Kevin Drum explains how to figure out the percentage chance that a candidate is actually leading in a state based on their lead in a close poll and the poll’s margin of error.
Update: The CJR Campaign Desk also has an explanation of margin of error.
The other day I talked about why I made a political donation. I wanted to talk a little bit more about the power of political donors. There’s a guy in Houston named Bob Perry, who’s very very rich, and spends a lot of his money on political causes. Go ahead and Google his name — you won’t easily find anything about the Bob Perry I’m talking about. (He’s blessed with a very common name.) He’s a huge Republican donor, has supported George W Bush since he originally ran for governor of Texas in 1994, and has pumped $200,000 into the coffers of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. That $200,000 could easily be the deciding factor in this Presidential election. And his money is everywhere. Awhile back I talked about how a friend of mine lost in the primary for a judgeship in Houston — Perry was one of his donors as well, he really spreads it around. I have no desire to use one dime for evil, whereas obviously Mr. Perry has no such compunctions, but I am interested in learning more about how money plays a role in politics first hand. Perhaps I should set up a DropCash account and solicit a few million in donations so we can run a real experiment …
I’ve created a tag in del.icio.us for aggregating information about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, swiftvets. Please feel free to add on.
An Iraq veteran rejects the war in Iraq.
Former Pentagon testing chief Phillip Coyle emailed Noah Schactman at Defense Tech to explain why the recently deployed missile defense system won’t work, and why pretending like it will is a danger to us. It’s hard to think concretely about government spending, given that there’s so much of it, but remember that we’re spending billions of dollars on this thing, and it has literally no chance of working. It’s stunning.
After seeing it mentioned at Medley, I picked up a copy of Paste magazine last night. It’s a music magazine that comes with a sampler CD with songs by the musicians featured in the magazine, and it’s really really good. What I like best about it is that it seems to be directly targetted at people around my age, so the writers have had the same formative music experiences that I’ve had. I don’t know if I’m going to subscribe yet, but I am going to try to catch the next issue on the news stand. (The editorial in the issue I bought says this is an extra-twangy issue, so under ordinary circumstances it may be two poppy and not enough rootsy for my tastes.)
How is the following quote a compelling argument for President Bush?
So long as anybody wants to work and can’t find a job, I know we’ve got more work to do in Washington, D.C. It starts with making sure your taxes are low. Be careful of these folks who travel around the country making all these big promises, and say, oh, don’t worry, we’ll pay for it by taxing the rich. You know how that goes. The rich hires accountants and lawyers and you get stuck with the bill. But we’re not going to let him raise your taxes.
(The quote is from the same speech that I linked to in the previous item.)
The first time President Bush offered this argument, I thought it was a gaffe. His basic argument is that the rich are so good at exploiting tax loopholes that tax increases don’t affect them. If that’s so, why then did the President give them a huge tax break when he lowered taxes? Why do statistics show that since the tax cuts they’re paying less taxes? Whose job is it to make sure that “the rich” can’t exploit these tax loopholes? Are people so stupid that they’ll be persuaded by this arguement? The mind reels.
President Bush on missile defense, yesterday: “I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system really don’t understand the threats of the 21st century. They’re living in the past. We’re living in the future.” John Kerry on missile defense, May 1, 2001: “But let me underscore that missile defense will do nothing to address what the Pentagon itself considers a much more likely and immediate threat to the American homeland from terrorists and from nonstate actors, who can quietly slip explosives into a building, unleash chemical weapons into a crowded subway, or send a crude nuclear weapon into a busy harbor.”
I’d love it if someone could explain the Bush administration’s obsession with missile defense. Do they think pretending like they can protect us from incoming ICBMs will help them out politically? Is this just a sop to the defense industry? Do they actually think that the system will be effective and that there is a pressing need for it? I just don’t get it.
Update: DefenseTech calls it faith-based missile defense. Not original, but accurate.
