Awesomeness

I can't express how happy I am that we have a president who does stuff like this:


Watch out, Cheney!

Stop indoctrinating our schoolchildren, Mr. President!

So, President Obama is giving a little talk to schoolkids today. It's a totally innocuous little pep-talk that of course has the right wing up in arms about how he's supposedly "indoctrinating" kids into the socialisms or something like that.

If you follow that link up above and read the speech, you can see it's not true. But surely some jerkass president was interested in indoctrinating kids to their political ideology via the teevee, right?

Ah, here's one!

Let's see what Ronald Reagan had to say to kids back in 1986:

As you know, my remarks are being broadcast live over radio and television to high school students throughout the country. While I was in Tokyo at the economic summit, I found myself thinking about all of you, and I decided that when I got back it'd be good to report to you -- share some thoughts that I've been having about the future.

In general, conditions in our country are about as bright as this very bright afternoon. I was worrying when I put that line in there that it might start to rain, and I'd have to say something else. [Laughter] We've been working to take an economy that was in bad shape and get it moving and growing again; take our national defense and make it first-rate again after a long period of decline; and to restore reason, respect, and reality to our foreign policy. And I think it's fair to say that we've made a good deal of progress.

Only 5 years ago our economy suffered from high inflation, high interest rates, mushrooming government spending, and steadily increasing unemployment. A lot of people couldn't find jobs, and people on fixed incomes were finding it harder to buy the basics, such as food and shelter. Well, we got inflation down, interest rates down, and our economy created over 1\1/2\ million new jobs just last year alone. The poor are now increasingly able to dig themselves out of poverty, and that's been good economic news.

The good news in defense is that our Armed Forces, which were suffering from neglect and low funding, have now made a comeback. Morale is up in the services, and the quality of our men and women in uniform has never been better -- and I mean never. As a matter of fact, we have the highest percentage of high school graduates in uniform today than we've ever had in the history of our nation, even back when we had the compulsory draft. In addition, our nation has encouraged a more realistic sense of defense needs.

In foreign affairs we've kept our friends close and the lines of communication with our adversaries open. We've tried to give the world the sense that the United States has a coherent and logical foreign policy that reflects our respect for freedom and our opposition to tyranny.

The point is that all we've done has had, and will continue to have, a direct impact on your lives. And the fact is, it's your future, not ours. And all that we've done, we've done with an eye toward how it would impact you. We want to make your future better, because tomorrow belongs to you. And since you're the leaders of tomorrow, I wanted to talk to all of you as a friend about the things you'll have to do to ensure a prosperous nation and a peaceful world. And I'm sure that peace and prosperity must be at the top of your agenda for the future.

You have some special responsibilities ahead of you -- very important responsibilities. America is back, yes, but we still face major challenges in the world. And it's your generation that will have to accept the primary responsibility for tackling these challenges. It's important that you're fit for the future and that you be all that you can be. So, go for it! In the area of education you have a responsibility to try to learn and care about scientific and intellectual inquiry. The world is an increasingly competitive place. And if we're to compete, we'll have to do it with brainpower -- your brainpower. So, keep learning and hit those books.

We have to remain economically competitive, and that means being aware of two things: first, what makes economies tick, and second, what works in other societies. We've been trying very hard in Washington to make America even more economically fit by really overhauling our entire tax structure. When we came into office, the top personal tax rate that the Federal Government could put on your income was 70 percent. Now, you can understand, I think, that if you were getting up in those brackets -- there were 14 different tax brackets, depending on the amount of money in each bracket you earned. And when you could look and say, ``If I earn another dollar, I only get to keep 30 cents out of it,'' you can imagine the lack of incentive there. Well, we lowered it to 50 percent, and the economy really took off. Now we're trying to lower it yet again so that families can keep more of their money and so the national economy will be lean and trim and fit for the future.

And it's your generation that will defend freedom from its adversaries. The biggest contribution you can make to that quest is to become a good citizen. Good citizenship is vitally important if democracies are to continue. Good citizenship means trying to understand the issues and great questions of your day. It also means voting. To vote is to take part in this grand experiment called democracy in America. It's your right and your responsibility to take part. Good citizenship also might mean considering going into teaching as a profession. There's a teacher shortage, as you may know. You could help ease the situation and give to others the advantages you've been given if you become a teacher yourself. And it's also important that you stay in school. That diploma counts. And I just want to personally congratulate those who have overcome some disadvantage and who stuck it out and will graduate this year.

And part of being a good citizen, part of being fit for the future so that you can meet America's agenda for the future, is seeing to it that you live your life with a clear mind and a steady intellect. And that means saying no to drugs. Nancy has traveled across the country talking to young people like you. And many of them have talked to her about the allure of drugs, about the drug culture, and the kind of peer pressure that you come under to experiment and try out drugs. But when you come right down to it, drugs are just a dead-end street. They have nothing to offer you. I think you also ought to remember we only get one set of machinery. If you wear this set out, you can't take it and trade it in someplace for a used one or a new one. So, what you do now and early in your life decides how able you're going to be to enjoy yourself when you get to be my age.

And I want to tell you, I'm enjoying myself. I've talked to young people from China to Europe to the islands in the Caribbean. And let me tell you, they're incredibly bright and talented, and they're going to create quite a future for themselves. And you can't keep up or catch up if you allow your mind to be clouded by drugs.

Well, that's more or less what I wanted to say to you today. I'll be talking to many young people over the next few months, and I'll be expanding on certain points and amplifying certain themes. But for today, before your questions, I just want to let you know that I have been thinking about you very much. You are a special generation, and you're facing special challenges. And the biggest is to be ready for a future that will prove to be demanding and exciting. Soon, we'll enter the 21st century, a time that'll have more than its share of great wonders. The next 10 or 15 years may well be the most exciting and challenging in the history of man. There's the continuing revolution in technology, the possibility of curing diseases that have stalked us from the caveman era. There's the marvelous conquest of space, a rich frontier whose riches we've barely glimpsed. And there's the struggle between the democracies and those countries which are not democratic.

All of these possibilities bring with them questions. And it's your generation that will have to answer them. That makes you all very important, indeed. You have much before you. And all I can say is that you've begun brilliantly. Continue to pursue excellence. Be proud of your country and its heritage, and be proud of yourselves, as we are proud of all of you.

Yup, nothing political about that! Kids just love hearing about tax brackets!

Queen of the Birthers!

This is really remarkable. I knew that Orly Taitz is crazy, but I had no idea just how crazily she presents herself. This is the person at the head of the whole birther movement!



I can only imagine how insane (or racist) a person has to be to watch that and think "Oh hey, she made some really good points!" Pretty insane, probably.


[Addendum:] In case you're wondering, "Dr." Orly Taitz is a dentist. Which just goes to further confirm my theory that crackpots who prominently identify themselves as "Dr." never have a doctorate in anything even remotely related to what they're talking about. It's all about giving themselves an undeserved air of credibility.

[Addendum 2:] Hey, it's Obama's birthday today! Here is a card for him, courtesy of Progressive Fitchburg's official Chronologically Aware Correspondent!

(click to embiggen)

Obama is Brainwashing us with the Tee-Vee!

This starts off slow and boring, so just skip to about 2 minutes in. That's when the crazy kicks into high gear. It gets even better around 4:50.

And people wonder why I say that conservatives have lost touch with reality.*


* That's a lie. Nobody wonders.


[UPDATE!] You're probably wondering how Joe the Plumber Phone Sex Operator fits into Obama's mind-control-via-digital-tv-converter-box machinations.

