The Climate Change election

No, it's not because Harris is mad as a hatter on the Green New Deal or because Trump will kill all of this off - although both are entirely correct.  No, this is thinking about the polling which shows the race to be neck and neck even though it is anything but.

Long time readers know how I bang on and on about the hideous data problems in today's Climate Science.  I've been doing this for fifteen years - this post may not be the earliest where I delved into the problems in the climate databases, but it's one of the earliest.  How To Create A Consensus On Global Warming:

We keep hearing people tell us that there is a "consensus" that the planet is warming, because the "science is settled". Longtime readers know my feelings on the latter, so there's no need to rehash old arguments. Instead, I'd like to look at how one might go about manufacturing a consensus. It's actually not hard.

Step 1: Change the data

[lots of details on data manipulation and shenanigans removed]

We see this in high fidelity in the polls for this election.  There are a million ways to manipulate the polls to give you the results you want, such as estimates of Republican vs. Democrat turnout.  In essence, I'm not objecting so much to the results of the polls, but rather to the assumptions that go into the sausage-making machine.  Change the assumptions, change the output.

But my old post also highlights a key issue in play on today's polls:

Step 2. Fund only scientific research that confirms warming.

Who is paying for these polls, and what are their agendas?  Quite frankly, we don't know either of these but the polls are acting in very close agreement.  You could look at that as a measure of accuracy, or you could look at that as an outcome of the agendas - such as shaping public opinion and expectations.

Now I may just be nasty and suspicious but there is a way that we can test whether my suspicions hold water.  It's the same thing we can do with Climate Science, to validate what we hear from the establishment scientists.  All we have to do is ask a simple question: if the data are so settled, do we see lots of corroborating evidence or do we see a lot of evidence contradicting the establishment view?

In both cases, we see a lot of evidence contradicting the official narrative.

For example, for Global Warming, we see all sots of non-warming things:

• "Global Warming" seems to be causing a whole lot of blizzards.
• Record temperatures show the hottest year in US history was almost 90 years ago.
• We're told it's the HOTTEST YEAR EVER!!!11!!eleventy!!! but we still see record snow and cold.

You would think that if the science really were so settled that evidence for Global Warming would be falling off the trees.  It's not.

And so with evidence for a "neck and neck election".  If it were so settled - after all, essentially all polls say exactly that - then why all the evidence that says it's not?

• Donald Trump campaigns for Arab-American vote in Detroit
• LA Times, Washington Post, Gannet refuse to endorse Harris
• All the betting sites have Trump not just ahead, but way ahead.
• Even the crooked polls have Harris neck-and-neck, where both Hillary and Biden were up by 5 or 6
• She is the incumbent but only 28% of Americans think the country is on the right track
• Barack Obama is trying to shame Black men to vote for Harris.  And it's not working.

If it were a neck and neck race, you'd see a bunch of these on Harris' side, too.  You don't.

Remember, we're in the middle of a preference cascade.  Don't pay any attention to the polls which are trying to gaslight you.  Pay attention to what you see with your own eyes.  And as to the "margin of cheat" you can believe that a bunch of Democrat operatives are doing exactly that right now, and wondering if they want to risk 10 years in Club Fed to try to push a loser across the finish line.  A bunch of them will take a hard pass on that.

Endorsed

RFK Jr. backs Rand Paul for Senate GOP Majority Leader.  Of course it will never happen, but interesting.

(via)

Constitutional Crisis

The bustard's a fortunate fowl
with almost no reason to growl.
Saved from what would be
illegitimacy
by the grace of a fortunate vowel

Via Aesop comes news that the Republic is now in a full fledged constitutional crisis.  The short version: Texas put up razor wire along the border, the Federales cut it down, Texas sued to stop the Fed interference, and the Supreme Court sided with the Feds.  Now Texas has told SCOTUS to pound sand and the Texas National Guard is putting up more razor wire.

It is unreported whether Texas Gov Abbot echoed Andy Jackson's famous words that the SCOTUS has issued its ruling, now let them enforce it.

This is an enormous blow to the prestige and legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and demonstrates just how fragile that sense of legitimacy is.  Good grief, what an unholy mess.

