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October 17, 2004

CNNGallup Shock: Bush Back Up by 8

Zogby and Newsweek weren't just noise. Bush's weak first debate performance cost him, but not as much as it first seemed. I'm a little surprised -- I thought Bush was toast, to be honest with you -- but the public does seem to have sort of settled on him for re-election (if just by a little bit).

I did not see this one coming.

Coming Soon! Andrew Sullivan explains how the "internals" all look amazing for Kerry! Eagles up, South Park Republicans!

posted by Ace at 01:46 PM

Comments

'I did not see this one coming '----Ace

The nice thing about the internet is that you can be 'petty' and it almost never seems out of place.

I saw this one coming.

Kerry is UN-ELECTABLE except in the various 'asylums'scattered around the nation.I don't know if this poll is accurate but you can SEE the desperation in the Dems campaign.Kerry 'won' the debates,but I saw a great piece on the BBC(REALLY!!),wherein they showed a focus group after the last debate.When asked who'won'virtually everyone picked J*K,but when asked who they were voting for,the OVERWHELMING majority went firmly for Bush.Kerry got 3.5 votes(1 lady said that she would vote for Kerry only 'if I had to'.
The reason advanced by the pollster --- " They know that Bush is not as articulate,BUT they believe that 'he believes',and that is good enough for them.
Exactly.

Posted by: dougf on October 17, 2004 02:07 PM

After the 1st debate, when Kerry was up by one or two points, the media here in Europe went into a frenzy. For more then a week they parroted the news...i wonder if they will say something about this?

Posted by: madne0 on October 17, 2004 02:12 PM

Don't get nervous when Rasmussen and Zogby get closer on Monday and Tuesday. That's just noise from the weekend effect where Dems poll higher on Fridays and Saturdays. But expect to see the press highlight the "mo" toward Kerry from this easily identifiable pattern.

I'm just saying...

Posted by: Birkel on October 17, 2004 02:51 PM

It is encouraging news but I hope no one gets lazy and decides in any state that their vote doesnt matter any more...it matters now more than ever. Let's not get complacent about this news!!!

Posted by: Paul on October 17, 2004 02:53 PM

You are killing me! There's still 2 weeks left. Anything can happen. A wild attack on an American city that Kerry actually handles well ('we tried it the president's way, and we're still having attacks, let's try it my way'), something worse than we've been seeing in Iraq, or a market crash. Or, Kerry can find something dirty on Bush and release it 2 days before the election. Or, the 527s can be more effective that we can imagine in getting out the vote. Be happy about the poll numbers but pleeeeeeeeeease stop saying how Bush is such a lock.

Posted by: Karol on October 17, 2004 02:53 PM

Dead people, illegal immigrants and people with multiple aliases don't show up in polls. If you want Bush to win I suggest you sign up for the 72 hour program and volunteer as a poll watcher or voter caller on Nov. 2nd. Take days off if you have to. The dems are going to cheat big this year.

Posted by: Paul B. on October 17, 2004 03:09 PM

"Stay on Target!"

Posted by: Iblis on October 17, 2004 03:44 PM

Iblis: just what I was going to say.

I wonder if Ace was the other guy in the theater killing himself laughing during "Team America"'s cantina scene.

Posted by: someone on October 17, 2004 04:09 PM

That's the problem with following the media's lead and scoring a debate like a boxing match. It's not.

In 2000, Gore was widely perceived to have "won" the debates but the memorable parts about his antics and "lockboxes" ultimately cost him. So what was memorable about the debates?

- "Global test"
- "Mary Cheney"
- "marrying up"

The media can claim Kerry won the debates all they want. The conventional wisdom before the debates was that Bush needed to get through them without a major gaffe: he did, and Kerry didn't.

For once, it looks like the conventional wisdom might have been wise after all.

Posted by: Jim B on October 17, 2004 04:21 PM

Zogby is already claiming that Kerry has cut Bush's lead from 4 to 2. CNN isn't even touting their poll on their own web site. I personally like the realclearpolitics.com approach. Take all them polls done in a certain time frame and average them. I would suspect that it would give you a less biased view with a smaller margin of error. They show Bush +3.8.

Posted by: Steve L. on October 17, 2004 04:34 PM

I was thinking more of, "Don't get cocky, kid!" Must be my inner Solo coming through. :-)

And remember what followed soon after that: "That's the only explanation for the ease of our escape."

