I hope this is on C-Span: New York, NY: Wednesday, September 14, 7:00 PM A debate between George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens on Iraq and U.S. and British foreign policy. Moderated by Amy Goodman Mason Hall at the Baruch College Performing Arts Center I rather imagine that Mr. Hitchens will mop the floor with Al … Continue reading “Mark your calendar”
I hope this is on C-Span:
New York, NY:
Wednesday, September 14, 7:00 PM
A debate between George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens
on Iraq and U.S. and British foreign policy.Moderated by Amy Goodman
Mason Hall at the Baruch College Performing Arts Center
I rather imagine that Mr. Hitchens will mop the floor with Al Qaeda’s man at Westminster.
This is really a classic of having-it-both-ways feminism. Cindy Sheehan complains about people telling her to take care of her kids have made her a victim of sexism: We as mothers need to stop buying into the load of misogynistic crap that our children need our constant presence in their lives so they can thrive … Continue reading “Go Home and Take Care of Your Kids”
This is really a classic of having-it-both-ways feminism. Cindy Sheehan complains about people telling her to take care of her kids have made her a victim of sexism:
We as mothers need to stop buying into the load of misogynistic crap that our children need our constant presence in their lives so they can thrive and grow…It is up to us Moms to make sure our children are whole and safe.
Yet she only has an audience because she’s a Holy Mom. This is one strange woman.
The ultimate question here, leaving aside Sheehan’s hypocrisy, is whether the US is safer in the long run with a democratic regime running Iraq or with Saddam in charge. As long as I can remember, the American left has argued that you can’t have peace without justice, and Saddam was anything but just.
It’s sad that so many of my former comrades have abandoned their principles for cheap shots at the Republican president who beat their candidates at the polls. Democratic elections don’t always produce the results we like, but they’re generally better than the alternatives.
I can only hope that I will live to see a day when the American left breaks ranks with the Buchananite isolationists and returns to its core values.
Patrick Frey’s op-ed on Cindy Sheehan in the Los Angeles Times is deeply disturbing: But in its apparent zeal to portray Sheehan as the Rosa Parks of the antiwar movement, the Los Angeles Times has omitted facts and perspectives that might undercut her message or explain the president’s reluctance to meet with her again. Could … Continue reading “Peacenik paper fawns over antiwar mom”
Patrick Frey’s op-ed on Cindy Sheehan in the Los Angeles Times is deeply disturbing:
But in its apparent zeal to portray Sheehan as the Rosa Parks of the antiwar movement, the Los Angeles Times has omitted facts and perspectives that might undercut her message or explain the president’s reluctance to meet with her again.
Could it be that one of nation’s largest newspapers has a bias?
Check out my favorite blog carnival, the one that Glenn Reynolds doesn’t want you to see.
Check out my favorite blog carnival, the one that Glenn Reynolds doesn’t want you to see.
It’s day two of the blogstorm occasioned by Paul Krugman’s claim, following Andrew Gumbel, that: Two different news media consortia reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the [2000] election to Mr. Gore. Mickey Kaus picks it up today, paying careful attention to Krugman’s wording: The discomfiting truth is … Continue reading “Andrew Gumbel’s Big Florida Lie”
It’s day two of the blogstorm occasioned by Paul Krugman’s claim, following Andrew Gumbel, that:
Two different news media consortia reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the [2000] election to Mr. Gore.
Mickey Kaus picks it up today, paying careful attention to Krugman’s wording:
The discomfiting truth is that, if you also recounted overvotes, the NORC media recount, under several “certainty” standards, showed Gore the winner.
Using the most inclusive standards, Bush actually gained more votes than Gore — about 300 net — from the examination of the undervote ballots. But Gore picked up 885 more votes than Bush from the examination of overvote ballots, 662 of those from optical scan ballots.
What’s more, there’s strong, near-smoking evidence that if the recount had been allowed to proceed overvotes would have been counted (despite the Gore camp’s revealingly idiotic, self-defeating focus on the “undervotes”).
Gumbel himself makes this claim on Amy Alkon’s blog (in comments:)
Re the media consortia recounts, yes, they suggested the outcome was inconclusive IF RESTRICTED TO THE FOUR SOUTHERN FLORIDA COUNTIES THE GORE CAMPAIGN WANTED RECOUNTED. Had the whole state been recounted, Gore would have won by any standard. [emphasis added]
But the claim is false. The Washington Post article that Kaus links says that ambiguity remains even when the overvotes were counted, the outcome depending on what standard is used to review the ballots:
But this is one case where disagreements among the reviewers affected the outcome. Gore won under this scenario when two of the reviewers agree on the markings. Under a standard in which all three were required to agree, Bush won by 219 votes.
Gumbel claims that Rick Hasen backs up his claim in this comment:
It is true that the NORC study found that had all the state’s undervotes and overvotes been counted, Al Gore would have come out ahead of George Bush.
