Teabagger Protest In D.C.

Ken AshfordObama OppositionLeave a Comment

How many Tea Party prostesters went to march on D.C. this weekend?  According to Michelle Malkin, it was in the neighborhood of 2,000,000.

Wingnut bloggers from Glenn Reynolds to the Pajamas Media to Newsbusters excitedly link to Malkin.  And they all shouted with glee: "See?!?  We're no 'fringe'!!!  Two million!!!"

Except that ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol.

How could Malkin be so far off?  You see, Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, the rightwing group sponsoring the rally, told the crowd that that ABC had reported there were 1.5 million people there.  And that number got tweeted around, and then Malkin finally blogged that there were 2 million.

It was a lie.  Kibbe lied.

Malkin retracted the number, but is now all concerned that the left will take note of the "error to discredit the undeniably massive turnout today."

Well, 2 million is undeniably massive.  That's how many turned up for Obama's inauguration.  Hotel rooms were double booked — it was indeed massive.

70,000 is a football game.

The cited figures were not a little "oopsy".  They were 25 times greater than the actual figures.  Off by 2500%.

Yes, the left is going to take note of this, Miss Malkin.  It was a gargantuan lie told by the activist group behind all the tea party rallies.

UPDATE:  Powerline's John Hinderaker is trying to spin, spin spin….

There has been a surprising amount of controversy over the size of the anti-Obama administration protest in Washington yesterday. Liberal media have pegged it in the "tens of thousands" (or even just "thousands") range, while some have claimed that there were as many as 2 million people there, which seems impossible. There probably will never be a definitive number, but efforts to lowball the crowd are ridiculous.

Riiiight.  Assuming that there was, say, 100,000 people (most reports say 70,000 at most), efforts to lowball the crowd by claiming there are "tens of thousands" are "ridiculous".

And what about the efforts by the march organizers to exaggerate the claim twenty-fold?!?  Chirp, chirp, chirp.

I have no expertise at estimating crowds, but this one was obviously huge. If you compare it, in very rough terms, to the 50,000 or so it takes to fill a stadium, it appears to be well into six figures.

I have no doubt that Washington Democrats are well aware of how many people turned out, even as their media outlets try to downplay the event. Ultimately, those media efforts will have little effect, just like the media's silly attempt to portray anti-big government voters as "racists," etc. The rubber will hit the road in November 2010. If present trends hold, the ruling Democrats will suffer a severe reversal that the media will not be able to avoid reporting, however much they may hate it, as in 1994. On the other hand, if the economy turns around and the Democrats hold on next year, no one will care much how many protesters did or did not turn out yesterday.

Now comes the punchline, something added to the post after it was published:

SCOTT adds: The site John linked to for the photo he originally posted above has retracted it, noting the picture was of another rally.

UPDATE:  Teabaggers in their own words:

NineTwelvePhotos

Collectively, they don't seem to have much message discipline.  They just seem to dislike Obama.

Sadly, there was an election not too long ago.  We won, they lost.

RIP: The Man Who Saved More Lives Than Any Other Person In History

Ken AshfordIn Passing1 Comment

Borlaug Oh, I could tell you his name, but it probably wouldn't mean anything to you: Norman E. Borlaug.  He died at the age of 95 last night.

What was his claim to fame?  Well, the title above says it all.  He saved more human lives than anybody in the history of…. well…. in the history of history.

How many lives?  Well, the figure most often used is one billion.

That's right.  Dude saved the lives of around one billion people.

Believe it or not, the fictional The West Wing mentioned Borlaug and his accomplishments.

A popular book in the middle of last century called The Population Bomb warned of massive starvation primarily in Africa and the Middle East, and would have come true but for Borlaug's innovations, helping to more than double world food production between 1960 and 1990. 

The father of the green revolution, his efforts averted global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps 1 billion lives.

9/11 Tributes Gone Horrible Distasteful

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

In my book, the tribute honor today goes to Cakewreck, the website featuring poorly designed pastry and cakes.

Example 1:

Cari [1]. lw . patriotic donut holes

"If you don't eat donut holes, the terrorists win"

Also, they appear only to be red and white — no blue — so I guess it's for Swiss or Canadian patriots or something.  Or maybe it's symbolic of blood.  Eewwww!

