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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 9:43:24 GMT -8
Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play Today's Polls are More Useful than a Concrete Parachute, a Screen Door on a Submarine, the "ay" in "okay"Yesterday was special to a small crowd of the poll-obsessed journalists and political scientists who recognize the following chart:  The chart is from political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien’s 2012 book The Timeline of Presidential Elections, which looks at how, when and why voters make their decisions about who to vote for. The chart shows you how predictive horse race polls are of actual election outcomes between 1956 and 2008.¹ Here’s how to read it: On the left, we’re at 300 days before the election, when polls are of little to no predictive value historically. On the right, it’s Election Day, when polls explain the vast majority of variation (R-squared, the y axis) in the Democratic candidate’s actual share of the popular vote. In other words, polls are not super useful 300 days before the election, but become more useful as November approaches. And, lucky us, we are now 300 days before November 5th, 2024! It’s Election Day minus 300, or ED-300 as elections forecasters like to say. Happy ED-300! This also means that the last few months of poll discourse have taken place entirely to the left of the axis on the above chart — a time period when polls were so inaccurate historically that they were excluded from the analysis. I should say the precise numbers here are a little fuzzy, but the predictive margin of error for presidential horse race polls starts out at about +/- 20 today, in terms of Democratic margin. That means if the polls had Biden up 10, he could end up losing by 10 — or winning by 30 — in one out of twenty elections. Obviously, because of political polarization and other factors, those margins are unlikely today. |
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:01:34 GMT -8
This May be More Useful Than a Remote without Batteries, Reacting to new polling showing Donald Trump losing older voters to President Joe Biden by a stunning margin, the panel on MSNBNC's "Morning Joe" suggested the former president is scaring away a key voting block he needs in his third bid for the Oval Office. Noting that in the new poll, Biden leads 60 percent to 39 percent among voters over 65, the panel agreed that Trump's attacks on Biden's age may be a major factor along with the chaos that always accompanies Trump is scaring off older voters. "I want us to talk about this part of it, because everybody is focusing on the younger voters who right now are not moving towards him as much as they thought," co-host Scarborough prompted his panel. "They're going to come home. they just will. You look at this number though: voters 65 and older, Joe Biden, 60 percent, Donald Trump — Sam, nobody expected this, but we have seen this. Older voters have been moving toward Joe Biden steadily for quite some time, and of course, as we know, older voters? They vote." In 2020, Previous Guy Won Voters 65 and Over 52% to 47%, In 2016, it was 52% to 45%.Trump's attack on Biden's age is blowing up in his face big time
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:06:00 GMT -8
Today's Installment of "People Suck".
A man testifying about the family he lost in the Israel-Hamas war was jeered at by protestors at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting to pass a controversial compromise resolution calling for a ceasefire and a release of Israeli hostages, video and reports show.
The man describes losing five family members at Kibbutz Be'eri, including two who were kidnapped on Oct. 7, during Hamas's attack targeting Israeli civilians in video released by the advocacy group Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area.
"This resolution does one thing -- it fuels antisemitism and hatred as exemplified in this room right now," the man said. "Listen! The pig noises and everything else. This is pure antisemitism."
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:11:24 GMT -8
The States Where Women Are Forced to Give Birth Are the Same States Those Babies May Go Hungry.
While children's rights and anti-hunger advocates across the United States applauded Wednesday as the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced summer food aid for kids, more than a dozen Republican state leaders are rejecting the assistance.
The USDA said that 21 million children in 35 states are expected to be fed by the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) program set to launch this year, providing low-income parents with benefits to purchase food for their kids.
"This new child nutrition program will be a game-changer in combating summer hunger," said Feeding Indiana's Hungry, which runs food banks in the state.
No Kid Hungry New York said Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul's decision to accept approximately $200 million to feed 2 million vulnerable children "represents a historic opportunity to dramatically reduce hunger for kids" in the state.
But advocacy groups in 15 states were left fearful and outraged by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's announcement, as 15 Republican-controlled states have declined the food aid.
Chris Bernard, chief executive of Hunger Free Oklahoma, told The Washington Post that an estimated 300,000 children in the state will lose access to free meals when the school year ends, leaving many hungry all summer after pandemic relief money helped provide them with food during school vacation for the last four years.
"We are extremely disappointed that the state says it is not able to implement Summer EBT for 2024," Bernard wrote in a column in The Oklahoman last week, pointing out that food aid has "proven to be effective in reducing child poverty and hunger rates and improving both academic and behavioral performance in school."
"In short, we know what works," wrote Bernard. "We need the policymakers to invest in these programs. The health of our children and our economy depend on it."
In states that are accepting the federal funds, families with incomes below the poverty level who already receive free or reduced-price lunches during the school year will be provided with $120 per child—or $40 each summer month—to purchase food at grocery stores or other retailers.
The program is launching following the expiration of pandemic aid programs and as grocery prices and food insecurity rates in the U.S. have soared in recent years, with the latter rising from 12.5% in 2021 to 17.3% in 2022.
Along with Oklahoma, the other 14 states that are not participating in the $2.5 billion Summer EBT program are Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:14:08 GMT -8
Damn! I Was Just Planning on Going on a Date in Bogota. (And I Was Planning on Flying there on a Boeing 737 Max 9)
US citizens travelling to Colombia have been warned against using dating apps in the country after the "suspicious deaths" of eight American tourists in two months.