As it turns out, he's part of the conspiracy!



We're through the looking glass, people.

Redneck Grand Jury Indicts Obama!

Wow, it's hard to even know where to start with this.

It's a WorldNetDaily (known to some as WorldNutDaily, WingNutDaily, etc.) article about various people who are trying to use legal challenges to get rid of B. Hussein Obama (known to some as "The Usurper").

It's a boring article that's not worth reading, except for the awesome part about these wacky rednecks who created their own grand jury in order to... ummm... subvert the government?

Georgia resident Carl Swensson, whose work is detailed on his Rise up for America website[*], told WND he got tired of the issues over Obama's eligibility, as well as his performance in office.

"I took it upon myself to find as many patriots as I could across the state, for the purpose of seating 25 for a grand jury," he said.

What is it with crazy conservatives wanting so desperately to be a part of the legal system while at the same time not understanding a damn thing about it?

It's bad enough having to deal with all these dipshits who think that taxation is unconstitutional, now we actually have to deal with people trying to use the fucking Magna Carta to depose the president. Seriously.

Swensson cites on his website as authority for the grand jury the Magna Carta, the bill of rights that formed the foundation of British common law on which U.S. law is based.

See, the Magna Carta gave barons the right to depose the king if they could get 25 of them to agree to do so.

Obviously there's no difference at all between 13th century British nobility and a bunch of pigfuckers in 21st century Georgia, or between an elected president and a hereditary monarch, so the legal argument is totally sound!

He said the members were chosen, sworn in and observed all of the rules of procedure. Swensson declined to elaborate on the specific allegations about Obama, telling WND that remains confidential at this point because of the possibility of a prosecution.

Well, that's disappointing. But the mention of "eligibility" makes it pretty obvious that this is at least in part about Obama's birth certificate.

Apparently the same detachment from reality that makes people think that Obama is a space alien also makes them believe that there's an actual possibility of this wingnut masturbation fantasy resulting in a prosecution. I wish there were, because it would be incredibly funny to watch.

Be careful, though! These "patriots" mean business!

However, the website explanation of the procedure includes some intimidating language.

"If the government does not amend the error within 40 days after being shown the error, then the four members shall refer the matter to the remainder of the grand jury," it says. "The grand jury may distrain and oppress the government in every way in their power, namely, by taking the homes, lands, possessions, and any way else they can until amends shall have been made according to the sole judgment of the grand jury."

Let me translate that from the legalese for you. Here's what they're actually saying:

"If the government doesn't kick B. Hussein Obama (A.K.A. Barry Soetoro) out of the presidency and back to Islamistan in 40 days, then we're going to take over. When we take over we will throw a giant fit, and seize your trailers, trailer parks, NASCAR collectible mugs, and anything we can fit in the back of our pickups."

Them's fightin' words!

I really, really hope they follow through with their threats. The government must see the light, or these brave patriots will be forced to overthrow it!

All 25 of them.


* You absolutely must go to that website. They start by spelling the president's name wrong in the page title, and it just gets funnier from there on out!

Local pastor thinks Obama is the Antichrist?

One of my many bad habits is reading the Shepherd's Corner column in the Fitchburg Pride. Often it's the only thing I'll actually bother to read in the Pride, because it's such a good source of hilarity.

In this almost-weekly feature, we get words of "wisdom" from various community ministers/pastors/priests/whatever. Oddly, I haven't been asked to contribute yet despite the fact that I am an ordained Reverend, and a devoted Pastafarian.

I blame prejudice.

Some of my fellow religious leaders are pretty good, though. Well, one is. I have no complaints with the Unitarian lady. Most of the others are various levels of crazy. Some are just a little crazy, with their bible-quotin' and all. Others are quite crazy.

Into this latter category is where I'm putting Pastor Steve Mayo, the guy behind this odd column. Allow me to quote a bit:

Over the last few weeks, and especially since the election, President elect Barack Obama has been labeled everything from the Messiah to the Antichrist as people try to make sense of what happened on Nov. 4. Is he the great American hope who will make every wrong right in the world, judgment on America for its apostasy, or somewhere in between?

Umm... wow. Where to even start?

Pastor Crazypants is right that some lunatics call Obama the Antichrist, and actually are serious about it. But "the Messiah"? Huh?

The only people who I've ever heard use the term "Messiah" when talking about Obama are right-wing assholes. They're not using that word because they believe he's a messiah, they're using it to make fun of people who are just too deeply into Obama. In fairness, there are a fair number of people who are too into Obama, and they deserve to be made fun of.

Regardless, I don't think there's an Obama supporter out there who thinks of him as the "Messiah" in a religious sense. It's a figure of speech, Pastor!

Also, "judgment on America for its apostasy"???

Apostasy is basically leaving one's religion. America has never had a religion to leave. It's a secular state, and has never been a "Christian nation", no matter what lies you've been told.

It's creepy to talk about apostasy in this manner. It brings to mind Islamic theocracies, where apostasy is often punishable by death. I wonder what "judgment" this pastor thinks America has earned.

Okay, that first paragraph was pretty dumb. But maybe Pastor Steve will now redeem himself by saying how the people saying these things are stupid!

Those who think of him as the Messiah need to think again. Those who think that just moving our country to one political party or the other will solve our problems need to look back at history to see just how false that statement is. Having one party in control of every branch of government has never brought about a utopian United States.

Argh!

Okay, ignore for a moment the fact that nobody actually thinks of Obama as "the Messiah." Why are only those people (who don't exist in the first place) taken to task? What about the nutballs who call him the Antichrist? You don't have any problem with them?

Apparently not, because at no point are they mentioned again. I can only assume that Pastor Steve endorses the view that Obama is the Antichrist.

I do enjoy Pastor Steve's views on one-party government being a bad thing, though. He's quite right that it's "never brought about a utopian United States." Of course, neither has two-party rule. Or anything else. But hell, I can't argue with the facts!

The rest of his column is also wonderfully crazy and idiotic. This is a man who's not at all in touch with reality. For instance:

W blame an outgoing president for our inabilitto see that we are gettininto mortg we
cannot afford and buying things we cannot pay for.

Put a bigass [Sic] after that whole thing.

What it's attempting to convey appears to be that people blame Bush for their own overspending. The jerks!

Except they don't. They might blame Bush for the culture of excessive deregulation that led to banks going all willy-nilly offering mortgages to people they knew couldn't pay for them. That's a very different thing.

What other crap can this guy spew?

We murder and call it choice. Lust is confused with love. We as a society are turning around. Instead of addressing the issues at hand, we are trying to free our conscience and make everything acceptable. I have heard it said regarding different sins that, "I was born this way."

I would very much like to know what "different sins" he's heard people say "I was born this way" about. I mean besides homosexuality, which is obviously what he's referring to. Perhaps he'll tell us?

We were all born this way. We are all born sinful. Left unchecked, we will run towards sin and away from God. We often prefer to create a god in our own image, rather than obeying the Lord "who was, and is, and is to come" (Rev. 4:8).

So we're all gay? How am I going to break this to my wife?

Pastor Everyone-is-gay then goes on to ask a very important question.

Where do you stand? Are you going to look to a man to solve our problems, or are you going to look to God? If we don't turn back to God, then even help with the best of intentions isn't going to make a difference.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else here, but I'll give an answer.

I'm going to look not to "a man" to solve our problems, but to multiple men and women. Because the only way problems ever get solved is when people get off their asses (or knees) and do something about them.