Is this blog bugged?

Posted by: The Black Republican on October 17, 2004 04:37 PM

Instapundit links to a new Stephen Denbeste article about the polls where he overlays color bars to show the overall trends, which clearly show both candidates creeping up, but Bush more sharply than Kerry and the trends are very consistent over the past several months. From his engineering background, he states that there are two possible reasons for the "noise", or the large ups and downs: Bad sampling equipment (impossible with a poll) or Fraud. Want to guess which it is? And the big reason the Dems are crapping their pants right now? They are loosing. And they are loosing more and more as we get closer to the elections.

Posted by: Dacotti on October 17, 2004 04:55 PM

Kerry's internals? I suspect Kerry's "internals" got flushed down the john after that poll came out.

Posted by: Dan on October 17, 2004 05:04 PM

Jim B, Re: memorable moments.

Got wood?

(anyone selling that on t-shirts yet?)

Posted by: SomeJoe on October 17, 2004 05:39 PM

Ace-

Guess the debates really *were* a wash after all ;-).

Hey pal, bully on you for the great poll coverage, you're my first stop. Okay, my second stop, after Drudge. But you're kicking ass.

BTW, did you know that Pierre Salinger was killed by a missile?

http://garfieldridge.blogspot.com/2004/10/was-pierre-salinger-killed-by-surface.html

Cheers,
Dave

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on October 17, 2004 05:48 PM

As much as we want to believe that Bush has turned the corner, we can't lose sight of Ohio. Does Rove have a viable plan to capture the Buckeye state? And Florida's not out of the woods either. Let us pray. Or better still, let Rove & Co. prey.

Posted by: wdennis on October 17, 2004 05:50 PM

Newsweek polls are always noise and should always been ignored.

Gallup, Zogby, Rasmussen, Ipsos-Reid, Mason-Dixon, and one or two others--these are legit. Newsweek's one of those outfits that gives polling a bad name.

Posted by: Dean Esmay on October 17, 2004 07:23 PM

Amazon.com Widgets

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The Deplorable Gourmet
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Top Headlines

TJM definitively ranks the films of Alfred Hitchcock

@KFILE 21m

Politico is reporting that multiple people have abruptly resigned from Eric Swalwell's gubernatorial campaign: "Members of senior leadership have departed the campaign, including Courtni Pugh, a strategic adviser who served as Swalwell's top liaison to organized labor groups."

So the campaign is collapsing due to the truth of the sexual harassment allegations.
That hissing sound you hear is the air going out of the Swalwell campaign. UPDATE: No it wasn't, it was just Swalwell one-cheek-sneaking out a fart on camera
Eric Swalwell more like Eric Farewell amirite
thanks to weft-cut loop.

This is the dumbest AI bullslop I've seen in a while: the CIA can use "quantum magnetometry" to track an individual man's heartbeat from twelve miles away
I wouldn't click on it, it's not interesting, it's just stupid clickslop. I just want to share my annoyance with you.

Oil prices plunge on bizarre realization that Eric Swalwell may actually be straight. A rapey molester, allegedly, but a straight one.

Artemis II Crew releases clearest images of the Far Side yet recorded

Classic Rock Mystery Click
This is super-obscure and I only barely remember it. Given that, I'll give you the hint that it's by the Red Rocker.
And I guess you think you've got it made
Oh, but then, you never were afraid
Of anything that you've left behind
Oh, but it's alright with me now
'Cause I'll get back up somehow
And with a little luck, yes, I'm bound to win
Now twenty people will tell me it's not obscure, it was huge in their hometown and played at their prom. That's how it usually goes. When I linked Donnie Iris's "Love is Like a Rock," everyone said they knew that one and that his other song (which I didn't know at all) Ah Leah! was huge in their area.

Sarah Longwell spotting

Tuq'r's makeover is 100!

Alfred Hitchcock learns to talk with TJM

Ryan Long goes to the No Kings rally to pick up young liberal hotties and is greatly disappointed in the quality of the mish
thanks to stevey

You know we "joke" about the GOPe just "conserving" leftist things?
David French just posted:

Populists ask what conservativism has ever conserved?
Well its about to conserve birthright citizenship!
Posted by: 18-1

I couldn't hate this queen of the cuck-chair more if it paid seven figures and came with a corner office.

TJM definitively ranks the films of John Boorman.

Kid punks CNN chump by speaking truth to retard

Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!

In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.