Tag Archives: election 2016

R code to read Nate Silver’s data

Thanks to Nate Silver for posting all his polling data in a convenient text file that anyone can read! It’s a nice thing to do. Even though not many of us can do as interesting things with it as Nate Silver, it is a fun data set to play and practice with. Here is an R-bloggers post with some ideas on how to play with it.

 

the GOP’s “Growth and Opportunity Project”

After their 2012 election loss, the Republican Party made some surprisingly candid admissions and drew some surprisingly logical conclusions. I could almost begin to support a party that focused on sound, evidenced-based policies to create accelerated economic growth and true equal opportunity, while preserving a minimal but effective safety net for people who need it through no fault of their own.

We are the Party of private-sector economic growth because that is the best way to create jobs and opportunity. That is the best way to help people earn an income, achieve success and take care of their families.

But if we are going to grow as a Party, our policies and actions must take into account that the middle class has struggled mightily and that far too many of our citizens live in poverty. To people who are flat on their back, unemployed or disabled and in need of help, they do not care if the help comes from the private sector or the government — they just want help.

Our job as Republicans is to champion private growth so people will not turn to the government in the first place. But we must make sure that the government works for those truly in need, helping them so they can quickly get back on their feet. We should be driven by reform, eliminating, and fixing what is broken, while making sure the government’s safety net is a trampoline, not a trap.

Too bad their primary voters resoundingly rejected these reasonable ideas in favor of bigotry, science denial, and downright childishness. I doubt I will so much as glance in their direction again, even though I get frustrated with the subserviance to big business, warmongering and relatively narrow range of policies in consideration by the Democrats.

August 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

  • Bokashi is a system that essentially pickles your compost.
  • There is an unlikely but plausible scenario where Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, could become President of the United States this fall. Speaking of implausible scenarios, I learned that RIchard Nixon made a serious attempt to pass a basic income bill in 1969.
  • Here is a short video explaining the Fermi Paradox, which asks why there are no aliens. Meanwhile Russian astronomers are saying there might be aliens.

Dick, Bush, and Johnson

Ronald Feinman proposes a scenario where Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, could be become U.S. President in the fall, with Mike Pence as his Vice President.

in theory, if neither major party candidate wins 270 electoral votes, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives for the first time since 1824. In a Republican controlled House, Gary Johnson, in theory, could be elected President with the lowest percentage of popular votes in American history, far less than John Quincy Adams’ 30.9 percent in 1824 or Abraham Lincoln’s 39.8 percent of the vote in 1860…

So at least, there is a long range possibility that on January 20, 2017, we could have our third President Johnson, after Andrew Johnson in 1865 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963. And we would have a Libertarian President, the first third party candidate in history to be elected President, albeit by the House of Representatives.

But at the same time, under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, either Mike Pence or Tim Kaine would become Vice President, as only the top two candidates for the Vice Presidency can be considered by the Senate, although the top three candidates can be considered by the House of Representatives for President. Since the Senate is majority Republican, that would likely make Mike Pence Vice President to serve with Libertarian Gary Johnson as President, which would make for a very interesting and weird situation, never having occurred before in American history.

And this does not even account for the popular theory that voters are subconsciously attracted to candidates named Bush, Dick, or Johnson.

July 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

  • The financial crisis triggered by U.S. banks in 2008 may have been a major factor behind a resurgence of right-wing politics in Europe.
  • Household chemicals may have adverse effects on the developing brain, including a contribution to the risk of “neurodevelopmental disorders that affect the brain and nervous system including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, intellectual disabilities, and other learning and behavioral disabilities”.
  • The CIA is just not that good at spying.

3 most hopeful stories

  • There are new tools for considering ecosystem services and biodiversity in development decisions.
  • Uber Pool could be a game changing technology that ushers in a new kind of flexible transportation system.
  • The problems of a civilization in overshoot can seem overwhelming, but one thing you can do is convert your lawn to a sustainable ecosystem. Moss is an option. Also related to this, some ecologists are paying more attention to soil.

3 most interesting stories

  • I was a little side-tracked by U.S. Presidential politics. Nate Silver launched his general election site, putting the odds about 80-20 in favor of Hillary at the beginning of the month. The odds swung toward Trump over the course of the month as the two major party conventions took place (one in my backyard), but by the end of the month they were back to about 70-30 in favor of Hillary. During the month I mused about NAFTA, the fall of the Republic, the banana republicThe Art of the Deal, how to debate Trump, and Jon Stewart,
  • It’s really okay to cook pork chops medium rare.
  • It’s really hard to predict earthquakes. Many scientists think it is impossible, but once upon a time they thought that about predicting weather.

debating Trump

I don’t make a point of reading the National Review, but sometimes I do so I know what they are saying. Most of this is ridiculous, like a suggestion that Trump will get the minority vote because minorities are on welfare and they are afraid illegal immigrants will get their welfare. That’s just lies, racism, and nonsense. But I did think the article made some points about how and why it is hard to debate someone like Trump.

it is suicidal to descend into the muck to battle Trump. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz all tried and failed, despite the fact that they had every moral justification in hitting back in like kind. Elizabeth Warren is trying to be an anti-Trump street-fighter; but her incoherent venom suggests that Harvard Law professors should stick to academic jousting in the faculty lounge. Brawlers know the rules of the street far better than establishmentarians. The Senate is not The Apprentice, and politics is not New York real estate. Ask the trash-talking Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg if she came out on top in dueling with Trump — or whether she virtually destroyed a quarter-century’s reputation in minutes and ended up no better than an elderly version of Rosie O’Donnell in a Supreme Court Justice costume. Hillary is stepping up her crude attacks on Trump. But as in the past, such hits are more likely to make the Trump mode suddenly seem normal, and to make Trump a target of those who claim they are more sober and judicious but in extremis prove no more measured than Trump himself.

Stoop to Trump’s level and you are trying to beat him at his own game, and he will shred you. Refuse to engage him and you might look weak or scared. That leaves trying to challenge his facts and logic and lack of coherence from one speech to the next. Clearly his supporters don’t care about any of these things, but maybe some swing voters are capable of logic. We will find out.

Trump’s Banana Republic

Here’s what Fareed Zakariah had to say about the Republican Convention.

Over the years, I have watched campaigns in third world countries in which one candidate accuses the other of being a criminal, sometimes even threatening to jail his opponent once elected. But I cannot recall this happening in any Western democracy until this week. The Republican convention has been colorful and chaotic, but above all, it has been consumed by a vigilante rage, complete with mock prosecutors, show trials and chanting mobs. The picture presented to the world has been of America as a banana republic.

We have descended so far so fast that it is sometimes difficult to remember that this is not normal. It was only eight years ago that the Republican nominee, John McCain, interrupted one of his supporters who claimed that Barack Obama was an Arab and thus suspicious to explain that his opponent was in fact “a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

Contrast that with the tenor of this campaign, which has been set from the top by Donald Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that Hillary Clinton deserves to be in jail. He even promised that were he elected, his attorney general would reopen the books and “take a very good look” at possibly indicting her, himself having concluded that she is “guilty as hell.” That might have happened in a Latin American country — 30 years ago.

The Art of the Deal

It turns out Donald Trump didn’t write The Art of the Deal all by himself. Here’s what the guy who actually wrote it has to say in The New Yorker:

“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”