New Movie

[htismaqe]

I found a ad for a new movie that is now playing. I thought you might want to check it out. It looks like a real horror.

rushlimbaugh.com/home/today/unbreakable.html (http://rushlimbaugh.com/home/today/unbreakable.html)


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[Chieficus]

Hey, Rush is looking pretty slim. Good for him. I hadn't seen a picture of him lately. I wasn't able to get to the hyperlink of the movie, so I just went to his homepage. Here's the first story I read there. I'm curious if anyone finds it to be convincing:
http://rushlimbaugh.com/home/today/STACK__1_112400.html

[Chieficus]

There must be something I'm missing. What's "From Rush's Stack of Stuff"? Is that for humor or something? Was this essay supposed to be convincing?

[ColoradoChief]

Dan - It was kind of humor, at least that is ho it appeared when I listened to it live, but also had a point to it. If people were having a tough time picking a canidate, because neither of the main ones really endeared themselves. Then wouldn't it make sense that in really close elections that in cases such as this that there may be a bunch of people that did not vote for President?

[Chieficus]

Hey Morphius,

Yeah, I must be a little slow on the uptake. It makes sense that there would be a lot of non-votes, that's for sure. Here's a link to a cnn.com "fact check" (so-called) about the undervote. It contains criticisms of claims made by both sides:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/30/jackson.undervote/index.html

[This message has been edited by DanT (edited 11-30-2000).]

[Chieficus]

Well, one thing that everyone can agree on--it's kind of chickensh!t for Gore's folks to be whining about a differential undercount that results from using punch-cards instead of optical-scan ballots if the problem has been known about for so long. Hell, that's an obvious equal-protection violation of the Constitution right there. The whole state should be using equipment that has comparable measurement properties. If the punch-card system is more than twice as likely to miss a vote as a optical-card system, then why are they being used? And why didn't anyone figure this out BEFORE the election?

Stupid idjits.

[Chieficus]

The most bogus thing about Gore's complaint is the fact that the Democratic counties where he thinks he has uncounted votes were, by and large, using equipment that must have been approved by a bunch of Democrats. Right? I mean, the real blame for this whole "undervote" mess should be on the Democrats if it's going to be on any party. The butterfly ballot is kind of like that, also. I mean, who would approve such a f'ed-up design. If the Democrats didn't have enough sense to pilot-test such an unusual design to figure out if it worked, which party should be blamed for that? Sure as hell shouldn't be the Republicans.

[ColoradoChief]

DanT - No arguement on some of your points. I thought one of the law suits by the Demi's was that one of the second machine counts should be thrown out because they lost votes, but I have not heard much about this one since. Doesn't sound like they really want all votes counted with lawsuits like this.

It would be nice if the VNS would have given their numbers instead of just saying that it was wrong, but then that would be useful.

[This message has been edited by morphius (edited 11-30-2000).]

[htismaqe]

Dan, they did pilot test the ballot desing. They sent samples out to voters and newspapers. And nobody I repeat NOBODY complained about the desing being complicated untill after the vote. Oh, and get this, the person who was responsible for the ballot desing is a Democrat. How about them apples?

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[Chieficus]

Hey Morphius,

Yeah, I would have been interested in the numbers also. Of course, the VNS numbers would have been just an estimate, subject to random sampling error and all that. They'd have to have a very large sample to be able to have a reasonable chance of detecting a difference of a few tenths of a percentage point. In a way, it might have been less misleading for them to just leave it the way they did--with a statement that the results probably (i.e. >50% chance) went this way or the other. Still, the statistician in me still would rather see the actual numbers, even though I know that they'd be misinterpreted by folks who aren't used to dealing with lies...uh, I mean...statistics. http://www.chiefsplanet.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Chieficus]

Hey raiderhader,

I mean a real pilot test--the kind that most competent research teams do before every survey. The whole point of a pilot test is to catch UNFORSEEN errors and problems with the proposed instruments. Now, I would hope that if I had seen that ballot beforehand, I would have automatically nixed it--folks don't read English in an interleaved-manner across two pages: of course it's a bad design--but even if I hadn't, a properly conducted pilot test would have had a good chance of detecting a problem.

[This message has been edited by DanT (edited 11-30-2000).]

[htismaqe]

Dan, I see no problem with it whatsoever. It is not confusing to me. And guess what, 3rd graders have had no problems with it either. How do you explain that? The truth of the matter is, it's not confussing. It wasn't considered confussing until after they voted and a telemarketing firm, that was paid by the Dems, called and suggested that perhaps they might have been confused by the ballot and voted for the wrong guy. Then they prompted the voters to join others like themselves and call thier congressman and whine and complain.

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[htismaqe]

OK, I don't know why the link didn't work, but I have another one to try. This is an audio ad for another "movie".

www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/today/ILLUSTRATING.html (http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/today/ILLUSTRATING.html)

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[This message has been edited by raiderhader (edited 11-30-2000).]

