"Children Just Aren't Going to Know What Snow Is!"

Global warming fanatics and proponents of political cap and trade regulation just can't catch a break.  Unfortunately, neither can European travelers, it seems.


Just when Iceland thought global warming was destroying their glaciers, a surprise eruption earlier in the year from the glacial Eyjafjallajökull volcano grounded airplanes for weeks, stranded hundreds of thousands of travelers, and reminded the world that liquid magma and scorching steam generally has a greater impact on frozen water than high concentrations of atmospheric gases.


Now, as world leaders return home from their annual global warming summit in Cancun to educate the world about how winter and snow are climate conditions of the past, northern Europe is blasted with the worst blizzard in 100 years, leaving a half a million passengers once again trapped at airports and train stations, bringing England's rail systems to a freezing halt, and even forcing German airports to hire clowns to keep stranded passengers entertained.


The storm is yet another chilling reminder that weather patterns tend to be cyclical by nature, regardless of the regulatory feel-good political efforts to change climate...change.


Question: Does Dr. David Viner, the senior research scientist of the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit still have a job after his claims from ten years ago that by now, thanks to man-made global warming, "children just aren't going to know what snow is" and winter snowfalls will have become "rare and exciting" events?  As Europe struggles to de-ice their vehicles, rebook their holiday travel plans, and in general just keep their heads above the snow drifts, I certainly hope someone from his department has clued him in that, surprise, it tends to snow during winters.


For that matter, at which ski resort is Al Gore roasting chestnuts by an open fire?


Old Man Winter once again is showing the international community that it needn't be concerned --especially during this particularly frigid holiday season-- about snowfalls being a thing of the past.


~Gee

Andy Rooney Trots Behind Gallup

Andy Rooney, during his November, 14, 2010 episode of 60 Minutes, claimed:

A Gallup poll said that President Obama's approval rating was at an all-time low. Gallup said that they surveyed over 90,000 Americans for this one poll. I mean, where was I when they were calling people about President Obama? 

The survey said that only 44 percent of us approve of President Obama's performance. 

Well, I surveyed nine of my friends and eight of them said they liked Obama but didn't trust a Gallup Polls. As far as I'm concerned, Obama's doing the best job he knows how and it's good enough for me. 

Something called the 2010 Mercer Quality of Living Survey chose the top 221 best cities to live in, in the whole world. According to this survey, the three best cities were Vienna, Zurich, and Geneva; New York City came in 49th out of the 221 cities that they rated. 

I was born in Albany, New York. I've lived in London, Cologne, Paris and Beverly Hills. I've lived in New York City for a long time now. And I'll take New York. I forget whether I've ever been to Zurich or not. I wouldn't want to live in a city I forget whether I've ever been to or not. You can't forget New York. 

Another survey about the reliability of 2011 model cars showed that General Motors cars - Chevy, Buick, Cadillac and GMC - have improved and are now ranked higher in reliability than Mercedes Benz, BMW, and Audi. Bad for the German car makers but good for the Americans. 

Despite all the surveys I read, I've never been asked what I think about anything. My answers would be a lot different than the answers they say people give. They should survey people about what they think of surveys.

Rooney’s comments gave his viewers yet another example of what the declining standards of journalism now looks like and likewise proves three very troubling facts about this so-called reporter: 

• 1.       A failure to understand the basics of journalism and statistical sampling
• 2.       Display of an attitude of a pompous superior intelligence over the general population
• 3.       An overall denial of reality and intolerance for dissenting opinions

Gallop Polls have long been accepted as an objective organization that conducts mass public opinion polls concerning practically every current political, social, and economic subject imaginable.  Their surveys span across 140 nations, according to Wikipedia’s estimate, such that nearly 95% of the world’s adult population is represented. Clearly, the Gallup Organization has quite a large grasp on providing objective public opinion results.  

Yet, Andy Rooney prefers instead to question the organization's validity and opts instead to draw conclusions based off an informal survey of nine of his friends as though his buddies’ views have the same merit and carry the same weight of a statistical sampling conducted by Gallup. 

Andy Rooney challenged the validity of Gallup's polls with the opinions of nine buddies.  Even first year college students studying Communications, Marketing, or Economics, no doubt know that one must obtain at least 32 points of data in order to have an accurate representation for a study. Thirty-two points of data, you say? Bah! Eight out of nine of Andy Rooney’s friends agree with Andy Rooney and approve of President Obama’s performance! Now those are reliable “statistics” we can count on!

I did appreciate Rooney’s pompous narcissism in insinuating that, had he been questioned for the survey, the results would have somehow been altered to show that the majority of Americans approve of Obama…regardless of the sheer number (90,000+) of other Americans who were surveyed and upon whom the survey results were based.  After all, everyone must know that tens of thousands of opinions coming from lowly peons, er, citizens is hardly equivalent to the magnanimous and utterly priceless perspective of Andy Rooney. 

Oh well, as far as Rooney is concerned, “Obama's doing the best job he knows how and it's good enough” for him.

Translation:  ‘My opinion is much more important than everyone else, so what’s good enough for me should be more than good enough for the rest of you. You want my opinion. You need my opinion. And if Gallup didn’t ask for my opinion, it clearly is not a reliable source of information.’

Perhaps his skepticism to believe the Gallup results stems from his own network’s tenancy to distort facts or conveniently revise poll results to push a certain agenda.  Ironic how, while Obama’s ratings were higher during his campaign, the polls were somehow a dead-on indication of how “out of touch with reality” the GOP and Tea Party were with the majority of Americans.  Yet now as the majority of Americans have clearly lost their excitement for the President and his destined-to-fail policies, the polls are somehow untrustworthy, questionable, and probably wrong, in the eyes of Rooney. 

