[Posted by Karl]

As usual, you are positively encouraged to engage in sockpuppetry in this thread. The usual rules apply.

Please, be sure to switch back to your regular handle when commenting on other threads. I have made that mistake myself.

Sockpuppet comments about the Republican primary race are strictly prohibited. If you wish to use sockpuppets for that purpose, confine your comments to this thread. Same goes for any discussion that is not funny where people want to get angry at each other. Offending comments will be summarily deleted and the violators flogged.

And remember: the worst sin you can commit on this thread is not being funny.

—

Film Actors’ Guild president Alec Baldwin has never been accused of being the sharpest tool in the drawer.  On Victims of Communism Day, Baldwin told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell of Republicans’ political woes:

Well, you know, things for these guys aren’t going that well. You know the, the economy may stumble. It probably won’t stumble that badly between now and the election. For those people who look at these very handy benchmarks like the Dow, the Dow is still staying pretty well above 13,000. Which that kind of crowd of Romney’s really, really goes for. ***

And here’s Alec talking to GQ in a new interview:

GQ: Yesterday you were speaking about how Mitt Romney is out of touch with the American people. If getting pizza with firemen isn’t the right way to remedy that, what’s a more appropriate food to show that you’re down with regular people?

Alec Baldwin: I think right now, and I know this is a very glib thing to say, but I think right now it would be to take a book full of food stamps and go buy whatever meals you can with a food stamp provision on a weekly basis. Because although welfare has been cut, as we all know from a lot of reportage over the last several months that food stamp use has soared. I think the most American thing you can do today is go stand in line and see what your weekly allotment of food stamps will buy you.

He thinks he’s being cute, but when Alec Baldwin joins Newt Gingrich in calling Barack Obama the “food stamp president,” he may want to rethink the notion that the GOP is running scared.

–Karl

If her daughter wants to look this good, it’s going to have be her own decision:

(more…)

The Chinese dissident and opponent of forced abortion will be allowed to stay in the U.S. — perhaps not permanently, but at least past the 2012 elections (which is the important thing for Obama). In reporting the news, Ed Morrissey lists the Obama administration’s mistakes in handling this situation:

Thus ends, one presumes, the shockingly inept performance from the State Department and the Obama administration in handling the Chen matter. The State Department all but pushed Chen out of the US embassy in Beijing, reneged on a promise to accompany him to a hospital, and then blamed Chen for the miscommunication. They let themselves be pushed around by Beijing, which miscalculated exactly how the rest of the world would react to their heavy-handed treatment of the anti-One Child Policy dissident, but that doesn’t let the White House off the hook for its callous abandonment of a democracy activist.

We are in the best, and most principled, of hands.

Alternate post title: Frivolous Lawsuit of the Day 2:

When she plucked a winning lottery ticket out of the trash, Sharon Jones’ luck changed instantly. The $1 million prize let her pay off debts, give thousands of dollars to her children and buy a gleaming new pickup truck.

But now her jackpot is in jeopardy. A judge ruled this week that the money belongs to another woman, who says she threw the ticket away after a lottery machine incorrectly told her it was a loser. The Arkansas Lottery Commission insists there are no problems with its equipment.

A discarded lottery ticket is at the center of a million dollar dispute in Arkansas. A woman who found the ticket in the trash received the prize from the state lottery commission, but a judge says the ticket belongs to the woman who bought it.

The winner in the lawsuit says she threw away the ticket after an electronic scanner told her she had lost:

Sharon Jones claimed the $1 million prize last July, turning in a scratch-off “Diamond Dazzler” ticket that the other woman, Sharon Duncan, said she purchased earlier at the Super 1 Stop convenience store in Beebe, about 35 miles northeast of Little Rock.

Duncan told a judge she discarded the ticket after an electronic scanner told her it was “not a winner.”

“And then the next thing you know, 10 months later, you’re fighting for something that was trash,” William Jones said.

It’s not clear how Duncan proves she bought the ticket, especially in light of this:

White County Judge Thomas Hughes concluded that Duncan bought the winning ticket, even though lottery records and store security video didn’t synch up to the precise timing of the purchase. He ruled that Duncan never abandoned her right to claim the winnings.

“The $1 million was never found money,” the judge said Tuesday.

My favorite part of the story isn’t in the linked article, but I know I saw it the other day and just can’t find the link: the store owner also sued for ownership of the ticket.

Hey, why not?

If this doesn’t provoke a lively debate then I have no idea what could.

[Posted by Karl]

The bloggy thing to do this morning would be to link the results of the new Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll of FL, OH and PA, toss in today’s media focus on VA from ABC News and others, then do some analysis of the strategies the campigns might be to pursue some given set of swing states.  Indeed, I have done posts in that vein before (albeit with some nuance I won’t get into here).  But today I feel more contrarian and nitpicky.

