Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Second rate reporter says what?

In my day, never was longer.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

As long as McCarthy is Speaker, the House will never be in order.

White supremacy is terrorism.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The words do not have to be perfect.

You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / Ooga booga

Reader Interactions

117Comments

  3. 3.

    cleek

    Saul Alinsky…

    i love how a guy i’d never heard of (before wingnuts posthumously cast him in the role of Emmanuel Goldstein) is behind everything i think. the conspiracy obviously runs deep. very deep.

  5. 5.

    YellowJournalism

    Don’t have a link, but I heard on the radio that there are numerous sexual assaults at OWS. The host was going on about how horrible it was that a guy got groped by another guy at Occupy Ottowa. Claimed the police didn’t want to do anything because the protest is “maybe” a good cause. They’re really reaching now.

  6. 6.

    Short Bus Bully

    It’s certainly bullshit, but I can fucking HEAR all those ridiculous conspiracy theories getting clicked open on AOL email accounts across the country and being TAKEN AT FACE VALUE.

    Remember, people loved THE SECRET too…

    /facepalm

  7. 7.

    The Dangerman

    Don’t have a link, but I heard on the radio that there are numerous sexual assaults at OWS.

    This was a focus of O’Reilly’s show last night; apparently, these talking points were blasted out over the past couple days.

  9. 9.

    Suffern ACE

    @Short Bus Bully: Well, we are a culture that won’t pick up a history book, but will believe that a major thrust of our history can be explained as a conspiracy by the Church or the Illuminati or the Free Masons to supress the truth about Mary Magdalen.

  10. 10.

    dmsilev

    @cleek:

    i love how a guy i’d never heard of (before wingnuts posthumously cast him in the role of Emmanuel Goldstein) is behind everything i think. the conspiracy obviously runs deep. very deep.

    That just proves how powerful and insidious he is, that he’s essentially the Professor Moriarty of Community Organizing.

    (I think that’s an endowed chair at some liberal university somewhere)

  11. 11.

    Jay in Oregon

    @The Dangerman:
    So they’ve gone with “The Occupy protesters are anti-Semitic!” and now they’re trying for “Occupy protesters are raping women! And maybe even gay-raping men!”(*)

    I expect in a week or so to hear about all of the crosses being burned in the middle of the park.

    (*)I’m not offering any judgment on the validity of any sexual assault charges that have been made, only expressing admiration at how concerned the right wing is about the dignity and safety of people who are considering checking out an Occupy protest…

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    Also, too, as I noted in one of the other threads, apparently RAHM! is to blame for raining on Cain.

  13. 13.

    gocart mozart

    @Nylund:
    Ayers leaked the Cain sexual harrassment information silly. Everyone has a different role. Jeremiah Wright was assigned the whole “instituting sharia” thing for example.

  14. 14.

    Zifnab

    This is conspiracy building in the same way that making a ‘house’ with four Lego bricks counts as engineering.

    Clearly the hard working conspiracy theorists have had enough from the collectivist rabble and are now on strike.

  16. 16.

    Southern Beale

    And Herman Cain has submitted to a hard-hitting “exclusive” interview with Ginni Thomas, as in, the wife of Clarence Thomas, for Tucker Carlson’s vanity rag.

    I mean, mother of all dog whistles.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    @Comrade Javamanphil:

    NEW CLASS INFIGHTING: “Lower Elites” vs. “Upper Elites,” cont’d: NYC arrest records: Many Occupy Wall Street protesters live in luxury. “Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States. Some of the homes where ‘Occupy’ arrestees reside, viewed through Google Maps and the Multiple Listing Service real estate database, are the definition of opulence.”

    Median sales price for properties sold in NY in 2011 is $350,000. So yeah, they’re pretty solidly 99% for NY, and deep 99% if they’re NYC.

  24. 24.

    Chris

    @Jay in Oregon:

    So they’ve gone with “The Occupy protesters are anti-Semitic!” and now they’re trying for “Occupy protesters are raping women! And maybe even gay-raping men!”(*)

    Off-topic, but since you brought up the “antisemetic” allegations about OWS – anyone know what’s going on with Marine Le Pen? She supposedly intended to stop by an OWS rally in New York to… something. They didn’t exactly say what. But it was part of her plans.

    (If anyone here’s close to OWS New York, by the way, please do make sure you spread the word about who and what she is, and greet her accordingly).

  25. 25.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Southern Beale: I wonder if she offered to make a few calls on his behalf.