May God save this honorable Republic.

The election is beyond the margin of fraud

Two and a half months ago I forecast a Trump landslide victory, 354 electoral votes to Biden's 184.  I lay out why for those of you who are interested.  I don't see a reason to change this prediction.

Sure, the Democrats will cheat. I don't think they can cheat this enough to change the result.  Certainly Pennsylvania is at risk for industrial scale cheating; maybe North Carolina as well.  But enthusiasm among Republicans is off the charts, so the amount of cheating that will be needed is higher.  Also, the "shy Trump" voter syndrome is real - people have been not just verbally abused but attacked and killed for being Trump supporters; no wonder some won't talk to pollsters, family and friends about their preferences.

That also increases the amount of cheating the Democrats will have to do.  I think that number is just too high for the Democrats to pull this off.  What they will do is expose industrial scale levels of cheating.  That will solidify voters' views of the Democratic Party for 2024 - it will be a bad moon rising for that election, too.

The election is over

Stick a fork in Slow Joe - he's done

 

Sure, the polls show Joe ahead by 5000%, but let's look at the evidence.  It doesn't support poll results showing Joe winning; on the contrary:

• Republican enthusiasm is off the chart.  There are something like 2 Million volunteers knocking on doors and calling on the phone.  They've contacted 100 Million voters.  It doesn't look like there are any Democrats doing this.  By way of comparison, a little over 60M voted for Trump in 2016 - now there is a measurable fraction of that working for his campaign.
• Biden gives rallies to a dozen people.  Trump gives rallies to tens of thousands.  Even more importantly, a big fraction of the people in the audience are not Republicans, and a big fraction didn't vote last time.  Now they're standing in line to hear The Donald.
• We see "Trump Trains" all over the country - parades of thousands of cars flying Trump flags.  We see them in historically Democrat strongholds: 30,000 cars paraded in "deep blue" Miami.
• Trump's outreach to the black and hispanic communities has paid off.  His support is a lot higher than 4 years ago - maybe two or three times as high.
• Trump's job approval rating is over 50%.  I can't remember any president with a 50% approval rating losing reelection, ever.
• What I find most interesting is the Gallup poll showing that a majority of people expect Trump to be reelected.

If Joe really were ahead by 5000%, would we see any of this?  No - all of these signs would point in the opposite direction.  So who are you going to believe: a bunch of pollsters who blew it bigly last time, or your lyin' eyes.

Like I said, stick a fork in Joe, he's done.  Just get out and vote.

2020 Election Prediction: Trump 354, Biden 184

So the Democrats have had their shot, and it looks like a wet firecracker.  This is the high water mark for Joe Biden, and it will all be down hill from today.  Quite frankly things look grim for Biden/Harris.  So the question isn't whether Slow Joe will lose, but by how much.  Here's my prediction:

This map has the wrong counts for some of the State electoral votes; both Trump and Biden will get an additional EV that the map didn't correctly count (there are 538 electoral votes).

Here's how I arrived at this result: I started with the State-by-State vote percentages that Clinton and Trump got.  Then I applied the following adjustments:

• +1% to Trump because he's the incumbent.  This is probably low.
• +1% to Trump for his outreach to Blacks and Hispanics.
• +1% to Trump because of concerns about Biden's mental health.
• +1% to Trump because of high GOP voter enthusiasm and low Democrat voter enthusiasm.  This is probably low.
• +1% to Trump because of the riots and the Democratic Mayors' response to it.  This is terrible branding for the Democrats.  The Queen Of The World suggested this voter reaction to the riots.  She's absolutely right that the Democratic Party has shot itself in the foot here.
• -1% from Trump because of the virus and the economic damage of the lockdown.  This is unfair, but the buck stops at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

So adding 4% to Trump (and subtracting 4% from Biden; this is a zero sum game) gives us the map I showed.  Actually, New Mexico is a tie; I awarded it to Trump because like I said I think the incumbency advantage is probably more than +1%.

