httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
hat tip to NRO & the Llama Butchers
“I want to steer markets.”
“I want them set free!”
Nice visual play on the mal-investment hangover!
Category Archives: 2010 Election
Preliminary analysis – Scott Brown win in MA
I quickly downloaded the AP results by city for Massachusetts. Now Massachusetts is unique in the US, in that the entire state is divided in townships. Counties exist in name only and all local government functions are carried out by the township governments. Another way of putting this: There are no unincorporated parts of Massachusetts.
But, of course, the townships vary quite a bit in their size – both in area and in population. It was quickly clear from the AP table that Coakley had carried most of the largest cities in the state. She carried 10 of the 15 largest with 59% of the vote. She won Boston, Worcester, Newton, Springfield, Brockton, Brookline, Arlington, Medford, New Bedford, & Framingham. Brown won Quincy, Weymouth, Lowell, Barnstable, and Peabody. In those 15 towns/cities she collected 278,620 votes to Brown’s 193,063.
But Brown won 183 of the next 235 towns/cities and racked up an impressive total of 862,627 votes to Croakley’s 657,560.
Brown’s margin of 205,000 votes from the 2nd tier of 235 cities easily overcame Coakley’s margin of 85,000 from the top 15 cities.
In the 3rd and final tier of 75 towns/cities, Coakley won 54 and Brown only 21, with Coakley again winning 57.5% of the vote. But there just aren’t that many people in the small cities. In the 3rd tier she won 26,657 votes to Browns 19,695.
Conclusions: I think what the pattern shows is simply confirmation of the conventional wisdom. Coakley won the urban areas (and some significant liberal suburbs). Brown won the suburbs. And he won them with big enough margins that he won the state. It’s also a confirmation that you don’t have to win over every constituency in order to win an election. You have to win big on your turf and not lose too badly in areas outside your strengths.
Oh no! He DIDN’T just say that, did he?!?!
yes he did.
Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said THIS about Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat…“Why would you hand the keys to the car back to the same guys whose policies drove the economy into the ditch and then walked away from the scene of the accident?” “For the Republicans to say vote for us and bring back the guys who got us into this mess in the first place, I don’t think it’s a winner.”
I mean, it is Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but this is unseemly!
The DSCC thinks “Tea Party” is a bad thing
Does this strike anybody else as weird?
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (which is run jointly by all of the current Democrats in the US Senate) thinks that all they have to do to persuade folks to vote against Scott Brown is to link him to the Tea Party movement.
Maybe it’s just me. But national polling has shown that the Tea Party movement has higher favorability ratings that either the Republican or the Democratic Party.
While the choir might respond well to this attack, I think the majority of independent voters greet news of Brown’s affilation with the Tea Party movement as a positive, not a negative.
Apparently, it’s not just the Coakley campaign in MA that’s out of touch. From inside the beltway it appears to be axiomatic that Tea Party = Evil.
I don’t think most voters agree. We’re going to find out tomorrow.
Massachusetts Miracle
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nEoW-P81-0
New TSA Regs & Procedures
photo captioning by Pansy
Fix or replace?
A few weeks ago, my trusty Lenovo laptap snapped first the left and then the right hinge which connects the LCD screen to the keyboard/cpu unit. I’ve had it for several years (and been quite satisfied with it), but my immediate response was to go online and start shopping for a replacement.
And then I thought again.
Today, the $35 replacement hinges that I ordered arrived. This evening I spent about 20 minutes opening the case, removing the old hinges, and installing new ones. I’m quite happy with the laptop once again.
The larger implications of this for the economy are actually much more significant that one might suspect. The US economy has been built on consumer spending, both big ticket items (houses & cars) and on intermediate “white goods” (appliances & electronic gadgets). When times are difficult or uncertain (or both) many consumers have the option of postponing purchases of new or replacement items and stretching the life of the things they already have.
This appears to a significant part of what has happened in the US over the past 12 months.
See charts below:
Caption contest winner
Competition
Obama has often made the assertion that a federal-government-run “public option” is a necessary, fundamental part of healthcare reform because “competition is needed to keep the private insurance companies honest.”
If a “public option” is necessary to provide competition in what has until now been a private sector of the economy, why isn’t a private option necessary to provide competition in areas where the government has a monopoly?
Why shouldn’t we have a “private option” in primary & secondary education? Won’t real education reform require vouchers, and competition?
Why shouldn’t we have a “private option” in the government’s massive, compulsory retirement scheme known as social security? Why shouldn’t working men and women have choices about where their social security account dollars are invested?
[crickets chirping]
That’s what I thought. Neither President Obama nor the liberal pack baying for healthcare reform care a fig about competition. The “public option” is a stalking trojan horse that will enable the government to transition to a single-payer system.
But a naked proposal for a single-payer system would never get the votes for passage, so the “public option” must be employed and cloaked in a fig leaf of pretend admiration for “competition.”
Change.org blames Katrina on Bush’s failure to pass Global Warming Bill
They’re not just blaming the failure of city & state authorities to evacuate folks on Bush, they’re blaming the actual hurricane itself on Bush. Here’s a quote from an email they just sent out today:
President Bush’s short-term failures compounded the suffering along the Gulf Coast in those fateful days. But his dismal failure to lead on global warming has made extreme weather events like Katrina more likely in the future.
And they’re saying we all need to rally around and make sure Obama and Co. pass a “clean energy and climate bill this year.”
We must
“. . .work tirelessly to prevent a future where disasters like Katrina become the norm. A strong clean energy bill is critical to preventing such a future, but we need our President to lead Congress where it needs to go. Tell President Obama to push Congress for bold action today.”
This is, of course, nonsense on stilts. Here are the facts:
A) Global temperatures have been cooling since 1999
B) Katrina was not caused by global warming
C) There has been a DECREASE in the severity of hurricanes over the past several years.
The global warming alarmists have by now reached a mystical level of superstition in which all the bad things in the world are the fault of global warming. And the fact of global warming is unquestioned. Their response to an examination of the data is took stick their fingers in their ears and make loud noises.
Instead of passing the foolish, pork-laden, economy-crushing, job-destroying cap & trade bill, call you congressman and senators and urge them to let it die a natural death. The bill, passed by the house, is languishing because the Senate is reluctant to take it up. Put a DNR order on the bill and instead look for ways to reduce government regulations, reduce taxes, and let the entrepreneurial spirit of American free enterprise put people back to work.
For the record, here’s the full text of the Change.org email which went out today:
