Month: June 2014

Why it doesn’t much matter who the Democrats pick to lose in 2016.

These two graphs will hopefully help people understand why I’m not panicky about any of the potential Democratic candidates for 2016 actually running.  The first graph shows Bush/Obama’s polling average, as of Election Day 2004/2012:

Bush-Obama-1

…and the second shows Bush/Obama’s polling average today (June 6, 2014/2006):

Bush-obama-2

Continue reading Why it doesn’t much matter who the Democrats pick to lose in 2016.

Obamacare no longer OFFICIALLY fiscally knowable.

The part that I bolded is simply not true:

Four years after enactment of what is widely viewed as President Barack Obama’s key legislative achievement, however, it’s unclear whether the health care law is still on track to reduce the deficit or whether it may actually end up adding to the federal debt. In fact, the answer to that question has become something of a mystery.

The answer to the question is It’s a government program that was conceived in folly, developed without direction, and birthed in rancid partisanship.  Of course it’s going to add to the federal debt.  Seriously: doesn’t anybody read, anymore?  None of this is surprising to people with even a rudimentary knowledge on how expensive government policy can get when you don’t rigorously control it. Continue reading Obamacare no longer OFFICIALLY fiscally knowable.

How Green will make the Senate Red – thus making Democrats blue.

Josh Kraushaar asks a question: “Does President Obama care about keeping the Senate?”  I answer with another question: “Why would he care?”

…and this is becoming a bit of a broken drum, huh? – Which is significant in and of itself, given that the midterm elections are in five months.  Five months where the President and leader of his party is spending his time playing golf and having over-long dinner parties instead of attending to either the country’s, or his faction’s, business.

:pause:

The old joke is right: God must be a Republican.  Because this goes way beyond ‘blind luck,’ and right into ‘Divine intervention’…

You know, this might be a viable alternative to getting a JesusPhone.

God knows it’ll almost certainly be cheaper.

Amazon is planning to announce a new phone June 18 that will use lots of cutting edge mobile technology to unite real-world shopping with Amazon’s online marketplace.

Not surprisingly, the phone is ideal for shopping with a large screen and multiple 3D cameras and sensors built in, a source with knowledge of the device told VentureBeat.

I wonder if it’ll support a decent text editor? It’s supposed to be a little larger than usual, the better to help people use it for shopping.

Cook Political Report shifts California-26 from Lean D to Toss-up.

This is fallout from last Tuesday’s California primary: freshman Democrat Julia Brownley got 46% of the vote to Republican Jeff Gorell‘s 44%. What should probably worry Brownley more is that the combined total percentage of Republican votes was over 50%.  It was generally not a great night for California’s Democratic candidates:

  • In CA-07 incumbent freshman Democrat Ami Bera is likewise dealing with an environment where Republicans got over 50% of the vote.
  • In CA-16 incumbent Jim Costa has the same problem… which he did not have in 2012.  This race may have more possibilities than we thought.
  • In CA-25 Democrats were locked out of the race to replace Buck McKeon.  That seat is now Safe Republican.
  • In CA-31 the same thing might still happen: one Republican won first place, and the second spot is up to the absentee ballots. If this happens it will mark the second cycle in a row that the jungle primary system has ensured a Republican representative in what is considered to be a Democratic-leaning seat.
  • In CA-52 freshman Democratic incumbent Scott Peters is staring early retirement in the face: he got only 42% of the vote against a field of Republican candidates.
  • And, in general: there is no indication that any sitting incumbent Republicans from California are in trouble in the House this year.

All in all, the GOP is looking more and more like they will not lose any net seats in California this year (I consider CA-31 balanced by CA-52) and may actually pick up a couple.  And the funny part? The Democrats still haven’t seemed to work out how to work with the new top-two primary system. So if you believe that there were shenanigans involved in the post-Census redistricting… then I guess that those shenanigans failed, because the system now seems to be predisposed to punish political parties that can’t maintain ballot discipline..

I know, I know: ain’t it a shame?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Via comments here it’s now looking like the next California controller might have to be a Republican:

Republican David Evans has edged into second place in the seesaw battle for state controller, pushing Democratic Assemblyman John Pérez into third and, at least for now, out of the Nov. 4 general election.

But a report by the secretary of state’s office Friday morning showed that 991,699 ballots remain to be counted across California, making the most recent numbers anything but final.

Numbers released Thursday night show Republican Ashley Swearengin, the mayor of Fresno, leading the race to replace termed-out Democrat John Chiang with 761,108 votes, or 24.6 percent of the ballots cast.

This jungle primary thing just doesn’t stop being funny.

Quote of the Day, Really. Yes. EVERYBODY Is Counting The Days Until 01/20/2017 edition.

The Washington Free Beacon gets it right on the first try:

According to Politico, Obama’s Italian dinner party illustrates the paradox of his second term. “Stymied at home and abroad, Obama recognizes that he is less in control of the Washington agenda than ever in his presidency,” write Budoff Brown and Epstein. “Yet his newfound realism has also given him a palpable sense of liberation.” I find nothing paradoxical about Obama’s recent pattern of behavior, nothing mysterious about the golfing, partying, traveling. It is quite obvious: Obama has given up.

Which is not the worst thing in the world, frankly. We’ve all seen what happened when the man attempted to actually run things…

Today, of course, is D-Day.

The beginning of the end of the war in the Atlantic theater.  I have not much to say that has not been already said; but there is one point to make.  You will see a lot of people who will wistfully, or angrily, or simply emotionally remark that the deeds done by that generation might be beyond the reach of this one.  To which I say: no, they are not.  The people of the 1940s had to learn to endure, usually under appalling conditions; and if we were to be subjected to the same stresses that they were we would learn to endure, too.  It would admittedly be just as painful for us as it was for them – nostalgia blurs the memory – but men and women have not suddenly become genetically different in the last seventy years.  We’ve simply been enjoying a bit of a Golden Age, that’s all.

That’s all.  God bless the men and women who died in World War II so that I could grow up in peace and quiet.

Some interesting stuff here from SJG about the OGRE sponsor sheets.

Basically, one of the Kickstarter sponsorship levels was the right to make and sell your own specialized sheets of Ogres (often with scenarios added).  You would think that these would all be processed by the sponsors right away, because that level of sponsorship was not cheap.  But not quite 100%…

…an update on the status of the various sponsored counter sheets created by third parties in support of the new Ogre edition. The biggest lesson we learned from those was: it’s risky. Some of the counter-sheet sponsors performed their obligations flawlessly. Some had problems but are working through them. Some seem to have fallen off the map.

The problem, with 20-20 hindsight, is that it’s possible to have enough money and enthusiasm to sponsor a counter sheet, and even take orders, and still not have the ability to follow through.

Something to keep in mind, if you were planning a crowdsourced project in the near future.