Tag: politics

So much for “Alpha Mitt”

I told you that Mitt Romney, for all his height, financial success, and executive hair, was a Beta.  One display of dominance in the first debate, the first in what is now six years of running for president, does not an Alpha make.  Recall that before the debate, Scoobious Doobius noted this:


“In terms of “game” theory (as opposed to “game theory”), it’ll be
interesting to see tonight if things turn into the classic “real alpha
versus beta huffing and puffing and trying to look like an alpha” sort
of thing. If Obama takes that bait, then I’ll be a little more
open-eared towards the predictive power of game.”

The case, she is closed.  Obama not only came out huffing and puffing, but he even managed to prevent Romney from dominating him the way Romney had in the first debate.  The real indicator of Romney’s Betatude was not that he failed to AMOG Obama a second time, but rather the way in which he permitted a woman to not only overrule him, but the rules set out for the moderator prior to the debate as well.

There is no excuse for this failure.  A true alpha would have shut her up and forced her to submit to him without even requiring an appeal to the rules.  But, given how the rules were not only clear, but Candy Crowley openly declared her intent to flout them before the debate, Romney’s failure to shut her up and force her to stick to her appointed role is conclusive proof that he is not, and has never been, an alpha male.

All he had to do, the first time she opened her mouth in violation of the rules, was read them to her and ask her what part of them she did not understand.  Later, when she attempted to play fact-checker, he should have immediately asked her what the score was, then informed her that if she isn’t keeping score, she isn’t the judge of the debate and she should stick to her moderator duties as she agreed prior to the debate.  The fact that Romney’s failure to deal with the woman led directly to him fumbling his best opportunity to publicly drive home Obama’s responsibility for the Libyan debacle is merely rubbing salt in the wound.

Romney cracks 50

Thus spake Gallup:  Romney 50%, Obama 46% Among Likely Voters.  Obama down sharply among men, college grads, and Southern voters vs. 2008

If Romney manages a similar rout again tonight, we could end up seeing a landslide in a few weeks.

Game and the election

I try to keep the two blogs fairly separate these days, since a relatively small number of people are interested in both econ/religion/politics/literature on the one side and intersexual relations on the other.  Also, the intellectually ruthless approach utilized here tends to work better on matters more objective than the socio-sexual hierarchy.  However, there are times when the two perspectives come together as one, which was the case with a question from GK concerning why women have suddenly begun turning towards Mitt Romney in the presidential election.

My thought is based around one of the keys to understanding female behavior, which is that it is often
aversion-based.  Men find this difficult to understand because their
behavior tends to be positive, in the sense of “I want X, therefore I
will do Y.”  The aversion-based female pattern tends to be more oriented
towards “I don’t want X, therefore I will do Y”.  The increased female
support for Romney has little to do with Romney himself, much with less
his policies or Obama’s policies, but rather the collective socio-sexual
fury of a group of women duped.

Read the rest at Alpha Game.

Suzhi and the sheng nu

It’s strange, isn’t it, that so many organizations formed for the advancement of women’s rights were established by left-wing parties like the Fascist Party in Italy and the Communist Party in China.

They are articles about single, professional women published on the Web
site of China’s state feminist agency, the All-China Women’s Federation.
The Communist Party founded the Women’s Federation in 1949 to “protect
women’s rights and interests.” 

It must be a coincidence.  But these days, it isn’t hard to imagine either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama agreeing to establish a state feminist agency, assuming of course that Housing and Urban Development doesn’t already qualify.

I do rather like the idea of referring to unmarried women over the age of 27 as sheng nu, however.  Especially since comes with the imprimatur of an official international State Feminist Agency.  It would really be sexist to refer to them any other way.  However, looking at it from the long-term perspective, it is ominous that China has been actively seeking to encourage its best and brightest women to breed instead of pursue an education since 2007.

Iran is doing this.  China is doing this.  The USA and the nations of the West, on the other hand, are encouraging their best and brightest women to sterilize themselves.  Which societies would you bet on in the long run?

Democratic panic

Andrew Sullivan’s desperation is palpable:

The Pew poll is devastating, just devastating. Before the debate, Obama had a 51 – 43 lead; now, Romney has a 49 – 45 lead. That’s a simply unprecedented reversal for a candidate in October. Before Obama had leads on every policy issue and personal characteristic; now Romney leads in almost all of them. Obama’s performance gave Romney a 12 point swing! I repeat: a 12 point swing.

Romney’s favorables are above Obama’s now. Yes, you read that right. Romney’s favorables are higher than Obama’s right now. That gender gap that was Obama’s firewall? Over in one night….  Seriously: has that kind of swing ever happened this late in a campaign? Has any candidate lost 18 points among women voters in one night ever? And we are told that when Obama left the stage that night, he was feeling good. That’s terrifying. On every single issue, Obama has instantly plummeted into near-oblivion.

So, the media has noticed that the narcissist-in-chief is running a lazy, disinterested re-election campaign and appears to be throwing the election.  Who could possibly have imagined that would ever happen?  Who could have seen such a dramatic reversal coming?  Anyhow, we’ll know that Romney has the election in hand if he comes out strong on in the second debate and crucifies Obama on Libya and the murders of the American diplomats there.

Nate Silver starts the spin

For someone whose vaunted statistical model was forecasting an 85 percent chance of an Obama victory next month, Nate Silver is really beginning to sound as if he’s attempting to retreat from his current predictions:

I feel as though it’s my duty to tell you when my subjective estimate of the odds differs by a material amount from the ones that our model produces. On Friday and Saturday, I wrote that I thought the model was underestimating Mr. Romney’s chances.

