Idle Analytics» Politics

Mark Kelly is right about gun policy. His 85% statistic is bullshit

Reuben — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:32:14 +0000

I strongly support gun control. This country has gun laws dictated by a relatively small group of highly vocal lunatics who believe all manner of strange things, from doomsday scenarios to byzantine and ghastly conspiracy theories. Any sane political theory dictates that if we take sensible steps to reduce the number of semi-automatic firearms in …

GOP is anti-science: Marco Rubio Earth creation edition

Reuben — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:01:13 +0000

From GQ magazine's interview with Marco Rubio: GQ: How old do you think the Earth is? Marco Rubio: I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do …

Election bursts some major intellectual bubbles

Reuben — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:27:35 +0000

I count at least four separate delusions were repudiated by the election results on Tuesday. 1. There is a hidden conservative movement waiting to show itself For four years, the GOP has done nothing but attack the president. This by itself is not a bad thing: the opposition party is there to check the in-party's …

Calling Republicans the party of racism is questionable

Reuben — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 20:13:23 +0000

Bill Maher is fond of repeating his line: "Being a Republican doesn't make you a racist, but if you're a racist you're probably a Republican." This attitude has obvious anecdotal examples to support it. The numerous racist signs shown at Tea Party rallies, the incredibly low minority support for and participation in the GOP, things …

The insane and inane in the Third Party debate

Reuben — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:16:02 +0000

If you ever needed an argument for why the two party system in the US is a good idea, just watch this year's Third Party debate, which took place this past Tuesday. It included the "candidates" for President from the Green, Justice, Constitutional, and Libertarian parties (Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson, Virgil Goode, and Gary Johnson, …

A terrific debate with little dishonesty

Reuben — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 06:33:39 +0000

Clearly the president had a much better night than he did during the first debate, and he also had a much better night than did Mitt Romney. But more, and more importantly, the debate was just plain good. It was wide-ranging, featured legitimate differences in opinion, and not a lot of lying on either side …

Understanding polls (part 2)

Reuben — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 05:03:13 +0000

In a previous installment, I showed the results of sampling a population to determine some fact: In that case, it was a hypothetical measurement of the number supporting Obama. By taking 50 "people" at random in the set and tabulating their responses, one gets a rough estimate of the actual proportion of the population who …

Biden bucks up the troops

Reuben — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 05:03:52 +0000

Last week's Presidential candidate debate was an unequivocal rout for Barack Obama. The aftermath of tonight's Vice Presidential candidate debate makes that clear: partisans from both sides of the spectrum are claiming that they won. Last week, only one side was saying that. Obama's losses in the past week have been steady and disheartening, erasing …

Moderate Romney a genuine threat to Obama

Reuben — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 03:58:50 +0000

Mitt Romney's campaign, in the days leading up to Wednesday, said that he was ready with a number of "zingers". This feint made it seem like "47%" hating, plutocrat Thurston Howell Romney was going to come out swinging and defend his campaign and his running mate's budget. He didn't. He changed the fundamental message of …

Understanding polls (part 1)

Reuben — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 05:19:25 +0000

Let's say that we want to know how many people are going to vote for Obama and how many for Romney. The population of all voting people has a certain distribution (a number who vote for one, another number who vote for the other). For the sake of argument let's say it looks like this: …