So, the other day I made my first political donation ever. Well, actually my wife made our first political donation. Not counting the boxes you can check off on your state income tax to fund judicial elections. A canvasser for the DNC came by our house seeking donations, and my wife made a $100 donation to the cause. Under ordinary circumstances she would have said no, but I’ve been mentioning all summer that I think we should pump some of our hard earned dollars into the political process, and I even made sure that she gave them our name and other information so we could get on the mailing lists. (Now that I think about it, I imagine that they have to take down your information anyway to make sure you’re not violating election laws by donating too much.)
My reasons for donating are pretty straightforward — I’m interested in how much it costs to buy access to politicians. I figure I’ve taken the first step, which is getting my name on the list of people who are willing to cough up money to support Democratic candidates. The question then becomes how much money you have to give yourself or get other people to give to get someone to listen to you. This question has been much on my mind since I read somewhere that Robert Rubin couldn’t get an audience with the movers and shakers in the Democratic party until he brought in massive amounts of campaign money. He then became Secretary of the Treasury, and by most accounts did a great job.
I’d be pretty interested in talking to some politicians about various issues, especially those near and dear to my heart and more in my area of expertise, like DRM. My theory is that I have to pay them to get them to listen to me. That donation was the first part of the experiment. Given the fact that I’m not rich, it will be interesting to see where the experiment leads.
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The slime machine at work
So last night I watched the Chris Matthews show because my mother called me and told me to. The first guest was conservative blowhard and discredited historical revisionist Michelle Malkin, who was paired up with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Malkin says she was ambushed by Chris Matthews, and if she were, it wouldn’t surprise me, but things didn’t get out of hand until she walked out on a precipice by trotting out the “Kerry’s wounds were self-inflicted” lie. There is speculation that Kerry’s shrapnel wounds in two cases were caused by shrapnel from grenades thrown by Americans — but for the purpose of the Purple Heart, that’s irrelevant. That charge is a non-sequitur. Furthermore, “self-inflicted” is a loaded term. Note that these slimeballs are not saying, “wounded by friendly fire.” The only time you usually read about self-inflicted wounds in the media is when people kill themselves — the connotation of the term is that the person intentionally inflicted the wounds upon themselves. The use of that term is not accidental. So, Chris Matthews, knowing as well as you and I what people understand self-inflicted to mean, starts pressing Malkin on the issue. He wants to know whether she’s accusing Kerry of having shot himself on purpose.
To the transcript:
It goes on like that for awhile, mainly because Malkin simply keeps referring back to the book because she’d prefer to beg the question rather than answer it. In the end, he kicks her off the show because she refuses to answer the question, and ends her ignoble time in the dubious limelight of MSNBC by asking Matthews whether he’s ever asked John Kerry whether he’d shot himself on purpose, which in my opinion is deserving of a one way ticket off the set. Malkin’s goal is clearly to leave viewers with the impression that Kerry did shoot himself on purpose (hence the use of the term “self-inflicted” and her unwillingness to take a stand herself), and furthermore that it’s up to Kerry to address and deny these allegations.
Needless to say, Malkin’s appearance on the show induced a lot of really foul language on my part, but that’s not the reason I’m talking about this. What I find interesting is this revelation of how the slime machine works. You just throw as much crap out there as you can, and then you pretend like it’s the victim’s job to rebut the unsubstantiated allegations. Use doublespeak wherever possible so that you can’t be pinned down taking an actual stand. If you repeat the same lies enough, people will believe they’re the truth. I’m not a fan of Chris Matthews, but I’m glad that he didn’t let Malkin (who could have just as easily been any other professional liar for the right wing) go unchallenged, and I’m glad she never got a chance to plug her execrable book.
On some days, I try to convince myself that all politicians are the same, that they all run negative campaigns, and that they all try to smear their opponents. The awful truth, though, is that the Bush campaign and the Kerry campaign are not the same, and the Bush supporters and Kerry supporters are not the same. What this campaign is really teaching us is that if you want to be President, it is better to do nothing in life than to attempt to distinguish yourself in any way before aspiring to higher office. Kerry’s service in the Vietnam war and tenure in the Senate are being used to bludgeon him in ways that I honestly wouldn’t have imagined before the campaign. George W Bush accomplished nothing before he became governor of Texas, and he’s better off for it.
Update: Oliver Willis has video of the “Gulf of Malkin” incident.