gone's blog

Monsters behind closed doors? Or in the library?

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:53:03 -0800

Today, Hillary Clinton was asked to respond to Samantha Power's resignation:

Well I think sen. Obama did the right thing, but I think it’s important to look at what she and his other advisors say behind closed doors...

You mean like this?

"[Expletive] you!" Ickes shouted.

"[Expletive] you!" Penn replied.

"[Expletive] you!" Ickes shouted again.

Who is More Progressive - Obama or Clinton?

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:40:36 -0800

Considerations

Most analyses of voting records begin by looking at the bills, and only looking a "key" votes (there are a lot of procedural moves in the roll call, as well as nonsense votes). So, by careful selection, the National Journal is able to "show" that Barack Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate (more liberal than Bernie Sanders, the socialist), just as they did for John Kerry in 2004. Conversely, Progressive Punch gives Clinton a 91.5 to Obama's 89.28. One of the ratings sites used to call Obama a "Rank and File Democrat" and Clinton a "Radical Democrat", but I can't find it, so maybe they're in the process of reversing the designations.

Furthermore, there's really no way for an outsider to know by looking at the write-up on Thomas what a particular vote really means (is an "Aye" vote on a procedural move the same as a "Nay" vote on the underlying bill? Only sometimes.) The only people who can possibly know what a vote actually are the people in the Senate, so I decided to avoid classifying bills or roll-calls at all. Let the Senators classify them, by their votes.

Methodolody

GovTrack.us has rdf yearly files of roll call votes here, which list by bill who voted which way. Using a simple xml parser, I invert these so I have a list for each senator of how they voted on each bill. That makes it easy to compare each senator's voting record for a year.

I started by producing two lists: Obama's voting record compared to everybody else's, and Clinton's voting record compared to everybody else's. These are sorted by descending order of percent of agreement. For example, here's the top of Obama's 2007 list (percent agreement, number of comparable votes, senator):

Obama's Lieberman factor

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:22:22 -0800

It doesn't exist.

In 2005, Obama voted with Lieberman 90% of the time, while Clinton voted with Lieberbman 89% of the time.

In 2006, it was 88% vs. 85%.

And in 2007, they were tied at 84%.

And Obama and Clinton voted the same way 94% (2005), 92% (2006) and 96% (2007) of the time.

All of this by crunching the data you can download at GovTrack.us. If I can find any meaningful statistical differences, I'll do a followup.

Campaign Expenditures Compared.

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:47:59 -0800

How people spend their money says a lot about them. Using OpenSecret's campaign expenditures breakdown for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I indulged in a little spreadsheetery.

The following chart tells you nothing about how much the actually spent on any of these categories. What it shows is what Hillary Clinton spent for each $1.00 that Barack Obama spent.

Fundraising Events	$0.01
Print Media	$0.16
Miscellaneous Media	$0.16
Fundr Direct Mail/Telemarketing	$0.23
Polling/Surveys/Research	$0.42
Salaries & Benefits	$0.73
Miscellaneous Administrative	$0.75
Internet Media	$0.78
Travel	$0.93
Fundraising Consultants	$1.08
Supplies, Equipment & Furniture	$1.17
Miscellaneous Campaign	$1.27
Campaign Events	$1.31
GOTV	$1.42
Materials	$1.63
Rent/Utilities	$1.83
Media Consultants	$2.02
Administrative Consultants	$2.45
Postage/Shipping	$3.35
Contrib Refunds	$3.74
Contribs to Committees (Fed & Non-Federal)	$4.36
Political Consultants	$6.02
Campaign Direct Mail	$6.93
Contribs to Parties (Fed & Non-federal)	$7.16
Broadcast Media	$8.08
Charitable Donations	$8.32
Miscellaneous Fundraising	$11.63
Food/Meetings	$12.19
Contrib to Candidates (Fed & Non-federal)	$55.31

A small town Maine caucus.

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 18:12:41 -0800

My town has about 1,000 residents (though many of the retirees are elsewhere this time of year). It had 276 registered Dems. In 2004, less than 30 people showed up to caucus. This year, 98 people showed up (and the weather was 33 degrees and raining).

There was about 45 minutes of confusion - the former head of the Democratic Committee was retiring (after a heart attack), so the new folks had to keep getting direction from the experienced ones. Plus we had to change rooms (to the gym) because the library was too small.

In this state, at least, a caucus is really a meeting of the Democratic Committee. So there were elections of secretary, treasurer and new chairman, then the representatives to the county committee. Once we finally got rolling, it went smoothly:

Campaign for America's Future...

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:24:03 -0800

...has a truly outstanding post (part 1 of 2) comparing US and Canadian healthcare by someone who knows both firsthand. All you Canadians can bookmark it, so that you can respond to the next troll with a link instead of writing it all out all over again.

