The Tea Party Rage is about... the Queen of Tarts ...
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: The Tea Party Rage is about... the Queen of Tarts ...
Date: Mar 28, 2010 9:29 AM
FRANK RICH BELOW
===========================
About which they're raging
they know not:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/alice-table.html
`That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet,' said
the King, rubbing his hands; `so now let the jury--'
`If any one of them can explain it,' said Alice, (she had grown so
large in the last few minutes that she wasn't a bit afraid of
interrupting him,) `I'll give him sixpence. I don't believe there's an
atom of meaning in it.'
The jury all wrote down on their slates, `She doesn't believe there's
an atom of meaning in it,' but none of them attempted to explain the
paper.
`If there's no meaning in it,' said the King, `that saves a world of
trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't
know,' he went on, spreading out the verses on his knee, and looking
at them with one eye; `I seem to see some meaning in them, after all.
"--Said I could not swim--" you can't swim, can you?' he added,
turning to the Knave.
=======================
It's not about Gays and Homos
or Blacks or Wimmins or any of
them just plain decks of cards.
Somewhere along the rage highway
during the Bush years, someone re-thunk
up the notion that the nation was about
rebellion against the Bigs. No one has yet
explained to the Mad Hatters that the Bigs
have all along called the Shots and conversely
"none of them attempted to explain..."
that the *US Government* was *designed*
around the theory that the "Autocrats
wouldn't always get their way."
If the Hatters could think up a single
instance where BigInsurance/Wall Street
has mangle the lives of the Main-Streeters,
well, then, in that one instance we'd find
that Wall Streeters/BigInsurance were "over a
mile tall and therefore exempt from giving
testimony."
Right now the Queen of Tarts wants to:
`No, no!' said the Queen. `Sentence first--verdict afterwards.'
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0327/palin-slams-lamestream-media-lies-tea-party-violence/
"It's a bunch of bunk that the media is trying to feed you. Don't let
them try to divert attention from the issue," she said.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tart
======================================
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/28
Published on Sunday, March 28, 2010 by The New York Times
The Rage Is Not About Health Care
by Frank Rich
THERE were times when last Sunday's great G.O.P. health care implosion
threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC's
"This Week," a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in
a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later,
the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up
his "Hell no, you can't!" incantation in the House chamber - instant
fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am's "Yes,
we can!" classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened
the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to
wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-
generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.
But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There's nothing entertaining
about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil
rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the
week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched
from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local
police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and
their families.
How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler
knows so little about history that it doesn't recognize its own small-
scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante
violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a
window. So far.
No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its
proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a
big deal, all right, so much so it doesn't need Joe Biden's adjective
to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-
style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32
million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a
conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page
observed last week, the bill's prototype is the health care
legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains
what used to be considered Republican ideas.
Yet it's this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor
to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from
the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It's this bill that
prompted a congressman to shout "baby killer" at Bart Stupak, a
staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It's this bill that drove a
demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from
Missouri. And it's this "middle-of-the-road" bill, as Obama accurately
calls it, that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric,
from "Kill the bill!" to Sarah Palin's cry for her followers to
"reload." At least four of the House members hit with death threats or
vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle
crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.
When Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935 and Medicare in
1965, there was indeed heated opposition. As Dana Milbank wrote in The
Washington Post, Alf Landon built his catastrophic 1936 presidential
campaign on a call for repealing Social Security. (Democrats can only
pray that the G.O.P. will "go for it" again in 2010, as Obama goaded
them on Thursday, and keep demanding repeal of a bill that by
September will shower benefits on the elderly and children alike.)
When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries
of "socialism" along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from
the American Medical Association.
But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the
overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year
before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by
similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even
more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the
civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That's
because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable
change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.
The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now,
were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater,
running for president in '64, drew on the counsel of two young legal
allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as
a "threat to the very essence of our basic system" and a "usurpation"
of states' rights that "would force you to admit drunks, a known
murderer or an insane person into your place of business." Richard
Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the
bill "would destroy the free enterprise system." David Lawrence, a
widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment
of "a federal dictatorship." Meanwhile, three civil rights workers
were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.
That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that
what the right calls "Obamacare" is less provocative than either the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that
actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of
American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care
bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It's
merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of
2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled
America in 1964.
In fact, the current surge of anger - and the accompanying rise in
right-wing extremism - predates the entire health care debate. The
first signs were the shrieks of "traitor" and "off with his head" at
Palin rallies as Obama's election became more likely in October 2008.