Here's something macabre:

Anna B

"Oh, oh!  I want a slice of the north face of Tower One please!"

And finally:

Jolly d-ow-never foget

Uh, I think they forgot something.

Government Run Health Care? We’re Closer Than You Think

Ken AshfordHealth CareLeave a Comment

Slate.com:

The latest report from the Census Bureau on income, poverty, and health insurance is full of interesting data. (For example, median household family income in 2008, at $50,303, was below where it was in 1998. Heckuva job, Bushie, Greenie, and the whole economic team!) Perhaps the most surprising census data are the significant evidence that, even absent a reform bill, the United States is slowly nationalizing health care. In 2008, enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid rose from a combined 81 million to a combined 85.6 million. Add in military health care, and some 87.4 million Americans in 2008 got health insurance directly from a government source—about 29 percent of the total. Meanwhile, health insurance became less tethered to work. The percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance fell from 59.3 percent in 2007 to 58.5 percent 2008, and the percentage of those working full-time and part-time who lacked health insurance rose in 2008. The ranks of those getting insurance from employers include a substantial number of public employees—teachers, state workers, etc. (In August, government accounted for about 17 percent of payroll jobs.) Add those folks to the people receiving coverage from Medicare, Medicaid, and the military, and, as Jon Bon Jovi once put it, "we're half way there." Most of the Americans who have insurance may already be getting it through the government, one way or another.

This has nothing to do with Obama's proposals.  This is just a trend, brought on in part by the insurance companies themselves.  As employment-based insurance plummets because it is fiscally impossible to keep, more are moving to government-run insurance programs (if they can), or (sadly), no insurance at all.

Observations With Which I Concur

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Culled from here:

1.   More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.

2.  Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk?

3.  There is a great need for sarcasm font.

4.  How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

5.  I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

6.  Was learning cursive really necessary?

7.  Lol has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".

8.  I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

9.  Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

10.  How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

11.  What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

12.  MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

13.  Bad decisions make good stories.

14.  Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!

15.  Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem….

17.  You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

18.  Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.

19.  There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to fall after leaning your chair back a little too far.

20.  I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

21.  As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

22.  It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

23.  The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

Short Takes

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

(1)  I recommend Facebook Lite.  It's Facebook's clutterless version.

(2)  9/11 tribute?  None from me today.  I'm not sure what can be said this year that wasn't said in any prior year. Commemorate amongst yourselves.  I think kitchy 9/11 tributes get worse and worse every year (picture below is from 2002)

2d5c6b42c81d395ec163e4ff7d9ae684

(3)  Rob Miller, the Democratic challenger to Joe Wilson (R-SC) in 2010, had only $48,000 in his campaign account at the end of June.  Since Wilson's "You lie" outburt, Miller's cofferes have rose to over $750,000.  Now Wilson is begging for money.

(4)  I'm not impressed with the hurricanes this year.

(5)  I think Ellen Degeneres as an American Idol judge is a nice idea, and might boost ratings for a while, and I like her, too.  But what qualifies her to be a judge in a singing competition?

(6)  Hahaha!  Speaking of Joe Wilson, remember a few years ago when the Dixie Chicks were unpatriotic because they criticized the president during a time of war at one of their own concerts?  Good times.

(7)  And relatedly, remember when wearing an anti-Iraq War T-shirt to a presidential State of the Union speech would not only get you thrown out, but arrested???  Sigh.  Those were the days.

(8)  The U.S. Census Bureau has just announced that the poverty rate for 2008 was 13.2%. This means the number of people in poverty has increased by about 2.5 million, to 39.8 million. To give you some perspective, 2.5 million is more than the number of people who live in Detroit and San Francisco combined.

(9)  Glenn Greenwald looks at incivility versus indecency, and how incivility (using swear words, calling the president a liar, etc.) gets treated with indignation, while indecency discussed in soft and civil tones (i.e., torture) gets a pass:

As long as one adheres to Beltway decorum, one can advocate the most amoral and even murderous policies without any repercussions whatsoever; it is only disruptive and impolite behavior that generates intense upset.  Beltway culture hates "incivility" (public use of bad words) but embraces full-scale substantive indecency (torture, lawbreaking, unjustified wars, ownership of government by corporations, etc.).

Glenn Beck Rape/Murder Controversy Growing

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/Idiocy4 Comments

Recently, I drew attention to the fact that some say that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, as well as the website: glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.