The model is designed to distinguish essentially random changes in the polls from more permanent reversals in the state of play. But it takes a one-size-fits-all approach to do this. Had there been no major developments in the news cycle over the past several days, there would be reason to be skeptical that the shift toward Mr. Romney had been quite as clear as the polls had seemed to imply. There have been other points in the election cycle when the polls appeared to show a shift in the race but without much news to drive it; the model has been fairly “smart” about avoiding being taken by these false alarms.

The trade-off, however, is that the model may be too conservative about accounting for a shift when there is real news behind it. The model is able to account for changes caused by some types of economic reports, since those are incorporated directly into the forecast; we also have special procedures to handle polling around the party conventions. Other types of news events, however — like the debates, major foreign-policy developments, or the vice presidential selections — may not be handled very adroitly by the model.

Those who like to get on my case about Obama defeating Hillary for the Democratic nomination tend to forget that I make a single prediction about the election long before the nominees are even known.  In 2008, I predicted that the Republicans would serve up a sacrificial lamb and the Democrats would win nearly 18 months before the election.  I was wrong about the specific individuals, but the general theme was correct.  In 2010, I predicted that the Republicans would win in a landslide.  In 2012, I predicted that the Republican candidate would win easily unless it was Mitt Romney, in which case I still expected him to win.

Meanwhile, the “professionals” like Silver are not only making new model-based predictions on a weekly or even daily basis, but are attempting to separate themselves from their predictions.  I leave it to you to determine which process is more useful, even if the success rate of those predictions made months in advance is lower than those “predictions” made in real time.

Yes, I was wrong about Clinton winning the nomination, about Pataki being the sacrificial lamb, and about Obama actually dropping out, but based on all the articles that have suddenly begun appearing about whether he is even interested in seriously contesting the election – and articles written by some of his most fervent supporters – it is clear that in the case of the latter, I was on the right track even though events did not turn out exactly as I thought they would.

It may be worth noting that despite what Silver and the mainstream polls say, I’m not the only one anticipating a Romney victory in November:

An update to an election forecasting model announced by two University of Colorado professors in August continues to project that Mitt Romney will win the 2012 presidential election.  According to their updated analysis, Romney is projected to receive 330 of the total 538 Electoral College votes. President Barack Obama is expected to receive 208 votes — down five votes from their initial prediction — and short of the 270 needed to win.

The first debate

He says it like it’s a good thing:

Obama has always relied on the big money men in private, while
disparaging them in public.  But what happens when he comes up against
one of them in the most public way possible?  Now we know the answer, and it ain’t pretty. The president appeared small and petulant and reactive.  Romney looked presidential and secure and proactive.

While Republicans are quite reasonably celebrating the fact that Romney demolished a hapless Obama sans teleprompter in the debate – disproving once again the notion that Obama is a supergenius master of rhetoric – they don’t seem to be thinking through the obvious implications of what they are witnessing.  Obama has never been more than a tool of those who have financially raped the nation.  Romney is one of the financial rapists.

How can anyone imagine Mitt Romney has any intention of fixing the very problems that he helped foster and from which he profited so massively?

You’d better sit down for this one

I’m certain we’re all just absolutely shocked by this revelation:

U.S. intelligence officials knew within 24 hours of the
assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that it was a terrorist attack
and suspected Al Qaeda-tied elements were involved, sources told Fox
News — though it took the administration a week to acknowledge it.  The
account sharply conflicts with claims on the Sunday after the attack by
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice that the
administration believed the strike was a “spontaneous” event triggered
by protests in Egypt over an anti-Islam film.

 It’s always so hard to see innocence shattered.  So much for the feared rage of Jihad Boy.  Sure, we all knew that Obama and his handlers were liars, but the remarkable thing is how bad at it they are.  Mitt Romney, now, there is a politician who can tell perfectly credible lies without blinking, insofar as he can resist contradicting himself.

WND column

Foreigners First

Paul had been filibustering the Senate for days, delaying action
by requiring the maximum amount of time be spent on each vote until he
got a vote on his own bill, which failed, 10-81.  Numerous Republican
senators stood up in opposition to Paul’s bill, calling it dangerous and
irresponsible, especially to Israel.
 

Keep in mind that this vote took place 11 days after the U.S.
ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was murdered along with
three other U.S. diplomats in Libya. The federal government is sending
money that it doesn’t have to declared and undeclared enemies alike, to
countries that Barack Obama has openly declared are not U.S. allies,
while simultaneously refusing to re-enact the Bush tax cuts because the
country supposedly cannot afford them.

Trends and the media polls

Gallup Election Polls

09/5-11/2012
Obama 50%
Romney 43%

09/14-20/2012
Obama 47%
Romney 47%

I’m still trying to figure out how folks like Karl Denninger are interpreting a 7-point swing towards Romney as proof that Obama has the election all but sewn up. Especially when Rasmussen shows a similar 46%-46% result.
I understand the Electoral College and why some prefer the state-by-state analyses. But the fact remains that Rasmussen nailed the 2008 popular vote while Nate Silver asserted “Obama’s Convention Bounce May Not Be Receding” on the very day that Gallup reported this seven-point move away from him.
Either way, it is useful to recall that in polls as in stocks, past performance does not guarantee future results.