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October 31, 2004

Bush Leads by Three in Dem-Skewing CBSNYT Poll

OTOH, Frank Luntz says that Bush needs to be up by at least three in order to win (due to new voters and late-undecideds voting against him, plus, you know, fraud), so if this poll is merely accurate, Bush is still only fifty-fifty to prevail.

The article is worth reading, because it does endeavor to spin this as really bad news for Bush.

It's not just news-- it's hilarious liberal desperation.

Update: But the New York Times goes, as usual, a little farther.

If any of you are fans of Mickey Kaus, you know that Times' reporter Adam Nagourney is their go-to guy for liberal cocooning. For example, when the last NYT poll in 2002 showed a massive movement towards Republicans, Nagourney buried that interesting finding until nearly the end of the article, and wrote some idiotic article about the polls' findings about voter anxiety and the like. He gave it the following headline:

Poll Finds Americans Like Cheese

Okay, not that, but something equally anodyne and boring. The New York Times "newspaper" deliberately refused to report its own discovery of actual news in order to not distress its archliberal constituency.

At any rate, the latest NYT poll finds that Bush is ahead by three-- cause for some alarm to liberals, given the poll's Democratic skew.

And what's the headline?

In Final Days, Divided Electorate Expresses Anxiety.

Once again, Nagourney deliberately avoids mention of the actual news-making part of the poll in favor of a non-newsworthy headline that won't discombobulate liberals too much.

The first two paragraphs:

The nation is girding for tomorrow's presidential election, worried about the integrity of the voting system, divided over the legitimacy of President Bush's election four years ago and anxious about the future no matter who wins the contest, according to the final New York Times/CBS News Poll of the 2004 campaign.
The poll shows that Mr. Bush and his opponent, Senator John Kerry, remain locked in a statistical tie as they head into the final 48 hours of the race. But the poll registered an increase in Mr. Bush's job approval rating, as well as an increase in the number of Americans who said the nation was heading in the right direction. Republicans described this as evidence that Mr. Bush was picking up speed in these closing days of the campaign, but Democrats dismissed the numbers, saying that both figures remain dangerously low for an incumbent.

Nagourney waits until the sixth paragraph to actually let you know Bush is up 49-46-- not really a "statistical tie" at all, because any statistician can tell you that any lead indicates at least the probability that one man is ahead, even if you can't be sure of the margin. This lead isn't big, but neither is it tiny.

Nagourney has waited far, far longer in his articles to inform his readers of what the poll actually says. He's slipping a bit. I expect better/worse from him.

Loose shit, Adam.

posted by Ace at 10:21 PM

Comments

Try deciphering the new Gallop poll. Bush down in fl and OH up by 4 in PA? they are on crack. It is totally ass backwards. I think the polls are shit this year more so than usual. Just better get everyone to vote.

Heard 500 old folks die a day in florida or something bizarre like that earlier and they are having poll workers check obits for dead voters to watch out for.

Bush should win this handily. If he loses it will not be for not fighting the fight. When they are not playing by the same rules it makes it hard to win.

Posted by: jennifer on October 31, 2004 10:37 PM

Oy. 2 days. I feel like the guy pounding on the rail and screaming during the last lap of a horserace.

Posted by: Russell Wardlow on October 31, 2004 10:43 PM

I'm starting to understand the whole "icing the kicker" thing too.

Posted by: Joe R. the Unabrewer on October 31, 2004 10:46 PM

In this poll, 71% said they are as well off or better than they were four years ago. Doesn't sound like the Great Depression to me.

Posted by: on October 31, 2004 11:03 PM

I don't know if I can understand all this wacky, esoteric poll number gobblygook without Kim Richards to explain it to me, Ace.

Posted by: Alex on October 31, 2004 11:50 PM

That is what I'd call "objective reporting" from the Times. After all, they didn't make things up.

Posted by: jb on November 1, 2004 12:23 AM

Tha weekend polls are straight garbage..

First off, It's been pointed out all over the blogoshpere, that Bush folks are attending Friday night football games, second, it's Holloween weekend! All the good mommies and daddies are out doing what they do with tha kiddies.. This leaves either A)people who hate football or B)people who hate kids -- at home, answering the phone.

I'd take these last poll numbers -- wad em'up,-- do a Kerry-Jump-throw with em' right into the waste basket. I'd also like for someone to please stick a bloody sock in Terry Macoluf's mouth every time he mentions the exit polls showing Kerry ahead with people who've already voted in Iowa and Florida. That stuff is crap to.

Its all crap.

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Posted by: Raymond on November 1, 2004 03:16 AM

49-46.
Hmm.
That would mean there are 4% undecided if you assume at least 1% for Nader or Bednarak or whomever, combined.

The incumbent rule, which has only been true in 4 of the last 6 elections, says people break against the incumbent 2 to 1. It is of course horsesh**. But, that would still leave Bush winning the popular vote.

But all of the above is nonsense. Expect Bush to win 5 or 6 states that are 'surprises' to the media. They're not surprises. They're figured out of the numbers to fit preconceptions.

No Kool-Aid here. I just have my ear to the ground. Cutting like a fu**ing hammer, I'm like the Lone Ranger out here. I've already sent Tanto into town and I'm just waiting to ride into town to put the smack down.

Posted by: Birkel on November 1, 2004 04:00 AM

Even one with such an obviously Republican cut to my jib has friends in certain liberal circles around town (Manhattan, if you have to ask.) These guys give me lots of good scoop on these reporters, Nagourney being the reporter they hate but need. Why? First of all, he's an ass-bandit. And second, he is a sniveling, Andy Sullivan-type ass-bandit.

His ambition, his enthusiasm for his career is second only to his fixation with the "stinky starfish".

Posted by: spongeworthy on November 1, 2004 09:28 AM

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Top Headlines

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

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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.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
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Batman tries to fire Superman
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Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all

Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]