Category Archives: Non-gun politics

Here’s the problem. Romney isn’t a great candidate. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that anyone who would be arrogant enough to run for President wouldn’t be a good candidate for President. You see the dilemma.

I’ve heard lots of people complain that the choice between Obama and Romney is just a choice of which form our Gozer will take. Fair enough. But maybe we should take a close look at our premise and see if it is valid.

Why would we care if a candidate is perfect or not? I believe the answer is because everyone wants a President who will rule over us wisely and would use his good judgement to rule as we would if we had the same information as he has. If that’s what we wanted, then only perfect candidates would be acceptable.

Here’s the problem. We aren’t electing a Philosopher King. We are electing a chief of the Executive Branch of our government. If we had a Philosopher King, we could go back to being lazy and ignoring politics while the King benevolently ruled over us. I don’t know about you, but my ancestors didn’t come to this country to be ruled over. Where’s my master? That son of a bitch ain’t been born.

We keep searching for the perfect candidate who will do everything for us so that we can forget the hard work of ruling over ourselves. That’s just laziness. That’s how we got to where we are. No one seized unconstitutional power, we gave it to them. We voted it that way. And why did we do it? Because we were lazy and didn’t want to be bothered. We didn’t want to get our fat asses off the couch and make it happen, we wanted to sit in front of the boob tube and watch it happen.

Every time I hear some hard-core Libertarian I want to strangle him. Libertarians seem to have two problems. One is that they don’t seem to have any idea how to convey their beliefs without basically telling people that they are both wrong AND stupid. I can’t find it, but there is a hilarious video about how Libertarians can’t sell their ideas to regular people because Libertarians would rather rant at people that make the case for them. The second problem with Libertarians is that they make the perfect the enemy of the good. They can’t accept “good enough.” If it ain’t perfect, it’s worse than Barack Obama. Politics is the art of compromise, and as far as I can tell, the stronger Libertarian they are, the less flexible they are to compromise.

This means that Libertarians are unable to infiltrate and convert the Republican Party, which is the only possible route to power for them. No one with even an ounce of sense believes that the Libertarian Party will replace the Republican Party. And that whole “Liberaltarian” garbage was just a way to confuse those Libertarians who had hit the bong so many times that they had lost touch with reality. So rather than win slowly, the Libertarians would prefer to lose quickly. It’s a shame, because for the most part the Libertarians are right. The government shouldn’t spend what it doesn’t have, should respect people’s rights and their property, and should basically stay the hell out of their lives to the maximum extent possible.

Why won’t Libertarians infiltrate, take over, and change the Republican Party? Laziness. They don’t want to take the time to make the changes. They don’t want to pressure their Representative and Senators. They don’t want to bug the crap out of their State Rep and Senator. They don’t want to make sure that the Governor knows their name. That’s actual work. Sitting on the couch bitching about how it’s just a different face on the same Gozer is easy.

Everyone needs to get it through their thick skulls that “throw the bums out” isn’t the solution. The next set of bums will do the same thing. They will do what is profitable, and changing the bums doesn’t change what is profitable. We can’t find only good people to represent us. We are mostly going to elect power-hungry jackasses. It’s hard not to elect them when they are basically the only people who would run for office. The solution isn’t to change the people, it is to change what is profitable.

Milton Friedman said it best.

 When you make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, they’ll do it. It’s just that making the right thing politically profitable is hard work.

So what are you going to do? Are you going to do the hard work? Or are you going back to your couch secure in the knowlege that the Gozer is just going to destroy you anyway?

I’ve pointed this out before. You are being lied to. The latest lie in “Election Coverage 2012™” is the “Romney Surge.” Romney isn’t surging at all. In order for Romney to “Surge Ahead!” he’d have to start out behind. And that’s not what is happening.

From Fox News,

National polling released Monday continues to demonstrate an apparent Mitt Romney surge, with the Republican nominee at least pulling even with President Obama — and in one poll shooting past him — on the heels of what Gallup deemed the biggest debate victory in recorded history.

Poor old Andrew Sullivan, former conservative gay man and now primarily known as the nation’s foremost long-distance forensic gynecologist, penned this cri-de-coeur,

The Pew poll is devastating, just devastating. Before the debate, Obama had a 51 – 43 lead; now, Romney has a 49 – 45 lead. That’s a simply unprecedented reversal for a candidate in October. Before Obama had leads on every policy issue and personal characteristic; now Romney leads in almost all of them. Obama’s performance gave Romney a 12 point swing! I repeat: a 12 point swing.

Andy, when you’re writing, it’s not necessary to write “I repeat.” If they’ve missed what you wrote they can just read it again.

They say that “Figures don’t lie, liars figure.” It’s as true today as it ever was. The polls have consistently shown Obama close or ahead in the race. They’ve also shown a significant party identification advantage for the Democrats. The latest poll shows that party ID reduced, eliminated, and even reversed a bit.