Those passions have spiraled ever since - from Gov. Rick Perry's
kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the
gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies
last summer to "You lie!" piercing the president's address to Congress
last fall like an ominous shot.
If Obama's first legislative priority had been immigration or
financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same
trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker
of the House - topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a
powerful gay Congressional committee chairman - would sow fears of
disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the
country no matter what policies were in play. It's not happenstance
that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver - none of them major Democratic players
in the health care push - received a major share of last weekend's
abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan "Take our country
back!," these are the people they want to take the country back from.
They can't. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill
contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care
vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic
women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12
months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election
year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party
movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven't had a single
African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had
only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly
changing America are well-grounded.
If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like
homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that's their right. If
they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995
by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to
cooperate on any legislation, that's their right too (and a political
gift to the Democrats). But they can't emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by
remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed
militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that
story. And they can't pretend that we're talking about "isolated
incidents" or a "fringe" utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac
poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify
themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while
only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible
leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the
resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia,
concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly
that the law is "now on the books." Yet no Republican or conservative
leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the
others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now.
Last week McCain even endorsed Palin's "reload" rhetoric.
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea
Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out
its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P.
leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia
Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that's the
strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear
them too.
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
Frank Rich is a regular columnist for The New York Times. He is the
author of many books, including The Great Story Ever Sold: The Decline
and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci
Frogwatch
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Some reality:
http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2010/03/grim-news-majority-says-tea-party-more.html
Ray OHara
"Frogwatch" <dbo...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:9b75174a-9372-4849-bdf3-Anthony Fauci
Some reality:
http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2010/03/grim-news-majority-says-tea-party-more.html
==================================================================================
47% is not a majority.
Peter Skelton
<dbo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>Some reality:
>http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2010/03/grim-news-majority-says-tea-party-more.html
Why not post the original?
Peter Skelton
Jack Linthicum
> On Sun, 28 Mar 2010 08:18:26 -0700 (PDT), Frogwatch
>
>
> >Some reality:
> >http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2010/03/grim-news-majority-says...
>
> Why not post the original?
>
>
> Peter Skelton
and the examination of the Rasmussen polling, graphs, etc at the
citation
1.08.2010
Rasmussen, Teabaggers, and Type II Error
by Nate Silver @ 11:42 AM
Bookmark and Share Share This Content
As many people have noticed, Rasmussen's polls this year have tended
to be more favorable to Republican candidates and causes than those of
most other polling outfits.
This does not necessarily imply bias. It could result from a whole
number of things, ranging from the fact that they're applying a likely
voter screen when most other pollsters aren't, to some sort of
methodological quirk, to the fact that they're just doggone right.
But the degree of the "house effect" seems to vary according to the
nature of the candidate. When the candidate is a mainstream or liberal-
ish Republican, like the candidates in Missouri or Ohio or Connecticut
or Illinois, Rasmussen's numbers don't seem to differ all that much
from other pollsters; maybe a couple of points, on average. But if the
candidate is more of an "insurgent" conservative with ties to or roots
in the tea-party movement, you can see some really big differences.
Take, for example, their recent polls in Kentucky and Florida. In each
case, you have someone who gets the tea-partiers excited (Rand Paul
and Marco Rubio, respectively) running against a more traditional
mainline Republican.
The other pollsters, for the time being, have the mainline Republican
doing better; in Rasmussen's case the opposite is true. In Florida,
Quinnipiac has Charlie Crist outperforming Marco Rubio by a net of 23
points against the Democrat, and Research 2000 by 25 points. But
Rasmussen has Rubio doing 8 points better. A similar trend manifests
itself in Kentucky for Rand Paul in his matchup against Daniel
Mongiardo, although is not so apparent against the other Democrat,
Jack Conway.
I've also included the percentages of voters in each survey who had a
strong enough opinion about a candidate to rate him -- this is not
exactly the same thing as name recognition, but it's pretty close so
we'll use that term as a shorthand. Research 2000 and Quinnipiac have
Rubio with name recognition of 43 percent and 38 percent, respectively
-- Rasmussen has him at 80 percent. PPP and Research 2000 have Rand
Paul with name recognition at 49 and 55 percent; Rasmussen has him at
81. (EDIT: To be fair, some of this is because Rasmussen's polls are
somewhat more recent -- they had Rubio at 71 percent name recognition
in August and 72 percent in October, and Paul at 74 percent in
September.)