God isn't going to fix the economy, God isn't going to stop the war, God isn't going to make sure you have a merry Christmas. God's going to do what God has always done: absolutely nothing.

What is this pathetic form of defeatism practiced by some Christians? If you want a better world, get out there and do something about it. Every minute you spend praying to your god is a minute you're not doing something to improve the world. Yes, you can do both if you really want. But why waste time?

Apparently Pastor Steve just wants you to sit around praying and filling up his collection tin instead of working to improve the world. No thanks!

I was wondering if all Pastor Give-up's sermons are this bad, so I went to his church's website. As it turns out, it's the filthiest thing I've ever seen in my life!

Let's say you want to listen to some of Pastor Steve's inspiring thoughts about giving up on the world. So you go to the Sermons page. Being concerned about computer security, you have Javascript disabled in your browser (perhaps via the NoScript Firefox extension). You're treated to this!

(click to embiggen)
Now, that "Importance of Godly Women" sermon sounds okay, at first.

But how could it possibly compare to "duck hot gay love sex", whatever that is? What do they really sell in "celebrity sex stores"? Why are they saying that "scotland sucks"? These could be interesting sermons too!

Perhaps I should try another page. Hey, that "Megawatt Youth Ministries" thing sounds exciting too!

Wow, it sure is! Corn wives rule!

Virtually every page on the site is like this. A little bit of churchy stuff up top, then tons of links to places you really shouldn't visit taking up the rest of the page.

I was going to send a nice email to Pastor Steve alerting him that the site has been compromised by spammers and that they'll need to have somebody clean it up.

But then I thought back to Pastor Steve's advice. If we rely on humans for website security, we won't get anywhere!

So instead of alerting him to the problem, which would probably result in a sinful human having to clean things up, I'm just going to pray to God that He will use his magic to fix the site and get rid of all the suspicious links to "squirting chicks" and "hentai cat girl galleries".

I figure it should be pretty easy for him, being God and all. And it's the way Pastor Steve would want it.



[Update] - I removed the links to the site. There's obfuscated Javascript involved, and just in case it's up to something nastier than link farming I don't want to send people there and get them infected.

If you really want to see the site, it's at http://www.elmstcc.org. I don't recommend visiting unless you disable Javascript first, though. You wouldn't see the fun stuff with it on anyway.

Also, God has apparently not gotten around to fixing it, so I did alert the contact address on the site. I guess we humans will just have to fix our own problems, again.

Racism now dead! (According to racists.)

There's one thing about the media coverage of Obama's victory that's been really getting on my nerves. It started basically as soon as his victory was announced and hasn't stopped since. It's the excessive focus on the fact that a black man is the President Elect.

Yes, it's historic. Yes, it represents a milestone. Yes, it's deeply meaningful, especially to those who lived through segregation. It's fine to recognize those things.

What's not so good is to pretend like this represents the end of racism. Obama is not the first black man to achieve great things, he's just the first black man to be elected President. Racism hasn't gone away.

Even more annoying is when the people claiming that Obama's victory represents the end of racism are blatantly racist themselves.

Let's go to my new favorite source of crazy idiots and swipe some comments from the S&E's commenting forums!

Here's a lovely one to start off with!

i better never again hear j.jackson ,al sharpton or the commie press say america is a racist nation or ill take my mc cain signs and put them where the sun dont shine.

Yeah, clearly it's not a racist nation. It's just one where some impotent jackass threatens to sodomize black leaders with campaign signs for saying things he doesn't like.

Surely that's just one nutjob, right? He probably got condemned by all the other posters in our new non-racist America!

Or not:

I hear you, what will Black people say now we have a Black president??. No more Moaning, no more Whitey is holding me back.

I wont hold my breath though!!

Yeah, stupid whiny black people!

Wait, I've never actually heard a black person say that (except perhaps ironically). Have these idiotic commenters ever actually talked to a black person? My bet is no.

And there's yet more support for our initial comment. Here's someone else who's creepily eager to sodomize black leaders with yard signs.

Let me know when you do I'll take some of those signs! and help you place them.

From the same author of that comment (someone who goes by "QEII" and claims to have voted for Obama, while also predicting the Illuminati will kill him in six months. Seriously.), we get this gem:

I am hearing a lot of feedback that the blacks are making this racist.

Damn those blacks for causing racism! Don't they realize that if they'd just be white there would be no racism at all? It's all their fault!

It gets much worse. Here's some poor discriminated-against white dude whining about how much black people suck:

well, I've been discriminated against since i was a teenager and the funny thing is I'm white! The people to blame for the bad habits of the black people is their parents, parents parents, and so on. Older black people will tell their children "See that white kid? Knock them down cause your grandmother was knocked down."
Give me a break blacks! I never did anything to you and all of you are living the past.....already this morning; there is discriminating going on. Whoopy that a 102 year old black woman got to vote! Why didn't she vote for the Presidents before? Take advantage of your rights when the white presidents got them for you instead of waiting for a black President is in office.....so, who is the stupid race? Gosh! Stupid, dumbest dang people ever....oh! And you are not African American unless you moved here from Africa! And on top of that; i wouldn't be advertising that your African American just to the fact that the place is a disease for all and rapes happen along with Aids. Yeah right! Whey would I want to state I came from Africa!??!!? That's embarrassing! Get a life and get out there and pick cotton like your should be doing!

There's nothing I can even add to that. I'll just move on, while hoping this individual lives a long and profoundly miserable life.

Want some more nonsense? Sure!

Bill Bennet on CNN said it BEST

This is a great Country......Lets "hope" he is at "least" a good president.

I totally agree,....I didn't vote for the big-O, but I am glad he has one cause now "we are no longer a Racist-country!"

time to get rid of Quota's, Equal-Oppurtunity, and all the other special programs......Obama either showed us that Hard-work and perserverance got him there..........or he got there by not having to be the best, just very tan.

Yeah, most of that is gibberish, and I'm not even entirely sure what he was trying to say. Still, it's another racist douchewad saying America isn't racist. Better yet, he's trying to use Obama's victory as an excuse to do away with "Equal-Oppurtunity" [Sic]!

Listen, morons. If anything, Obama won despite being black.

Did some people vote for him because he's black? Yes. Just like some people voted for McCain because he's white. Or more significantly, just like some people voted for McCain because Obama is black.

I can't say I know just how many people fit into each category. I do strongly suspect that far fewer people voted for Obama because he's black than voted for McCain because Obama is black. But really, race isn't a significant deciding factor for anyone but a small group of people.

Yes, Obama got the overwhelming majority of the black vote. So did Kerry. So did Gore. So has every Democrat for the last few decades. That matters a whole hell of a lot more than race. So does political skill. There are reasons that Alan Keyes, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton never became serious contenders. If people really voted for Obama based on race, wouldn't they have done better?

I could pull more quotes from that forum, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Obama being elected President doesn't mean racism isn't still a problem in this country. Hell, there were white supremacists who supported him.

In fact, many white supremacists are hoping that Obama's election will set off a "white backlash".

PEARL, Miss. — They're not exactly rooting for Barack Obama, but prominent white supremacists anticipate a boost to their cause if he becomes the first black president. His election, they say, would trigger a backlash -- whites rising up, a revolution of sorts -- that they think is long overdue.

He'd be a "visual aid," says former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, in trying to bring others around to their view that whites have lost control of America. Obama's election, says another, would jar whites into action, writing letters, handing out pamphlets rather than sitting around complaining.

Yeah, racism isn't dead. It's alive and well.