    Gonna have a Rolodex full in his case though, sheesh, better get the gallon bottle.

  26. 26.

    maya

    @Southern Beale: Damn! That tent is getting crowded. But, on the plus side, we’ll probably be treated to Ginni’s definitive answer to Ann Coulter’s “our blacks are better than their blacks” claim.

    Please do watch that for me, will you, as I know I will be busy that particular hour or day.

  27. 27.

    scav

    well, our conspiracy options of the day are either the Four-Lego or the Rube Goldberg platters, the suggested salad has a suspicion of sexual frisson dressing, all to be finished with a chocolate oppressors layer cake.

  30. 30.

    Poopyman

    @Reality Check: Your link says:

    The 3rd order polynomial fit to the data (courtesy of Excel) is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as having any predictive value whatsoever.

    So thanks!

    Mmmmm. Pie!

  33. 33.

    Roy G.

    Wingnut Newsflash: If you use a bank or own your own home, YOU ARE INELIGIBLE TO PARTICIPATE IN OWS!

  34. 34.

    eemom

    @Southern Beale:

    And Herman Cain has submitted to a hard-hitting “exclusive” interview with Ginni Thomas, as in, the wife of Clarence Thomas, for Tucker Carlson’s vanity rag.

    Please tell me you are kidding.

  38. 38.

    Steve

    @YellowJournalism: Every day when I walk by OWS (the real thing, not some flyover imitation), there is a very prominent anti-sexual assault sign. ‘RAPISTS GTFO’ and so forth. But whoever that rapist was, magically I just know he’s a Man of the Left.

  39. 39.

    Jeff Spender

    @Reality Check:

    Yes, PREDICTIVE value. It does however show that the earth SEEMS to be cooling, NOT warming as the Warmists say.

    Question: how much of the raw scientific data have you read? Just curious. Because the last time I looked into it, climate scientists were predicting that the climate would undergo extreme shifts, not strictly just warming.

    So the fact that the data that you’ve highlighted says the Earth is cooling doesn’t really disprove anything.

    It just means the climate is variable. Global Climate change doesn’t mean WARMER, it means more extreme.

  40. 40.

    Poopyman

    @Reality Check:

    Yes, PREDICTIVE value. It does however show that the earth SEEMS to be cooling, NOT warming as the Warmists say.

    And this statement is in no way predictive? Got it.

  41. 41.

    scav

    @David in NY: Doesn’t matter, Chex_mix is on record as flipping through nearly the whole card deck before settling on this one. They may be well matched.

  42. 42.

    Chris

    @Poopyman:

    You mean Jean-Marie Le Pen? The French RWNJ? Here’s a picture of, uh, “her”. Makes identification a bit easier.

    No. I mean Marine Le Pen. The current RWNJ in chief. The one who’s touring Washington and New York right now trying to meet with important people in order to prove her importance. Here’s a wikipedia article about, um, her.

  44. 44.

    Jeff Spender

    @Poopyman:

    I don’t comment much here, but I love to get into arguments (even with trolls) about anthropomorphic global climate change.

    The nuance here is understanding that global climate change doesn’t predict that the Earth is going only get warmer. It predicts that because we’ve upset the delicate global climate feedback cycles with added CO2, CH4, and water vapor in the atmosphere, the climate will display more extreme patterns of heating and cooling, which will cause more extreme weather (such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and the like). The main problems will be rising ocean levels, mass extinction of sea life, famine, drought, and displacement.

    Why is it so hard to understand that the biosphere and the climate are complex adaptive systems?

  45. 45.

    geg6

    @Reality Check:

    So one guy, who it seems was recently taken to task by his fellow scientists for using misleading data and methods is your proof that global warming isn’t happening?

    On 6 September 2011, a proof copy of a rebuttal, by Dessler, of Spencer and Braswell’s 2011 paper in to be published in Geophysical Research Letters was released. Dessler pointed out that Spencer uses a circular argument to suggest that short term sea surface temperature changes are driven by cloud variation. Specifically, Spencer uses the assumption that his hypothesis is correct in establishing a value for the heat capacity of the atmosphere and near surface oceans. Spencer then goes on to use that heat capacity value to prove his assumption. Using a heat capacity value based on the work of others, Dessler concludes that short-term global average sea surface temperature is driven primarily by heat transport from deeper in the oceans as part of the ENSO (in line with current understanding), thereby vindicating Dessler’s earlier method for establishing cloud feedback. Dessler also points out that in comparing climate models with data, Spencer used those that did least well at simulating the ENSO while choosing to ignore those that simulated it well.

