DISHONEST REPORTING Is Killing The Country

This entire election cycle is turning on one factor – dishonest reporting.  There is no other proper term for it.  DISHONEST REPORTING.

When a candidate lies and the press does not report it as a lie, that is dishonest reporting. When he does it DAILY and HOURLY, and the press does not report the lies as lies, it can only be called dishonest reporting.

When a candidate refuses to produce his tax returns, and the press doesn’t hound him into doing it, that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate can make up shit about the other candidate and the press pretends that such fabrications are not just made-up shit (LIES), then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate can flip-flop hourly about his stance on any – ANY – issue, and the press does not laugh him out of town EVERY TIME, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has spent more than five years calling the President of the USA a Kenyan by birth, and the press lets him get away with it, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has had 3500 lawsuits against him and the press isn’t digging into as many as they can find for DIRT, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has CURRENT and multiple state-driven fraud court cases against him, and the press doesn’t put that as above-the-fold headlines, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has a civil case against him about having sex four times with a 13-year-old back in the 1990s, and the press doesn’t take off on him about it, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate consorts with racists and the press doesn’t hang him with their pens, from February to November, then that is dishonest reporting.

When the press does not refer to him by name as “Donald Trump, the racist candidate” every day, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has been smeared by the other party with baseless and unprovable allegations that KEEP on proving to be baseless, over and over, and the press goes along with it, then that is dishonest reporting.

The list goes on and on, and what we have is a press that has no principles except selling news – but which is passing on the chance to sell FAR MORE news, simply by driving Donald Trump deep into the racist and lying gutter from whence he came.

I won’t even call it irresponsible reporting, because reporters are beholden to the publishers who sign their checks, not to the public.  So selling more subscriptions is actually responsible, from that POV.

But this is the first and foremost time in American political campaign history that the press – in toto – has been so dishonest, on a daily basis and as a herd.

Is there anything to say but SHAME ON THEM, and what they are inviting to HAPPEN to the country?

And it’s going to HAPPEN, if they don’t start being honest in their reporting.

THE MAGIC NUMBER SAYS THAT THE BERN IS DONE

I’ve known all this for some time now.  Hillary Clinton has it in the bag.  Sanders does NOT have a path to victory.

It is my opinion that Sanders is well aware of it, but refuses to let his people know how bad it is.

Here is the MAGIC NUMBER 639.

WHY? She now has 1744 delegates, INCLUDING the superdelegates that Sanders is humping for RIGHT NOW.  He is humping for them because he knows those votes of those delegates COUNT.  He will be lucky to flip 5.  Out of Hillary’s 475.  WHOOP DE DOO.

So, when Hillary gets 639 more delegates, she will have 2383. When she DOES, she will have won.  CAN SHE?

A piece of cake.  Based on the latest polls, she will get about 789 from WI-NY-CA-PA-NJ-CT-MD-RI-DE-NM-PR-DC, and there ain’t a lot Sanders can do about that.

Can he cut it down by 100? Maybe.  But too little, too late.

For those who can’t count it up, 789 is 150 MORE than the 639 she needs to clinch. So if she gets that many (as it seems) she will have 150 more than the 2383.  That makes 2533.

CLINCH!

When she CLINCHES, IT’S OVER.  BERNIE LOSES.

And those 789 aren’t all.

There are another 288 or so for her in not-so-friendly states like ND-SD-WY-MT-IN-OR-GU-WV-KY-VI. She will get those because of the proportional primaries that the Democrats run.

She will then have 2821, more or less.

And THOSE aren’t all, either. THEN there are the 217 uncommitted SUPERDELEGATES, who, once she gets really close (like after PA) will start committing to Hillary. Expect 200 of those for her. She will THEN have 3021 give or take a few.

Ah, Antonin, We Hardly Knew ya. . .

Ding dong, the wicked prick is dead…

The battle to replace Antonin Scalia? I’ve got an interesting idea, if not a great one…

If Obama selects a fairly liberal nominee, the GOP Senate will, of course, drag their feet. They ARE required by the Constitution to consider the nominee. But they’ve already said they won’t okay anybody Obama nominates. But come October, when it is obvious that Hillary or Bernie will win the Oval Office, what do they do THEN? And with it more than 50% likely that the Democrats will win back the Senate, TOO, then what are their options?

Do they keep on saying, “Let the next President name the Justice!!!”

