Voodoo Economics Obama style....

Let me live 'neath your spell,
Do do that voodoo
that you do so well.

You do something to me,
something that simply mystifies me.
Tell me, why should it be
you have the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live 'neath your spell,
Do do that voodoo
that you do so well.
For you do something to me
that nobody else could do!

Links to Cole Porter lyrics.

Hat tip to Mike L!

Mississippi is the most giving state...New Hampshire the least..

I was driving some today so I tuned in The Big Guy and he was doing his annual drive for money to fight blood cancers.

During the trip I said hello to a Leftie I know and joshed him about The Big Guy setting a new record in dollars and in donations.... I pointed out that all of the attacks the Lefties have done have increased his listener numbers... I must say he took it poorly and wouldn't believe me when I said Lefties are Scrooges.

Here's proof.



Click on image to increase size.

Link

Polls and polls and what they mean

Whenever I find a poll, or article, that takes a political point of view or shows a result that I find to be in contrast with what I think is common sense, my ears get pointed and I get interested.

Take the case of the Senate election in Minnesota between Demo Al Franken and Repub Norm Coleman. The election ended too close to call and we have had various challenges, recounts, etc., ever since. Coleman’s claim has been that the votes weren’t all counted the same. As I noted in the Link below, I think he has a point and that seems wrong to me.

The Minnesota Board of Elections, a three judge panel, disagrees with me. Their position appears to be that well….. the election officials tried to do it right…

Well, well. Will that become the new defense? “Judge, I tried to NOT rob that bank.”

Over vote link.

So now Coleman finds that he can accept having the election decided by different rules in different places, or he can appeal. Concede or appeal to the Minnesota SC and then, if he loses there, up the Federal chain to the US SC.

Various pundits have weighed in on both sides which matters not to me. What I do find of interest is this that poll that claims that 63% of the voters in Minnesota want Coleman to concede. Since the election ended too close to call, I was curious. So I started digging through the poll.

First I looked at how the voters in the poll claimed to have voted.

Q7 In the US Senate election last fall, who did you vote for? If you voted for Norm Coleman, press 1. If you voted for Al Franken, press 2. If you voted for Dean Barkley, press 3. If youdidn’t vote or don’t remember, press 4.
Coleman ......................................................... 41%
Franken........................................................... 41%
Barkley............................................................ 13%
Didn't Vote/Don't Remember .......................... 5%

I then looked up the party affiliation of those polls.

Q9 If you are a Democrat, press 1. If you are a Republican, press 2. If you are an independent
or identify with another party, press 3Democrat ........................................................ 39%
Republican...................................................... 28%
Independent/Other.......................................... 32%

Link to Minnesota Senate Recount Poll.

Q7 Is a snapshot of 11/4/08, if you believe the results. But, the issue isn’t what was done on 11/4/09, but whether or not Coleman should concede.

I then went to Q9. It should be obvious that a Democrat would be more likely to favor Coleman conceding. And my knowledge of MN politics tell me that the “Independents” are very much Leftwing Liberations and Populists. (Not the same person, obviously.)

So what would a reasonable person expect? I would expect that on the question of whether not Coleman should appeal, the results of the Poll’s loading Demo 39- Repub 28- Independent (Barkley) 32 number would follow party affiliation.

And they do.

If you go down to the crosstabs (back up information) in the poll, 93% of the Demos, 25% of the Repubs and 61% of the Barkley (Ind) voters polled want him to concede.

Okay, that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why the people polled are weighted the way they are.

Even more interesting is why these people changed their minds? And why in such astonishing numbers? Look 41% of those polled said they voted for Coleman.

Now 63% say they want him to concede?

That doesn’t make a lot of sense, now does it? As for the poll? I have no idea as to why it was done, who paid for it and why it was weighted the way it was.

Lips and Liquor

Works for me!

Hat tip to Jimmy M!

Tax Day protests and small things...

It is rarely the large things in life that cause explosions of change... Instead it is the constant drip drip of a leaky faucet that explodes us into action.. Divorces don't happen just because of a single incident, but incident after incident.

States are reaffirming their rights under the 10th Amendment. And not just "red states," unless you consider Wisconsin a red state. Not because they yearn to be free, but because they know they can do a better job than Washington.

Tax day protests seem to be so successful the media and the Left must attack them. In Nashville the media said, "several thousand" when the pictures showed at least 4,000. And other nearby locales took people away that would have been in Nashville. Plus today was a work day in an economy where many people didn't want to piss off their boss by not showing up.

So when I look around for all the grandiose prose and two dollar words, I found none as clearly spoken as this.

If I am "disloyal" to call a 2 million dollar nature path a waste of federal dollars, so be it.
If I am disloyal to ask that all street tree programs be frozen because we don't have the money, so be it.
If I am disloyal to point out the huge disparity between those that work in the private sector and those that work for the gov't, so be it.
Does the State of NY REALLY WANT ME TO MOVE? Do you really?
The thing I don't think anyone has reported about the tea parties is the anger about local and state gov't. If I were king of the world I would fire every single nazi garbage policeman in my township. I would also sell their cars and office furniture. The very idea that we now have people roaming around awarding "tickets" to improper garbage makes me sick.
If you think I am kidding, I am here to say that I actually got a summons from the garbage police!
My tax dollars at work!

The above from babs at The Gates of Vienna

Crowd picture from The Tennesseean.

USN EC121K shot down

40 years ago today off the coast of North Korea.



The commercial version, without the radomes was the Super Constellation and was known in the fleet as "Connie." The Navy designated it WV for Willy Victor and the Air Force called it the EC121. Sometimes in the early sixties the DOD standardized on EC121 but to many it remained the "Connie" and "Willy Victor."

Basically a flying radar and electronic counter measures platform it flew the barriers out of Iceland and Hawaii until it was shut down in '65 when it became more and more a spook type aircraft and a fore runner of AWACS.

I met a guy today who had some interesting theories about another aircraft going down. I won't go into them because he's writing a book and I wouldn't want to spoil it.

But it got me to thinking about aircraft being shot down and this one came to mind.

At 12:34 local time, roughly six hours into the mission, the Army Security Agency and radars in Korea detected the takeoff of two North Korean Air Force MiG-21s and tracked them, assuming that they were responding in some fashion to the mission of Deep Sea 129.[3] In the meantime the EC-121 filed a scheduled activity report by radio on time at 13:00 and did not indicate anything out of the ordinary. 22 minutes later the radars lost the picture of the MiGs and did not reacquire it until 13:37, closing with Deep Sea 129 for a probable intercept.[1]

The communications that this activity generated within the National Security network was monitored by the EC-121's parent unit, VQ-1, which at 13:44 sent Deep Sea 129 a "Condition 3" alert by radio, indicating it might be under attack. LCDR Overstreet acknowledged the warning and complied with procedures to abort the mission and return to base.[2] At 13:47 the radar tracks of the MiGs merged with that of Deep Sea 129, which disappeared from the radar picture two minutes later.[1]

Link

I hope their families know that someone remembers.

U.N. spent U.S. funds on shoddy projects... USA Today headline

Gee, you think?