    Not to mention that he’s a creationist:

    Spencer is a proponent of intelligent design as the mechanism for the origin of species.[32] On the subject, Spencer wrote in 2005, “Twenty years ago, as a PhD scientist, I intensely studied the evolution versus intelligent design controversy for about two years. And finally, despite my previous acceptance of evolutionary theory as ‘fact,’ I came to the realization that intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism. . . . In the scientific community, I am not alone. There are many fine books out there on the subject. Curiously, most of the books are written by scientists who lost faith in evolution as adults, after they learned how to apply the analytical tools they were taught in college.”[32] In The Evolution Crisis, a compilation of five scientists who reject evolution, Spencer states: “I finally became convinced that the theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution, for the creation model was actually better able to explain the physical and biological complexity in the world… Science has startled us with its many discoveries and advances, but it has hit a brick wall in its attempt to rid itself of the need for a creator and designer.”

    And your ilk call us liberals moonbats?

    ETA link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_%28scientist%29

  49. 49.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Poopyman: Go down a little in that Web page you linked to and you’ll find this:

    The youngest of Le Pen’s daughters, Marine Le Pen, is leader of the Front National.

    She’s in the US this week.

    About four people pointed this out to you in a thread yesterday when you issued the same “correction”, but you may have left.

  50. 50.

    Steve

    @Jeff Spender: Psst: the long-term warming trend is unmistakeable. A brief interval of cooler temperatures does not serve to reverse the trend or even call it into doubt. Don’t take your eye off the ball.

  51. 51.

    Chris

    @Poopyman:

    Yeah, tell me about it. One of my friends summed it like this on facebook yesterday –

    “THAT GUY HAS A DAUGHTER, AND THEY LET *HER* SPEAK?!?”

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    About four people pointed this out to you in a thread yesterday when you issued the same “correction”, but you may have left.

    Well, with BJ’s tendency to have a half dozen threads pop out of the ground in about ten or fifteen minutes, it’s easy to get lost. I’ve probably inadvertently offended someone in the course of the year I’ve been posting here by dropping a conversation cold without realizing it.

  53. 53.

    Reality Check

    @Jeff Spender:

    @Jeff Spender:

    Here’s my take on Warmism:

    1) The Earth’s climate varies naturally.

    2) Human activity alters climate to some extent locally and globally.

    3) Humans are able to a certain degree to affect local climate.

    4) Global climate is very poorly understood.

    5) Thus far there is no hypothesis that meets Feynman’s criteria[1] for providing useful explanation of how the Earth’s climate works.

    6) Thus the global climate is not controllable by human activity, since nobody has figured out whether or not a steering wheel exists, let alone how turning it will alter climate.

    7) The geological record implies, however, that the Earth’s climate is remarkably stable despite wide variations in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the amount of radiation being put out by the sun, the inclination of the Earth’s axis relative the Sun, the strength of the magnetic field, the arrangement of the continents, etc.

    8) The computer models used to justify much CAGW panic-mongering are lousy and show numerous flaws in how the matrices are designed and the handling of boundry conditions and unsurprisingly, their predictions don’t match reality very well[2].

    9) The policies being pushed by the CAGW crowd, (curtailing energy production and consumption, diverting investments from profitable, beneficial ends towards less beneficial ends, many of which are unprofitable without huge subsidies) are of dubious, if any, benefit and come with huge costs in millions left in poverty, in hunger, or with shortened lives and are, in my mind, therefore terrible ones that should never be adopted.

    10) Much of the claims being advanced to buttress CAGW are so contradictory that it becomes like that Bill Murray sketch on SNL where he interpreted women’s dreams, and invariably came to the conclusion that they wanted to sleep with him. This detracts from the CAGW movement’s credibility.

    [1]http://tinyurl.com/ybgfa3p
    [2]http://tinyurl.com/6977llo

  54. 54.

    Reality Check

    Why not try to attack his data instead of attacking the person? His being a creationist might matter if we’re discussing Evolution, but we’re not. We’re discussing the claims of Warmism.

  55. 55.

    Poopyman

    @Jeff Spender:

    Why is it so hard to understand that the biosphere and the climate are complex adaptive systems?