The US embassy in Bogota said some victims were drugged and robbed after meeting people on these apps.
The incidents often occurred in cities like Medellin, Cartagena and Bogota where US tourism has picked up.
Travellers are being told to avoid isolated locations like hotel rooms.
Criminals use the apps to lure victims to public spaces like restaurants and bars, where they can be assaulted, robbed and even killed, sometimes by the person they meet, the embassy warned.
In the final three months of 2023, the number of robberies of foreign visitors increased by 200% and deaths by 29%, including the eight Americans who died between 1 November and 31 December.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:15:37 GMT -8
Anyone Here Ever Aroused by Reading the Dictionary?
The Florida Freedom to Read Project has released a list of over 1,600 books that, as of December, have been removed from Escambia County Public School District library shelves for review to ensure compliance with new legislation.
The list includes eight different encyclopedias and five dictionaries, "The Guinness Book of World Records," "Ripley’s Believe it or Not!" "Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl" and "The Autobiography of Malcom X," among many others.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:19:33 GMT -8
Could We Get Four Electoral Votes Closer to Sanity? This week, Democrats in Maine's legislature renewed their effort to elect the president according to the national popular vote when they held a hearing on a bill that would have the state join a multistate alliance to implement just such a change. The bill under consideration would add Maine's four Electoral College votes to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, under which member states would collectively award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact would come into force only once states with a majority of electoral votes have joined. Currently, the statewide winner gets two of Maine’s electoral votes, while whichever candidate wins in either of the state's two congressional districts gets one additional vote per district. Maine Democrats have controlled both the legislature and governor's office since 2019, but that year, the state House rejected a similar bill by just a few votes after the state Senate had approved it. The Portland Press Herald reports that some Democrats are still opposed to this latest push, but this time, at least one Republican in the Senate supports the plan. But while Democrats have a wide majority in the upper chamber, they can afford only a handful of defections in the House. The compact's 17 current members (which include Washington, D.C.) currently have 205 of the 270 electoral votes needed to activate it; Maine's entry would increase that figure to 209. Because Republicans have typically opposed the agreement, its ultimate passage will likely rely on Democrats winning power in several more states. That could happen by 2028, as there's a tough yet real path to victory, as illustrated in the map at the top of this story (click here to enlarge) and in this companion spreadsheet.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:22:23 GMT -8
You Might Get a Charge Out of This
The Department of Transportation has announced $623 million in grants to support electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure across the country.
"We're at a moment now where the electric vehicle revolution isn't coming, it is very much here," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters.
The grants will support 47 projects in 22 states and Puerto Rico, with an emphasis on rural areas and underserved communities. The funding will also lead to the construction of about 7,500 EV charging ports.
The decision comes as the Biden administration is setting a goal of installing 500,000 chargers nationwide by 2030. Sales of EVs have been rising but at a slower rate than past years, with consumers citing high vehicle prices and poor charging infrastructure for the lukewarm response to electric vehicles.
"This charging infrastructure is making sure that everyone from the local business owner to a freight truck operator can conveniently and reliably get where they need to go," said Shailen Bhatt, the administrator of the Federal Highway Administration.
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:29:12 GMT -8
2.1 Billion Thirsty People
On the heels of the planet's hottest year on record, new research out of Dartmouth has found that seasonal snowpack across the Northern Hemisphere has shrunk significantly over the last 40 years due to global warming — potentially putting millions of people at risk of worsening water instability.
Between 1981 and 2020, dozens of river basins have seen a significant decline in snow water equivalent, or the amount of water contained in the snow, due to human-caused climate change, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The sharpest drops — between 10% and 20% per decade — were in the Southwestern and Northeastern United States, as well as Central and Eastern Europe.
That includes the Colorado River basin, a key source of water for California and the Southwest, which dwindled to dangerous lows during the most recent drought. The basin has seen spring snowpack declines of about 7% per decade over the last 40 years due to climate change, the study found — or roughly 25% to 30%.
"What we are looking at is a longer-term aggregate pattern, and the question is, is snow a reliable source of water availability for places like California going forward? And the answer, absolutely, is no, it is not," said Justin Mankin, an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College and one of the study's authors.
Many of the snow-dependent watersheds now find themselves on the precipice of a threshold the researchers dubbed a "snow-loss cliff," or a point at which marginal temperature increases imply larger and larger snow losses to come. The inflection point occurs when average winter temperatures in a watershed are warmer than 17 degrees.
"Once you get beyond that threshold, you start to lose an increasing percentage of your snow with each degree of warming," said Alexander Gottlieb, the study's lead author and a doctoral student at Dartmouth. "You sort of get this snowballing — for lack of a better word — loss."
In all, roughly 2.1 billion people live in snow-dependent hydrologic basins that are either at, or just on the other side of, the temperature threshold, the researchers said.
Even with El Nino, California's Snow Pack is 42% of Normal for This Date
I never drink water... fish f**k in it. -- W. C. Fields
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Post by mhbruin on Jan 11, 2024 10:34:00 GMT -8
The QOP Accomplishes Something
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hasben
Resident Member
Posts: 1,023
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Post by hasben on Jan 11, 2024 21:34:31 GMT -8
the @housegop didn't like the color
The QOP Accomplishes Something
Well it was tough as they didn't have many choices:
no blue= democrat
no green= tree hugger
no brown= illegal immigrant
no black= well, black
no pink, yellow, orange, purple= gay colors
only real choices were white or red for repub
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