Obama's victory may mark a milestone in race relations, but it sure as hell hasn't ended racism. There's a lot of work left to be done, and a lot of bigots standing in the way. Hopefully we'll get there one day, but it's going to take awhile. Pretending things are better than they actually are doesn't benefit anyone.

Yay!

It's over, and the people and questions I wanted to win actually won for a change! Sure there were a few things in other parts of the country that didn't turn out perfectly, but overall pretty good.

So it's happy dance time!

John McCain is a Socialist!

Here's a boring video of John McCain answering some idiot's question about progressive tax policies.



That's right, folks. John McCain is totally in favor of the redistribution of wealth. This is also true of every other politician in the country (except maybe Ron Paul, who is a moron). McCain even explicitly states that it's not Socialism!

As for Palin, she's said this:

“Alaska was conceding too much, and chipping away at our sovereignty. And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”

"Share the wealth," huh? Socialist!

So why do McCain and Palin keep accusing Obama of being a Socialist for supporting progressive taxation, when they also support it (along with the vast majority of the population)?

Because they're filthy liars, of course. Duh.

The Myth of a Conservative Central Mass.

Having grown up and first become politically aware in the Fitchburg area, I can't count the number of times I've heard people describe central Massachusetts as "conservative."

Liberals have complained about it, just as conservatives have lauded it. Both I think recognized that central Massachusetts is a bit more conservative than the Boston area or western Mass.

Hopefully they also realized that being more conservative than those two very liberal areas isn't saying much. It's not like central Mass. is on par with central Alabama or anything.

Still, a superficial look at the local media might lead the casual observer to believe that the Fitchburg area is actually conservative.

There's a crappy conservative newspaper, we've had some far-right radio hosts on local stations, and the cranky conservative contingent is quite good at leaving their wingnutty comments all over the local internet. The local blog authors are still mostly moderate or liberal-leaning, but the commenters can be batshit crazy.

What this all brings me to is this article in the Worcester Telegram. It's about the presidential race and the money going into it from central Mass. Seems Obama is by a large margin the favorite of this supposedly "conservative" section of the state.

For instance:

Through September, 364 residents of Worcester, Fitchburg, Leominster, Auburn, Shrewsbury and Westboro made 1,173 contributions of $200 or more to Mr. Obama’s campaign totaling $192,749. That amount is almost three times the $72,809 that 101 McCain supporters in those communities gave in 193 contributions of $200 or more in that same time period, according to campaign filings with the Federal Election Commission.

In Southbridge, alone among the seven communities, Mr. McCain out-raised Mr. Obama, collecting $7,650 from three donors to Mr. Obama’s $1,259 from five donors.

Throughout the state, Mr. Obama received $12.1 million in campaign contributions through August, more than triple Mr. McCain’s $3.6 million in contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ Web site.

Yep, Obama more popular than McCain. Shocking news, right? Apparently only Southbridge even gives a shit about McCain, and that mostly looks like three rich Republicans and not some sort of groundswell of support.

When it comes to Fitchburg, we find an even bigger difference.

Keith Stone, a 46-year-old Fitchburg resident, who retired last year, contributed 14 times to Mr. Obama’s campaign, giving a total of $640.

Mr. Stone said Mr. Obama should be president because he will change current political policies.

“To have John McCain admit on TV that he voted 90 percent of the time with the president showed that voting for him is like asking for another four years of the same policies,” Mr. Stone said.

Mr. Stone said residents of Fitchburg, whose mayor may turn off certain streetlights to help manage the city budget, cannot afford four more years like recent ones. He and 18 other Fitchburg residents contributed $9,691 through Sept. 30 to Mr. Obama through 120 contributions, more than 12 times the amount given to Mr. McCain in the same period in that city.

Twelve times! Holy crap!

Really, this shouldn't be surprising. Fitchburg elected Deval Patrick with an even bigger percentage than he got in the general election. It elected Lisa Wong in a landslide. It is basically a pretty liberal town, at least as far as its voting record goes.

So why does it come across as conservative? Obviously, the newspaper doesn't help. But it goes beyond that. There's an old guard of conservative douchebags in Fitchburg. They're all over the media, they spend a lot of time writing letters to the editor and making inane comments on the internet.

They're the people who appear whenever a change (sometimes painful, usually necessary) needs to be made, kicking and screaming and demanding that things would be so much better if only we had an old white guy in charge. They're the ones who think "lifelong Fitchburg resident" is a qualification for public office, not a detriment.

If you get in an argument with this old guard, you will lose. Not because you're wrong. You're not. You'll lose because they can afford to spend ten hours a day writing bullshit about the town, and you don't have the time to debunk each of their idiotic points in turn. They can't win with logic, so they go with bulk.

But you know what? It doesn't matter.

In the end, most people in this area are on your side. Sure, there are plenty of conservative cranks ready to make a lot of noise. But nobody really listens to them. They're enjoying their own little echo chamber where they can talk about how Obama is a secret scary Muslim and Lisa Wong is all about self-promotion, not public service. They're just a little cult of ideology. And have about the same basis in reality as your average cult.

In the meantime, you and I should celebrate. We're actually not the minority. We may be the loud ones. The ones who make blogs and get in arguments and run campaigns and generally work to make things better. But we're just the representatives of the majority of people in this area, who basically support the same ideas.

Conservatism is a dying ideology. That's as true in central Massachusetts as it is in the rest of the state. At this point, that may even be the rest of the country.

Things are changing for the better. Enjoy. And keep up the good work.

As the Fonz goes, so goes the country.

Still on the topic of endorsements, it is imperative that you watch this video. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, at least jump to 2:15 and watch that part.



Am I the only one who finds Fonzie deeply creepy here? Please tell me I'm not alone in this.

Everyone endorses Obama!

Well holy crap.

Going against type, the Sentinel has endorsed Obama. Sure, they also ran two syndicated editorials slandering him at the same time, but still!

It was already pretty clear that conservatives who actually have a shred of intelligence have defected to Obama, but apparently even parts of the crazy base are falling for Barry now.

Just off the top of my head, Republican defectors to Obama include Colin Powell, Bill Weld, Christopher Buckley, Christopher Hitchens, Scott McClellan, Lincoln Chafee, and a bunch more.

Hell, if circa-2000 John McCain suddenly time-traveled to 2008, he'd probably endorse Obama too. Which would explain all those "Obama is awesome!" ads the McCain campaign put out earlier this year.

So who likes McCain? Well, there's Joe Lieberman. Also this idiot:



That's not very good company.

Vote for Obama, the choice of non-crazy people everywhere!

Post-debate Whatever

Here is the single best thing to come out of last night's debate:


Awesome.

Most of the rest of it was babbling about "Joe the Plumber," plus the usual lies and obfuscations and pretty words that mean very little. The most exciting moment was when I really pissed off my friend's cat, who tried to maul me. He couldn't though, because he was declawed, and that must have been pretty frustrating. I feel bad about the whole thing. Sorry I was a dick to you, cat!

The results of the debate are pretty typical. If you already planned to vote for Obama, you still plan to do so. Ditto for McCain. If you're undecided at this point in the game you're probably so clueless you'll either miss the election entirely because you got confused about what month it is or you'll get lost trying to find your polling place and somehow drive into a lake. So who really cares what you think?

There are two things I want to mention, though. They both keep coming up, and they're both really aggravating.

This is a picture of an overhead projector:

This is a picture of the Adler Planetarium's Zeiss Mark VI projector, which John McCain has repeatedly referred to as an "overhead projector":


Yeah, pretty big difference there.