    Because of a massive failure of imagination. Yeah, it’s impossible to wrap your head around the idea of millions of tons of carbon and what it can do to the atmosphere, same as you can’t really wrap your head around millions of years of biological permutations resulting in the highly complex organisms running around the planet. Some people accept that their imagination won’t handle it but accept the data and the conclusions stemming from it. Other folks either deny it outright or make up shit about jesus riding around on dinosaurs. One group is dismissed as the “reality-based community” and the other group is running our country.

  56. 56.

    jl

    Journolist engineered what?

    The drunken s o s h u l i st, crypto muslin lying ruthless child debauching Perry trapped that poor oppressed Mr. Cain.

    I heard that from unimpeachable sources.

  60. 60.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Hannity talking points for today:

    OWS is full of rapists (there have been many many rapes – his words)

    OWS is violent (we must defend the police)

    OWS = walking around topless and having sex in public

    Oh and he opened the show pissing his pants because Anonymous has threatened him and the entire Fox News cartel with taking them down tomorrow. I am giddy with anticipation.

  64. 64.

    SectarianSofa

    Talk about phoning it in. This is conspiracy building in the same way that making a ‘house’ with four Lego bricks counts as engineering.

    4-block lego building does count as engineering if you’re a one-year-old human. In other words, your average cat or dog could build better conspiracy theories, just coasting.
    (In fact, I know some cats that do this on a regular basis. Good thing they can’t operate automatic weapons.)

  66. 66.

    ed drone

    @Ruckus:

    I normally love the smell of desperation in the morning.

    Unfortunately conservative desperation smells like bullshit.

    Equally unfortunately, conservative optimism also smells like bullshit.

    Ed

  67. 67.

    MikeJ

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Oh and he opened the show pissing his pants because Anonymous has threatened him and the entire Fox News cartel with taking them down tomorrow. I am giddy with anticipation.

    Anonymous also said they were going to take down the NYSE.

    eta: A few weeks ago that is. Obviously, they didn’t follow through.

  68. 68.

    Rome Again

    @geg6:

    I hope they’re right. I hope Cain pulls it off and runs away with the nom. I’ll be on a popcorn binge if he does.

    Me too! :)

  70. 70.

    Tim F.

    I don’t doubt that Roy Spencer thinks he is the first person to discover that temperature trends follow a decade-scale cycle that (if he bothered to check) correlates quite well with the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

    I could show the Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 curve from August to January of last year and chumps like RC would pester all their Facebook acquaintances about how CO2 is going down and not up.

    If Spencer thought his readers were any dumber he would use sunlight from seven to eleven AM to prove the sun is getting stronger.

  72. 72.

    jl

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    ” OWS = walking around topless and having sex in public ”

    That is the fear and resentment that oldsters and middle age midlife crisis people vented 50 years ago in the mid 60 during the fist DFH wave.

    Man, the Fox News audience gotta be really really really old, and really really really repressed.

    Maybe they should throw in that they aren’t talking baths. That was what I found attractive about the DGHs when I was kid.

  73. 73.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Tim F.:

    If Spencer thought his readers were any dumber he would use sunlight from seven to eleven AM to prove the sun is getting stronger.

    That would work on the puddle of goo that is RC, I’m sure.

  75. 75.

    Jeff Spender

    @Reality Check:

    Do you have any idea what a feedback cycle is, or what a complex adaptive system is?

    Don’t just post random tidbits you got off of Google and pretend to be knowledgeable.

    The question is: do you grasp the underlying concepts? If not, all of those points you made are just random letters.

    If I were to undress how you’ve argued, I’d note the hints of fallacious reasoning mixed with a touch of misinformation. The big giveaway is the use of “warmism” to describe the science.

    Also, why would you use a commencement speech from 1974? That’s just a bit dated, isn’t it? Try again.

  76. 76.

    Chris

    @Tim F.:

    If Spencer thought his readers were any dumber he would use sunlight from seven to eleven AM to prove the sun is getting stronger.

    Hell. Climate change denialists thought “it snows in winter” was an argument.

  78. 78.

    Satanicpanic

    Liberalism must be like Scientology- I haven’t got the level where they’ll discuss Alinsky yet. I also don’t get my Sorosbucks yet either.

  80. 80.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Poopyman: The fact that you didn’t first call her Rosanne Rosanna Danna, which is what people usually do including me I think once, puts you ahead of the game right there.

  83. 83.

    geg6

    @Jeff Spender:

    He knows nothing about any of those things, does RC. Nor does he apparently know to use the google before quoting these “experts” that he always dredges up as the “definitive” voice on AGCC.

