Hmmmm…
Dawn sent me links to the Real Clear Politics job approval numbers for Bush and Obama to date (thanks Dawn!), and I thought to myself, “self — I’d really like to see those two line graphs superimposed.”
Being a profoundly lazy woman who no longer owns graphing software, I didn’t go back and replot them from the original data. I just took the two images, knocked out the disapproval line, superimposed them and — using the magic of Photoshop — tugged and squeezed until all the axes aligned. That’s why the lines look funky and chewed. They are reasonably accurate, though.
I don’t think there’s a profound idea to be taken away from this. We’ll never know what Bush’s presidency would have been like without September 11 erupting early on. Or whether he’d have won a second term. I’m not even sure we can read anything into the apparent volatility of Bush’s numbers (that’s probably an artifact of the squashing and stretching I had to do).
Still, that trend can’t make Obama’s political folk happy. When you run as all things to all men and turn out to be not much for not many, the public disillusionment is profound. And disillusionment is a sausage machine: you can’t turn the handle the other way and get your pig back.
Oh, and not a WORD about the line colors, okay? This is a monochrome blog; I’ve got two dramatic choices and I thought the fatter line should be the lighter color. Then I got all through and went, “oh, fuck.”
I hate that I have to think about these things.
January 13, 2010 — 6:02 pm
Comments: 30
I could almost feel sorry for Harry Reid
Almost. He’s a dimwitted old man, and for most of his life, “negro” was the nice word.
Then I think about the health care bill and it becomes imperative that I Photoshop him with his finger up his nose.
By the way, my grandfather wrote and self-published a whole book of anecdotes in hillbilly dialect. You can still turn up copies on rare book sites. I have a nephew who’s made it his life’s work to buy up all the copies he can find.
God knows why. It’s one of the most painful reads in the history of vanity publishing.
January 11, 2010 — 7:28 pm
Comments: 29
You might be a RINO
Here we go! It’s the run-up to the 2010 election — time for the foamy political ideologues and squishy middle-of-the-roaders in both parties to go after each other like hungover weasels in a rabbit hutch.
Fuck it. Civility is for afternoon tea with the Queen. Politics is a blood sport. Here goes:
If you’d rather be in power and actively steering the country in the wrong direction than out of power and pointing in the right direction you might be a RINO.
If you think Sarah Palin is — come on now, honestly — just a bit de trop you might be a RINO.
If you think the Tea Partiers are a muddled, ignorant rabble likely to flare out of control or give the party a bad name you might be a RINO.
If you think defining conservative principles and insisting candidates agree with them is a “purity test” — and a bad thing — you might be a RINO.
If you think it’s okay if the “Big Tent” is big enough to hold two people who agree on practically nothing at all, you might be a RINO.
If you think consensus and comity between members of opposing parties is an important political principle you might be a RINO.
If you think the Constitution is over two hundred years old and a lot has changed in that time you might be a RINO.
Come on, sock an elephant — it’s fun! Got any more? Say, isn’t that David Brooks over there, smirking at your alma mater?
January 6, 2010 — 6:53 pm
Comments: 34
So how about this: increased scrutiny for goofy-looking loserboys?
I mean, Jesus — look at these two! Wouldn’t you get up and move if Richard Reid sat next to you on a bus? To be perfectly fair to Abdulmutallabambalambabooboo, it’s the angle makes him look so goofy. Maybe that’s the photographer’s fault. Or maybe he really was gazing into the camera cocked sideways like a doberman staring down a kazoo.
Okay, fine. If they don’t want to profile Muslims — or, god forbid, foreign brown people — can we please profile young men with an obvious screw loose?
I got pulled out of line once, just as I was boarding a flight to London. I think it was my new aviator sunglasses (it was six in the morning, but I’d been up all night shuffling around Logan airport). Anyhow, I took them off and chatted with the nice security man for a while, showed him my passport and he let me on the plane.
Me. Middle-aged middle-class middle-American Wonder-bread old broad, me.
Is there any doubt if they’d pulled either of these guys out of line for a chat, he’d’ve rattled to pieces on the spot? Why didn’t they? Is there something like an inalienable right to be young, male and loser-y?
Okay, I take the point that the bad guys would go all out trying to recruit bombers who don’t fit the profile. But judging from these guys, they’re having a hell of a time recruiting the usual splodey-dopes who fit the profile exactly. What’re the odds they could convince a blue-eyed Scandihoovian grandma to slip into a panty bomb?
December 29, 2009 — 8:56 pm
Comments: 21
It’s the Christmas thread!
Eh. So the Senate passed Obamacare this morning, 60-39. Still, if the White House is back-burnering it until after the State of the Union Address, we’ve got a hope they won’t get this shit sangwich reconciled before the campaign season revs up. And then they (please god) get their majority trimmed, at the very least.
Mostly, I wanted to post the picture of Santa flipping the bird.
Merry Christmas, everybody! Here we go!
December 24, 2009 — 1:59 pm
Comments: 27
Geoff’s famous chart, now with 100% more commercial exploitation
If you hang around the Moronosphere, you’ve seen this chart. Or this chart’s baby-daddy, anyhow. This is what happened when geoff (who usually posts at Innocent Bystanders) took the wishful thinking unemployment chart the Obama administration used to sell the dreadful porkulus and plotted actual unemployment figures on top of it.
It reads better in color.
Anyhow, someone recently came to geoff and inquired if he could get the chart on a shirt or a mug or something and geoff thought to himself, “do I know anyone venal, desperate and masterful in the construction of line charts?”
Me! Yay! I give you: geoff’s famous unemployment chart merchandise.
