Call It A Comeback
Possibly the most humorous aspect of the Illinois conservatives is the inability to grasp why Judy Barr Topinka does well. The problem stems from them not understanding that most of America isn’t populated by fire-breathing weenies. The final cited source understands her outreach is what appeals to so many. Roeser, as usual, seems to see this as a sign she has sold herself to the devil. One can argue it is inclusiveness or selling out, but either way she is successful.
SMS has decided with the decreases coming in state aid, to directly lobby the federal government. What a state!
&c has a complaint with a profile of Al Gore that is legitimate. However, let me point out that Gore got his butt kicked at Cornell College and in Mt. Vernon during the ’00 caucuses. Bradley had his best campaign event there.
Pulling into his next stop, the small college town of Mount Vernon, Gore notices a motorcycle that has apparently shown up to lead him onto the campus of Cornell College. "Behold the tattered remnants of the imperial retinue," Gore says, half-joking, half, it seems, genuinely bitter.
He should be bitter there–they saw through his half-ass act.
Instapundit is on a tear recently, boldly proclaiming those who might disagree with him are not credible.
Cute rhetorical trick, but it isn’t very useful. He seems to think boys are being kept down by THE WOMAN. That really isn’t the humorous part though. One can argue that we don’t take boys problems very seriously and I think there is something to that. Much like some African-American kids face pressures to not achieve, boys as a class face similar pressures. The funny part is the screed proclaiming those who disagree with him are ridiculous:
You can disagree with this if you like — though, frankly, I think doing so is a confession of utter blindness to reality — but quit telling me that this is some creation of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. It’s not, and you only diminish your credibility by pretending (or, more embarrassingly, actually believing) otherwise.
Most of what we see him cite with the exception of Christina Hoff Sommers are further screeds with little systematic support. Sure, some people say really stupid things, but that doesn’t make a dominant feature of a culture. One thing we do understand about human behavior is that humans tend to search out views that reinforce their impressions. This seems like a prime case of seeking evidence for what one wants to believe is true and not trying to evaluate the degree of the problem. Glenn would improve himself to understand that problems occur by degree.
There are lots of dumb things done on college campuses, but part of the educational process is learning to distinguish between strong and weak arguments and questioning assertions. Because one takes issue with an assertion or disagrees with a professor isn’t the sign of a hostile environment. It is a sign of a place where teaching and learning are taking place.
Colleges aren’t monolithic thought machines despite what some would like to insist. Students are, not surprisingly, quite capable of evaluating arguments made by those teaching them and often discard those they find silly.
The real problem with this line of argument is how men and boys are being made into victims. Saying they are not going to college because of anti-male bias misses the mark on several levels. One would need to look at the alternatives to college that many men are choosing. Are people seriously trying to argue that working a crappy half-ass job with low pay and little future is better than listening to people abstractly blame men? Or the horror of facing viewpoints they disagree with?
I always found the middle class orientation of feminism at college the most surreal. Discussions of who does the housework seemed a little strange to the guy coming from a single-parent trailer park household. The argument that college is so tough for men falls into the same category of class based ignorance of most people’s lives. Existing in a closed tunnel that ignores the rest of the world causese one to lose the alternatives.
Men who fail out of college or leave aren’t doing so because of anti-male bias at the college level. The problems of male educational achievement start before college and simply follow from there. There is a problem and it is how we socialize boys to value education. That doesn’t make men in college victims, it makes the ones not going victims of low expectations.
Instapundit is upset that people don’t see the world through the same paranoid filter he does. To go back to the beginning of the Burk mess he said:
Sounds pretty creepy to me. In the Corner post linked above, Kathryn Jean Lopez says that this is exaggeration for effect. Perhaps. But I can only imagine the response in, say, Ms. if some conservative male engaged in similar exaggeration where women’s reproductive rights were concerned.
Perhaps? What Glenn seems unable to grasp is that he was joining in the bashing of Burk based on what might have happened if someone else had written a similar parody. His excuse of his behavior is that he was making another point about how PC leads to the messenger depends on the acceptability of the language. This is, of course, irrelevant. In a piece like Burk’s the point is blood obvious. ‘Perhaps’ demonstrates one accepting that it wasn’t satire. A little personal responsibility would be nice out of someone who can’t let academic dishonesty go for a second. It is a spoof and Lopez refused to concede this point. Worse, it is pretty clear that someone (Hootie) is sending out this meme and hacks are repeating it.
