Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Jeff- Saw a lot of talk about this in the afternoon. Either elaborate psy-op to make Ukraine overconfident or Russia's really preparing their public for the imminent retreat from Kherson city

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63309095

[THE_WIZARD_]

For those who have not seen the new Michael Moore documentary "Planet of the Humans" it's on YouTube...whilst there are many assertions made in this I disagree with...and in general 98% of what that idiot produces is garbage...it makes very good assertions on the scam that is the green energy business...very worthwhile documentary.

[CGVT]

"Michael Moore is an idiot, unless he agrees with my position"

Got it

[THE_WIZARD_]

He's still an idiot...but he does expose the scam that is green energy cultism (which is actually...as most scams are...about the benjamins)...

The greatest thing about this documentary is that the Progs are going nutso...wanting it removed from YT...they want MM banned!!

Classic!!!

[iam416]

Michael Moore is a pure muckraker. His films are always grossly slanted and often very unfair to the "bad guys" -- i.e.,, the dudes he disagrees with. That said, he periodically latches on to some kernel of truth. And, I suppose, he could even be right on some things.

The real show on the internet is that Moore has, to this point in time, been a true Prog hero and it's funny to watch the betrayal!!! Even if the film is largely in agreement with the Progs, they demand 100% fealty, and to go against them is to sin. That's the Left. The only way he could have been more alientating is to expose the total and utter grift in the DEI industry. Now, THAT would be a film. But even Michael Moore ain't that brave, so we'll have to settle for the grift in the green energy industry.

[iam416]

Meanwhile off in crashcourse's neck of the woods/now a place I won't come within 1000 miles of, the Ds are concerned that Lake could actually win the Governor's race. Do tell.

If Arizona Democrats aren’t livid with the leadership of the state party, they ought to be. Kari Lake was not one of the pro-Trump further-right candidates that Democrats spent big money to support in primaries — $53 million in 13 races as of mid-September, according to a review by the Washington Post — but the Arizona Democratic Party did choose to take a whack at Lake’s more moderate primary rival, Karrin Taylor Robson, at a key moment during the GOP primary:

NBC News told the story back in July:

Kari Lake watched her lead narrow in the polls and big players in Arizona’s Republican establishment coalesce around her top rival weeks before the state’s Aug. 2 primary for governor.

So Democrats stepped in.

The state party, in an email blast this week, thanked her opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, for past donations she made to Democratic candidates. The move was quickly interpreted as another example of Democrats’ meddling in midterm election primaries to help draw the general election opponent believed to offer the easier matchup in November — in this case Lake, an election denier endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

“As the Republican primary for governor continues to stir toxic infighting, the Arizona Democratic Party will always be grateful for Robson’s longtime support in helping elect Democrats up and down the ballot, including this November,” Josselyn Berry, a spokesperson for the state party, said in a quotation tacked on to the bottom of the email.

The Arizona Democratic Party knew darn well what they were doing with that release. Kari Lake was a registered Democrat from 2008 to 2012 — they could just as easily have spotlighted that fact. By calling attention to Robson’s donations to Democrats, the Arizona Democratic Party was telling Arizona Republicans, “Robson is not one of you. You should vote for Lake.”

And they did. Lake won the primary by about five percentage points.

Now, keep in mind who the likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee was, as described by the Post’s Ruby Cramer:

It is easy to view Katie Hobbs as Lake’s opposite. The Democrat oversaw the contentious 2020 election in Arizona as secretary of state and served as minority leader in the state Senate, but struggles as a messenger on the trail. At the Arizona Capitol, reporterswould often ask her to repeat her answers because sentences would trail off, making hermeaning difficult to decipher, one reporter said.Duringthe primary,Hobbs declined to debate her Democratic opponent, despite the fact that he posed little threat to her campaign. (She won with 72 percent of the vote.) She has since refused to share a stage with Lake,producing aweeks-long saga over debate rules and an uncomfortablerunningcontrast. When Hobbs didn’t show at a voter forum earlier this month,Lake stood for more than an hour next to an empty podium labeled “KATIE HOBBS,” in case there was confusion about her absence. “I have no desire to be a part of the spectacle that she’s looking to create,” Hobbs said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” a few days later.