  84. 84.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Reality Check: But wait you’re voting for Romney you said, right? He’s not a climate change denialist, in his book at least. And then you know, universal health care, his plan is what Obama and co. based theirs on, and all the rest of it, all that is pretty sharply at odds with what you say here.

    You’re either a bad example of a spoof or I suppose just a good example of a Republican.

  85. 85.

    Poopyman

    OT, but Politico has come up with a number:

    POLITICO has learned that one of the women who accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s received a payout of about $45,000 as part of her settlement – significantly more than the two or three months’ salary Cain initially recalled the woman obtained.
    __
    The woman who received the approximately $45,000 is the staffer who Cain has acknowledged formally lodged a complaint about his behavior.

  86. 86.

    SectarianSofa

    @Satanicpanic:

    Liberalism must be like Scientology- I haven’t got the level where they’ll discuss Alinsky yet. I also don’t get my Sorosbucks yet either.

    Brilliant. I hope there are volcanoes. I don’t think I want to live on a fake merchant marine ship, though.

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):
    Just fantastic. Fuck. People here are stupid enough without help from Fox.

  88. 88.

    Reality Check

    @Jeff Spender:

    Blah blah blah, a lot of hot air and no counterargument. If you read the link you would realize the date doesn’t matter–the principles remain.

    I mean “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is thousands of years old but nobody says pay no attention cause it was written a long time ago! Same with “all men are created equal”.

  90. 90.

    Reality Check

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Mitt Romney changes his mind based on new data, this is vital in the private sector and that’s why he’s done it in the public sector. That’s something Obambi would never understand.

  91. 91.

    Tim F.

    Mitt Romney changes his mind based on new data

    I think we can all agree on that. Every time new polling data comes out we get another Mitt.

  93. 93.

    Satanicpanic

    BTW, I am usually guilty of this as well, but maybe we should stop feeding Mitt Romney’s publicist? Just throwing that out there. I know it’s fun to do.

  94. 94.

    Jeff Spender

    @Reality Check:

    I mean “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is thousands of years old but nobody says pay no attention cause it was written a long time ago! Same with “all men are created equal”.

    Wait, wait.

    Let me get this straight: You’re arguing science by using a philosophical point? Do you think that biology wasn’t revolutionized when Watson and Crick discovered the molecular structure of DNA in 1953? Don’t you think that, perhaps, physics has changed with the advent of atomic power?

    So you’re contending that a handful of principles from the year 1974 based on an ever-evolving science are just as valid as they are now?

    I just want to get this straight. This isn’t a matter of philosophy. This is a matter of science. Science always changes. It is dynamic.

    Your argument is invalid.

    I won’t argue the other points until you can prove you have even a basic understanding of feedback cycles and complex adaptive systems.

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @Reality Check:

    So since Richard Feynman said that ESP is fake back in 1974, therefore that proves without a doubt that climate change isn’t real?

    Yeah, that’s about the level of logic I’ve come to expect from you.

  96. 96.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Reality Check: No but I’m just asking why you’d vote for someone with whom you clearly disagree. Whether he always felt that way or not wasn’t part of the question. I’ll let the Republicans do the “Romney’s a flip-flopper!” stuff, I think the Democrats can just sit back and let him be Bob Dole. To be honest.

  97. 97.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jeff Spender:

    I’m not sure if you read the Feynman link, but I can assure you that it doesn’t say anything close to what RC is claiming it does. In fact, it doesn’t address climate or weather or even environmentalism.

    The speech is completely, 100 percent unrelated to RC’s claims, but you should expect that from him by now.

  98. 98.

    David in NY

    @Chuck Butcher: No, no. Mitt looks at the “data.” It tells him what he believes. If a majority of Mass. voters are pro-choice — it tells Mitt he is. If they’re tolerant of gays — it tells him he is. But if the data says today’s voters are crazy wingnuts it tells him he’s pro-life. And if they’re intolerant of gays — it tells him he is.

    See, Mitt changes his belief based on “data” in entirely “predictive” ways. The data correlates entirely with what the polls tell him the electorate wants to hear.

  100. 100.

    Tim F.

    @Satanicpanic: My friend, you need more experience with trolls. RC cites his evidence, defends his rationale with an actual argument, keeps the tone well within the bounds that you people set and responds coherently to at least some replies. We have regulars who would do well to at least live up to that.

