Full headers

This post is just part of a Twitter conversation, but wouldn't work as 50 tweets (exaggeration).

@kesgardner @Heminator @lizbuddie @michellemalkin ... that can be compared to other emails, or even just checked for sending domain.

— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) December 11, 2014

(scroll down for the rest)

Let me give an example. Go to Mapquest, and set up some driving directions. Then choose "send" and give an email address to send it to; make it yours.

When you receive the email, find the option to "View full headers". Different mail clients have it in different places, but almost all have it somewhere.

Look in the headers, and you will find something like this:

X-Originating-IP: [55.55.555.555]

Nearly every webform will have an originating IP header. These can be compared to emails sent before. I'll bet even emails from your webform have them. Give it a try- submit something from it to email yourself; check the full internet headers on the received email.

Edited to add: one reason for that header to almost always be there is so you can track back abusive users. If your webserver that processes your forms isn't passing that header, then you should get on whoever coded it to fix that. I bet it is there, though.

"on a track to be the hottest year ever"

2014 is on a track to be the hottest year ever http://t.co/iHNsQXiecA

— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) December 6, 2014

"2014 is on a track to be the hottest year ever" according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

That sounds familiar.

• the World Meteorological Organization is predicting 2013 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded
• according to data from NOAA, 2012 is on track to be the hottest year ever for the contiguous United States.
• According to NASA, 2010 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded

But what happened?

"the record of satellite measurements of global atmospheric temperatures now shows no warming for at least 17 years and 5 months, from September, 1996 to January, 2014, as shown on the accompanying graphic." Forbes

That time period includes 2013, 2012, 2010. All of which were reported to be on track to be the hottest year ever on record.

Maybe it's different this time.

Quoting something I wrote in 2001

Some (all?) of the links won't work, but if you really want you can Google most of the info to find it again, or you can look for the exact same links on The Internet Archive. But this is an excerpt of something I wrote back in 2001, which has relevance today.

One such sympathizer might be Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney General for the Lyndon Johnson administration. In 1992, Clark founded the International Action Center, which enjoys the continuing support of the ex-Trotskyist, pro-Stalinist Workers World Party. While the original teachings of Karl Marx are decidedly atheistic, Clark sees a natural alliance. "Islam has probably a billion and a half adherents today. And it is probably the most compelling spiritual and moral force on earth today. (source). "Islam is the best chance the poor of the planet have for any hope of decency in their lives. It is the one revolutionary force that cares about humanity..." (source)

The International Action Center is an umbrella group which shares its offices and its telephones with such groups as Iraq Sanctions Challenge, Peace for Cuba, U.S. Out of Korea Committee, Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Mideast, and Millions for Mumia, which works to free cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal who was convicted using evidence obtained under the powers of anti-terrorist legislation. The structure of the groups, including how frequently new ones appear and disappear, and including how much of their funding comes through charitable donations, is very similar to terrorist networks and cells.

There are ties between Clark and Bin Laden. In 1998, two American embassies in Africa (one in Nairobi and one in Dar es Salaam) were bombed. Four men were eventually captured and tried in the United States, and all were convicted. The prosecution established through phone records and wiretap transcripts that Bin Laden had direct contact with the Nairobi cell that carried out the attack.

One of the defendants, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, signed a confession regarding his involvement in the Nairobi cell. This Saudi national was riding in the truck that carried the bomb to the embassy, but instead of becoming a martyr and dying in the subsequent blast, he fled on foot. He was treated at a hospital nearby, and was arrested. In addition to his confession, he was in possession of keys that fit into a padlock on the rear of the truck bomb. After his conviction, the defense presented Ramsey Clark as a witness as they argued against the death penalty. (More information regarding the trial can be found here).

How has Clark responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11^th? On September 29^th, there will be a demonstration in Washington, D.C. Ramsey Clark is leading the effort.

Shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center, a website called "Beat Back The Bush Attack" (note: they have subsequently changed their name) announced that they would be organizing a demonstration. "Now is the time for all people of conscience, all people who oppose racism and war to come together. If you believe in civil liberties and oppose racism and war, join us on September 29 in front of the White House. We urge all organizations to join together at this critical time" their announcement stated.

The temptation is there to dismiss this group of people as misguided kooks or irrational pacifists. This would be a mistake. The organizers of this protest are hoping for a repeat of the troubles that occurred in Seattle in November, 1999. The site's FAQ makes this clear:

Should I bring a gas mask? A helmet?

Since Seattle, there have been an increasing number of major demonstrations and convergences that have been targeted with a high level of repression by the state. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, THE DEMONSTRATIONS IN DC WILL FALL INTO THE SEATTLE CATEGORY. Everyone is advised to take this seriously and take precautions. Basically, this means ensuring that you are protected against the types of maneuvers that the cops have clearly utilized over and over against very large demonstrations. Namely, the types of things to protect yourself against are teargas, pepper spray and projectiles. So, this means you should:

• buy and learn to use a gas mask
• wear a helmet, head guard or a hard hat
• wear protective eyewear

The mainstream media currently is portraying the protesters of the war on terrorism as pacifists. They are not. These are the same folks that terrorized Seattle in 1999 under the umbrella group Mobilization for Global Justice, and who tried to do the same in Washington, DC in April 2000 under the name A16.

The type of protest that occurred in Seattle in 1999 takes months of preparation and organization. Travel plans had to be made for the various anarchists. Staging areas had to be set up [Gerry's note: obviously, things have changed and things can move faster in 2014]. Lodging for those taking place had to be arranged. The logistics behind such an endeavor would make it impossible for such an uprising to be impossible to coordinate on such a short notice.

