chrisishardcore.com

No Wonder

If you've ever wondered why we're not a nation of millionaires, here's a clue:

According to a new Quinnipiac poll, voters by a 46% to 41% margin would rather Bush run their business than Kerry. Set aside the fact that he's screwed up our foreign policy -- that has little to do with running a business. He's got a bad business record. His only business success is getting the city of Dallas to raise taxes and pay for a new stadium for the Texas Rangers.

Everything else he's touched has eventually gone bust. And yet 46% of us think he should have checkwriting authority. Go figure.

Stand on the Right!

Back when I used to ride MARTA to school everyday my biggest complaint was that nobody in Atlanta has any escalator etiquette. Standing on the right and walking on the left (just like the highway) shouldn't be that hard to master but either nobody seems to know this or care. Or maybe it's just that the South goes at a slower pace so everybody wants to stand and take it easy.

No matter. I'm glad to see that they have this problem in Washington DC as well. Only there it seems it is just the tourists that don't know the rules of the moving stairs. If they are visiting from Atlanta I can only say sorry, I tried to let them know before their trip.

This is what we're up against

Sadie Fields, director of the Georgia Christian Coalition spoke at the state Republican party convention this weekend. This is what she said regarding this year's Supreme Court race, where the Coalition and the state GOP are backing challenger and ex-Cobb judge Grant Brantley.

"Somebody asked me, ‘are you ready to take on the Buckhead attorneys?’" Fields recounted. "After the homosexuals, it’ll be a piece of cake."

Simply put, you can not vote for a Republican in the state of Georgia if you disagree with this statement. These weren't the words of some marginal state House member, this was endorsed as the viewpoint of the Republican party at their state convention. These guys are very, very bad, and if they get power in this state what happened the last two years will be just the beginning.

A Fair Trade

In 2000, the police union supported George W. Bush for President and Zell Miller supported Al Gore, at least in theory. This time around, Zell is one of Bush's biggest supporters and the police union has announced it will support Kerry. I'll take that trade. I only wonder if it was Zell's support for the elimination of direct election of Senators and George W. Bush's implicit endorsement of that position (since Zell is campaign co-chair and Bush hasn't renounced it) that led our men and women in blue to reconsider their choice for President this year.

Apologies on the Dailies

Some readers (well probably all readers) have noticed that I stopped updating the Rasmussen daily tracking numbers about a month ago. The reason is that it seemed impossible to get an accurate count ... the only conclusion I could reach was that Rasmussen does either some serious weighting or some editorial adjustments to his numbers.

He published a weekly average along with a daily 3 day average. The weekly average equals S + M + T + W + Th + F + S / 7. If you go back, you can get the average for S + M + T and also for Th + F + S. If you multiply the weekly average by 7 and then subtract the 3 times the Tuesday average from that week and also subtract 3 times the Saturday average for that week then that leaves you with Wednesday's daily number.

Additionally, if you know one day's daily number you can also figure out the daily number for the 3rd day after that. W + Th + F / 3 = Friday's average. Th + F + Sat / 3 = Saturday's average. Thursday's daily and Friday's daily are a constant in both equations, the only difference is Wednesday and Saturday. So the difference in the Friday and Saturday average numbers times 3 is the difference between Wednesday and Saturday's daily numbers.

Suffice it to say that if you have three weeks of data you *should* be able to figure out every day's numbers. When I did this and when Rasmussen would let slip some of the daily numbers my data didn't correspond with his. So I figured what's the point? He's either making it up or I'm really bad at math. That said, it is fun to do and if someone with more time wants to tackle it I will give you a hint passed on to me by a reader. If you look at the source code of his page you can see the averages broken down to the decimal level...it's in the code for the graph on his webpage.

So today the poll says 46-45 Bush but the graph says it's actually 46.5 - 45.0 in the President's favor. So that's why I stopped updating it. It wasn't because Bush was pulling ahead (as seemed the case a couple of weeks ago) or that I think Kerry's got it in the bag, it's just because I think the source data is kind of junky and you know what they say -- garbage in, garbage out. And I try to at least be responsible for my own garbage on this site!

Trouble?