First, these polls and media stories merely confirm what we would have surmised a year ago: FL and OH are going to be close, PA remains a tough get for the GOP, and VA has been trending Democratic but not a sure thing for Obama in light of the 2009 and 2010 elections there.

Second, as Nate Silver notes, state polling is still noisy at theis point in the campaign.

Third, as political scientist Andrew Gelman notes, the past several decades have seen a steady decline in the variation of statewide vote swings.  Come November, the swing in the swing states will likely mirror the swing nationally.  Electionate makes a similar point, although I have some disagreement with the underlying reasoning:

There’s a growing chorus arguing that Obama has an electoral college advantage. The underlying assumption is that the race is close nationally and yet Obama seems poised to secure well over 300 electoral votes. In my view, that argument is misguided for a simple reason: the race isn’t close nationally, and the electoral college consequently reflects an Obama advantage.

Electionate’s claim that the race isn’t close nationally is based in large part on the argument that Rasmussen and Gallup are skewing perceptions of the race.  I will not rehash the claims against Rasmussen; some of them are quite reasonable, others less so.  Gallup defends its polling here and here.  Rather, I will note that Electionate’s plot excluding Gallup and Rasmussen tends to show a slowly tightening race, which is what you see with Gallup and Ras in the mix.  Eyeballing the plot suggests Obama currently has an edge of a bit over 4% — but today’s RCP average gives Obama an edge of 3.6%.  That’s not much a difference, particularly when considering that head-to-head polls at this point in the election cycle explain less than 50% of eventual results. [Note: Electionate does not name RCP as an offender on this score.]

However, this is another reason to focus more on Obama’s job approval number than any Electoral College map at the moment.  The current RCP averages are 48.3% approve, 47.4% disapprove.  If you exclude Gallup and Ras, 47.8% approve and 47.3% disapprove.  Again, judiciously including Gallup and Ras has no significant effect on the numbers; if anything, they boost Obama’s approval number.  For the zombies focused on the 2004 campaign analogy, note that while Bush had declining job approval eight years ago, he went into the election with a 49.8% job approval by the RCP average.

None of this will keep we political junkies from obsessing over polls and maps.  It’s fun to do that.  Just keep in mind that at this point in the campaign, they probably do not tell you what you really want to know.

–Karl

[Posted by Karl]

Given the number of stories I expect to see making these errors, I almost hate to single out the WaPo’s Chris Cillizza. But here he is, predicting that Pres. Obama will go even more negative in his reelect campaign — almost advising that he do so — based on Pres. Bush’s 2004 reelect campaign:

Why? Because Bush whose popularity was sliding amid rising questions about the war in Iraq — among other things — knew that there was no path to victory against Kerry by spending any substantial time touting his accomplishments during his first four years in office.

Partisans on both sides were already lined up either for or against Bush and no amount of positive (or negative) advertising would move them off of how they intended to vote. Undecided voters didn’t like Bush so positive ads amounted to a waste of time. The only way to win was to make Kerry even less palatable.

Obama is in a somewhat similar — albeit it slightly stronger — position that Bush found himself at this time in 2004. The struggling economy has dragged down the current incumbent’s numbers and two of his main legislative achievements — health care and the economic stimulus — are not popular with the American public. (They are popular with the Democratic base, however, which is why Obama is touting some of those accomplishments in web ads — a means of communication that helps gin up energy in the base.)

Mind you, Jay Cost has looked in depth at the 2004 campaign and found essentially the opposite result:

The election that year was a referendum on Bush: people who disapproved of him voted overwhelmingly for Kerry; people who approved of him voted overwhelmingly for Bush. In fact, the Bush approvers/Kerry voters were more numerous than the Bush disapprovers/Bush voters.

As Jay noted: “If anything, Kerry did a better job at peeling away voters from the “other” side than Bush did.”

Cillizza’s sloppy thinking is most evident in his final paragraph quoted above.  I doubt he missed the day in writing class about paragraph structure and how topic sentences are supposed to be supported by and flow from the topic sentence.  Here, we are told Obama is in a slightly stronger position than Bush, but the rest of the paragraph actually suggests why Obama is in a weak position. [My theory is that Cillizza believes this because Bush's approval was trending downward in May 2004, while Obama's has generally trended upward since Autumn 2011.  However, I would note Bush's downward trend broke over the summer of 2004 -- and it's entirely possible the converse could happen here, based on the natural rhythms of a presidential election year and the state of the economy. The main point here is that Cillizza could not be bothered to support his assertion with data or argument.]

Cillizza spells out his bedrock premise near the end of his piece:

Remember: Campaigns run negative ads because they work.

However, political scientists like John Sides will tell you that we haven’t remotely arrived at a place where research suggests that negative ads “work.”  This is not to say that negative ads never work; it is merely to say that at best, Cillizza can only claim that campaigns run negative ads because they believe negative ads work.  Sides calls the idea that negative ads work a “zombie,” because it refuses to die, despite the general lack of data supporting it.