…but Hasen makes this remark rather off-hand in the context of a posting arguing that the election was a statistical tie.
And this is in fact what the recounts showed. It’s impossible to perfectly create the same scenarios in an audited recount that prevail in a real election. The auditors used panels of three neutral parties to review ballots, and found that voter intent was hard to discern, hence the discrepancy between the 2-out-of-3 standard of review and the 3-out-of-3 standard. While one can certainly argue that voter intent in the real world is discerned by 2-out-of-3 canvassers, it’s not the same system as canvassers are partisans, so in effect 2 out of every 3 canvassers represent the majority party in that county.
But that being as it is, the fact remains that we can’t say that a full manual recount of all the ballots rejected by Florida voting machines in 2000 would have conclusively given the election to Gore. Including all uncounted votes – undervotes, overvotes, and absentees – the outcome depends on the standard for discerning voter intent, and that’s what both consortia found.
Krugman lied, Gumbel lied, and Kaus’ claim differs from theirs. Kaus says: under several “certainty” standards; Krugman’s boy Gumbel says under any standard. This is not the same claim at all, of course. Kaus puts it correctly, but Gumbel doesn’t.
(And BTW, how comfortable are we with elections in which the outcome is determined by a handful of people who can’t mark a ballot so that a voting machine can read it properly? If it were up to me, there would be no manual recounts because people are more prone to error and bias than machines. But that’s another point for another blog.)
More at the James B.
UPDATE: Krugman builds a wall and hides behind it.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that Al Gore won the 2000 election by winning Florida. You can’t be blamed for that, because nobody knew it at the time. But Paul Krugman, ever ready to re-write history and teach us the many things the media doesn’t want us to know, has the full story: Two different … Continue reading “Krugman re-writes history (once again)”
I’ll bet you didn’t know that Al Gore won the 2000 election by winning Florida. You can’t be blamed for that, because nobody knew it at the time. But Paul Krugman, ever ready to re-write history and teach us the many things the media doesn’t want us to know, has the full story:
Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.
There you have it. And don’t complain about the lack of evidence, he came by this revelation from the book Steal this Vote by the very reputable British journalist, Andrew Gumbel. Gumbel is so reliable that one highly rational Democrat-leaning advice columnist says she simply believes him, evidence be damned.
You aren’t to blamed for not remembering things the way Krugman and Gumbel do, especially if you read the New York Times. At the time that the Times’ media consortium completed its analysis of the uncounted Florida votes (undervotes and overvotes, it’s all coming back now isn’t it), they reported that the vote was so close the final outcome depended on which votes you counted and how you judged them:
Thus the most thorough examination of Florida’s uncounted ballots provides ammunition for both sides in what remains the most disputed and mystifying presidential election in modern times. It illuminates in detail the weaknesses of Florida’s system that prevented many from voting as they intended to. But it also provides support for the result that county election officials and the courts ultimately arrived at — a Bush victory by the tiniest of margins.
The study, conducted over the last 10 months by a consortium of eight news organizations assisted by professional statisticians, examined numerous hypothetical ways of recounting the Florida ballots. Under some methods, Mr. Gore would have emerged the winner; in others, Mr. Bush. But in each one, the margin of victory was smaller than the 537- vote lead that state election officials ultimately awarded Mr. Bush…
But the consortium’s study shows that Mr. Bush would have won even if the justices had not stepped in (and had further legal challenges not again changed the trajectory of the battle), answering one of the abiding mysteries of the Florida vote.
Even so, the media ballot review, carried out under rigorous rules far removed from the chaos and partisan heat of the post-election dispute, is unlikely to end the argument over the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. The race was so close that it is possible to get different results simply by applying different hypothetical vote-counting methods to the thousands of uncounted ballots. And in every case, the ballot review produced a result that was even closer than the official count — a margin of perhaps four or five thousandths of one percent out of about six million ballots cast for president.
But Krugman and Gumbel are right that the Times consortium found that a full, manual recount of all undervotes, overvotes, and uncounted absentees would have given the election to Gore under seven of the competing standards for vote-counting:
If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most permissive “dimpled chad” standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin.
So the claim that Al Gore would have won under a full, manual recount with a uniform standard isn’t false, isn’t a lie, and isn’t really all that misleading unless you’re making an argument about fraud or willing to consider what the two consortia actually said about scenarios. But Krugman does just that, charging that the discrepancy between the manual recount findings and the official tally was due to some kind of fraud on the part of Katherine Harris and her fellow Republicans.
In fact, the main reason the Gore failed to get the kind of recount that would have shifted the official tally toward him was his failure to ask for it. Gore’s strategy, as the New York Times reports and we all knew at the time, was simply to seek recounts in the four counties where he believed he had the best chance of winning:
But what if the recounts had gone forward, as Mr. Gore and his lawyers had demanded?