It seems like the administration's solution to any problem is just to show up and make some kind of scene. Trouble in Iraq? Rumsfield makes a surprise visit to Baghdad. Job losses in Ohio and Pennsylvania? Bush shows up in front of a banner that has "Job Creation" all over it. I will say that Bush's visit to Iraq on Thanksgiving probably did do a lot for the morale of the troops that were over there.

Unfortunately his advance people didn't even set him up with a real turkey to serve to the troops. That's what happens when your people put perception above all else. Even when you do something worthwhile they usually end up making it look contrived because normally that's job #1.

The Founders' Gerrymander

After Zell's crazy ranting about the Senate, I got to thinking about what Grover Norquist has called the Founding Father's Gerrymander...the US Senate. What would US Senate "Districts" (ie states) look like if they were apportioned equally by population (like the US House and state legislatures are) instead of rigidly defined by state lines that in some cases are over 200 years old.

Well using Maptitude software I have created a redistricting of the US Senate. Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, which aren't shown, compromise one new "state". The other 49 are made by carving up the existing Continental US. As you can see, I first tried to keep as many existing boundaries as possible. Washington, Missouri and Tennessee fell within a deviation of +/- 5% and these new "states" retained the old borders.

After making these states that were idential to existing state boundaries, I made as many new "states" as possible by combining old states. Colorado and Utah combined to form a new region as did Mississippi and Arkansas. After this point, I generally started with major cities and drew outward, trying to keep regions that were similar (Alabama and the Florida panhandle or the coastal regions of Virginia and North Carolina) together.

You can take the basically evenly divided Senate and look at this map and try to guess what the partisan makeup would be if these were the new election districts. Those little "states" concentrated on the cities of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York would probably each send 2 Democrats, while a lot of those big rural districts might send 2 Republicans.

The funny thing is, looking at this map, the outcome would probably be pretty close to even. I attribute this to the ability of local parties to achieve parity -- you've got a lot of Republicans from the otherwise pretty liberal Northeast and a lot of Democrats from the otherwise Republican great plains.

Even if partisan control in the Senate under this map was 50-50, I think you'd have a much more conservative and rural/exurban Republican party and a much more liberal and urban/suburban Democratic party. Say goodbye to the Arlen Specters, Tim Johnson's, Olympia Snowe's and Evan Bayh's and say hello to a lot more Senator Inhofe's and Carol Moseley-Braun's. I guess moderation through gerrymandering is just another bit of unintended wisdom from the founders.

Here is a blowup of the New York City area:


Download a printable 8.5 by 11 PDF file of this redistricting map.

Kerry's to Lose

Or so says Zogby. I think that's somewhat true, but I try not to get overly optimistic. Watching the Daily Show last night, where John McCain was the guest, I couldn't help but thinking that if he were President he'd be nearly impossible to beat. Even I'd consider voting for him (as I did in the Presidential Primary in 2000 in Georgia).

I know it is fashionable to be on some sort of Kerry lookout and question why top Democrats aren't conspiring to drop him from the ticket. I wonder why no one feels the same way about an even bigger turkey on the top of the ticket...I guess it's just because he's already the President. Why dump him anyway when he's been so good with foreign policy and he's just starting to set his sights on space.

The Last Word on Zell???

If you're like me you're playing the "what will Zell say next" game. Notice I said "say" instead of "do" because at this point he's not really accomplishing anything. Actually that's not fair -- he's producing a lot of hot air.

Anyway. Regarding his most recent release of hot air - the repeal of the 17th amdendment and with it direct election of senators. Nobody takes this guy seriously anymore, but it's worth pointing out that with Congressional district lines so gerrymandered state legislatures already essentially pick Congressmen. When they gerrymander their own lines they pick themselves, and when they gerrymander local government lines they pick them too.

The only officials that aren't in essense picked by state legislatures are those elected jurisdiction wide. Senators and Governors are the primary example. The gerrymanders that set up the state lines are kind of out of data now. Other offices safe from gerrymander include countywide officials and mayors, although those gerrymanders are sometimes pretty recent...up until 1930 or so Georgia was still using race as a primary factor in making new counties.

The point is that Zell is either so out of touch or so eager to please the Kool kids that he'll say just about anything now. He wants to empower state legislatures to handpick even more of our government when they're already empowered enough. What a loon.