All of the change in both polls came from the composition of each sample. In pre-debate interviews by Gallup, self-identified Democrats outnumbered Republicans by five percentage points, according to Gallup’s Jeff Jones. By contrast, in the three days following the debate, the balance shifted in a GOP direction, with 34 percent of registered voters identifying as Republicans (two points up from pre-debate), 33 percent as Democrats (four points down).

So why is this happening? That’s actually a two-part question, which has a two-part answer.

1. Why is the news media showing Obama up and then down?
2. Why are the journalists showing Obama up and then down?

The news media, the corporations, need you to show up and watch their program. If you don’t watch, their audience share goes down, and therefore their ad revenues go down. If they told you the truth from the beginning that Obama is on the wrong side of the Little League slaughter rule, you’d go watch something else. So they lied to you to keep your attention. There is a risk. They can’t allow this lie to go all the way up to the election. If they’re calling it close all the way up until the election, you are going to lose even more respect for them when their vaunted polls turn out to be about as reflective of reality as Obama’s campaign promises. They need a “Romney Surge” to reconcile their lies about Obama being ahead with the reality that Obama is has about as much chance as the Titanic. They have to manufacture a realignment to cover their earlier lies.

The journalists, however, have to go along with this. Why would the do that? Well, wouldn’t you? What are journalists, anyway? Do they have some arcane knowledge? Secret insider info? Good looks and charm? None of these. Jennifer says that actors are nothing but monkeys who dance for our entertainment.  Journalists are no different. They exist solely to entertain us. They entertain us by bringing us information, tying it up into a neat bow, and using it to tell us a story. No one, no matter how un self-aware can forget that the bottom line is to get viewers or readers. The journalists like to pretend that they are brave tellers of truth, but in the end, they are just dancing monkeys. The one time they can really be involved in something big is during election coverage. The rest of the time they cover sappy human interest stories or the local crimes, but during election coverage they get to pretend to be the voice of the people. They pretend that they are bravely demanding answers from politicians, and bringing us vital information that we will use to determine the course of an entire nation, even the world! What happens to those brave truth tellers when they don’t have a race, but a blowout? When the outcome is well known in advance and the audience has left for more interesting stories? They either pretend not to notice the obvious, or they lie to hide it.

We will probably hear of a few more ups and downs in the last few weeks before the election. They all want to keep it interesting. But it’s over. It’s been over for months. Romney isn’t surging, the media is simply realigning their polls to reflect reality.

My prediction. Romney wins in a walk. The Senate flips. The House, due to significant redistricting by Republican run State Legislatures, gets even more Republican.

WRAL has announced the results of a poll they commissioned. They say the Presidential race is too close to call.

With five weeks until the election, North Carolina remains a fierce battleground for Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, according to a WRAL News poll released Tuesday.

Helpfully, they have posted the actual results of the poll (PDF) so we can investigate it further.

Let’s look at “Party Affiliation,” which is the last set of columns in the Presidential section. WRAL surveyed 571 likely voters and found that 33% were Republicans, 45% were Democrats, and 22% were Independent. If we compare that to the voting for 2008, the exit polls showed 31% Republican, 42% Dem, and 27% Independent. Since 2008 was a historically high year for the Dems, where does WRAL get off showing results for 2012 with an even higher Democrat advantage in party ID?

Why is the media consistently over sampling Democrats in their polling? Some are suggesting that it’s to demoralize Republicans and make them think that Obama’s got it wrapped up and we shouldn’t even bother voting. I think it’s simpler than that. The Media isn’t in the business of selling news. The Media wants to sell your eyeballs.

There’s a rule of thumb, if something’s free, it’s not the product, you’re the product. The Media wants you to tune in and watch their TV station. They need as many eyeballs as possible on their show so that they can charge more for advertising. It’s that advertising that pays their salaries. What happens if you decide that Obama is going down in flames and there is no point in watching any election coverage? News ratings go down, advertising revenues go down, and the Media has to switch back to hyping Kardashian/Lohan/Snooki videos.

The Media wants you to tune in so they are manufacturing a horse race when everyone knows that the Obama horse broke a leg in the first furlong. Expect to hear all about how Romney is “pulling ahead” in the last two weeks of the election coverage. That’s them realigning their polls to reflect actual reality and not media reality.

The question is not “Is North Carolina in play?” The question is “Is Wisconsin in play?”

Sean’s prediction? Romney wins going away. I don’t think we’ll see numbers like Reagan-Carter, but that’s only because I can’t see California going Republican.

Why they call it “Harboring” I don’t know. It sounds like slavery to me.

A Concord couple are accused of bringing an African girl into their home 18 years ago and illegally keeping her in the country while paying her little to work at their house and hair braiding salon.

Wow. What sort of people would keep an African slave in this day and age?

(Suspect 1) is a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Ivory Coast, prosecutors said, while (Suspect 2) is an Ivory Coast citizen. 

 The victim is now 28 years old and has been here almost 20 years. She was paid very little and got no formal schooling. Sadly, I doubt that the NC justice system will chain both suspects to lawnmowers for 20 years as punishment, but that’s what should happen.