What's interesting is that you have to add a lot more to get the vote totals to change much from here - another 1% doesn't change anything at all, 2% only swings 10 electoral votes (embarrassingly for Biden, 3 of them would be from his home State of Delaware), and it's only when you add an additional 3% that you start swinging some serious EVs like New Jersey, Illinois, and Washington.  I just don't believe that Trump will increase his vote percent from 47% to 53%.  It's possible - Joe is a terrible candidate - but this is landslide territory and would mean serious GOP pickups in Congress as well.  I'm not seeing those vibes.

So there you have it.  I may be wrong, but at least I show my work.

Spycraft, Google, and Donald Trump

The problem facing an Intelligence Agency is the same as the problem facing a historian studying some past civilization: what are the sources you have, and how much do you trust them?  For both the Intelligence Analyst and the Historian, sources may be few and far between.  A great example of this in history is the Heroninos Archive, a set of ancient Roman records literally rescued by accident from a trash heap.  The archive is the most complete set of documents about how a large Roman farm was run, and we almost didn't have it.

For an example of whether you can trust a source, you can't do better than Procopius.  He was the personal secretary of the great general Belisarius who tried to (and nearly succeeded) reconquer the western portion of the Roman Empire for Justinian the Great.  Procopius wrote about the campaigns in The History Of The Wars, and wrote about Justinian's many building projects in The Buildings.  Both books describe the glories and virtues of Emperor and General in glowing terms.  So far, so good.

But all is not what it seems.  In 1623 another of Procopius' books was discovered in the Vatican Library.  The Secret History is a savage description of the private lives and moral failures of the Emperor and his wife, and the General and his wife.  Procopius pours scorn on them all, sometimes in X-rated detail.

So we have Procopius' sources, but which do we believe?  Aye, there's the rub.  They can't both be true, can they?

We see this in our day.  A huge set of Google internal documents were released yesterday, describing how the company (allegedly) purposely changes search results:

A Google staffer today released documents exposing a massive censorship campaign where the ubiquitous Google search engine purposefully censored pro-life and conservative web sites, including LifeNews.com.

Google Insider Zachary Vorhies has given an interview to watchdog group Project Veritas where he discusses how he documented Google censorship of leading pro-life and conservative web sites for over a year. He made the decision to go public in an on-the-record video interview after Google went after him following the release of the information to Project Veritas.

He decided to go public after receiving a letter from Google, and after he says Google allegedly called the police to perform a “wellness check” on him.

This effects us in our daily efforts to understand the world in which we live.  What sources do we have?  Do we trust them?  I haven't trusted Google, for a very long time.  I use and recommend Duckduckgo, which combines multiple sources and which also doesn't spy on you.  But even here there's a problem, because Google results are included there - there's a ripple effect of Google censor algorithms that spreads far into the online world.  And since Google is a near-monopoly, the spread of these ripples is unknowable but presumably far indeed.

We are entering a new election cycle, one where Google is accused of manipulating election outcomes:

Google’s biased search algorithm actually flipped seats in the 2018 US midterm elections, according to a researcher who found the search engine’s “dramatically biased” results could have shifted over 78 million votes to Democrats.

“Upwards of 25 percent of the national elections in the world are being decided without people’s knowledge by Google’s search algorithm,” senior research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology told RT, calling the search engine the “deciding factor” in close races.

This is a source.  Do we believe it?  RT is the rebranded Russia Today, paid for (to some extent) by the Kremlin.  Do they have an agenda?  Certainly.  Does what they say sound like it might be true?  As the Mythbusters might put it: plausible.

Google is clearly opposed to conservative views in general, and to Donald Trump in particular.  It's been known for years (detailed in my post above) that they manipulate results in furtherance of their ideology.  This much seems clear.  How much they manipulate the results - and their ability to swing elections - is less clear.  But it's not zero.

This is a problem for us today, as it is for historians.  What if everything you hear about Donald Trump is worse than things actually are, because the sources are biased?  It's like everything you know comes from a Donald Trump version of Procopius' Secret History.  Actually, when you consider the stories in the press about him, that's perhaps not very far off the mark.