  101. 101.

    jl

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Mitt Romney wishes he could be Bobdole. Bobdole could be quite folksy, and funny, in a wry acerbic way, whenever he could, or chose, to keep his mean streak under control.

    I think one thing Romney is better at is not falling into a mean streak.

    Dole is still around, right?

    If I were Romney, I would go the master and get some Bobdole lessons.

  104. 104.

    Jeff Spender

    @Mnemosyne:

    SHH! This is a fun process which involves trickery and clever misdirection.

    I did read it. RC’s point was nonsense. I didn’t want to get to that point yet.

  105. 105.

    geg6

    @Reality Check:

    Funny that you would say this to someone else but still not address the criticism of your pet scientist that I posted.

    Oh, wait. It’s you, so not so funny after all.

  106. 106.

    Anarchaeologist

    @Reality Check: You’re either not reading Spenser’s (ridiculous) commentary carefully or you don’t know what you’re talking about. The temperature anomaly is positive, which means that no matter what spin a deeply discredited hack puts on it, the Earth is still warming, not cooling. And to think it’s only a week since I saw all manner of denialists claiming that “no one is disputing that the Earth is warming,” following Mueller’s comments on his results.

  107. 107.

    Rome Again

    @Reality Check:

    Reality Check turns flip-flopping into a positive attribute.

    LMAO, thanks for the laugh. Try selling that to other non-Democrats. You won’t find many who agree. ::snickering::

  109. 109.

    J. Michael Neal

    @Reality Check: “The 3rd order polynomial fit to the data . . .”

    Regression. He haz a fail.

    “For entertainment purposes only.” doesn’t even begin to describe how useless a third order regression equation is unless there is a really, very, extraordinarily good explanation for why you should use it. How many variables is he using in that equation? I’m betting that there’s a degrees of freedom problem there.

    If you allow me to use as many variables as I want, with any exponents I want, I can show that any two things you care to name are correlated. That’s not an exaggeration.

  111. 111.

    Jeff Spender

    @J. Michael Neal:

    If you allow me to use as many variables as I want, with any exponents I want, I can show that any two things you care to name are correlated. That’s not an exaggeration.

    I love statistics, and math in general. This is one reason.

  112. 112.

    Anarchaeologist

    @J. Michael Neal:

    If I understand third order regression properly (and I’m not guaranteeing that I do) it’s like saying,”The Earth is still getting warmer, and it’s still getting warmer faster, but the rate at which the acceleration is accelerating is getting slower.” Indeed a bit of useless mathematical wankery from Spenser.

  113. 113.

    xian

    you know feeding this troll (or “debating” it) is truly a waste of time and energy.

    I once thought there were smart right-wingers somewhere who might have something beyond agitprop and ooga booga to offer but I believe their philosophy, now down to an odd alliance of ressentimente and greed, is so utterly bankrupt that the trolls can’t even keep their stories straight or on point for the duration of a paragraph.

  114. 114.

    El Cid

    I reckon that if I were to spend like a few months reading about the Big Bang and such, I’d have all the science knowledge I’d need to find the good scientists who don’t believe in the Big Bang, so there.

  115. 115.

    J. Michael Neal

    @Anarchaeologist: That’s actually not what third order regression means. That’s a description of the equation used to describe the correlation involved and not what the extent to which anything is increasing. For first order regression, the equation is linear. If x is your dependent variable, y and z are your independent variables a and b are the coefficients of correlation, a linear regression equation is in the form[1]:

    x = a*y + b*z

    For regressions with an order greater than one, called multiple regression, you get additional terms with exponents as well as cross variables. A third order equation might look like:

    x = a*y + b*y^2 + c*y^3 + d*z + e*z^2 + f*z^3 + g*y*z

    The more terms you have, the less useful the equation is because it increases the chances that the correlations involved are spurious. As I said, if you give me as many terms as I want, I can prove any things you care to name are correlated. It just won’t mean anything.

    [1] Yes, I’m ignoring the constant.

    Edit: FYWP I have no idea how to get the exponents formatted properly.

  117. 117.

    Brutusettu

    Bill O’Brien seems unaware that [s]most[/s] all politicians and all of Fox News’ opinion entertainers et al. all play from the same playbook Bill O’Brien is ripping on.

    The other Bill O is trying to demonize his opponents with his “In fact…Let’s not talk about the substantive issues [the kid brought up, let’s talk about my talking points and vote getting shtick]”

Comments are closed.