However, the protest on September 29^th was planned long ago, long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The domain beatbackbush.org was registered July 21, 2001. According to their website, they were going to protest the Bush administration's policies regarding the IMF and World Bank, although the phrase "Beat Back The Bush Attack" seems more fitting for the protest of the war against terrorism.

The plans for these protests hit a bit of a snag when the United States reacted with restraint not seen under the Clinton administration. To date, there has been no Bush attack to beat back; unlike Clinton, Bush has said that he has no desire "to send some $2 million missiles at a $10 tent and hit a camel in the butt" to satisfy the desire for quick retaliation. Coupled with the fact that Bush's approval ratings have soared to the 90% level, a change in approach was needed. The group behind beatbackbush.org quickly redesigned their site from leading the charge to "Beat Back The Bush Attack", to "International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism)". They registered a new domain (internationalanswer.org) to front this effort, and both websites currently have essentially the same content.

The shifting focus of this protest shows that the people involved have one goal in mind, and it is not the stated intent, which has shifted from protesting the IMF and World Bank, to protesting President Bush's retaliation to the attacks, to now protesting racism and the coming war on terrorism. The real goal is disruption, as well as to gain publicity, and to put political pressure on the government of the United States to move away from capitalism.

The front page for both of these sites currently shows no link between their efforts and the International Action Center, merely showing Clark as the first of the "initial signers" for their declaration.

One can find who is the primary contact for an internet domain by performing a whois query against the domain names databases. A whois query on beatbackbush.org shows that the organization behind the website is called "World View", and is based in Jersey City, NJ, and lists an administrative contact of Sara Flounders Kramer. The email address given for the administrative contact is gery@riseup.net. A whois query for internationalanswer.org, though, shows the organization to be the IAC, and provides the same email address for the administrative contact. Sara Flounders (sans the Kramer surname) is listed as the administrative and billing contact for the IAC's website. Both internationalanswer.org and beatbackbush.org are hosted on machines running in Boca Raton, Florida. The contact for riseup.net, as found using whois, is Elijah Saxon, who gives his email address as being from the ucsc.edu domain (University of California, Santa Cruz, where he is probably an alumni). Saxon also has registered revolt.org, which says it is part of Global Update, which also has a domain. globalupdate.org, riseup.net, and revolt.org all indicate that they operate out of Seattle, Washington.

What is riseup.net? They provide "Tech support for the revolution" according to their main page. The vanguard, it would seem, has gone high tech. riseup.net also provides hosting for "Direct Action Networks", which function like cells for activities promoting "radical social change" and "social justice", which are the new catchphrases used to hide the true nature of their activities, which is the promotion of Marxism.

Here is how riseup.net describes themselves:

riseup.net is a project of the Red Cursor Collective, a 100% volunteer effort of activists using technology for radical social change. We provide training, web hosting, listservs, email accounts, and any kind of tech support needed by the activist community.

The riseup.net page says that, currently, their "costs greatly exceed the donations we have received". If donations do not currently meet costs, yet they are operating, from where are they currently getting their funding?

Many of the IAC's initiatives are funded by contributions from The People's Rights Fund, a 501c3 tax-exempt, non-profit organization. A google.com search on "Peoples Rights Fund" and Flounders (for Sara Flounders) shows that the contributions have been both frequent and varied in their purpose. Many of the contributions were directly to the IAC. Others were made to other organizations that tie back to the IAC and/or Clark.

Where does the People's Rights Fund get their money? Their website makes no mention. However, at least part of their funding comes from Fidelity Investment's Charitable Gift Fund. One can only wonder how well Fidelity has screened their recipients, if the money from this fund is being funneled to Marxist advocacy groups. One can only wonder who at Fidelity realizes that their fund was used as a conduit to funnel funds for the planning and execution of the massive demonstrations-turned-riots of November 1999 in Seattle, or the similar demonstrations in Washington, DC, of April 16, 2000 that were limited in their destructiveness by police raids the night before. These raids found riot gear, gas masks, staging locations, and involved the arrest of senior IAC members. One can only wonder how Fidelity feels about their fund being used as a conduit to funnel funds for the planning and execution of the coming September 29^th demonstration against the war on terror. One can only wonder how well Fidelity would react to this information becoming widespread public knowledge.

For what it is worth...

Contemporaneous link here.

I could be wrong about things with the heckers mentioned here...

RT @FreeBeacon: That feeling when you do executive amnesty and immigration activists still heckle you at speeches. https://t.co/T3C3btwETl

— WhiteHousePressCorps (@whpresscorps) November 25, 2014

...but it feels to me that there are two main possibilities, and there are not many probable others.

1. The hecklers were planted, to try to make President Obama seem like the pragmatic one, in an attempt to start mitigating the damage done to his and the Democrats brand by his maneuver. Further, that the President was careless and gaffed with the "changed the law" phrase.
2. or the very people Democrats have been stringing along for years may not have been satisfied, and they flustered him into making that gaffe. A constituency, I might add, that the Emerging Democratic Majority depends upon not only supporting this party, but soliciting for and promoting.

I have no idea which one, but it feels to me like it's one or the other.

About PPP...

A friend gave me this. [not mine after this, although I completely agree]:

Here's some fun numbers.

