Fri: QOP Secretary of State Is OK With Christians,Not Jews

Remember When Rasmussen Was a Respectible Polling Organization?

Kari Lake had lost Arizona’s 2022 governor’s race by thousands of votes, falsely declared that she’d been robbed, and was trying to overturn the election results in court when, finally, she was declared the winner of the race in March.

But not by Arizona’s millions of voters. Rather, well-known pollster Rasmussen Reports announced that, actually, a majority of its survey respondents claimed to have voted for Lake over Gov. Katie Hobbs (D). Not only that, Rasmussen Reports said — it was an eight-point blowout in Lake’s favor.

The news from Rasmussen Reports, which was based on an unprecedented 1,001-person poll taken four months after the election, was the boldest claim yet from the pollster, heralding a miraculous supposed 92% turnout rate in the election — rather than the certified rate of 62.56%.

Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports’ lead pollster, didn’t simply report that Arizonans were wary of voter fraud, another one of the poll’s findings. He leaned into the conspiracy theory that Lake had been robbed of a victory.

“This is a very strong signal that Arizona voters are aware that there are irregularities and cheating,” Mitchell told Steve Bannon in an interview on Bannon’s show, adding later: “What we found is that voters told us that just four months ago they elected Kari Lake as the governor of Arizona by 8 points.”

Lake appeared ecstatic. “NEW Rasmussen Poll Reveals the Red Wave did happen,” she wrote in a tweet that claimed Republican candidates Abe Hamadeh and Mark Finchem had also wrongly been declared losers. “Lake, Hamadeh and Finchem won according to poll and 50% of Arizonans say the 2022 Election issues were done intentionally to hurt Republicans.”

The practice of polling an election four months after the fact, and using the results — an imperfect snapshot of a tiny subset of Arizona voters — as the basis for questioning an actual election result was “totally backwards,” “out of bounds,” and “very inappropriate,” political analysts told HuffPost.

It was the culmination of a bizarre shift for Rasmussen Reports. After two decades of fairly consistent right-leaning polling of elections and political issues, the firm had stopped acting like a normal pollster. Rather than simply asking Americans about their beliefs in conspiracy theories and fringe views, Rasmussen Reports has amplified those beliefs, lending them its legitimacy as a household name in politics — to the delight of right-wing politicians and influencers eager for new material.

Citing its own poll results on Americans who think they know someone killed by the COVID-19 vaccine, for example, Rasmussen Reports tweeted a cartoon showing a cemetery with the word “coincidence” on every headstone. “ICYMI: We’ve all come a long way from ‘safe and effective,’” the firm tweeted.

Months after “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams referenced a Rasmussen Reports poll — asking respondents for their opinion on “It’s okay to be white,” which has become a far-right troll catchphrase — as part of a racist meltdown that ended with him urging white people “to get the hell away from Black people,” Rasmussen Reports is still retweeting Adams as he tries to gain new fans.

Even without corresponding poll data, Rasmussen Reports’ Twitter page has frequently amplified fringe conspiracy theories to its audience of 447,000 followers. Earlier this month, above a poll that simply asked whether voters were concerned about “cheating” in the 2024 election, Rasmussen Reports tweeted, “Printing & mailing real election ballots for phony voters at phony address’s [sic] that get retrieved, voted, mailed back & counted is likely the key to the organized theft of the 2024 presidential election.”

Duh!

A city in Arizona will no longer have natural grass in the front yards of new homes.

The ordinance, which is occurring in Scottsdale, Arizona, will only apply to single-family homes built or permitted after August 15. The measure was unanimously approved by the council.

In a press release from the City Council, the measure was touted as a step towards responsible use of resources.

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“It’s a positive step that supports responsible use of our water resources and an initiative that works in tandem with Scottsdale Water’s existing residential and commercial rebate programs,” according to the release.

Moreover, the city said that 86% of water customers supported the initiative, according to feedback gathered from Scottsdale Water customers. The initiative is part of a larger effort from the city of Scottsdale to reduce its water consumption.

So, Farmers has announced they're pulling out of Florida period.  And I doubt they're the only company who is doing/has done that.  So, who's left to insure all those $4 mil homes?

Besides with sea level rise, a lot of coastal FL is going to be underwater.  Pretty soon you know who will have to rebrand Mar-a-Lago as just Mar.

"There is a widespread belief that Florida will be the first state to go underwater due to rising sea level. Even the fact-checked New York Times described Florida as “going beneath the waves.” However that is not at all correct. Vulnerability to rising sea level is hyper-local and cannot be generalized. As the four color coded elevation zones on this map show, Florida is far from flat. Even when sea level rises five meters ––approximately sixteen feet––the majority of the state will still be high and dry. Even on our current path of burning increasing amounts of fossil fuel, most aggressive estimates for sea-level rise put that a century or more into the future,

"The perception that the State of Florida is just a few feet above sea level is simply wrong. There are of course some very important parts of the state that are three feet or less above sea level – approximately a meter. Most of greater Miami, the Florida Keys, and Fort Lauderdale are in that highly vulnerable zone. However, Orlando, the vacation mecca in the middle of the state is 82 feet (25 meters) above sea level and not at all vulnerable. Tallahassee, the capital, is more than 200 feet above sea level.

"Florida does stand out as the state with the lowest high-elevation point – how’s that for a contradictory term. Florida’s high point is 345 feet above sea level, the lowest of all fifty states. Thus it will never go completely underwater, even if all the ice sheets and glaciers on the planet melt, since a total meltdown of all the ice sheets glaciers would raise sea level 212 feet (65 meters). That could take thousands of years, depending on how warm the planet gets. With Florida’s mean (average) elevation at 100 feet it is vulnerable, but the state will be around in some form, at least for centuries. In contrast, Delaware’s mean elevation is only 60 feet, so most of Delaware will go beneath the waves long before Florida.

Florida is Not Going Underwater, at least not all of it

I have been as guilty as anyone of spreading the "Florida will be going underwater" myth. It is still true that Florida is increaingly under threat from more severe hurricanes, and the soil under building near the water is a serious threat.