The consortium asked all 67 counties what standard they would have used and what ballots they would have manually recounted. Combining that information with the detailed ballot examination found that Mr. Bush would have won the election, by 493 votes if two of the three coders agreed on what was on the ballot; by 389 counting only those ballots on which all three agreed.
The US Supreme Court stepped in because the Florida Supreme Court denied Mr. Gore’s request for selective recounts and replaced it with an order for statewide recounts with diverse standards, a recipe for fraud.
So the 2000 election wasn’t “stolen” as Krugman and Gumbel and their fellow Democrats maintain, it was botched by a too-clever legal strategy in Florida combined with Gore’s failure to win his home state.
This is classic Krugman, lying by putting a small truth in place of a big truth. His claim of fraud isn’t supported by the recount, because its basic finding is that the courts didn’t determine the outcome as much as varying standards and Gore’s insistence on a partial recount did.
Democrats would do well to stop complaining about stolen elections and start running some people for office who the people want to vote for.
The other media consortium was much less charitable toward Gore on the standards question:
George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows. The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 “undervote” ballots that were at the center of Florida’s disputed presidential election.
Brain terminal has a somewhat less nuanced report on this whole mess.
Cindy Sheehan has left the building: After hugging some of her supporters, Sheehan and her sister, Deedee Miller, got in a van and left for the Waco airport about 20 miles away. She has a cover story about her mom having a stroke, but she won’t be back and the movement will quickly forget about … Continue reading “Riding off into the sunset”
Cindy Sheehan has left the building:
After hugging some of her supporters, Sheehan and her sister, Deedee Miller, got in a van and left for the Waco airport about 20 miles away.
She has a cover story about her mom having a stroke, but she won’t be back and the movement will quickly forget about her and her off-the-wall comments.
Next.
This is very good news: The state Supreme Court restored Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s legislative redistricting initiative to the Nov. 8 special election ballot Friday, boosting Republican hopes to redraw California’s political map before the end of the decade. By a 4-2 vote — with a Court of Appeal justice on temporary assignment to the court … Continue reading “Lockyer loses, California wins”
This is very good news:
The state Supreme Court restored Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s legislative redistricting initiative to the Nov. 8 special election ballot Friday, boosting Republican hopes to redraw California’s political map before the end of the decade.
By a 4-2 vote — with a Court of Appeal justice on temporary assignment to the court casting the decisive vote — the justices overruled lower courts that had removed Proposition 77 from the ballot.
The decision was a huge victory for Schwarzenegger, reviving his flagging special-election effort.
Non-Gerrymandered congressional and legislative districts would be the greatest single reform to American politics since the Voting Rights Act, and it’s great that the Cals can make it happen.
Portland booster “Sloop” is quite upset with me: In Portland, we have many good things, but we also have excessive homeless folks, questionable cell phone service, and belligerent bicyclists. What gets me is people who move here and then brag about how much they dislike it so much (see the comments here). Portland’s population has … Continue reading “Sloop doggy dogg don’t like me”
Portland booster “Sloop” is quite upset with me:
In Portland, we have many good things, but we also have excessive homeless folks, questionable cell phone service, and belligerent bicyclists. What gets me is people who move here and then brag about how much they dislike it so much (see the comments here). Portland’s population has grown a lot in the past 10-15 years, mostly due to people moving here from out of state. So, as a native Portlander, I have little tolerance for a Californian who comes here, helps to congest traffic and inflate home prices, and then posts 3 times on a blog about how he doesn’t like it here, nor does he like Portlanders.
Free speech isn’t a Portland virtue, apparently.
But let me clear this up once and for all: I like Portland. It’s a cute little town. I just want a good meal every once in a while, without driving to Seattle.
Is that too much to ask?
Reef aquariasts call cyanobacteria “bubble slime algae” because it forms clumps of bubbles encased in slime, with the bubbles being a byproduct of a unique form of photosynthesis. It’s treated short-term with antibiotics, and long term by keeping the water free of phosphates and nitrates so it can’t grow. On a large scale, it was … Continue reading “Snowball Earth caused by slime”
Reef aquariasts call cyanobacteria “bubble slime algae” because it forms clumps of bubbles encased in slime, with the bubbles being a byproduct of a unique form of photosynthesis. It’s treated short-term with antibiotics, and long term by keeping the water free of phosphates and nitrates so it can’t grow.
On a large scale, it was probably responsible for the Snowball Earth effect, according to some Caltech research dudes:
In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Caltech graduate student Robert Kopp and his supervising professor, Joe Kirschvink, along with alumnus Isaac Hilburn (now a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and graduate student Cody Nash, argue that cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae) suddenly evolved the ability to break water and release oxygen about 2.3 billion years ago. Oxygen destroyed the greenhouse gas methane that was then abundant in the atmosphere, throwing the global climate completely out of kilter.
Cyano blooms in the oceans when phosphate fertilizers run off from farms. This is a treatable problem if the will is there, and it may play a role in reversing global warming, but that’s a scary thought.
Here’s a picture of the slime.