But what if everything a person hears is distorted?  The sources are unreliable, because they either are pushing an opposite agenda or they're being hidden (like a Heroninos Archive that ends up in the incinerator)?  This isn't far fetched at all - we see this in history, where it may be that everything that we know about the Byzantine Emperor Thomas the Slav is wrong, because of this very problem. (Note: if you don't want to listen to the Life and deeds of Thomas, skip to the last 4 or 5 minutes of this podcast where it discusses the reliability - actually the lack thereof - of the sources).

We know that opinion polls in the run up to elections are inaccurate.  Polls are a source, but how much do you trust them?

Quite frankly, you shouldn't trust them.  You shouldn't trust your search results - while they may not turn up biased sources, the most important sources may not turn up at all.  This is the most important thing that you should tell your friends and family.  Certainly people are trying to manipulate them, even if we don't know by how much.  In today's "Information Age", they need to have a healthy skepticism over what they see.  What sources are they seeing?  How trustworthy are they?

Oh, and tell them to use Duckduckgo instead of Google.  It's more accurate, and it doesn't spy on you.

Election predictions

A common theme here is that I do not trust the polls.  They have been increasingly inaccurate - ignoring the possibility that some of them are designed to mislead.  There seems to be an increasing resistance among the population to answering pollster calls - a New York Times poll had to call 38,000 people to get 700 who would reply.  Don Surber dissects this, and this is the key graf:

Gallup meanwhile has given up on election polling. The grand-daddy of polling admitted it cannot figure out how to get an accurate way to find out how people are voting.

Bottom line: the polls are not helpful forecasting this election.

It's made worse because the interesting race is for the House.  There are only 50 States to poll about Senate races, and there are only about a dozen that are close enough to bother.  In the House, there are maybe 50 districts that count.  Each of these districts contains 711,000 people.  To get a meaningful poll (i.e. one with a margin of error less than 5%), you might need to call 20,000 people.  The cost of polling the key House races will be perhaps ten times as expensive as polling the meaningful Senate races.

Since Senator are likely more powerful and important than Representatives, House polling is not going to happen as often, or be as thorough as Senate polling, because it's a lot tougher to justify the spend when compared to other options (say, Get Out The Vote efforts).

So the first takeaway is that nobody really knows what's going to happen in the House elections.  The polls are sporadic and of questionable accuracy, and so this is really in the realm of informed guesswork.  I have noticed that the closer we get to the election the less sure each side sounds - both the White House and the Mainstream Press/Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) have been making noises in the last couple days that seem intended to cool their supporters expectations.  Maybe the Democrats will take back control of the House, maybe not.  I don't think that anyone remotely knows.

The Senate has always looked like the Republicans would keep the Senate.  The closer we get to election, the more the Republicans look to pick up seats from vulnerable Democrats.  But again, the margin of error for some of the races is very thin, and the polls are of questionable value.  It seems certain that the GOP will pick up a couple, maybe 4 or 5.  It's unlikely they'll pick up the 9 they would need to theoretically avoid a filibuster.  I say "theoretically" because with the likes of the Susan Collins wing of the GOP there wouldn't be a solid 60 GOP votes for almost anything.

Increasing a GOP majority in the Senate will tend to weaken the Susan Collins types, though, which will help reduce gridlock there.  A thin GOP majority in the House will probably result in the rise of Susan Collins types there, and a Democratic majority will basically ensure gridlock for the next two years.

So it really comes down to the House which nobody can handicap with any sort of confidence.

The margin of voter fraud

Sonic Charmer looks into it and says it's 1.2%.

I suspect that the number is bigger - certainly a lot of people would like it to be bigger.

Interesting

Seems I agree a lot with the Libertarians.  Didn't see that coming. [/sarcasm]

I'm kind of surprised that I agree with so many of Obama's policies (at least according to this site).  The interesting thing about this site is that you can drill into the questions for a more detailed set of choices.

Via Chris Byrne, who owes me an email (hint hint).