That site, which only began on September 1, has had a lot of visits.  And among those interested are Glenn Beck's lawyers.

By September 3, lawyers for Beck's media company, Mercury Radio Arts, had contacted the domain registrar demanding that the "highly defamatory domain name" glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com be deleted, that the WhoisGuard privacy protection service be revoked, and that the owner's contact information be turned over to the lawyers.

Registrar NameCheap didn't do this, of course, and Beck's lawyers sent another letter the next day, making the same demands. They also showed that they were reading the website: "We also note that it appears you contacted the individual, as he states on his website hosted on the Defamatory Domain that 'my webhost is taking some flak over this website, so if he gets shuts me down, it may take a bit to get rehosted.'"

But the lawyers didn't follow through on their defamation threat.  Instead,

Beck's lawyers also filed a case with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Switzerland, the group which handles the worldwide domain dispute resolution process, on the grounds that the new website was improperly using Glenn Beck's trademarked name.

Of course, Beck's name wasn't trademarked when this all began.  But now they've started that process.  Unfortuantely, while most of the "goods and services" associated with the name are obvious ones like DVDs and books containing Beck's special brand of commentary, the mark is also reserved for use on "cups, ice buckets, mugs, non-metal piggy banks, ceramic and porcelain holiday ornaments."

So it doesn't seem that the website is in violation.

As for defamation, there's probably a good reason why Beck's lawyers haven't gone that route.  It's a loser.  For one thing, the site clearly states that it is satire.  And satire it is — it is mocking, through imitation, the very same smear tactics that Glenn Beck himself uses (falsehoods, innuendo, etc.).

But his lawyers certainly are drawing attention to the site, which is probably counter-productive.

Grocery Shopping

Ken AshfordRandom Musings3 Comments

The picture below represents two lanes at the grocery store checkout, and the number of items in each cart.

090902_1

So you're shopping, and in a hurry.  You have ten items in your cart, so you can go into the 10-items-or-less express lane at the left.  But there is one more thing you need/want.  Do you put it in the cart, forcing you to the regular lane, or forget it and go into the left?

These are the questions we face when we go to the grocery store.  How to get out as fast as we can.  What matters more to you?  The number of people in the line, or the number of items in the line?

An intrepid blogger did some regression analysis, and came up with some guidelines based on his findings.  Here's one:

Check is slower than credit which is slower than cash. Students are sometimes surprised that cash is faster than credit. From my observations, the fastest cash transaction will outpace the fastest credit transaction by a wide margin but there is also huge variance in credit transactions. I mean, some people have absolutely no idea what they are doing with that thing. The same can't really be said of cash.

Not too surprising to me.  But this was.

The express lane isn't faster. The manager backed me up on this one. You attract more people holding fewer total items, but… when you add one person to the line, you're adding 48 extra seconds to the line length (that's "tender time" added to "other time") without even considering the items in her cart. Meanwhile, an extra item only costs you an extra 2.8 seconds. Therefore, you'd rather add 17 more items to the line than one extra person!

Me?

I do profiling.

I look for the line with the fewest elderly.  It's been my experience that either pay by check (takes forever) or, even worse, get out their mini-purses and pay by exact change down to the penny.

I also admit: I tend to avoid lines with dishevelled people (although, typically, I am often one).  Food stamps and all that.

What about you?

A Better Way

Ken AshfordHealth CareLeave a Comment

Republicans think that one way to improve health care is to engage in tort reform, i.e., somehow limit the number of malpractice cases brought to court, or limit the damages that winning plaintiffs can receive.  Because (Republicans claim) of all these lawsuits, malpractice insurance for doctors and hospitals is high, which creates higher health care costs.

It's an idea, so let's give Republicans credit for actually bringing something constructive to the table.  At least it's not shouting "blargh snort gruff gruff" from the bleachers.

So let's give it the closer look it deserves.

Does malpractice insurance result in higher medical costs?  Sure.  But the impact is negligible.  As Obama said last night, malpratice tort reform is not the "silver bullet" that will solve all, or even most, of the high costs of health care.

Malpractice reform is based in part on the premise that people file frivilous lawsuits against doctors, and doctors (and their insurers) run up all kinds of money defending these frivilous lawsuits.  Sadly, this is not the case.