Do they DARE? As it draws near, they may actually opt for Obama’s nominee, after all – rather than one that a Democratic Senate okays…

In the long term, it isn’t going to matter. Justices Kennedy and Bader-Ginsberg are 79 and 82.9. The next President will likely be in office 8 years, at the end of which Kennedy will be 88 and Bader-Ginsberg 92.8. Meaning that TWO more Justices will be named by a Democrat. (Trump and Cruz have NO chance in November, and will get slaughtered.)

That, with this nomination, will change the court from 5-4, Conservative to 7-2, Moderate-Liberal. The SCOTUS will be changed for the next generation.

Possibly even on more, BTW. Chief Justice John Roberts has a weak heart. He had a heart attack around the time of his nomination.

This is a no-win situation for the Conservatives. Add the bat shit crazies that they have running for President, and their brand is near death. Add to that the internal revolution in their party, and the upcoming months should be extremely bad for the GOP.

Stay tuned. . .

There it is again: In 2012 86.8% of registered voters DID vote, but. . .

But some otherwise well-informed people keep repeating the same untruth.

My go-to website today (Super Bowl Sunday) repeated it – AGAIN:

Get-Out-The-Vote Operations Have Become More Sophisticated

In 2008, a team of political scientists from Yale and the University of Northern Iowa conducted a now-famous study in which they sent a mailer to 340,000 people reminding them of their voting history, telling them about their neighbors’ voting histories, letting them know their neighbors had received a similar mailer, and finally announcing that the neighbors would later receive a similar mailer that included whether the recipient voted in the upcoming election. The scientists discovered that this mailer raised turnout rates more than any other voting tactic. In Iowa, Ted Cruz used a threatening variant of this scheme in which the envelope was stamped “VOTING VIOLATION,” insinuating that not voting was a crime. For this tactic, Cruz was lambasted by Iowa Secretary of State Paul D. Pate.

This tactic and variations of it are not the only tool in the candidates’ bag of tricks these days. Studies by university researchers have revealed some other things campaigns can do to increase turnout. Since all campaigns have huge databases containing information on every voter, they can focus like a laser on increasing turnout of their supporters and not of their opponents.

You see, to even HAVE a voting record, you need to be registered.  And IF you registered, then 7 out of 8 of you DID vote in 2012.  All the crap about low turnout is simply not true.  See my post of January 14th, Why Have Polls Been So Wrong? Maybe They Should Try Polling Registered Voters (DUH)

The facts are that in Presidential elections those who are registered DO VOTE.  When 7 out of 8 vote, we have to consider that a GOOD TURNOUT.

The problem, as noted in that earlier post, is to get people registered in the first place.

If someone HAS a voting record, they are already registered.  All that effort to embarrass them into voting?  All they are going to be able to do is get A PORTION of the 1 out of 8 registered voters who didn’t happen to vote in 2012. But that is only 13% of the registered voters.

And getting out the vote campaigns can only target that same 13%.
It’s quite a bit like preaching to the choir.  People who register VOTE.  Plain and simple.  Why go to all that trouble over that 13% ( nationwide), when

On the other hand, why isn’t there a big push to GET MORE PEOPLE REGISTERED?  There were 61.9 million CITIZENS in 2012 who were not registered.  There were 20.2 million registered voters who didn’t vote.  Which number is bigger, 61.9 million or 20.2 million?  Why is no one making a concerted effort to go after the 61.9 million instead of the 20.2 million?

That makes no sense to me.  THREE TIMES as many citizens are unregistered as non-voting registered citizens.  There is three times the UP SIDE to getting them registered.

Because if they get registered, THEY WILL VOTE – to the tune of about 7 out of 8.

This is a no-brainer and everyone is missing it.

Bernie Can’t Govern

Yes, Bernie is the popular bandwagon of the week.  Big deal.  I LIKE Bernie. I do.

A REAL WORLD WAKE UP CALL:

But Bernie is the guy who didn’t see fit to BE a Democrat for at least 2 terms.  Not until he decided to try to hijack the Democratic Party by running for President. He’s like the Tea Party, just on the Left instead of the bat shit crazy Right.

Bernie moved to Vermont in 1968, and he wasn’t there five years before he decided that he was running for the US Senate and governor and NOT as a Democrat.  Apologies to all the Bernie lovers out there, but that makes Bernie a carpetbagger.