137 PPP polls in the RCP averages across all SEN/GOV races in 2014, excluding PPP's 2-way polls when it also published a 3-way poll in the same race.

Polls In the Field After September 1:

51 polls. 10 underestimated the Democrat (D-), 41 underestimated the Republican (R-).  So, 80% underestimated the R.

In 13 races won by Ds: 6 D-, 7 R-, average error 1.9 points in the 2-party vote.

In 38 races won by Rs (counting LA-SEN): 4 D-, 34 R-, average error 3.1 points in the 2-party vote.

That's not small - an error of 3 points can mean you had the D up 52-48 and the D lost 51-49.

Polls In the Field May-August:

29 polls. 4 D-, 25 R- 86% underestimated the R.

In 8 races won by Ds: 4 D-, 4 R-, average error 3.4 points in the 2-party vote.

In 21 races won by Rs: 0 D-, 21 R-, average error 4.8 points in the 2-party vote.

Polls In the Field Between 2012 and April 2014:

57 polls. 12 D-, 45 R- 79% underestimated the R.

In 16 races won by Ds: 4 D-, 12 R-, average error 4.7 points in the 2-party vote.

In 21 races won by Rs: 8 D-, 33 R-, average error 5.1 points in the 2-party vote.

Overall, PPP conducted 100 polls of races that Republicans ended up winning.  12 out of 100 fell on the side of underestimating the Democrat.  88 out of 100 fell on the side of underestimating the Republican.  PPP polled NC-SEN seven times and showed Hagan with a lead every time.  It polled FL-GOV eight times and showed two ties and six Crist leads, three of them by double digits.  In five KS-GOV polls and four KS-SEN polls, it had Orman and Davis leading every time.  Its only OH-GOV poll in the averages had FitzGerald winning.

And that's before you look at the races they chose to poll.

-PPP polled McConnell's race 3 times in 2012-13, when a small Mitch lead would be bad news for Mitch.  It polled the race once in August, found him up 5, and didn't poll it again until it was painting the tape the last week of the race, when it had Mitch up 8 (still well under his final margin).

-PPP polled the Maine Governor's race three times in 2013, finding Michaud up twice, but never polled it once in 2014.  It showed two double-digit Martha Coakley leads in 2013, then came back and only polled MA-GOV the last week when Baker was putting it away.

-PPP polled Thad Cochran's race twice, the last time in July 2014 when it had him leading 41-26.

-PPP polled TX-GOV four times but stopped after April.

-Its last poll in WI-GOV was also in April.

-PPP didn't poll the Iowa, Alaska, Arkansas or Louisiana Senate races in October, and didn't have a single poll in the field in any race between October 20-29.

A Letter to "My Side", Regarding Gruber

Yes, note how much of the 'mainstream' media is downplaying the Gruber tapes.

However, it would be a mistake to make the story about that. They've weathered such embarrassments before, and they will this time- without changing.

We have two years to educate, with the assistance of some wonderful videotapes courtesy of an Obamacare insider.

Two years. That's a long time.

It's on us to do it.

Let Me Add A Fourth Theory

Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy have an article up over at Huffpost Pollster wherein they discuss three theories for why polls underestimated the GOP. It’s worthy of reading.

You had to know a “however” was coming, did you not?

I have another theory to throw into the mix, and it is a theory I feel really good about believing is true. Without further ado, let me throw it out there.

The theory is that polls, at any point in time, are not measurements of what will happen, but rather are measurements of what the parties have to work with.

The parties spend a good amount of money on “get out the vote” (GOTV) activities. Some of these activities (voter contacts to spur interest, drives to register voters and/or request absentee ballots) start weeks before the election, and to some extent will get reflected in polls as they are ongoing. However, the late pushes to ensure the absentee ballots yet to be returned, and the Election Day efforts to get people to the polls, happen after most polls have been conducted.

It seems obvious to me that these operations must be capable of "moving the needle", or else the campaigns would not spend time, effort, and money on them.

Further, there is nothing that says that the parties will perform equally well in their respective efforts. In fact, it seems to me to be patently obvious that there will be times where, through skill of leadership and especially through advances in information technology, one party will improve from one election to another more than the other, that at times a party will develop an edge in this regard that can last a cycle or two, and that when that has happened it is inevitable that the other party will eventually catch up.

That dynamic, if my theory is correct, would play out such that in some years, we would see the Democrats outperform the polls, being better at converting their potential voters into actual voters at the end of the campaign than the likely voter screens in polls ‘assumed’ due to the methodology involved. In other years, the same would be true with Republicans. We might even see, for a few years in a row, the same party outperforming the polls, until such a time as the other “ups their game” - and if pollsters had adjusted their models and/or methodologies to try and rectify widespread misses, a party just drawing even would subsequently outperform the polls in a widespread fashion.

We might even see it look like it does in the chart Nate Silver presented here.

We also might see the effects be really big in some states, where field operations had changed more from election to election than in other states. As happened this year.

That the Democrats had developed an edge in micro-targeting and GOTV over several election cycles is broadly assumed to be true. Republicans spent a lot on ORCA, a software system designed to close that gap, but it failed to function on Election Day in 2012. This year, there were instead stories about how the GOP had developed a much improved system.

As Silver wrote in the article linked above, “The polls may be biased again in 2016; we just won’t know much about the direction of it until votes have been cast and counted.” I agree wholeheartedly. However, I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that polls are measuring attitudes and opinions of people, and can never measure the relative efficiency of the respective ground games at the end. That plays out, to a large extent, after the polling is done. If all of the effects of the relative strengths of voter mobilization efforts will be captured in pre-election polling, then my theory is bunk. However, it seems clear to me, since those efforts continue until the balloting stops, and are actually quite different in mechanics at the very end, that pre-election polls cannot ever truly measure it.