A 2006 study was conducted by a team of eight researchers from Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Harvard Risk Management Foundation.  They examined 1,452 medical malpractice lawsuits. They found that more than 90 percent of the claims showed evidence of medical injury, which means they weren't, by definition, "frivolous".  (The platintiffs may not have won, but not winning in court doesn't necessarily mean that the lawsuit was baseless to begin with)

More importantly, when baseless medical malpractice suits were brought, the study further found, the courts efficiently threw them out before they got to trial.  So the notion that our courts are filled with frivilous malpractice lawsuits doesn't stand up to scrutiny — it is exaggerated.

Nor is there evidence to show that the level of jury awards has shot up. A recent RAND study looked at the growth in malpractice awards between 1960 and 1999. "Our results are striking," the research team concluded. "Not only do we show that real average awards have grown by less than real income over the 40 years in our sample, we also find that essentially all of this growth can be explained by changes in observable case characteristics and claimed economic losses."

Even then, what exactly does malpractice reform look like?  Sure, Republicans can try to craft a statute that forbids frivilous lawsuits, but who will determine whether a lawsuit is "firivilous" to begin with?  The fact is that we already have a way to ensure that frivilous lawsuits don't go to trial — that way is the court system itself. 

Maybe a better way for doctors and hospitals to avoid lawsuits is to, you know, do better at their jobs. It's happened before. 

For example, anesthesiologists used to get hit with the most malpractice lawsuits and some of the highest insurance premiums. Then in the late 1980s, the American Society of Anesthesiologists launched a project to analyze every claim ever brought against its members and develop new ways to reduce medical error. By 2002, the specialty had one of the highest safety ratings in the profession, and its average insurance premium plummeted to its 1985 level, bucking nationwide trends.

Similarly, feeling embattled by a high rate of malpractice claims, the University of Michigan Medical System in 2002 analyzed all adverse claims and used the data to restructure procedures to guard against error. Since instituting the program, the number of suits has dropped by half, and the university's annual spending on malpractice litigation is down two-thirds. And at the Lexington, Ky., Veterans Affairs Medical Center, a program of early disclosure and settlement of malpractice claims lowered average settlement costs to $15,000, compared with $83,000 for other VA hospitals.

I'm not saying that malpractice reform can't help.  But it is not the only way, or even the fair and equitable way.  Rather than limiting people's ability to sue (or to recover damages), maybe the medical profession practice area can troubleshoot and fix areas that are prone to malpractice in the first place.

The National Review Editors Were In Favor Of Rational Thinking Before They Were Against It

Ken AshfordHealth Care, Right Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

August 17, 2009 National Review editorial:

To conclude from these possibilities to the accusation that President Obama’s favored legislation will lead to “death panels” deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved — let alone that Obama desires this outcome — is to leap across a logical canyon. It may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less. But that does not mean that there is nothing to worry about. Our response to Sarah Palin’s fans and her critics is to paraphrase Peter Viereck: We should be against hysteria — including hysteria about hysteria.

The cover of the current issue of National Review:

Nr-cover

Think Progress has more.

The Worst Sports Column Ever Written…

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

… was written on Monday.  It appeared in Tuesday's Orange County Register.  Here's how it begins:

It doesn't sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page.

Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year.

She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn't high-fived in a while.

She was not allowed to spike a volleyball. Or pitch a softball. Or smack a forehand down the line. Or run in a 5-footer for double bogey.

Now, that's deprivation.

Can you imagine? Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped and stashed in Phillip Garrido's backyard. She was 29 when she escaped. Penitentiary inmates at least get an hour of TV a day. Dugard was cut off from everything but the elements.

How long before she fully digests the world she re-enters? How difficult to adjust to such cataclysmic change?

More than that, who's going to explain the fact that there's a President Obama?

Dugard's stepfather says she's going to need a lot of therapy — you think? — so perhaps she should take a respite before confronting the new realities.

So, Jaycee, whenever you're ready, here's what you've missed:

And then it goes on to explain all the great moments in sports that Jaycee missed.

That's right…  a young woman was kidnapped at age 11, sexually abused, mentally tormented, and held captive for 18 years, and that's used as a launghing point to talk about great sports achivements?

"Ill-conceived" doesn't begin to describe this column.

The author, Mark Whicker, has since issued an apology.