After stints – still as an Independent  – as mayor of Burlington and in the US House, he decided to run again for the Senate – as an Independent in 2006, replacing the OTHER Vermont Independent, Jim Jeffords (a true hero of mine).  Bernie chose to run as an Independent, even though there was NO Democrat on the ballot.  IOW, Bernie could have become a Democrat THEN, in 2006, but he thought he was too good for the Democrats.

So, though Bernie has caucused with the Democrats for 9 years now in the Senate, Bernie never decided to BE a Democrat until he decided to run for President, just in 2015.  Democrats weren’t good enough for Bernie.  But when Bernie wants to be President, Bernie  decided to carpetbag it again.  Opportunism, thy name is Bernie.

“NATIONAL REVIEW EVISCERATES DONALD TRUMP” open for comments

Over at Electoral-Vote.org, they have the following, which I will comment on and face palm myself many times over…

Some of these are unbelievable if true.  It is self-explanatory.  I take on faith that the summaries are correct.  E-V is not set up for comments.

National Review Eviscerates Donald Trump

The flagship publication of the conservative movement, National Review, which was founded by the late William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955 (in New York, of all places), came out yesterday with essays by 22 conservative authorspummeling Donald Trump. Here is an executive summary, organized by the main thesis of each essay:

Why Have Recent Polls Been So Wrong?… Maybe They Should Try Polling Registered Voters (DUH)

Over at my Go To election campaign coverage website at Electoral-Vote.org there was this yesterday (Jan 13):

Why Have Recent Polls Been So Wrong?
Polls in places as disparate as Israel, the U.K., and Kentucky were way off last year. Pollsters still want to know why. Pew Research Center, which also does polling, has carried out an investigation and come to some conclusions. What it did was look at one of its 2014 polls more closely. In particular, from the polling data, it knows who it selected out as a likely voter and who was labeled an unlikely voter. Then it got the file of people who actually voted and matched it against its own poll to see how well its likely voter screen worked.

It appears that the main source of error in the poll was the likely voter screen. Asking people if they plan to vote turns out not to be a good predictor of whether they will vote or not. In particular, Democrats have a tendency to tell pollsters they will vote and then don’t vote, which leads to “surprising” Republican victories. Also a factor is people who changed their mind after talking to the pollster, but that probably is a smaller factor. Knowing what the problem is doesn’t solve the problem going forward, of course. On the other hand, it is good to know that low response rates and the large number of people who don’t have a landline weren’t the core problems. (V)

The voter screen, the voter screen, the voter screen, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah…

DUH

[First of all, I don’t give a rat’s ass about polling for primaries.  I am talking about polling for Election Day.]

[We all have some curiosity about voting machine reliability, but we also are not talking about THAT today.]

I will simply address the polling non-reliability based on my last post.  In that, the voter turnout for people who were actually citizens AND registered to vote in the last Presidential year, 2012, was 86.81% nationally.  States varied from West Virginia’s 70.26% to the 90.26% in Colorado, a swing state.  The median was 87.75% in Hawaii.

With 7 out of every 8 REGISTERED voters actually casting a ballot in 2012, I cannot see one reason AT ALL why anyone has a problem with polling and getting good results.  You find 1,000 registered voters, sorted only for demographic balance (which no one admits to being their problem) , and of those you can expect 87% to vote come Election Day.  And if 87% vote, your poll is going to be damned close.  With only 1 out of 8 registered voters NOT voting, how can you possibly get it far wrong?

SO, IT IS ONLY NECESSARY TO GO BY REGISTERED VOTER LISTS.  The proper demographics within that population should be a piece of cake – men, women, blacks, Democrats, Republicans, white, Asian, Hispanic – everything but dogs and cats mating in the streets.  Using the latest percentages of each to select which voters to poll – that should be about the easiest thing in the world.

Adjustments per state should, of course,be made, too.  Basically that means that in West Virginia the uncertainty is higher, but other than that, WTF is the problem?

Now, a full 40 million fewer voters voted in the off-year 2014 election, down from 132 million to 92 million nationwide.  That put the natinoal average at 64.89% of REGISTERED voters.  So in off-year elections, the uncertainty gets larger.

But I dare any of the polling firms to come up with more reliable indicators of WHO will actually go to vote.

I mean, WHAT THE HELL? We read that this polling firm prefers phone polls and that one prefers online polls.  HOW can that POSSIBLY be more reliable than building a database of ACTUAL voters from previous elections, adding new registered voters to that database – and then use THAT to select who to poll?

I tells ya, folks, this ain’t perzackly rockit science, ya know?