More troubling is the notion that Burk is wrong because of a hypothetical or even a real example of satire being condemed if it is right leaning and not PC. Burk doesn’t deserve to be attacked for what others might do. If someone gets their panties twisted over one of two similar satirical pieces, the ninny getting the panties in a wad deserves to be criticized, not Burk for her work. This is a logical point completely lost on him.
A perfect example is when Mike Royko wrote one of the finest satirical pieces on Pat Buchanan. I kept going back to it all day it was so funny and dead on in pointing out what a bastard Buchanan was. If one read it straight one might get the sense that he was supporting Buchanan. However, to do so would mean one was a ninny. What did Royko get for that? Protests, protests and protests and a hell of a defense from the Tribune, to their credit. Those protesters were ninnies who didn’t understand he was standing up for Latinos (well Hispanics in Royko’s world 😉 ). Other ninnies are those who don’t get Mark Twain. Kathryn Jean Lopez is another ninny.
Instead of taking Lopez to task for stupidity, Glenn decided to play identity politics victimhood with conservative white males being the ohhh sooo great victim. It is a cheap ploy and rather useless unless one wants to change the subject. Instead of whining about what might occur in another case, why not call everyone on their lies?
I’m at a loss as to how Lopez wasn’t lying about Burk. Maybe she is simply too dumb to grasp the satire, but that isn’t much of a defense, is it?
For those who have only tangentially heard about the addition of a nasty piece of the Homeland Security Act which protects vaccine makers from liability, see PLA. Far more rational than I would be in his position, he describes the possibility of potential links between mercury in vaccines and autism. Currently, Dick Armey has decided one of his last acts in Congress should center on being a schill for the drug industry. The effect of this bill will be to remove effective liability over using higher amounts of mercury than the EPA guidelines allow with no information as to what the effect would be. This is horribly irresponsible conduct and falls neatly into the category of a information assymetry given parents aren’t able to pay attention to every ingredient of a vaccine.
Government on the cheap produces these sort of problems. Government then trying to protect a company that was so careless is the height of cynicism.
Regardless of the ultimate resolution of the issue of whether or not thimerosal causes autism, one aspect of this controversy is not subject to dispute. Our public health system gave mercury to 30,000,000 children in amounts that exceed EPA guidelines. It did so without calculating the amount of mercury being given. It did so without knowing the medical effects of giving that quantity of mercury. A public health system that behaves in that manner is broken. It needs to be fixed.
Ministry Watch reports the results for their study of financial openness for Christian organizations. Several well known wingnuts have flunked including:
Benny Hinn
Joyce Meyer’s Life in the Word
T.D. Jakes Ministries
Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral Ministries
Anne Graham Lotz’s AnGeL Ministries
Gideon’s
Kenneth Copeland Ministries
The Rutherford Institute
Wingnuts, wingnuts and more wingnuts…and wingnuts who won’t tell you how they spend money.
Jim Henley wonders why Islamistsare reading an introduction to Taoism. I wish other people would wonder as well.
Desperate to be outraged about something, the Wall Street Journal reports on claims of vote fraud in South Dakota.
The problem the Journal faces is that the evidence of widespread fraud doesn’t exist. There is evidence of small-scale fraud with 4 native-americans being paid to vote. This should be prosecuted.
What is amusing is the use of a post-doc at the Harvard-MIT data center for authority. Most of the folks who get that job are bright, but certainly not authorities on vote fraud. One should focus on the argument made, and I do below, but if one is truly interested in a statistical analysis one should ask a scholar with a background in such issues, like, oh, I don’t know…Gary King at Harvard. This is especially true since ecological inference was developed by King and would be especially well suited to the problem.
But Michael New, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-MIT Data Center, has inspected the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Web site to discover other striking facts: While Democrat Tim Johnson ran statewide about 12 percentage points behind what Mr. Daschle got in his 1998 Senate victory, in Shannon County Mr. Johnson ran about 12 percentage points ahead. He got 92% of the vote compared with Mr. Daschle’s 80%. Nowhere else in the state did Mr. Johnson improve his vote share relative to Mr. Daschle.Senate voter turnout was up 27% statewide for this year’s close contest compared with 1998, but in Shannon County turnout increased by 89%. Again, no other county in the state showed comparable turnout increases. Shannon County is largely Indian country, home to the Oglala Sioux nation, and is heavily Democratic. But Mr. Thune managed to receive only nine more votes there than did Mr. Daschle’s opponent in 1998, notwithstanding the much larger turnout.