Somehow, it makes more sense to Rooney to question the integrity of an internationally-recognized organization that provides objective, statistical results of public opinion rather than to resign to the fact that his opinion isn’t important, isn’t revered and repeated by his viewers, and is only marginally accepted and agreed with by the majority of the American population. 

Oh, and could someone PLEASE tell me where Rooney was during the Bush administration, if a measure of “doing the best job he knows how” is equivalent to a successful and acceptable rating of the presidency?

Rooney’s intolerance for dissenting opinions not only gives evidence to his general denial of reality and lack of journalism standards, but it also highlights a few glaring logical fallacies (Appeal to Popularity and Biased Sampling, to name a few) through is continued implication that if more of his friends agree with his opinion, his opinion somehow has more truth and validity.

~Gee

Election Day! (Finally, change We The People can believe in!)

This is perhaps one of the funniest summaries I've seen from the Stewart / Colbert rally...clearly this crowd hasn't heard of Keynesian economics.

Alas, the one guy who very nearly distinguished himself as the lone intellect amongst the group (by recognizing the interviewer's obvious linguistic play on the words "Keynesian" vs. "Kenyan") then stuck his foot in his mouth with his follow-up answer, acknowledging he didn't know anything about Obama's economic principles.  Yikes.

For the record, let's recap a few of Obama's economic principles:

        'equality of outcome' mentality

  +    gov't-run & publicly-owned health insurance, housing market, etc. 

  +    'mandatory volunteering' principles and social reform initiatives

  =    _________

Answer: 

    a.)  Keynesian theory

    b.)  Austrian school economics

    c.)  Free market democracy

    d.)  Socialism

P.S. - Your predictions are in!  Thank you for your November Nonsense submissions!  Don't forget to vote!

~Gee

November Nonsense Has Begun!

IT...IS...TIME! 

The submission spreadsheet is completed for all those who want to play….Please, please, please share the fun by spreading the word….the more people who play, the merrier!

Directions: 

Just download the form here or simply email novembernonsense@gmail.com and we'll send the file to you.

Then, simply pick your winning candidates for each race by entering "R", "D", or "I" into the column "Your Prediction" on the "Senate" and "House" tabs.

We picked:

House - Lean Dem, Toss Up, and Lean Republican, but NOT Likely Dem/Rep or Safe
Senate - everything but Safe or Not Up for Re-election

Also, you automatically get credit for any election you can vote in to avoid any conflicts.

Be sure to fill in and submit the spreadsheet to novembernonsense@gmail.com by October 31^st, 2010.

Most importantly, DON'T FORGET TO VOTE THIS NOVEMBER!  

November Nonsense Update

"What do you get when you cross the college basketball March Madness tournament with politicians?"

November Nonsense!

Thanks to our special contributor, Andy, you now have the opportunity to take part in the first political / March Madness hybrid contest of its kind.


Want to participate?  
Here's what you need to do:


Read the directions from Andy below (Note: the predictions options for the race will be posted at a later date), be sure to send us an email at NovemberNonsense@gmail.com letting us know you want to join the fun, and SPREAD THE WORD!


November Nonsense Introduction, Instructions, and Rules:

Andy said...

November Nonsense is for political junkies. It’s for those of you who follow politics closely and think they have a good idea of what the results are going to be. It’s for nutcases who look at Election Night the same way some people view Oscar night, Super Bowl Sunday or New Year’s Eve. It’s for the people who plan on taking Wednesday, November 3rd off so they can stay up late Tuesday night to watch the results roll in from Hawaii.


November Nonsense is THE contest for pitting your political insight against others. Contestants will submit their predictions on the 2010 US House and Senate elections and the winner will be crowned the 2010 Political Prediction God (or some other silly title that I haven’t come up with yet) and be entitled to all the boasting and bragging that comes with that honor.


I haven’t finalized the details and am interested in feedback. However, here’s the basic process:
1) Select your predictions for each race in the MS-Excel sheet I will post at a later date
2) Submit your entry by October 31st
3) I’ll collect the entries and publish the results
4) To avoid any conflict of interest issues, you are not allowed to submit predictions for any election you can actually vote in. When submitting your entries, identify which (if any) races you are eligible to vote in and you will automatically be given credit for predicting the correct winner (no prediction necessary for those races)
5) One entry per person
6) Should there be a tie-breaker?


March Madness normally has 64 predictions total. This could have close to 500 if all the Congressional and Senate races are included. Then there are the state governor races… In order to keep it manageable and not become so huge no one plays, I’ve decided to limit the number of races to just the Senate races and the “in play” House races. In other words, Nancy Pelosi’s and John Boehner’s races are not included. I would appreciate input for how large to make this. I’ve come up with 3 options:
A) About 153 races consisting of the 131 “in play” House and 22 “in play” Senate races. In Scenario A, “in play” is defined as spanning from “Likely Dem” to “Likely GOP” but not including “Solid Dem/GOP”.
B) About 103 races consisting of 89 “in play” House and 14 “in play” Senate races. In Scenario B, “in play” is defined as spanning from “Leans Dem” to “Leans GOP” but not including “Likely/Solid Dem/GOP”.
C) 41 races consisting of 35 “toss-up” House races and 6 “toss-up” Senate races.
I’m leaning towards Scenario B because that opens up a lot of close races that could have upsets without making November Nonsense too huge.


Like I said, I would like some input, thoughts and commentary on whether anyone is interested in participating. As long as the number of contestants is not outrageous, I’ll leave it an open contest. I’m not planning on having an entry fee or awarding any prizes other than bragging rights.


Lastly, I’ve got most of Scenario B complete. All the primaries finished up this past weekend. I’ll target posting the beginning of October for posting the final rules, spreadsheet and directions.

November Nonsense Announcement

Details to follow... stay tuned!

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