This, at least, helps to explain why their results are different: the
voters in their survey are much more likely to be tuned in and to have
heard of candidates like Rubio and Paul, and are therefore more likely
to say that they'll vote for them. Rasmussen, I'm sure, would say that
this is because they're using a likely voter screen whereas the other
pollsters are not.
But personally, I just don't buy that 80 percent of the people who
will eventually vote in November have an opinion about Rand Paul or
Marco Rubio right now. These candidates are relatively fresh faces in
their respective states; the political class may know about them, but
most voters (even "likely" ones) aren't going to tune in to the horse
race stuff for several more months and may have at best a passing
knowledge of the candidates at this stage.
Moreover, the differences in name recognition are really large.
Suppose that Quinnipiac is right that Rubio has 38 percent name
recognition among registered voters. Suppose moreover that all of the
people who have heard of Rubio are people who are going to vote in
November and are properly identified as likely voters.
Turnout in midterm elections is usually in the range of 60 percent of
registered voters, and will probably be somewhat higher than that in
Florida where there are two highly competitive races. But let's say
it's 60 percent, and you can identify this 60 percent with 100 percent
accuracy. If that's the case, the highest Rubio's name recognition
should theoretically be in your poll is 63 percent, which is 38/60.
But Rasmussen had him at 71 percent two months before the Quinnipiac
poll was conducted, has him at 80 percent now. Some of this could
result from differences in question wording; Quinnipiac, for instance,
explicitly gives the respondent a choice of "or haven't you heard
enough about him?". Nevertheless, the Rasmussen respondent always
seems ready to take a position on just about everything, including
candidates and issues that other pollsters show he doesn't know very
much about. This perhaps reflects a form of Type II error or "false
negatives" -- leaving people out of your sample who should be
included, specifically people who are less well informed but who do
vote.
Although it seems likely that Rasmussen is winding up with an over-
tight sample of voters, I don't think that they're doing so
intentionally. If you're a robopollster, you're lucky enough to get
someone to complete your survey 10 months out from a Congressional
election when call screening is becoming more and more common and
people have a lot of other things -- notably the economy -- to worry
about. And, unlike the other robopollsters like SurveyUSA and PPP,
Rasmussen does all their polling in one evening, so if they miss you
the first time around, you're out of their sample. Their response
rates have to be very low. If someone has picked up the phone and
completed your survey, that's probably all the indication you need
that they're engaged by politics and they'll probably vote come
November.
But then Rasmussen applies a likely voter screen on top of that. This
is probably overkill. If you're Quinnipiac, and you have a huge
academic budget and a whole room full of trained professional
interviewers and are in the field for five or six days, then you can
and perhaps should be applying a likely voter screen, even at this
early stage. If you're Rasmussen and doing a blitz poll, your voters
have pretty much already been screened for you. It's even possible
that your sample is already too tight before the likely voter screen
and that you'd theoretically want to make it looser, although there's
really no good way to do that.
Weighting by party ID, as Rasmussen does, gives a pollster a pretty
big fudge factor, but only provided that the response biases in your
sample come between the categories that you're weighting by and not
within them. Rasmussen's weighting scheme might guarantee that they
have more or less the right number of Republicans or the right number
of Hispanics -- but it can't guarantee that they'll have the right
kind of Republicans or the right kind of Hispanics, particularly for
amorphous factors like ideology which can be hard to proxy. It's
possible, for instance, that they'd wind up with Republicans who were
too informed and/or too conservative relative to other Republicans. If
that's the case, it would probably manifest itself in the way that
certain Republican candidates performed vis-à-vis other ones, as we
may be seeing in their polling of Kentucky and Florida.
By the way, this is not necessarily an indictment of the ultimate
accuracy of Rasmussen's polls. This "bug" may even be helpful to them!
It's quite possible the uber-tuned-in voters that they're sampling are
"early adopters", and the rest of the electorate will follow their
lead. But in that sense, their polls are more like predictions and
less snapshots of current public opinion.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/rasmussen-teabaggers-and-type-ii-error.html
and
3.11.2010
House Effects Render Poll-Reading Difficult
by Nate Silver
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/03/house-effects-render-poll-reading.html
Mort Zuckerman
wrote:
>
> and
>
> 3.11.2010
> House Effects Render Poll-Reading Difficult
> by Nate Silver
>
It doesn't matter.
The USA does not have anything to
offer the world, healthwise:
http://www.actionlyme.org