Why didn’t New compare registration rates to the final results? Because he wouldn’t like the results. In Shannon County, South Dakota, 7.2% percent of registered voters are Republican. 7.8% of the voters in Shannon County voted for Thune. There is a higher proportion of other registered voters in Shannon which I assume are independents, but given Native American voters often vote almost 90% Democratic unless John McCain is on the ballot, the overall results aren’t that surprising. Indeed, it appears that for a county with 94.2% Native Americans, the numbers are to be expected.
mr. new points out that this is just a 4% increase in gop votes over 1998. in the other three south dakota counties where indians constitute more than two-thirds of the population, mr. thune gained between 23% and 43% more votes than the gop candidate in 1998. the oglala sioux would seem to give new meaning to the phrase “bloc voting.”
But this doesn’t give us the relevant information. Who voted in those places? Were Native Americans turning out? Or were other people in the county? Given there are 505 registered Republicans in Shannon County is it that absurd that half turned out? Not only that, but the turnout virtually mirrors the 1998 Senate race and the 2000 Presidential race. He is assuming the marginals should stay the same if turnout increases. But targeting specific types of turnout certainly alters the marginals.
In fact, the story is more obvious. Democrats put a lot into turning out Shannon County for a reason. They had a lot of potential votes there. Republicans probably didn’t bother because they have not broken 252 votes in the county for statewide offices. The Republican vote has been constant while Democratic vote has been increasing. Given the Democrats were doing voter registration and GOTV in Shannon, unless the Democrats were complete idiots and targeted Republicans, this is as expected.
As a clue to those unfamiliar with how to evaluate stats, if there is a new variable one should expect a change in the behavior. Given there was a massive voter registration drive and significant GOTV efforts by Democrats only in this county, one should expect a very different effect on the relative proportion of the vote.
As Mr. New concedes, "this could all be a coincidence." But "this trifecta of late results, high turnout and unusually strong support for the Democratic nominee should, if nothing else, arouse suspicion." >But Mr. New has a problem, no one in their right mind would call it a coincidence, they would call it a voter drive. Treating a significant effort to turnout voters sympathetic to the Democratic Party as a coincidence is malpractice for one who is trained in statistics.
New wants to look at this issue from the electorate being a constant proportion. In other words, if turnout increases there should be proportional increases in both parties votes. This is not necessarily the case, especially in a county like Shannon. In 1998, 2000, and 2002, about 250 votes were cast for Republican Senator or President in each year. This is almost exactly 50% of the registered Republicans in Shannon County, South Dakota. Given Thune would have been stupid to spend turnout dollars on so few votes, he didn’t. One might argue a voter drive amongst Native Americans should have at least stayed constant in the proportion of Republican votes amongst Native Americans. Such an assumption is unwarranted. Voter drives usually target voters less likely to vote and almost by definition, less likely to be informed on voting. They would look to peers for cues as to how to vote because of their low level of political sophistication and in a one-party reservation, that is likely to result in near unanimity amongst picked up voters. There is a way for Republicans to get around this. Work for Native American voters?like John McCain does.
The calculus is entirely different for Democrats than for Republicans. If one assumes the 917 independent registered voters are heavily Native Americans (a reasonable assumption in a county that is 94.2% Native American) that means total, likely Democratic voters are around 92.6% of registered voters in the county at around 6473 voters. In a state where an election is going to be close those votes are something to concentrate upon and the Democrats did. Shannon County did deliver the election to Tim Johnson, but that isn?t something dark and devious behind it. It was working your base and getting people to the polls. There were 2856 votes for Johnson in Shannon County this year meaning a turnout of around 44% of likely Democrats and I find that low number depressing.
Nothing in the county affected Republican turnout and so it was constant. However, a variable was introduced into the Democratic turnout and this changed the proportion of votes between the parties. This isn’t rocket science, it is obvious.
Now, if widespread fraud occurred, present legal evidence. If not, stop whining because people exercised their right and celebrate democracy in action.
And the cheap shot about the Ashcroft election at the end of the election is stupid. Ashcroft lost by 40,000 votes. Vote fraud didn?t produce that difference.
Substantially edited from the first posting
As if asked whether Gary MacDougal was a good party leader like Schwartzkopf was asked if Saddam Hussein was a good military leader, Steve Neal points out Gary McDougal is not a good tactician, not a good grass roots organizer and not a good fundraiser.
A great line:
Among the reasons that Illinois Republicans held the governorship for 26 years is that their party has been led by common-sense moderates. MacDougal, who has close ties to the right-wing eccentric Jack Roeser, has embraced the ideologues and true believers. If the party swings too far to the right, the Illinois GOP could be reduced to permanent minority status.
Neal further describes efforts to install Topinka as Party Leader.
What is stunning is that the ICFST party leader had to be circumvented by almost every major candidate.
ArchPundit