Notice the postcard and greeting card. I hope sending one to your Congressman becomes all the rage, because every one of those represents twenty American cents of cha-ching in my little piggy bank.
It’s through November, 2009 — the most recent period we have numbers for. I have a bad feeling we’ll be updating that chart a time or two. I can’t see the red line coming down to touch either of those blue lines for quite a little while.
December 23, 2009 — 6:20 pm
Comments: 20
Nopenhagen
The hippies, they are not happy.
John Lanchbery, Birdlife International: “It sounds very vague. There’s no next step, nothing to link through to how to get a final deal done.”
Heh heh.
Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club: “President Obama and the rest of the world paid a steep price here in Copenhagen because of obstructionism in the United States Senate.”
Say what?
Kate Horner, Friends of the Earth: “This is the United Nations and the nations here are not united on this secret backroom declaration. The US has lied to the world when they called it a deal and they lied to over a hundred countries when they said would listen to their needs. This toothless declaration, being spun by the US as an historic success, reflects contempt for the multilateral process and we expect more from our Nobel prize winning President.”
But he means well. And he’s got a fabulous crease in his pants.
From what I can glean, they’ve agreed that the earth shouldn’t be allowed to warm more than 2°C, but how they’re going to bully the planet into that unclear. There’s no set target, oversight or enforcement involved. It’s less a treaty than a serving suggestion.
I love this quote from Obama: “We are confident that we are moving in the direction of a significant accord.”
We’ve agreed to take the first steps toward talking about a framework for considering the implications of actually doing something.
Thank you, O Lord, for the incompetence of our enemies.
December 18, 2009 — 7:41 pm
Comments: 25
Say no to the Turkish delight!
I got it! Al Gore is the White Witch!
That’s why it snows wherever he goes. That’s why he’s desperate to make us cool things down, even though the climate is manifestly not getting warmer.
They’re snowed in in Copenhagen. It’s predicted in D.C. They’re predicting snow for us tonight, too, so I’m making cookies in case that means Al’s dropping in unexpectedly.
I’m not just saying this to be nasty: have you ever noticed there’s something drag-queen-y in Gore’s face? It’s partly that his eyebrows look shaved, but it’s something else about his eyes. And his high nostrils.
Why would drag queens have high nostrils? Shut up is why.
December 17, 2009 — 6:50 pm
Comments: 25
Save a tree — wipe your ass with a hippie
It’s obvious the media made up a whole batch of warmist stories for the run-up to the Copenhagen summit, and they’re by-god going to run them — Climategate be damned. The New Scientist has an article hilariously titled Five eco-crimes we commit every day.
Eco-crimes. Gosh, that sounds super science-y.
Anyhow, it’s a list of things that produce more CO2 than you think (you do think about how much CO2 you’re pumping out, don’t you?). You might’ve knowed it would be a list of everyday things life would be perfectly fucking miserable with less of. New clothes before your old ones have totally worn out. Doing the laundry. Letting food go to waste. Coffee (dear sweet Jesus…coffee).
And, yes. Toilet paper.
It seems long fibers from freshly cut trees are needed to make soft bog-roll. As paper is recycled, the fibers get shorter and harsher. One hundred percent recycled TP is probably like burnishing your asshole with a windowscreen, but…hey. Polar bears, dude.
Polar.
Bears.
Hooray! Greenpeace gives us a guide to environmentalist-approved toilet paper, including a handy .pdf you can print out and carry with you. In case of shock toilet-paper-buying opportunities, I guess.
Incidentally, if Greenpeace is accurately describing the situation — if Kimberly-Clark really was needlessly cutting down old-growth forests to make toilet paper — then I guess I’m glad they got nagged into stopping. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find they had been harvesting trees in a responsible way on the advice of wise forest managers. And indian shamans.
If I had to play who-do-you-trust between Big Business and Big Eco…meh.
December 1, 2009 — 7:22 pm
Comments: 42
Schadenfreude Monday!
It’s a vile day here — wet, wild and windy (though I must say, unseasonably warm) — and I’ve spent the whole of it piled up on the couch reading the leaked emails and datafiles from the University of East Anglia. I love this kind of shitstorm. And the lame-o spin that goes with.
There won’t be a “hey, kids, let’s put on a giant hoax!” message. Not the point. The most scandalous bits are incontrovertible. To wit:
The Warmists are a small, insular crowd. It’s no use saying these were only a few scientists; they’re all on each other’s Rolodexes. The data these guys were pushing underpins mucho research. If that data is sloppy or nonexistent, it discredits a LOT of the science.
They leaned on journalists and editors. There’s not much virtue in “peer reviewed” papers if editors are pressured into or out of reviewing particular scientists.
They broke the law. Destroying information that is the subject of a Freedom of Information request is flat-out illegal. Also, some of the grant money discussion looked a little…fiddly.
They are fucking morons. Seriously. You don’t ever, EVER, EVARRRR put anything into writing that you wouldn’t want to read on the internet. I knew that. Didn’t you?
Journalists (particularly ones mentioned by name) will work hard to keep this information out of the funny papers, and they may succeed. Maybe. But the scientific community will be rocked by this. At the very least, it hamstrings the ability of these particular guys to strongarm editors and dismiss the opposition as beneath notice.
When Copenhagen fizzles, we’re going to see a lot more crude activist tearjerking bullshit like the stupid raining bears ad. Because — robbed of their extra-super-powerful 100% dissent-free global scientific consensus — that’s the best they’ve got.
Follow along at Watt’s Up With That and Climate Audit (among others). And remember, the good stuff is often in the comments.
November 23, 2009 — 4:19 pm
Comments: 28