Romney app more obnoxious than Obama app

But both are extremely obnoxious, and you shouldn't use either.  Both campaigns have iPhone and Android apps you can install on your phone.  Don't:

Last Wednesday, Reuters published a story that touches on security concerns surrounding President Obama’s app. Reuters reported, “The app is helping hundreds of volunteers and staff with the voter drives that the campaign sees as a vital way to combat a crop of voter identification laws that could reduce Democratic turnout in swing states… But the implications of having a stranger’s name and address at one’s fingertips has raised the hackles of privacy advocates…”

GFI Labs decided to dig deeper and, at the same time, make a side-by-side comparison of both apps for Android. Here’s what we’ve found out about the Romney and Obama apps.

So what did they find?  A lot:

Riddle me this, GOPman: why does Romney's app need to turn on your camera (CAMERA) or microphone (RECORD_AUDIO)?  Riddle me this, Obamabot: why does your app grab contacts (READ_CONTACTS) or your GPS location (ACCESS_*_LOCATION)?

I know that you're both politicians and so the only reason that you kiss babies is so that you can get closer to swipe their lollypops, but do you have to try so hard to live down to my worst expectations?

Remember Borepatch's First Law of Security, folks: "free download" is Intarwebz-speak for "open your mouth and close your eyes".

Via El Reg.

You guys don't much like the Republican Party

Not sayin' that you're wrong.  Just sayin' that you don't much like the GOP.

Me neither. 

So who does the GOP see as the real enemy?

Obama or the Tea Party?

The correct moment to tell Gingrich to leave the race, of course, was the moment he decided to enter it. No one was ever going to vote for the corrupt and thin-skinned little troll. The only purpose he served was to make Santorum and Romney look half-electable by comparison, and they both possess the electability of a Republican candidate in the classic Dole/McCain vein. They'll lose, but they'll lose respectably and make it look as if the Republican Establishment actually wanted to win the election.

Which, as is readily apparent, it doesn't. Obama is obediently bombing who he's told to bomb and defending the interests of the banks he's told to defend. So long as his handlers can sufficiently head off his self-destructive political instincts - seriously, he's picking a fight on healthcare now? - and keep him from quitting the race in a morose tantrum, the Republican Establishment will be perfectly satisfied with a loss to Obama it can blame on the Tea Party.

We have a very strange situation in 2012 where it is the Democratic Establishment that wants Obama out whereas the Republican Establishment is perfectly content with the idea of him serving a second term.

S who do you think that the Republican Establishment sees as a bigger threat?

       

Packin' and Stylin'

Dennis from Dragon Leather Works has an interesting idea - what if you could have a holster that would work rigged inside your belt (for those times when you want to be all covert) as well as outside your belt (say, for when you're at a Texas Barbecue)?  Obviously, the Barbecue bit means that you're showing off the pretty thing.

So he made one thats pretty:

And he sent one to me to try out.  It's said to be here now, so you'll hear about it in a while - I'm quite excited to have a holster that won't suck.

Dennis calls it the "Quantum" - you can't know where it will be.  Hmmm, said I: that sort of insanely fun  geekiness calls for some retro Photoshop The Gimp love:

That's the simple one.  But you know me - why stop at simple when you can get all complex:

After all, it's for a Barbecue, right?  People will know it's time to stop hitting the Shiner Bock when they can't figure it out.  And so, how about a poll?

Which logo for the Dragon Leather Works Quantum holster?

• Simple is always best.
• Bring the complex one, and the Shiner Bock!
• Why not both, where people could order the one they want?
• Why not both, where people could order the one they want? (I'll pay to get the stamp made)

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Just a clarification: by "I'll pay" I actually mean "You'll pay".  ;-)

Friday Catblogging - and name bleg

Seen today inside the Chez Borepatch secure perimeter:


I'm told that I like the idea of a rescue cat. He seems pretty cool (a cool cat, you hepsters might say), and unlike Little One-Eyed Dog, he didn't bite me when we first met. His name at the shelter is "Crash", which I quite like. #1 Son wants to name him "Lavernius". He tells me that I like it.

Err, nazzo fast. So what do you think?

What should the cat's name be?
	Crash
	Lavernius
	Player to be named later
	Nothing. Why name something that doesn't come when you call it?
pollcode.com free polls

Help us Obi-Wan Kenobi Al Gore's Intarwebz, you're our only hope.