Here's a page where you can donate to help them renovate the Zeiss projector. Feel free to send them some money, by the way. Planetaria are awesome.

Anyway, know why they need a donation page? Because while money for the planetarium was in a budget proposed by Obama, it never passed. The Adler Planetarium got no money to update their 40 year old projector.

Yet McCain repeatedly brings it up. It's bad enough that he thinks planetaria are "foolishness" (that is actually the word he used). But in his whining about someone daring to try to fund science education, he can't even be bothered to tell the truth, which is that the funding never passed. Argh!

It's part of a weird pattern of Republicans hating astronomy, for reasons I can't fathom.

McCain hates planetaria, Nathan Bech hates telescopes, Sarah Palin presumably hates the concept of heliocentrism. I guess the astonomers have it a little easier than the biologists, at least. Hell, nearly 70% of Republicans reject evolution.

I wonder why America is falling behind the rest of the world in science.

The second thing that irritates me into calcifying a black pearl of fury is this quote from McCain about ACORN. This is basically the new Republican talking point/excuse for why McCain is going to lose.

[ACORN] is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

Oh my god what total bullshit that is! Forget Diebold and the largescale disenfranchisement of potentially millions of people, what's important is that a few people might have registered "Mickey Mouse" to vote. So now when Mickey Mouse shows up to vote he will destroy democracy!

Here's a good explanation of ACORN and "voter fraud". In a nutshell, yes there have been cases of false registrations. This was fraud against ACORN, not voter fraud. There's no evidence anyone ever voted under the false registrations, someone was just trying to make some extra cash by registering people who don't exist.

In almost all cases, it was ACORN itself which drew attention to the fraudulent registrations. Their only crime (and this is only a crime in the eyes of Republicans) is trying to register poor people to vote. That's not a reliable Republican demographic!

Making this all the more annoying is that I can pinpoint when I first heard a Republican shill badmouthing ACORN. It was on NPR, in a piece about voter suppression by the Michigan GOP.

The shill downplayed the Republican attempts at voter suppression while also claiming that ACORN commits voter fraud for the Democrats. It was probably on September 11th that I heard it, judging from the date on this NPR blog entry.

Apparently it took the Republicans about two weeks to get their talking points coordinated, because it wasn't until around the 27th that attacking ACORN really started to take off.



The accusations are obvious bullshit to anyone who actually bothers to look at the facts. They're just a smokescreen to try to divert attention from the well-sourced evidence of Republican voter suppression.

Sadly, debunking lies like this just tends to make people believe them more strongly. Cognitive dissonance is a terrible thing.

Anyway, Obama won the debate. Yay!


[Update 6:38 PM] Want to know more about what the hell is up with that picture up top? Go here and be enlightened!

Jerome Corsi, world's greatest idiot

You may or may not know who Jerome Corsi is by name, but you've almost certainly heard about his works.

See, this is the asshole behind the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." Same guy who recently published the book "Obama Nation", which is a nice compendium of lies and idiocy. Want someone to thank for the stupid emails your grandmother sends you claiming Obama's a Muslim? Corsi's your man.

He's also a 9/11 "truther", which of course means he's a gullible idiot. Oh, and he made news just recently for getting detained in Kenya for not having his papers in order, while in the country on some dumbass anti-Obama stunt.

He's also a favorite of the worst "news" organization in the world, WorldNetDaily. They love him!

In fact, here's a fun article in WorldNetDaily about Corsi and his devastating "proof" that Obama is all buddy-buddy with Kenya's Raila Odinga. Though in typical WND fashion, Odinga is referred to as "ruthless, foreign thug." Both those adjectives are intended as epithets.

What's Corsi's proof of this connection? Emails, of course! Which we can happily see for ourselves in shitty-resolution scans of printouts of them! Let's look at them!

Here's the first one:

In case you can't make it out, I'll transcribe that for you:

Subject: Let's share a dream!

Hello brother,

I will kindly wish that all our correspondence handled by Mr Mark Lippert. I have already instructed him. This will be for my own security both for now and in future.

Faithfully,
Obama

How damning!

Apparently not only is Obama secretly best friends with Odinga, he's also a Nigerian email scammer!

No native English speaker uses the phrase "I will kindly wish." Not to mention leaving out numerous words (like "be" before "handled by" and "the" between "in" and "future"). And seriously, do we really think Obama signs his emails "Obama" and not "Senator Obama" or "Barack" (for friends/foreign dictators)?

The second email is almost as bad!
I'm not even going to transcribe that one, but let me point out a few things.

"mark.lippert.obama.senate.gov" is not an email address. Sure, maybe that's just a typo. Mysterious foreign Obama sure makes a lot of them.

He also has his email program set up really weirdly, since the first time around his return address wasn't capitalized and the second time it was. Nothing suspicious about that!

The fact of the matter is that even if these emails had been written by a competent forger and not someone on a break from sending out Nigerian 419 scams, there'd be no reason to believe them. They're emails, presented without headers (also forgeable, but it's not like these people are competent), context, or really anything at all that would actually tie them to Obama. Forging an email is about the easiest thing in the world.

Yet WorldNetDaily considers these obvious fakes "Proof" that Obama backs Odinga. And what WND prints gets reprinted by Drudge, and Fox, and all the other right-wing shills out there who care more about someone confirming their biases than actual facts.

Well, I have "proof" of something almost as devastating!



Quick, someone tell Drudge about this!

Presidential Debate Liveblog!

Hey, it's a presidential debate between John "McNasty" McCain and Barack Hussein Obama! With commentary from me for some reason!

Will liveblogging it be fun? Probably yes for like the first 15 minutes, then I'll likely get annoyed and sick of the whole deal, but will keep going because I'm a masochist.

Complicating matters, I will be totally sober during the debate, as my body has recently decided that alcohol == headaches. This will make the debate remarkably less enjoyable, and I don't recommend that anyone follow my lead. In fact, I recommend you take a drink every time you hear the word "maverick." It will help dull the pain.

I'm going to be watching the debate online via Hulu, who will be using this as their first ever live stream! So maybe we'll get some awesome technical difficulties along the way and I can call the whole thing off. That would be pretty sweet.

Incidentally, tonight's moderator will be Tom Brokaw, NBC's liaison to the McCain campaign. Damn that liberal bias!

Okay, here we go!

