PiT must cringe every time she logs on.

She? PiT is a dude.

I guess he mean Annie

I'm sorry to Annie.. but the name Annie kinda creeps me out.  Why?  I'll tell you why.  A friend of mine (her name is Katie) babysat some kids in high school... and they always used to call her Annie... and it freaked her out.. cuz apparently Annie was their old babysitter who was killed in a car accident.

The other creepy thing about those kids?  The boy "told" on his sister because she was "rubbing the back rubber thingy on her china"

[Countess Anya of the North Parish]

     Yes, most definitely.

eww we don't want to see you nude. no need to give people heart attacks.

I'm grinning ear to ear right now.  Ice burn!

God, PiT must cringe every time she logs on.

She? PiT is a dude.

I guess he mean Annie

I'm sorry to Annie.. but the name Annie kinda creeps me out.  Why?  I'll tell you why.  A friend of mine (her name is Katie) babysat some kids in high school... and they always used to call her Annie... and it freaked her out.. cuz apparently Annie was their old babysitter who was killed in a car accident.

The other creepy thing about those kids?  The boy "told" on his sister because she was "rubbing the back rubber thingy on her china"

i am annie the orphan. just without red hair.
sorry it creeps you out.