Vetting

So Van Jones has resigned - I guess that being a mouth-breathing Truther was in the end too embarassing for the Administration.

"In the end" - it seems that it wasn't too embarrassing to check in the beginning. Remember the questionnaire everyone had to fill out, back at the beginning of the year? The one with this:

“Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun? If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage.”

It's strange what this Administration thinks would be embarrassing, and what they don't think to ask. It's also strange how well the mental model "the Administration is filled with left wing kooks" predicts its actions.

The future is here, part 2

Excited by the idea of my own personal two-way wrist TV, I asked where my flying car was. As it turns out, it's just down the road from me, in Woburn, MA.

It's the Terrafugia Transition flying car:

But the Transition is a successful "roadable aeroplane". It takes off, lands and flies like any other light plane, using small local airfields. On the ground, the pilot can press a button and in 30 seconds the wings fold up. The propellor is disconnected, and the Transition becomes a front-wheel-drive car with typical performance. It runs on unleaded, and will fit into a single-car garage. You only need a US "sport pilot" licence - significantly easier and cheaper to get than a normal private pilot's licence - to fly it.

Too cool for school, if you ask me. And if my two-way wrist TV works while I'm flying in it, I'll start expecting my meals to show up in pill form.

But there's a fly in the ointment: this is a beta test version. Terrafugia created a proof-of-concept version, and seemingly they are making a bunch of changes based on their test results. This is pushing out delivery from this year to 2011. They're going to need some marketing buzz to keep the momentum going over the next two years.

UPDATE 4 June 2009 22:32: Edited and shortened.

What do you do with a .10 caliber pistol?

A couple months ago, #2 Son and I met JayG at the local Gun Show (yes they have them, even in the Boston area!). I picked up a copy of the late, great Ian Hogg's The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Firearms.

Now Al Gore's Intartubes has made dead tree reading somewhat obsolete, if you're going for info about 1911s or Glocks, or even M1 Garands. However, what you miss out by sitting in front of the CRT* is the ability to flip through the pages, amusing yourself with the random oddball that lies on the pages. For example, on the page facing the Krag-Jorgensen, I found this:

A Kolibri Erika 2.7 mm (.105 cal) self loading pistol. Yes, that's a penny next to it.

So, just how big is a 2.7 mm cartridge? Here's a picture comparing (left to right) the 2.7 mm Kolibri, the 4.25 mm Liliput, and the .45 ACP. As you can imagine, these are highly collectable and even the ammunition is insanely expensive ($90 a round).

The pictures are all from a very informative page at Horst Held Antique Handguns in Midlothian, TX. Looks to be worth at least a detour, if you're in the neighborhood.

All this is great fun and historically interesting, of course, but it begs the question: just what do you do with one of these babies? Assuming, of course, that money were no object.

Me? I have no idea. So I'm tossing the question back to you, gentle reader. What would you do with one?

What use is a .10 caliber pistol?

• Don't shoot anyone - you'll just make them mad
• Shoot someone? At $90/round, it hurts me more than them!
• Finally! Something to stop the ".45 ACP vs. 9mm" flame wars
• Dunno - I lost mine

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* Yes, I am a dinosaur. Why do you ask?

Didn't see that one coming

OK, since everyone's doing it:

You are a Social Liberal (75% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (80% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also : The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Like I keep telling people, I'm not a conservative. Glad to see I'm not yet to Ted Kaczynski territory, though.

And completely off-topic, I love Blogger's "schedule post" option. I'm literally blogging in my pajamas, and this will post tomorrow when I'm at work (not in pajamas). Sort of Schrodinger's Cat meets Pajama Blogging.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing

So is the Senate checking out my Global Warming rants because I make a compelling case? Everyone vote!

The Senate is checking out Global Warming posts at Borepatch.blogspot.com. Why?

• Exceptional insight found so rarely these days
• It's like watching the shabbily dressed kook drool on himself
• Fitting me out for an all expenses paid vacation to Gitmo
• What this "we", paleface?

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UPDATE 1 December 2008 21:33: #2 Son looked at this and asked why I was getting hits from "Satan.Gov." Heh.