Regarding Democratic Party Approval Hitting Record Low

The Washington Post's Jose A. DelReal writes:

The Democratic Party's approval numbers have hit their lowest point in at least two decades following an electoral drubbing that gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

The Gallup survey has the Democratic Party pulling a 36 percent favorability rating, a 6-point drop since September.

The same poll shows the Republicans tying a 2-year high in approval at 42%. Further, by a 17-point margin, the public prefers Congress to steer the agenda, not the President.

Obviously, Republicans will be pleased with this poll. However, there are some things to keep in mind.

1. I have long held that, in the wake of a 'big' event, slight changes in response rates for each side of the aisle can have a (temporary) distorting effect on polls. Especially with response rates getting low, just a 1% increase in the chance that a person called will respond due to them being psyched about things can change the measurement tremendously, as can a decrease in the willingness of those turned off by the recent turn of events. This is one of the reasons why there are frequently 'bounces' in approval ratings or horserace measurements after events such as convention acceptance speeches or State of the Union addresses. Such distortions do not reflect a change in the underlying attitudes, and relatively quickly fade. Odds are, part of the results in this survey are due to such effects.
2. Approval rating and electoral success are reinforcing. A party that has a low approval will tend to struggle electorally, but also a party that struggles electorally will lose approval from partisans who are unhappy with the approach that led to defeat. Unlike the transient bounce from above, this effect tends to last longer.
3. Similarly, a party that suddenly has electoral success will gain approval from partisans who had been discouraged.

At this point, it is difficult to discern how much of the swing in Democratic approval is due to a temporary dip in enthusiasm, and how much is due to frustrations with their election day setbacks. My bet is that there is a mixture of both at play; that the Democrats will likely recover a few points over the next couple of weeks, but their approval rate will settle somewhere a few points below the level that had been established through September.

Updated to add: Regarding the above point on response rates, please see the table on this Tom Blumer article, which shows how the response rate in polls has declined from 36% in 1997 gradually over the years to where in 2012 it was 9%. With response rates that low, if 1 in 100 Republican partisans called decides to answer when normally they wouldn't, and 1 in 100 Democratic partisans called decides not to answer when they normally would, that would be sufficient to cause a 9 point swing in the partisan composition of the sample. Weighting for demographics would somewhat mask this in the partisan identification portion, but the Republicans sampled would be over-represented by the enthused partisans and the Democrats under-represented by the discouraged partisans. In other words, the declining response rate can very well be leading to the short-term change in enthusiasm having more of a distorting effect now than a decade ago.

Be Skeptical

Note to political consumers: view all polls released in next 72 hours with great skepticism. Very hard to poll now.

— mike murphy (@murphymike) October 31, 2014

Over the past two months, my home phone has been bombarded. Outreach contacts. Robo-call messages. Pollsters, so frequently as to defy the odds; no way could we be sampled so frequently. The closer we get to election day, the more frequent the phone rings. This past week, perhaps 5 calls a night. Last weekend, maybe 10 per day. I see no reason to think the trend will slow today or tomorrow.

It is always fun (and educational) to extrapolate out from a sample size of one, but I know that my wife refuses to answer the phone now and tells me I should let our answering machine screen things for us. It is easy for me to believe that the cacophony can influence response rates in a distorting fashion, and that the closer to election day it is, the more this is true.

I also find it easy to imagine that, as the election looms near, fewer people want to admit that they have tuned it out, or don't really care. The responses showing such disinterest, which can be used to screen out unlikely voters, may not be as frequent.

It does not take a huge change in either the response rate, nor in the answers to screening questions, to fundamentally change the quality of a poll sample as compared to those gleaned earlier in the cycle.

Throw on top of it that last night was Halloween, which is a night where who is home and who is not is just different than it normally is on a comparable day of the week.

Lastly, for the final surveys, there often is pressure to minimize the undecideds; to either put more effort into pushing leaners in the script, or to use some sort of modeling to allocate the coy.

I don't know which of these effects Mr. Murphy had in mind (or if there are others), but experience tells me he is right. The last election I did comprehensive, day-by-day analysis of the races was 2004, and the very last set of polls, all conducted in the last few days before the election, provided distorting information, not clarifying information. Experience had taught me before to view those with skepticism. I may not know the precise reason why he is, but Mr. Murphy is right. Bake in your perception of the races with the poll information you have on-hand right now, and just sit back until the results come in.

Edited to add: My warning above does not apply to polls that were previously in the field but concluded before the weekend (and just have not yet been published). Selzer, I am looking at you.

No equivalence

.@GerryDales Here's an equivalence: Civil liberties = Civil liberties. One day, they take theirs. The next, they take yours. #Ebola

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) October 26, 2014

Love ya, Ron. But that's something more akin to a Glenn Beck response than one a diligent (mostly) centrist would say. Absolutism is the fodder of extremists.

Trying to say that the forced internment of over 100k people, merely due to their ancestory, for an indeterminate length of time, is even slightly comparable to the forced quarantine, during a medical crisis, for a period of time of a handful of weeks, of a handful due to who they were exposed-- is nutty.

"One day they'll take yours," for a month, with it having nothing to do with who you are. Not comparable. It's really odd that you think it is.