8:45 - Yeah, it's 15 minutes early. I wanted to be ready. Also, I started watching the Tina Fey thingy on Hulu here and just discovered that at the end she says "maverick" in case you're playing a drinking game! I did not know that when I wrote that shit up above!
8:51 - Now I'm just watching this:Way to be exciting, Hulu!
8:58 - Okay, timer's over and it's beginning and I'm treated to several terrible commercials. I think they're just streaming whatever dumb shit is on NBC right now.
9:00 - Yes, we will be having "undecided voters" asking the questions this evening. No mention if they're illiterate too or just regular morons.
9:03 - Brokaw is getting all down on the economy. "We don't know where the bottom is." Hee.
9:03 - Some bald guy sitting in the bald section asks about bailing out bald people. Obama: "It's the Republicans' fault you bald guys are suffering."
9:05 - Obama has steps: 1) Fire fat cats 2) Reform system.
9:06 - McCain thinks it's all about energy independence and "keeping taxes low." The question was about bailing out normal bald guys, dude!
9:07 - Oh, the actual plan is buying everyone's house. That makes perfect sense.
9:08 - McCain will not appoint Tom Brokaw to be Secretary of the Treasury or whatever. That passes for humor. He also thinks the CEO of eBay "inspires trust and confidence."
9:10 - Obama likes Warren Buffet, then makes fun of McCain for thinking the fundamentals of the economy are sound.
9:11 - Some guy asks a question I missed because my dog is being obnoxious. McCain talks about Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, blaming Obama for encouraging them?
9:14 - Obama "McCain's all about deregulation and is a big fat liar but I'm trying to look dignified so I won't actually say that. But his campaign chair's a lobbyist for Fannie Mae, so nyah."
9:16 - Brokaw: "Are you saying the economy is going to get worse before it gets better?" Obama: "No, blah blah blah." WRONG.
9:17 - Same question to McCain, same basic answer but stutters a lot and is still trying to make up for 3 weeks ago by calling American workers the "fundamentals" of the economy.
9:18 - Some southern woman: "How can we trust either of you when both parties are responsible for this big clusterfuck we're in?" THANK YOU STUPID WOMAN FOR YOUR DEEPLY PROBING QUESTION.
9:20 - Barry: "Yeah, we suck. Here's a bunch of empty gibberish meant to placate you since you didn't bother to ask a real question."
9:21 - McNasty: "I'm a reformer! I love Joe Lieberman!"
9:23 - Oh my god he won't shut up.
9:24 - Brokaw, "Health care, energy, or entitlement reform, put them in order of importance!" This is a question?
And yes, I think Brokaw is drunk.
9:25 - McCain won't put them in order, he just says they're all important. Obama's cool with prioritizing, energy #1, health care #2, education #3.
Wait, was education a choice?
9:28 - Some old lady with AOL wants to know which animals the candidates will sacrifice to Ba'al.
9:30 - McCain wants to sacrifice earmarks. So he's killing a pig. Probably Babe.
Also says "We're not rifle shots here, we're Americans." which makes no damn sense.
9:30 - Obama: Remember 9/11? We really should have sacrificed back then instead of shopping like idiots. YES, BUT WHAT ANIMAL?

9:33 - Brokaw: "EVERYONE'S DRUNK!!!" This is somehow related to the economy.
9:34 - OMG Obama said some people are living "high on the hog." Why is he so sexist about Sarah Palin's lipstick?
9:35 - McCain's dementia kicks in: "Obama wants to nail Jello to the wall like Herbert Hoover... Protectionism... we'll get to that... he wants to increase taxes... small business are going to cut jobs... the economy is bad..." He moves his fist during the whole thing like his Jeopardy buzzer is broken.
9:37 - Brokaw won't let Obama respond to McCain's crazy, and starts making up questions. Brokaw asks about reforming Medicare and Social Security because the Greatest Generation is really concerned about them.
9:39 - Obama: "I'm going to ignore your dumbass question, Tom. Instead, here's all the ways McCain just lied to you."
9:40 - Man, McCain and Brokaw sure are chummy. McCain: "I'll answer your question." Then he doesn't.
9:42 - Someone assassinate Tom Brokaw now, please.
9:43 - Audience lady asks how we're going to move fast on environmental issues and "green jobs."
9:43 - McCain: "Seriously, I love Joe Lieberman. Also nuclear power!" Because environmentalists really love nuclear power.
9:45 - Obama sees the "green jobs" as being just like computers. Yes, we'll have a big bubble when everyone gets involved, which will then burst. Obama also likes nuclear power, but other stuff too.
9:47 - The splitscreen reveals the horror:
9:48 - Ooh, even better!
9:50 - Question: "Should healthcare be treated as a commodity?"
9:50 - Obama has mastered the "Yeah that sucks, here's another plan" response. "If you like what you have, keep it. If you don't have health insurance, you can have ours. Also, McCain's plan sucks." THIS IS TRUE.
9:53 - McCain thinks putting everything online will make healthcare fine. He wants you to go across state lines for health care. Like a common criminal fleeing the po-po's!
9:54 - McCain thinks people have health insurance that pays for hair transplants. "I might need one of those myself." Nobody laughs.
9:55 - Brokaw: "Health care: Privilege, right, or responsibility?" WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?
9:55 - McCain: "Responsibility, but we're not giving it to you. And Obama wants to fine you!!!"
9:56 - Obama says it should be a right and looks totally frustrated that everything McCain says about him is a lie. Then tries to correct the lies. Tough luck, Hopey, nobody cares about your dirty liberal facts!
9:57 - I hope you commenters are keeping up the cleverness. I can't read all your comments because this liveblogging is surprisingly difficult. You guys should take over.

9:59 - Foreign policy time. Some guy named Phil asks how economic stress will affect our nation's ability to be a peacemaker in the world. No $$$$ means no bullets!
10:00 - McCain: "we have gone to all four corners of the world and shed blood... so we are peacemakers." What?
10:01 - Obama goes off on how all our wars suck. McCain is scribbling something and looking grumpy that Obama doesn't love war as much as he does. Why do you hate war, Hopey?
10:03 - So the answer to Phil's question is "we're fucked!"
10:04 - Why is buttplug Brokaw asking questions? Stop breaking the rules, Tom!
Anyway, he asks when it's cool to go invade other countries. I think he's pissed that Hopey's down on war.
10:05 - Hopey says we'd stop Hitler. Smart move! Also, remarkably good ideas for Darfur.
10:06 - McNasty looks pissed and is saying "my friends" way too much. Stop raining on his war!
10:07 - Old white guy says we need "a cool hand" in charge. The most impulsive man on the planet, with a huge gambling problem, thinks he's a "cool hand"!
10:08 - To clarify, that was old white guy McCain, not old white guy Brokaw.
10:08 - "Should the US respect Pakistani sovereignity and not pursue Al Qaida there, or should we do them like we did Cambodia?" - some lady.
10:09 - Obama: "Yep, Bush sure fucked that one up pretty awful didn't he? Maybe if he wasn't such a dick we wouldn't have to even worry about that question!" Then, after a lot of talking, he says yeah we'll kill Bin Laden if the Pakistani government won't do it.
10:10 - McCain: "My hero is Teddy Roosevelt... talk softly, big stick.. Obama wants to talk to Pakistan before invading them..." I think he's developing a lisp.
10:12 - Finally, he ends with the exact same policy as Obama.
10:13 - Obama wants a followup and McCain gets pissy and wants his own. Obama's followup: "What the fuck, John McCain? Why do you keep lying about everything I say?"
10:14 - Oooh, Hopey brought up McNasty's "bomb-bomb-bomb Iran" song! This rebuttal right here is where Obama just won the debate.
10:15 - McCain's rebuttal to the rebuttal: "Not true." Then goes into a story about joking with a veteran that stops after "I was joking with a veteran."
10:17 - Brokaw asked some question about Afghanistan I wasn't paying attention to, and the responses are boring. Oh my god I'm going to murder everyone if this doesn't end soon.
10:18 - McCain is hung up on Obama not "admitting he's wrong about Iraq." Yeah, that's going to happen.
10:19 - Some dick on the internet wants to apply pressure to Russia on humanitarian issues without starting another Cold War. McCain takes this opportunity to say Putin is a big KGB apparatchik or whatever. This question is idiotic.
10:20 - Where are all the Code Pink protesters? There must be undecided Code Pink protesters, right?
10:21 - Obama talks about supporting Russia and ex-soviet republics to help keep from having problems in the first place. This is too nuanced! What about Putin's crazy KGB eyes?
10:23 - Brokaw: "Yes or No, is Russian under Putin an evil empire?"
10:24 - Obama: "it's nuanced, you ass!"
10:24 - McCain says "Maybe" and gets a laugh and then goes on for awhile saying nothing at all.
10:25 - Another bald dude asks if we'd wait for UN Security Council approval before defending Israel if Iran attacks Israel. He also wants to know if we would wait for approval from Papa Smurf before rescuing Brainy from Gargamel. He is clearly an undecided voter.
10:26 - McCain: "Hell yes! We'll bomb those fuckers all the time! I love these imaginary questions! Hey, did you see that episode of 24 where Jack Bauer tortured that guy?"
10:27 - Obama: "Maybe we should avoid that in the first place, dumbass. But yeah, if your totally imaginary scenario comes to pass we'll do what we need to do."
10:29 - Last question! From someone in New Hampshire:
"What don't you know and how will you learn it?"
THIS IS THE STUPIDEST QUESTION EVER. THANK YOU NEW HAMPSHIRE FOR SUCKING SO BAD.
10:30 - Obama "Whatever, dummy. Here's some stuff I do know." Then just stump speech for awhile. He does this stuff well. Change, hope, courage, sacrifice, new direction!
10:32 - McCain: "What I don't know is what's going to happen." Also where countries are on the map? Then to the stump speech.
10:33 - Fine, I'll say it for you guys: MAVERICK MAVERICK MAVERICK MAVERICK
10:34 - Oh thank god it's over. Hahaha they both just stood in front of Brokaw's teleprompter!