Control your compulsive politeness, please; I'm almost as tired of reading it as you are of writing it.

Admin Wants Wiretaps...

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:56:06 -0800

...but they don't even pay the bills?

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

...

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found.

Wow, that's as good as the Gooper who had sex with a gay hooker, then tried to stiff him on payment.

Making Sense of Ethanol and Related Fuels.

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 02:37:18 -0800

I recently reached overload on the number of conflicting claims I'd heard about ethanol, so I went digging. It quickly became obvious that ethanol suffers from both unhinged hype and deranged derision. The answer to the problem as currently framed is a rather unsatisfactory equivocation, but it does point to something far more exciting.

The Technical Claims About Ethanol

It takes more energy to make than it provides. It turns out that's just not true, even when made from corn. The major factor in those studies which claimed it was a net loss was ignoring the value of the byproducts, which while they won't power cars, can power the refining process, or be used as fertilizer.

Ethanol can't be shipped by pipeline. Dirty, rusty water tends to accumulate in pipelines, and the ethanol will soak it up (whereas gas just skips over it). In fact, this is a pretty minor problem; you have to keep your pipelines cleaner, and keeping the ethanol running is a good way to do it. Ethanol is more corrosive than gas, so joints and gaskets have to be made from different materials. Brazil is building an ethanol pipeline, and discussions are underway to build one in this country.

Heavy equipment doesn't run on ethanol. Well, little heavy equipment runs on gasoline. You can buy lower end E85 tractors right now, though diesel (and biodiesel) is generally better for heavy equipment.

Oscar Peterson has died.

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 12:40:51 -0800

CNN's obit.

Famous for being lightening fast, with a technique that (like Art Tatum's) allowed him to keep playing long after the other musicians on the stage had collapsed from exhaustion.

One of the greats, and a true gentlemen. RIP.

The Founding Fathers were not infallible.

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:24:58 -0800

Caught a bit of a "conservative" author on BookTV, decrying that Political History, as currently taught, includes nothing of the "Founding Principles". His first example: the importance of Free Markets.

So I googled for a match on "free market" at site:constitution.org/fed (the Federalist papers) and got no (zero, zip, nada) matches. OK, well how many are concerned with economic issues? I only find eight (out of 85) by title (though I think there are a few more mentions, still, economic issues were a relatively minor consideration). Well, seven of those eight are on taxation.

But taxation - now there's a hot-button issue for conservatives! "Cut taxes" thunders Joe Scarborough every morning on MSNBC, and legions of conservatives agree, happily citing the (logically laughable) Laffer curve.

Edging towards theocracy.

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:35:23 -0800

Amazing post over at Street Prophets by the authors of The God Strategy: How Religion Became A Political Weapon in America.

On average, presidents from Franklin Roosevelt — commonly viewed as the beginning of the modern presidency — to Jimmy Carter mentioned God in less than half of their major addresses. In contrast, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush (through year six of his tenure) all did so in more than 90% of theirs. Further, the total number of references to God in the average presidential speech 1981-early 2007 was an astounding 120% higher than the average speech 1933-1980.

more after the break

Making Serious Progress on Energy Usage

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 01:37:01 -0800

The Energy Information Administration (www.eia.doe.gov) has huge amounts of data (and PDF reports). Unfortunately it can be difficult to compare across reports because they often use different units and definitions, but I made a stab at it earlier this year. This post finally prompted me to write up what I had now, rather than keep postponing it until I had worked out harder numbers (which was beginning to look like never).

According to the EIA, in 2005, transportation amounted to 28% of our energy use, 32% was industrial, and 22% residential and 18% commercial. Residential energy was 68% electricity, commercial was 77% electricity, and industrial was 35%, (transportation was less than a rounding error).

Anatomy of a Hit Piece.

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:03:44 -0800

The Washington Post's Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002
article starts this way:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Carbon Footprint.

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:55:14 -0800

Two excellent articles today on reducing your carbon footprint.

At AsymptoticLife there's a summary of their 10 part series where the authors do the work of studying their own energy consumption and how to reduce it. They looked at 3 paths: the "Easy Method" (no major expenditures, no major lifestyle changes), the "Planned Method" (use all available tech), and the "Hard Method" (what would life be like if we had to have zero emissions now).

...[we] discovered that using the Easy Method— no lifestyle changes or significant investments— we could reduce our CO2 emissions by 70%. That's more than a 2/3 reduction, without any major changes in our lives!

Why Godwin's Law matters.

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:03:55 -0700

Godwin's law states: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

A corrollary says that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress. Why? Because almost always the comparison is laughably hyperbolic. And the few isolated cases where the comparison is accurate are simply and effectively dismissed as being hyperbolic because all the other comparisons are.

But, you say (and you know who are), it's so clear, it's undeniable, the parallels are so obvious!