The Candidate Who Promises This Will Likely Get My Vote

The government needs de-lousing.

The IRS scandal is either the first example of it, or the tip of the iceberg; the first glimpse of a massive amount under the surface. But at least part of the government has been weaponized for the benefit of one party. Given what we have seen before, where much of Foggy Bottom has worked against the foreign policy of Republican Presidents, it is likely that the IRS is not the only part. And you have strange things like the Obama administration pulling in-house the Census Bureau.

I want a candidate who will promise, and then follow through on the promise, to de-louse all of the departments under the Executive branch.

I want every canbinet head to either be, or promise to hire as a deputy, an accomplished prosecutor. We need those skills to dig into what's been going on.I want Trey Gowdy for Attorney General. I want a Trey Gowdy at or near the top of every single department.

I want every department to have, as one of its top priorities, a complete investigation into if there have been any employees engaging in using their position for partisan purposes. Any coordination with outside groups. Any selective leaking. And payoffs or preferential treatment to donors to a particular political party.

I want all of the dirty laundry aired.

I want prosecution of any where there is evidence to merit prosecution.

I want everyone found to have abused power, but not to the level of prosecution, gone. If they cannot be fired, I want a branch office opened in Nome, Alaska with them transferred immediately.

I want no phone or internet service at said office.

Central heating, no. Space heaters, yes.

I want the Census Bureau moved back to where it was.

I want hiring decisions to have, as a key point, intellectual diversity. If a division has employees who have donated exclusively to one party, I want preferential hiring for those who have not donated to that party.

I want the nonsense that has been going on, where one party has tried (and mostly succeeded) at taking over the federal government inside-out for their own purposes, to be corrected.

I want all email and data archival policies reviewed. I want those who weakened them, in Nome. I want 20 year contracts with archival contractors that contractually cannot be canceled for a partial refund.

And I want it immediately, once Obama is out of office.

Which candidate will step up and earn my vote?

In Regards to Erick Erickson on MS and Consequences

Erick, I share so many of your sentiments in your piece. That said... you said, “There must be some consequence. I am just not sure what it should be.”

Must there be? Let’s look at the specifics with Cochran. Undoubtedly, his campaign turned to things detrimental to Republicans and to Republican principles, and he won. He won using the perqs of incumbency. He won with pork both delivered and promised. He won with a boatload of campaign cash. He won by smearing a large section of his party’s voters with lies.

But he barely won. He needed all of that, plus a military background he used to better effect than before, to barely win. He needed all of that, against an opponent who had serious flaws as a candidate, to barely win.

And he is old.

The type of Republicanism he exhibited or represents is on its deathbed in Mississippi. Take away the incumbency, the influence of delivered pork, the campaign cash connections developed over decades, and a candidate-just-like-Cochran loses that primary. Take it all away- because time is going to, relatively quickly. In other words, the battle was lost in Mississippi, but the war there is already won. We will get Senators there more in tune with the voters. All we lost was some time, but time is on our side.

The consolation prize is that we will get a Senator who will help us dislodge Harry Reid. That is not a small thing.

Instead of searching for immediate consequences, why not search for immediate opportunities? While the methods used to bringing black voters into the primary electorate were odious, it does not follow therefore that we must attack them for turning the primary.

My career is now in retail, and the hardest sale to make to a person is always the first one.

The new voters may have believed some lies, but at the same time they pulled the trigger for him knowing he is a Republican and knowing his voting record. Say what you will about Cochran, but he votes with the GOP an overwhelming majority of the time. That shows that the majority of the GOP agenda is not seen as show-stopping to these crossover voters. They weren't voting to help the Democrat win, they were voting to help Cochran-- a Republican-- win. We have first time customers here. Instead of focusing on consequences for those who treated us like crap, let’s focus on converting first time customers into long-term customers.

I follow quite a number of black Republicans and black conservatives, not of the celebrity type. It does not take much talk to realize that they see incredible tone-deafness on the right with regards to how to engage black voters. Bemoaning the crossover voters, who apparently mainly were black, is unlikely to change their perception.

We’ve been handed an opportunity here. Let’s expose the lies that have been told about who we are and for what we stand. Let’s convert some of these new voters. It will not be easy. In fact, the only sale harder to make than the second, is the first. But regardless that it was done at our expense, the first sale was made. Set the record straight, and make the sale. Always be selling. Always be closing.

We will convert only a percentage, but the message that will be sent is a powerful one: we are going to win, and we are going to transcend the lies.

MS: Democrat "Statistically Tied" With McDaniel

From this Politico article:

Within the past two weeks, private Democratic polling has shown that the party’s nominee, former Rep. Travis Childers, would start a general election statistically tied with McDaniel. A race against Cochran, who is well-liked by independents and many Democrats, would be difficult to the point of futility.

A few comments:

• It is generally a mistake to ignore polling data.
• The above is not polling data.

We have no idea of the context of the above. For example:

• When (who?) says they were "statistically tied," what is the margin of error? Were the results at the edge of that range, or towards the center?
• What is meant by "within the past two weeks?" Does that mean one poll in that time showed that, or many? How many polls were conducted that show this statistical tie? Were there others conducted that did not show that?

That is not to say that the race, should McDaniel win the runoff, is not closer now than conventional wisdom suggests. However, when I see reference to private poll data without the poll data being released, I cannot help but wonder if there is a reason that the full results were not being released, even if just the topline data. I don't discard the possibility that what is being leaked is accurate, but I also do not take it at face value.