Okay, I have no clue what that debate was all about. Hey commenters, you rule!

I AM NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN.

Why you shouldn't trust polls

People talk about polls a lot these days. Particularly presidential polls, where we're constantly told that Obama and McCain are "neck and neck."

This makes for more drama in the race, which journalists love. Nothing more boring than a runaway victory, that's for sure.

But is it really neck and neck? Maybe, but you really can't draw that conclusion from all these sucky-ass polls!

Remember the two days after the New Hampshire Democratic primary when everybody in the media suddenly realized that all their polls were incredibly wrong? Those were good days! Then they went right back to believing that their polls were valid and have been beating us over the head with them ever since.

Before I get into why the current polls are so incredibly flawed, let's talk about history a little. You've no doubt seen the famous picture of Harry Truman up there holding up a "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline after the 1948 election. This actually wasn't a polling error, it's just a nice picture. In fact, this screwup was due to a bad extrapolation of early voting returns. Which brings Fox News to mind, for some reason.

More relevant to what I'm talking about is the 1936 presidential race, in which it was at one point determined by the highly respected Literary Digest poll that Alf Landon would win in a landslide.

Remember president Landon? Of course not. FDR beat his brains in. Landon won Maine and Vermont and that's it, FDR got the other 98.5% of the electoral votes. In the popular vote, Roosevelt got 60.8% and Landon trailed almost 25 points behind with 36.5%, one of the biggest victories in modern history. Yikes!

What went wrong?

Well, Literary Digest (which was folded into Time magazine a couple of years later) used idiotic sampling procedures. They only polled their own readers, owners of registered automobiles, and people with telephones.

They did this during the Great Depression, of course. When the only people with cars and phones and with enough disposable income to subscribe to Literary Digest were far wealthier than the average citizen, and therefore more likely to vote Republican.

In modern terms, it would be like the Wall Street Journal running a poll that only counted their subscribers, people who drive Mercedes, and people who eat caviar at least once a week. Totally worthless.

Incidentally, George Gallup had his own poll of 5,000 random people that year and correctly predicted that FDR would win. And we haven't been able to shut up the Gallup polls ever since.

So, how does this relate to our current situation, when Gallup's more statistically-worthwhile polls are commonplace and pollsters have hopefully learned from their prior really stupid mistakes?

Simple: It all comes down to phones once again.

Most political polls are conducted by telephone. Many pollsters (but not all) just call land lines.

It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that in the current presidential race Obama does much better with younger voters and McCain fares better with older voters. This is true not just of these two, but of their political parties. The young mostly vote for Democrats and the old mostly vote for Republicans. It's just the way it goes.

It also shouldn't come as a shock that young people are far more likely to be cell-only while old people love their landlines. Hello, sampling error!

Pew Research recently released a study looking at the cell phones vs landlines issue. It's pretty telling:

Let me particularly point you to the third part of that chart, where they look at Obama vs McCain preference.

Among the landline-only people, you get 46% for Obama and 41% for McCain. Okay, that's not far off what the other polls around this time showed. You get slightly more for Obama in the two groups that have both (landline-mostly and cell-mostly), but it's not really a significant difference.

But among the cell-only group (which is apparently just under 15% of the country) you get a massive shift. It goes up to 61% for Obama and drops to 32% for McCain. That's a big difference!

Yes, you'll also see that the cell-only group is less likely to be registered to vote (still time!) and also slightly less likely to actually vote (maybe not enough time?), but that's not unexpected among the relatively unreliable "youth vote" and is what candidates hope to address with GOTV campaigns.

Polling organizations are aware of these discrepancies, of course. Hell, Public Opinion Quarterly (which I assume most pollsters read) even had a whole issue devoted to the cell phone vs landline problem.

But it's not just about cell-phone only and landline-only people. It's a bit more complex.

The bigger polling firms (like Gallup) use random dialers that don't exclude cell phones. Let's take a look at the methods section of their most recent poll. It's pretty sparse, unfortunately:

For the Gallup Poll Daily tracking survey, Gallup is interviewing no fewer than 1,000 U.S. adults nationwide each day during 2008.

The general-election results are based on combined data from Aug. 24-26, 2008. For results based on this sample of 2,724 registered voters, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Okay, it's good to have a large sample size, and that's a nice low margin of sampling error.

And as you can see, they do call people with cell phones. Though they don't mention how they know that it's cell-phone only. Do they ask anyone with a cell number if they have a landline and dump those people into the landline group? Maybe so. It's tough to know from this tiny little methods section.

The problem goes beyond cell-only and landline, though. It goes into a feature that's present on virtually every cell phone and only present on a relatively small (though growing) number of landlines: Caller ID.

I'd put Caller ID into the "practical difficulties in conducting surveys" category as mentioned in Gallup's disclaimer up there. For a large number of people (myself included), if a number comes up on the Caller ID that I don't recognize, I don't bother answering the phone. This is even more true if I'm out somewhere and my phone rings. Why should I take the time to answer some stranger's call when I know they can just leave me a message if it's important?

So who does answer the phone to talk to pollsters? Lonely people. People with nothing better to do. Invalids. People who are desperate to talk to someone -- anyone -- now that all their friends are dead.

In other words, old people.

Obviously it's not just old people talking to pollsters, but I'd be willing to bet good money that if you look at the median age of people who respond to telephone polling and compare it to the median age of voters, you're going to find at least a 5-10 year discrepancy.

According to RealClearPolitics.com, the likely median age of voters in the 2008 election will be about 44. I've been unable to find good data showing what the media age of responders to telephone polls is, but if anyone can point me to some I'd be mighty grateful.

Even if we give big firms like Gallup the benefit of the doubt and assume they go to great lengths to make their sample match the median age of the voting population (which they should if they want a truly representative sample), we still have a problem! They could do absolutely everything in their power to make the demographics of their sample match the electorate, but they can't do anything about people who just won't take a telephone poll. There are plenty of those people, and there's no reason to assume they have the same views as those who do respond to the polls.

A couple more problems with cell phones I'll just touch on...

First, unlike landlines, cell phones are not tied to one location. Your cellphone number can follow you around for years, so you can quite easily have a number that corresponds to another part of the country entirely.