Arizona Democrats knew their nominee was going to be soft-spoken and a poor communicator, and they chose to go up against the well-known former television-news anchor, who had been working in front of the cameras for more than two decades.

And now Kari Lake, enjoying a small lead in recent polling, is terrifying Democrats. Axios writes, “Democratic Party strategists are watching Arizona’s Kari Lake with growing alarm.” Democrats told the New York Times that Lake’s “charisma and on-camera skills make her uniquely dangerous.”

Well, gee, Arizona Democrats, maybe you should have thought of that before you meddled in the GOP primary, then.

[Hannibal]

Oh, I think they will retain the Senate. I think the Rs chances of winning the House are way higher than 72%.

According to the numbers, and standard statistically methods for dealing with margin of error, they aren't. Which is what Nate Silver ultimately uses, although I have yet to figure out the methodology that he uses to assign grades and weight to pollsters since he has some really bad ones that he has given high grades.

Whatever his methods, the intelligencia has too much confidence in computer models and fancy stats that attempt to predict the inherently unpredictable. This was true of Covid spread modeling and it's true for other areas as well. Nate Silver got famous predicting the 2008 election, which had to be one of the easiest elections of all time to predict. Since then, there's little that Nate Silver has gotten right that you couldn't also have predicted by looking at the RCP average for each tightly contested race. In many cases, the simple RCP average has been closer to the actual outcome than Silver's prediction. A sampling of Midwest swing states in 2020:

Michigan: 538 -- Biden + 7.9, RCP - Biden + 4.2, Actual -- Biden + 2.9

Ohio: 538 -- Trump + 0.8, RCP -- Trump + 1.0, Actual -- Trump + 8.0

Pennsylvania: 538 -- Biden + 4.6, RCP - Biden + 1.2, Actual -- Biden +1.2

Wisconsin: 538 -- Biden + 8.4, RCP - Biden + 6.7, Actual -- Biden +0.6

All of that effort being spent on math and statistics, to produce an outcome that in some cases is far less accurate than a simple average. Silver was "correcting" MI, PA, and WI in the "D" direction by pretty large amounts when the correction should have gone significantly in the other direction.

[CGVT]

Michael Moore is a pure muckraker. His films are always grossly slanted and often very unfair to the "bad guys" -- i.e.,, the dudes he disagrees with. That said, he periodically latches on to some kernel of truth. And, I suppose, he could even be right on some things.

Yep.

[Hannibal]

I haven't seen the Michael Moore documentary. I have seen though first hand the ridiculous sums of money thar are being thrown at utterly ridiculous green energy concepts that are straight out of science fiction. And all of them will make life worse for about 99% of Americans. In many cases, much worse. California is already experiencing this and they have barely even begun.

[THE_WIZARD_]

You need to watch the documentary. One example they illustrated was a large area in Michigan that was several football fields in size of solar panels...and the engineer was explaining that those massive solar panel areas would provide energy to fully support.....drum roll...10 homes annually!!! The underlying jist of the documentary was two fold...it's funded by greed...and that the so-called "green energy" and "renewable energies" are largley the product of...drum roll...coal!!! Evil fossil fuels!!

Also...thirdly...IMO...nuclear is the way to energize our future...but the cult is clearly against that as well...

[iam416]

Nuclear energy is so clearly the best path forward for "green energy" that even non-Prog folks on the Left are catching on.

Solar only meaningfully works if you outfit every south facing residential surface n the US with solar panels. And even then I want to emphasize "meaningfully" because its dent in "fossil fuel" consumption would vary by locale.

But, yes, the amounts of money being thrown at this shit -- honestly, I'm sure I'd actually underestimate it by at least one order of magnitude and I'm one cynical motherfucker.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Correct.

But yer still an asshat.

[Mike]

Nuclear energy is so clearly the best path forward for "green energy" that even non-Prog folks on the Left are catching on.

If climate change truly is an existential threat, than there are two options: Massive expansion of nuclear power or cull half the world's population.

[iam416]

I prefer (a) but I can definitely live with (b) with we start with the entire state of Western Ontario and then move into Canada.

[Dr. Strangelove]

There was a poll released yesterday that showed DeWine +31, Ryan +2. The gap between the two races is starting to get ridiculous