Conservatives will be inclined to attribute the sloppy thinking of such stories entirely to political bias by journalists who would prefer Obama’s reelection.  However, without excluding bias as a factor, the problem runs deeper than that.

The 2012 election will be mostly a referendum on the incumbent and the economy, as such elections almost always are.  Yet coverage of the campaign to date has overwhelmingly focused on the horse race, tactics, strategy, money and advertising, absolutely dwarfing coverage of policy, the candidates’ public records and even their personal issues.  The same was true of the 2008 general election coverage, despite a financial panic and two war theaters.  Indeed, two of the world’s easiest predictions are: (1) after the 2012 elections, journalists will hold conferences where they decry the fact that they disserved the public with too much horse race coverage; (2) they will do it again in 2016.

The establishment media’s enormous bias toward horse race coverage is fundamentally self-serving.  If campaign strategists and pollsters are the puppet-masters who determine election outcomes, then the reporters who relay their plans to the unwashed masses have status.  But if people think that the event of the moment may not matter all that much, fewer people read the Washington Post.  And even zombies gotta eat.

–Karl

Following up on Karl’s excellent post from yesterday, we have this from Michael Mukasey:

While contemplating how the killing of bin Laden reflects on the president, consider the way he emphasized his own role in the hazardous mission accomplished by SEAL Team 6:

“I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority . . . even as I continued our broader effort. . . . Then, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community I was briefed . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . And finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . .”

Mukasey constrasts this “me me me” attitude with that of George W. Bush:

The man from whom President Obama has sought incessantly to distance himself, George W. Bush, also had occasion during his presidency to announce to the nation a triumph of intelligence: the capture of Saddam Hussein. He called that success “a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq.” He attributed it to “the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator’s footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers. . . . Their work continues, and so do the risks.”

He did mention himself at the end: “Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.”

This video, with the smug look on Obama’s face as he discusses how he went after Bin Laden, makes the point well.

I’ll tell you when it isn’t. When the races don’t fit the narrative:

Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim.

The victim’s friend, a young woman, tried to pull him back into his car. Attackers came after her, pulling her hair, punching her head and causing a bloody scratch to the surface of her eye. She called 911. A recording told her all lines were busy. She called again. Busy. On her third try, she got through and, hysterical, could scream only their location.

. . . .

Forster and Rostami, both white, suffered a beating at the hands of a crowd of black teenagers.

If you reversed the races, would this be national news? Would we be hearing from Al Sharpton?

As it happens, it is being publicized by an opinion columnist. Who says: “Forster and Rostami’s story has not, until today, appeared in this paper.”

Thanks to dana.

If you’re looking for something uplifting (though sad), check out Baby Avery’s Bucket List. She was born with SMA (spinal muscular atrophy) and given only months to live. As described at the Daily Mail:

Her father Mike had chronicled his daughter’s life in a blog, writing in her voice about all the things she wanted to do before she died, including wearing a big bow and going to a tea party.

. . . .

The initial bucket list included several childhood milestones, such as going swimming, going on a road trip, sit on daddy’s shoulders, have a birthday party, and stay up past my bedtime watching TV with mommy and daddy.

If you go to the blog, you’ll see it became something of a sensation, and her “bucket list” grew and grew.

There will be no more additions to the list. She died two days ago. But the parents’ love of their daughter and of life shines through. Worth a visit.

From the Foundry blog at Heritage.org:

Parents, be forewarned: there’s a terrible danger out there. Delicious, sweet, spreadable chocolate is available for purchase in your supermarkets, but it’s NOT healthy for your kids! Who would have thought?!? But ignorance is bliss — very bliss — and in the case of Uninformed Moms vs. Nutella, it was worth $3.5 million in a class action lawsuit settlement.

This latest example of the U.S. legal system run wild comes to us from California where two mothers filed suit against Ferrero USA, Inc., the maker of Nutella — a spreadable, chocolate-flavored hazelnut product. ABC News reports that one of the plaintiffs — Athena Hohenberg of San Diego — sued the company because she was confused into thinking that Nutella is a health food, and she was “was shocked to learn” that Nutella “was the next best thing to a candy bar.”

The root of their claim is that the company is guilty of false advertising. The TV ad for Nutella highlights how the product is made from “simple, quality ingredients like hazelnuts, skim milk and a hint of coco.”

According to one of the plaintiffs, “I thought it was at least as nutritious as peanut butter if not more and that’s the impression I got from the advertisement. I thought it had health benefits and it clearly doesn’t.”

Now, the company is settling for $3.5 million — or anywhere from $4 to $20 per person in the class.

The ability of people to file frivolous lawsuits is one of the country’s biggest problems. Stories like this make for a good laugh but the underlying issue is not funny at all.