This is a problem because polls rely on extrapolating your one point of data into a representation of a large number of people living in your area. If you live in Texas but have a Delaware phone number, you're counted as being from Delaware. Not such a big deal if you're doing a nationwide poll, but for anything more local than that then goodbye representative sample!

Second, cell phones generally don't represent a "household" like landlines do. This is perhaps a minor quibble, because polls probably shouldn't be counting the views of whoever answers a landline as being representative of anything beyond that individual, but it happens. My household has three phone numbers (two cells and a landline). Can that skew things? Yeah, but it's probably not huge.

Third, there are indeed still people who don't have a phone number they're reachable at. They may have a limited cell phone that they'll only use for outgoing calls. Or one of those cheapo convenience store phones that they certainly won't waste time talking to a pollster on. How do you think they vote? Probably not for Alf Landon!

There are plenty of problems with polling beyond the ones I've raised here, but I'm also not saying that polls are totally useless (indeed, I often refer to them even in this post). Tracking polls can show trends reasonably well. Standard polls can still give a rough idea of where things stand, and if this election weren't so divided by voter age maybe they'd even be reasonably accurate. And more focused polls can be quite good. But I'm talking about the presidential election here.

And since choice of candidate is divided so much by voter age in this election, most of the polls you're seeing now are likely to be wrong. Don't pay much attention to that +-2% margin of error, because there are so many other factors involved it's likely to be considerably higher.

Now, maybe I'm wrong about all this. Maybe the polls are spot-on and they've already done a flawless job correcting for all these factors. I guess we'll find out in November. But for now, don't read too much into the polls.

Enough with "Experience" already!

Okay, I know the primaries are over in Massachusetts, but I have to get this off my chest.

Hillary Clinton incessantly talks about how she's so super-experienced and Barack Obama "isn't ready" and blah blah blah. I find this more than a little confusing, since it sounds like her primary basis for this claim is that she was First Lady for 8 years during her husband's presidency. And so I guess was super involved in everything he did that was good, and nothing he did that was bad (ahem... NAFTA).

So, I've decided to take a look at the political experience of four political figures: Hillary Clinton (obviously), Barack Obama (also pretty obvious), Nancy Reagan, and Laura Bush. Maybe the last two aren't so obvious, but if Clinton is going to define being First Lady as "experience" then Nancy and Laura may very well have some experience!

Note: I chose both Laura and Nancy because I figured Laura's the most recent first lady, but her president is totally unpopular, while Bill Clinton was popular to the very end. So Nancy represents the crazy-ass wife of a popular (and also crazy-ass) president whose legacy of total incompetence has already been whitewashed! Also, only 2-term first ladies were eligible, because obviously they have twice the experience! Sorry, Barbara Bush!

I'm going to use an elaborate and highly-scientific rating scale I've just made up that scores each candidate on their applicable pre-political life, years in political office, accomplishments, and maybe some other things I'll just make up. It then assigns them an "experienceability" score between 1 and 10. To be fair, I'll go in alphabetical order by last name.

Also, unless otherwise noted, I'm just getting all this information from Wikipedia, which is obviously totally infallible...

Let's begin!

Laura Bush

Pre-politics: Was a teacher and then a librarian. Earlier in life, killed her boyfriend in a car accident after running a stop sign.

Political experience: 6 years as First Lady of Texas, 8 years as First Lady of the country (barring impeachment or assassination). Also:

During her years raising her children, Laura Bush served as a volunteer in a number of organizations, including Friends of the Midland Public Library, the executive board of the Junior League of Midland, the Friends of Dallas Public Library Board Executive Committee, the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) at Preston Hollow Elementary School, and the Community Partners Board of Child Protective Services.

Which sorta counts. I'll assume most of those early volunteer gigs were part-time though, so will just give her 16 years. Not too shabby!

Accomplishments: Launched the "National Book Festival." "became the first person other than a president to deliver the weekly presidential radio address," "was praised by People magazine and others for her elegance and better use of fashion," "appeared on Egypt's version of Sesame Street," suggested a woman (perhaps Harriet Miers?) to her husband for a Supreme Court justice.

Ok, that last one didn't work out so well, but still shows she had power!

Experienceability! 3. I was going to give her a 7 originally because she has 16 years of First-Lady-ness! That's a lot! But it's being a First Lady, which means nothing. Even though apparently she influenced decisions. Still, she has experience killing people, which I'm sure would come in handy!

Hillary Clinton

Jeez, Wikipedia, your entry is too long! But I will resist the lure to use Conservapedia's shorter-and-totally-not-biased entry and slog through!

Pre-politics: Umm... She was a girl scout. Volunteered for Barry Goldwater. Went to Wellesley (hey an ex of mine went there and became a total whore!) and joined the Wellesley Young Republicans. Then worked "sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez." (I don't know what "sliming salmon" means but it sounds dirty and possibly lesbionic...) Then she went to Yale Law School and became a lawyer, the end.

Political experience: 12 (not entirely consecutive) years as First Lady of Arkansas, 8 years as First Lady of the US, 7 years as US Senator for New York. That's 7 years of being an elected politician and 20 years of being married to someone who happened to be either governor or president. Not bad!

Accomplishments: As first lady she most notably had that health care reform thing which totally failed to go anywhere or do anything. Does that count? Also she managed some crisis with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow at her side.

In the Senate she's on a bunch of committees. Supported going into Iraq and Afghanistan. Has spent some time bad-mouthing videogames. Also is running for president, which gives her one up on Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan.

Experienceability! 6. Well, she's only been in elected office for 7 years. Sleeping with the president doesn't count, especially when he's getting blowjobs from the interns and all your well-meaning plans go nowhere as First Lady. Still, you're beating Laura Bush!

Barack Obama

Pre-politics: Grew up in Honolulu and Indonesia. Which makes idiots on the internet think he's a Muslim. Went to Occidental College for two years, then Columbia, where he majored in political science "with a specialization in international relations." Was a lecturer on constitutional law from 1993-2004.

Political experience: Illinois State Senate for 8 years, US Senate for 3. Absolutely zero time married to any political bigwigs, which is bound to hurt him.

Accomplishments: As a state politician: ethics reforms, welfare reform, subsidies for children, health care stuff, "led the passage of legislation mandating videotaping of homicide interrogations, and a law to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they stopped."

US Senator: Wikipedia is baffling, so here:

Obama successfully introduced two initiatives bearing his name. "Lugar-Obama" expands the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and anti-personnel mines. The "Coburn-Obama Transparency Act" provides for the web site USAspending.gov, managed by the Office of Management and Budget. The site lists all organizations receiving Federal funds from 2007 onward and provides breakdowns by the agency allocating the funds, the dollar amount given, and the purpose of the grant or contract. In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the "Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act," marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor

So yeah, Nunn-Lugar...

He's on the Foreign Relations Committee too.

And did a bunch of other stuff, but I'm starting to get bored of this post, so just read it yourself if you want.

Experienceability! 7. This was tough to decide. He's got 11 years as an elected official, which beats Clinton's 7 and Bush's none. But some were on the state level, which is sort of wussy. Still, at least we know people vote for him. But he's never fucked a president (as far as we know). Nevertheless, I capriciously give him a 7.

Nancy Reagan

Okay, I admit it. Having Nancy Reagan as a part of this contest was just so I could use this totally awesome picture of her sitting on Mr. T's lap, awkwardly smooching his head.

For that alone, she gets an 11 in my "experienceabilty!" scale.

Nancy Reagan for President!