As is often the case with regards to publicly released poll information, more data is needed to help us truly evaluate where things lay.

Some thoughts on Bergdahl

• It is good that Bergdahl is no longer with the Taliban. He belongs to us.
• Since the administration claims that they needed to move quickly due to Bergdahl's "deteriorating condition," a full, unredacted medical report must be issued, preferably to the public, but at a minimum to Congress.
• If the administration lied about his medical condition and simply ignored the law for whatever purpose, then it clearly has less respect for the law than any previous Presidential administration-- including Nixon's. Not just for this matter, but for this on top of all of the other times they have treated the law as malleable or irrelevant.
• A full military investigation needs to happen expeditiously.
• If Bergdahl deserted, he needs to be subject to a court martial and punished as severely as allowed within the code, especially since men died searching for him.
• If it is found that Bergdahl collaborated with the enemy, he should be executed. Honorable men died for him.

Edited to add:

So, if terrorists we're fighting make it a "war" w "POWs" why is Obama regime still insisting on prosecuting al-Qaeda in civilian court?

— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) June 3, 2014

She's right.

On Memorial Day, A Way Look At Europe.

BREAKING: Exit polls show surge in support for far right, Euroskeptics in European Parliament election.

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 25, 2014

I am a Euroskeptic- in as far as it is being directed so far.

But the rise of the 'far right' in Europe worries me. While the press overseas tilts to the left (perhaps even further) than ours does, I don't catch them nearly as frequently conflating 'the right' with 'the far right,' in as far as saying the center-right is really no different. As such, I worry about these. What the media generally describe as 'far right' in Europe is ugly, whatever label is used for it. The rise of it is not cause for celebration. Sure, some policies may have pressure applied, but the risk is high.

It seems somehow appropriate to think of the unsavory recent history of Europe on this day. And learn from it.

Hypocrite

Via Instapundit:

The commander of the 341st Missile Wing at the time of the failed exercise, Col. Robert Stanley, fired the officer in charge of security. But Stanley himself was later forced to resign amid a scandal related to hundreds of missile officers cheating on exams, as 60 Minutes recently chronicled. Stanley maintained, though, that his officers had failed the drill by only a few seconds and that it was presented in a different way than usual.

Sounds like a reasonable enough defense: they came close to succeeding and they had been thrown a curveball.

But if that is a good defense, why did he fire the guy who was in charge of security?

Source link

Udall Being Propped Up Completely By The Under 30s

This morning, Quinnipiac releases the second half of their writeup on their recent polling of Colorado. Topline numbers for the Senate race: Udall 45, Gardner 44.

The numbers are even worse than that suggests for Udall.

• His lead is entirely due to those under the age of 30. He captures that cohort by 31 points!
• That age cohort, though, really knows absolutely nothing about Gardner. 72% of then haven't heard enough about him to form an opinion. Only 12% view him unfavorably.
• Udall trails among every other age cohort, with his biggest deficit coming among seniors (who happen to be the most reliable in terms of turning out). Gardner takes them by 8 points.
• Udall's approval rating among age cohorts: 39% for those between 30-49 as well as those 65+. On the 50-64%, it's 42%. The under 29s? 50%.
• On question after question, that age cohort has very high "DK/NA" or "Haven't heard enough" responses; this is a sign of a lack of engagement which to me further suggests potentially weak turnout. Naturally, that is "if the election happened today."
• In the Presidential horserace questions, Clinton loses to Paul by 5 points, with the under 30s splitting evenly at 43%. I read this in conjunction with what I mention above to mean that the under 30s are not opposed to a Republican. They just don't want what I will call "the same old Republicans." Jeb Bush is the only GOP name tested in this survey with more than 25% unfavorable responses from the under 30s.

Those are some really ugly numbers there, and it may be time to start moving Colorado up on the list in terms of seats most likely to flip. Barring some significant improvement by Udall with those 30 and over (if these crosstabs truly capture the Colorado landscape), he is going to lose.

Other quick notes... The number one issue cited by respondents was Healthcare. Udall trails by 21 points among those citing that issue as their main one. Second is the economy. Udall trails by 13 points among those... Christie (tied) and Huckabee (down 1) are competitive versus Clinton, whereas old guard Jeb Bush loses by 5.

Structural Aspects of Mail-in (and Early) Voting for GOTV Efforts

@HotlineJosh @kkondik @SeanTrende what is the structural firewall, especially in a mail-in state? Public-sector unions?

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 23, 2014

The above is in reference to Oregon.

I have a theory. Let's leave aside the who (be it SIEU, or whoever) is involved in any structural advantage. The fruits of GOTV efforts result, in part, from the man-hours expended. There are a limited number of bodies available to throw at the task, so to increase the man-hours you extend the voting time window. The party that gets the most benefit from GOTV efforts therefore benefits more from extended windows.

Tied in with this, I believe GOTV efforts generally are more favorable to Democrats, due to the fact that urban areas, with their higher population densities, tend to favor them. Higher population densities mean less ground to cover for ground-level GOTV efforts, which makes them more efficient in those areas.

The Cynical Exaggerating to the Point of Blatently Lying Preceded Obama

Ace wrote:

Like the typical sort of blog-trolling, Obama is basically writing grabby, preposterous, eye-catching, false headlines. And as with the various outfits which practice trolling all day long, he doesn't expect to catch flack for his mangling of the facts for viral hits, because no one expects a Salon headline to be honest in the first place, and, increasingly, few expect honesty from a President, either.

