I’m sure that the president will get right on it, just as soon as he finishes his latest round of golf.
You know, I’ll bet that Bobby Jindal hasn’t hit the links once in the past couple months.
One of the most insane things is the EPA not allowing the ships to clean the water, because they only remove ninety-plus percent of the oil. This is bureaucracy run amok. The president could fix it with the stroke of a pen. I wonder why he doesn’t?
Even thought it’s from Cracked, this is a good look at the counterproductivity of well-intentioned laws. With regard to the underground sex offenders, Obama favored a law on gun stores that would have made it similarly impossible to find a location for them. I don’t think that consequence was unintended, though.
I’m not sure that Iowahawk really has the goods:
JOSH MARSHALL: hey has anybody seen weigel?? he’s usually here by now
EZRA KLEIN: idk thats weird i saw him at 2nd period editorial and he said he be here
MATTHEW YGLESIAS: does anybody else think Mr Krugman is kind of cute? 😉
JOSH MARSHALL: eeeewww gross
MATTHEW YGLESIAS: i mean 4 an old guy
JOSH MARSHALL: maybe,,, but he always has chunks of food in beard and his eyes are kinda crazy
EZRA KLEIN: idk, I think they’re kinda penetrating and intense like Robert Pattinson
SPENCER ACKERMAN: omg omg I <3 Robert!!!! SPENCER ACKERMAN: he is so dark and brooding & intense
It’s not that it’s not realistic. I just thought it was an email list, not a chatroom.
…of the Kos poll problems — this poll on space, done a month or so ago.
I think that most polls on space are pretty worthless, because the public is so ignorant about the subject. It doesn’t make much sense to ask someone if we should spend more or less on something when they don’t even know how much we’re currently spending within a couple orders of magnitude. But this particular poll is not particularly suspect.
[Update a while later]
Getting back to the Kos polling problem, some people don’t think that he acted so nobly:
The fact of the matter is, Kos has been – and continues to be – content to let the negative assumptions based on his published data remain in the air for as long as possible. He knew almost as soon as he first published it that this R2K anit-GOP numbers would come into question. He could have retracted it at any time, but he chose to let that bad data sit out there for months, causing as much damage as possible until he had absolutely no choice but to act.
Well, he may have bought himself a world of hurt anyway:
The attorney for Research 2000 and its owner, Del Ali, is threatening legal action too:
Ali’s attorney, Richard Beckler of Howrey LLP in Washington, told TPMmuckraker in an interview, “This guy [Markos] is completely all wet. This allegation of fraud is absurd.” He added, “These guys are basically ruining Mr. Ali’s business.”
Beckler promised to take “some kind of action soon against all of them” — referring to Kos and the three authors of the analysis calling R2K’s data into question.
Two pieces of good news in this story. First, a lawsuit will bring out the truth not only as to whether Research 2000 committed fraud, but the interaction between Markos and the polling firm. Was Markos pushing the polling firm for certain results, what was he telling them privately, etc. The e-mails between Markos and Research 2000 may be more interesting than the JournoList.
Second, the more money Markos spends fighting Research 2000, the less money he has to fight conservatives. I would not be surprised to see Markos set up a legal fund to fight this battle seeking donations from the base. Donate away, as far as I am concerned. Every dollar donated to Markos’ lawsuit is a dollar drained from some Democratic candidate somewhere.
As I said, live by the lie, die by the lie.
Would Elena Kagan allow it?
I’d bet she would. Despite their pious posturing, these people have no more respect for the first amendment than they do the second.
Reducing homocysteine levels doesn’t reduce the risk of heart attack.
I’ll bet that’s true for cholesterol as well. I’m not even fully convinced that reducing blood pressure does, though I’m a lot more open to the proposition for strokes.
I hadn’t seen it this explicit before, but unless he’s off the reservation, apparently NASA bans sex in space, at least at the ISS. No big deal. They’re only up there for six months at a time…
I could write a long essay on the ways in which this encapsulates everything that is wrong with the American space program, going all the way back to Mercury. I’ll bet that NASA banned adultery back then, too. Tom Wolfe just made those stories up.
[Update a few minutes later]
Glenn says that this opens up a market niche for other facilities. Well, yeah. Though it’s more like just one more reason not to count on the ISS as a tourist destination. Or at least as the hotel. What we need is a habitat coorbiting with it where space visitors can stay, and use as a base for visiting the ISS for tours, which will minimize disruption if they ever actually start doing research there, and allow people to do what they want in the sack (or floating out of it) without disturbing the little Miss Prisses on DE Street.
Some thoughts on conservatives and media bias:
Every now and then, the curtain is pulled back on the mainstream media — and we see how these guys talk and act when they’re at their most authentic. This is important. Liberal media bias is maybe something we all have to live with, but that doesn’t mean it’s something to ignore, be blasé about, or excuse.
I’m grateful to both Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters for something: They admitted, yes, the media are liberal, and a good thing, too. It has to be that way, they said. For — and this is Walters talking — journalism involves the “human condition,” and liberals care about the human condition. Unlike conservatives, who of course couldn’t give a rat’s a** about the human condition.
Anyway . . . Conservatives should be frank and bold when it comes to the media, as to everything else. And if others say you’re tiresome or whiny or uncool . . . well, so be it. Did you sign up for conservatism to be cool?
Well, I haven’t actually signed up for conservatism, but the bias has been blatant and obvious to me for decades.
…by Elena Kagan.
Markos’ pollster was defrauding him.
Boo, hoo.
[Update a couple minutes later]
“I hope Kos’ book hasn’t gone to the printer.”
Hey, live by the lies, die by the lies.
[Update a few minutes later]
Geraghty is saying “I told you so.”
[Mid-afternoon update]
Some useful thoughts from Jonah’s readers:
One of the most tasty of several delicious ironies connected with this story is the way the bogus polls seem to damaged closely-contested leftist political campaigns. The nutroots wasted a couple of million dollars, by my count, on races that were probably not winnable.
And this:
Did you look at the cross tabs on that thing? Many of the questions are laugh out loud funny in a tin foil hat sort of way. I loved this one: Should women work outside the home? That’s kooky even by Kos standards. That’s just the thing. The Kos guys dreamed up these question thinking these are the sorts of things right-wing crazies discuss in their secret lair. Can you imagine getting asked this stuff by a pollster? 90% of Americans would hang up after three questions like this.
The R2000 guys may be crooks, but Kos was asking for it. He was willing to pay for “polling data’ that confirmed his only little brand of moonbattery. Now he’s pissed that the polling company was unable to supply it without resorting to deceit.
Well, a fool and his money. But I guess it does show that the left is at least honest in their delusory and fantasized caricatures of conservatives. I often wonder whether they’re liars or just nuts. Now I guess we know.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Why Kos should have suspected something fishy months ago:
1/18/10 Politico – Insider Advantage Brown 52 – Coakley 43
1/18/10 ARG – Brown 52 – Coakley 45
1/18/10 PJM – Brown 52 – Coakley 42
1/18/10 Daily KOS – Brown 48 – Coakley 48
1/17/10 InsideMedford-MRG – Brown 51 – Coakley 41
1/17/10 PPP – Brown 51 – Coakley 46
1/16/10 ARG – Brown 48 – Coakley 45
1/15/10 PJM/CrossTarget – Brown 54 – Coakley 39
1/14/10 Suffolk University – Brown 50 – Coakley 46
1/14/10 R2000 – Brown 41 – Coakley 49
He was paying them to tell him what he wanted to hear.