As always, go and read the whole thing. However, while the linked article (and supporting articles by John Dickerson and Major Garrett suggest that this is basically a new tactic the President has brought to the national table, I believe that it is just the natural evolution from one embraced by former President Clinton:

They thought the election was over, the Republicans did. By the time it was over, our candidate had won the popular vote, and the only way they could win the election was to stop the voting in Florida. He did a great job.

Stop the voting?

How about stopping the selective recounting with shifting criteria? No, saying "stop the voting" was a cynical and deliberate misrepresentation, designed to delight his side and infuriate the other side.

You know what would be fun?

If Charles Koch decided to make enough of a run for President that his views actually are made known.

David would work equally well in this regard.

Colorado vs New Hampshire

@ConArtCritic Fair points, both. But I think NH is fundamentally a more evenly balanced state than CO or MI, both of which are pretty blue

— Reid Wilson (@PostReid) April 9, 2014

Is Colorado fundamentally more blue than NH?

Entity	Colorado	NH
Governor	D	D
Lt. Governor	D	N/A
Secretary of State	R	D
Treasurer	R	D
Attorney General	R	D
Executive Council	N/A	D
US Senate (1)	D	D
US Senate (2)	D	R
US House	R+1	D+2
State House	D+9	D+42
State Sen	D+1**	R+2

** Democratic control saved by Evie Hudak resigning rather than facing recall, allowing Democrats to appoint a replacement.

NH went for Kerry in 2004 while CO went for Bush. Granted, Kerry was from nearby MA.

All in all, the GOP has had a rough time in both states since the start of the 2000s, but to my eyes NH has been behaving more like a blue state of late than Colorado has.

MI, on the other hand, has been as blue or bluer than either for quite a while.

On The Hickman Analytics Survey of Arkansas Why I Misread It

Just a few days ago, a poll of Arkansas by Hickman Analytics was published that had some interesting aspects to it.

Let me start off by confessing that some of my tweets the morning this hit the wire featured me misinterpreting what their pdf was presenting.

They went about asking some questions regarding the Senate race between Pryor and Cotton. But before they presented those results, they showed that their sample was comprised completely of people who said either that they would definitely vote in this election, or that they would probably vote in it. Intriguingly, they presented some of the results with the definite voters as their own breakout.

For example, when they asked the two-man horserace question (meaning, offering just Pryor and just Cotton; hereafter referred to Q5 as in the pdf), they found that definite voters chose Cotton by 9 points, 51-42%. However, they said likely voters were split evenly between the two candidates.

This is where my confusion started. Earlier in the pdf, they showed that their sample was comprised of 77% definite voters, and 23% probable. Obviously, the definite voters in the breakout on Q5 are those definite voters. But when they said likely voters, did they mean "all of the probables plus all of the definites", or did they mean "just the probables."?

The lack of an overall topline result on top of those two breakouts for the question suggests that the answer is "all of the probables plus all of the definites." In retrospect, more than suggests. But that is not how I took it. I immediately read it as that they simply used the words probable and likely interchangeably. (Spoiler alert: I was wrong)

Let me explain why I jumped to that conclusion, because I think it still speaks to some oddness in the data. To do so, let's revisit Q5, which showed Cotton leading 51-42% among definite voters and them tied at 46% among likely voters.

Since the definite voters comprise more than three quarters of the total sample, for the likely voter breakout to be inclusive of the definite voters, then the "likely but not definite" voters would need to be somewhere along the lines of 59% for Pryor, 29% for Cotton (Pryor +30!).

That is a fairly astounding gap, and feels like the kind of thing that would be noted in the writeup since it is such a surprising tidbit.

The math that led me to the 59-29% breakout assumes that the integers presented as the results by Hickman are precise. However, rounding can make a difference. But could rounding make the gap between the two candidates look less astounding among these probable-but-not-definite voters? The values that would most bring the gap between the candidates as low as it could go among this cohort but still round to the integers they presented would be 50.5% for Cotton among definites to 42.4% for Pryor, and among likelies 46.4% for Cotton and 45.5% for Pryor. With that as the assumption, the gap between the two among probable-but-not-definite voters drops, but still is huge, at Pryor +23.

I suppose it is possible that this cohort, while being not quite sure that they would actually vote, could yet be so overwhelmingly tilted toward Pryor as to bring the Q5 result to a tie overall. Stranger things have happened.

But there were other questions where they had results listed for both likely and definite voters. One put Pryor head-to-head against an unnamed Republican (Q3, asked before Cotton was mentioned). Here, they found the Republican was favored among definite voters 50-38%; this is quite similar to the Q5 definites totals of 51-42%. For this question, however, there was a much more modest swing when going from definites to likelies; 47-39%. Doing the same math as above, this suggests the probable-but-not-definite cohort would support Pryor 42-37% (Pryor +5 over an unnamed opponent).

I suppose it is also possible that this cohort, while being not quite sure that they would actually vote, would be modestly for Pryor (Pryor +5) against an unnamed Republican while being overwhelmingly for him when that Republican is named (Pryor +30 against Cotton). Perhaps Cotton is simply viewed by this cohort as being completely radioactive.

But I have not mentioned Q2. This question was all about name recognition and favorability. Here we find that just 28% of the sample has heard of Tom Cotton and has an unfavorable opinion of him. No signs of radioactivity there. And if one goes down to the bottom of the pdf, where the crosstabs live, one can see that Cotton's unfavorability must actually be lower among the probable-but-not-definites than it is with the definites; it is 31% for the definites but just 28% for the total.

That is why I interpreted the "Likely" breakouts in the pdf to be synonymous with "probably vote" and not being inclusive of the definite voters. I had not done the math, but just a quick look at the numbers told me about what I presented just now.

But when you get down to the bottom of the pdf to the crosstabs, then it is clear I did not read it right, nor had I read down to the crosstabs when I had tweeted that morning. That was sloppy on my part.

The weirdness in what it implies about the probable-but-not-definite voters remains, though. There are only 92 in this cohort according to the crosstabs, which works out to a MoE of around +/- 10% for it. Usually, though, if it was going to be towards one end or the other, the answers would be consistently towards one end or the other, whereas here it does not seem to be the case. Perhaps this cohort had an unusual number of number mashers, and the rotation of the choices causes their results to be inconsistent. Or, maybe they really just believe things in the percentages I worked out above. Either way, with that small of a subsample, it should not have shocked me that they did not break it out separately.

Either way, the results of this poll hardly seem good news for Pryor. His generic re-elect number puts him at 39% among likely voters, and he gets only 1 point more in a named horserace with all of the candidates. He gets up to 46% if respondents are limited to him and Cotton, but among the most definite to vote, he loses there by 9 points. All of this is true, with his main opponent having 33% of the respondents insufficiently familiar with him to offer an opinion on how much they like him. All of this true, with 85% effective recognition for him. All of this true, with him being the incumbent. All of this true, in a state where 61% of likely voters identify as conservative.

Regarding the GOP Data Warehousing Efforts

@GerryDales That's a rather incomplete view. Data "warehouses" have come and gone before. The change is this one is going to be in-house.

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) February 7, 2014

@GerryDales Well, it worked before.

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) February 7, 2014

Sometimes, 140 characters just isn't enough for a reply.

A cliche I hear in NFL broadcasts is that if a team has two first-string quarterbacks, then they really have none. Leaving aside the obvious counter-example of Joe Montana and Steve Young, it has more than a small grain of truth. It's overly glib, but I couldn't help but think that if the GOP has had data warehouses that have come and gone, they've really not had a good data warehouse.

Building out a robust data warehouse and the data mining operation to go along with it is a huge task involving many IT disciplines. The schema must be architected. The ETL (extraction, transformation, and load) processes must be built to populate the warehouse with data in usable form. The tools which will be used for querying must be deployed. The database must be tuned-- repeatedly, and iteratively. This is not a one or two month process. If, truly, there have been warehouses that have come and gone, then the wheel has been re-created several times over at a tremendous dollar cost and an even bigger lost mining opportunity cost.

An operation that is starting warehousing over at some cycle will fall behind another that built a robust warehouse and adapted it over time to integrate new data sources (hence a likely explanation for why what worked before has not been working recently) or to take advantage of the latest advances. That they are bringing it in-house, to give some more permanency to the warehouse and make its development an ongoing, iterative processes, shows that they have realized this and are making the right moves to rectify.

This is heartening news, as this is not the kind of race where if one falls behind, catching up is impossible. At the same time, it is not going to happen over night. While we are building over again, they are already mining while looking for ways to further enhance theirs. At least now we'll be running the race, rather than perpetually going back to the starting line.

I remain astounded, though, that this inefficiency existed for as long as it did.

NFL Prediction

I made the following prediction "in real life" halfway through this NFL season. While I can't "prove" online that I did, that's ok since it still requires a lot of things to happen.

• Peyton Manning would lead the Broncos to hosting the AFC Championship game.
• His team will end up facing his old team, the Colts, led by his replacement, Andrew Luck.
• The weather will be so cold and windy that passing the ball will be just about impossible in that game.
• Through no fault of his own, he'll get tagged again with not being able to win the big game, despite having won a Super Bowl in the past.

Note that I don't want this to happen despite Luck being my favorite non-Giant player; I like Peyton too much to root for that. It just feels inevitable.

Loathsome Reporting.

Let's compare and contrast some things from this article. First, the lead:

Hollywood star Brad Pitt’s Hurricane Katrina charity is coming under fire after more than two dozen homes that his organization built are rotting.

Now, a good way down:

Homeowner Verret says the wood on her home has already been replaced with yellow pine.
‘It didn’t take no time at all,’ said Verrett, who has been living in the home for just over four years.
‘It’s just like they said. If something’s wrong, they make it right. We are very happy with our Make It Right home.’

The closest they find to a real critic?

Homeowner, Gloria Guy, said her home had not been reconstructed yet.
‘They replaced a lot of houses but they ain’t replaced mine. They’re supposed to come pretty soon and do it.”

She's annoyed that, for whatever reason, she wasn't among the first helped? Helped for a second time?

But, you know, what does it matter. Pitt's an arrogant celebrity, right?

Pitt has said he gets ‘far too much credit’ for the charity’s rebuilding efforts

Oh, he's just saying that to avoid the blame. Right, Daily Mail? He deserves a headline like this:

Brad Pitt's Hurricane Katrina charity under fire after homes are 'ROTTING from the inside in New Orleans'

The capitalization there was a very nice touch. Jolly good show, jerks.

(By the way, I can very easily imagine Gloria Guy saying what she did not as an accusation but more of a lamentation; her saying that they're supposed to come as a statement of fact and not a statement of cyncism. My issue is not with her, but with the way the article was reported and written.)

Updated to add: And then these jerks came up with this.