[Chieficus]

raiderhader,

Were the 3rd graders given the full ballot and asked to vote for Gore? No, they were given the two pages that concerned the Presidential race. The main problem with that ballot is that it uses two pages for one race. If you eliminate that problem by handing someone two pages ("Gee, why do I have two pages, it must be that both pages are for this one race.") then of course a small sample of 3rd-graders would figure out the rest. Really, they aren't figuring out anything by that kind of test: they're having it figured it out for them.

If you want to see a reasonable statistics-based attempt at ascertaining whether or not there was a problem with the Palm Beach ballot, here's a link to an analysis by a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University:
http://madison.hss.cmu.edu/

I doubt that any of my colleagues in the American Statistical Association could look at those results and not think that the truth is that it was a confusing ballot for a lot of voters.

[Chieficus]

By the way, the link in my reply #13 has links to other reasonable analyses, though it's pretty damn convincing by itself: it simply compares the county-level data in Florida and shows huges discrepancies between the observed and expected number of Buchanan votes in Palm Beach County. There is no real doubt that the ballot confused a lot of voters.

[htismaqe]

Dan, ok you lost me when you were explaning the 2 page ballot thing. As for all of these test, it's Greek to me. But that is besides the point, you have to be a complete moron to not be able to folow an arrow. Period. It is that simple. No two ways about it. The truth is that these people had no problems with the ballot until thier party, via a telemarketing company, suggested to them that they might have made a mistake.

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[KC Hawke]

In regards to Rush's "Undecided Voters" point . . .

First of all, Gore & Bush can take a flyin' leap . . . wouldn't bother Pants none.


Anyway, I have a hard time believing that 10,000 people, who can't make up thier minds up on Bush/Gore, would have the conviction to go to the polls just to vote for local candidates. that number seem high to me.

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C.R. Pants
(The Resident Liberal)

[htismaqe]

Pants, that is true, but the real point as I heard Rush explain it, is that you have all of these undecided voters who didn't make up thier minds until election day. How are we supposed to know who they voted for? Are we supposed to assume that they went Algore? Well he would have you belive that.

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[KC Hawke]

are you saying the voters "made up thier minds" once they found out there were some " irregularities"? . . . just need some clarification there

[htismaqe]

No. I am saying that we have no idea of how these undecided voters ended up voting. How can we if they didn't know themselves till that day, or untill they got in the booth. But these people who are "determining the will of the voter" totaly disregard that when they are "determining the will of the voter". They don't stop and think about how these people saw the thing in both canadites. And a lot of people may have decided that they didn't like either choice, so when they got in there they decided not to vote for either of them.

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[Chieficus]

raiderhader,

There's lot of people who are not morons that get confused by seemingly simple tasks. Isn't Bush himself a dyslexic? That doesn't make him a complete moron (he has degrees from Yale and Harvard); it just means he doesn't process visual information the same as most people.

Here are two links from USA Today, the first concerns a small study (very comparable to a pilot test, by the way) that indicates that the ballots were confusing: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/science/ballot113000.htm

The second shows alternative ballots--produced by professional graphics designers--that would probably have been much better. This link is nice because it explains what I meant about the problem with the two-page/single-column design, which is that people don't read English by alternating pages, line-by-line: http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/ncguest.htm

Anyway, I'll quit beating this dead horse. I understand that the ballot seems as easy-as-pie for most people. I don't mean to seem so dense as not to get your point. http://www.chiefsplanet.com/ubb/wink.gif

[htismaqe]

Dan, do you mean to tell me that most of the people in ONE county have problems with proccessing visually? C'mon, you are a statitician, what are the chances of that? Give me a break. As for anything printed in USA Today, they are a Liberal paper that would like to see Algore win, aren't they?

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[htismaqe]

Oh, and how do you explain the telemarketing firm calling registered Dems?

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[This message has been edited by raiderhader (edited 11-30-2000).]

[Chieficus]

raiderhader,

No other county in Florida used that butterfly ballot. It's a bizarre design that one expert from Seattle said he'd never seen used anywhere else. The Bush Campaign tried to pretend that the design was used here in Cook County, Illinois, but they were just wrong--our ballots are single-page/single-issue. It floored me when the Bush Campaign made that claim because it comes very close to what I would call an outright lie.

The telemaketing firm was already hired to make phone calls. Big campaigns always hire folks to call their likely voters who haven't shown up at the polls yet. When the Gore campaign learned about the problem with the ballot, they changed the message that the telemarketing firm read. There's no way to look read anything into the telemarketing story except that the problem with the ballots was easily discovered once they were in the field. Again, my point is that such a novel thing as a 2-page/1-issue, interleaved-choices butterfly ballot should have been pilot tested before it was approved, and that the Democrats bear a lot of responsiblity for failing to do that.

[Chieficus]

raiderhader,

I can't comment on the biases in the USA Today. I'm sure that whichever major multi-national that owns them (is it Gannett, still?) probably has strings tied to both major parties. I'm not one to think that big-*** corporations have some weird sympathy for liberals and our causes that makes them act contrary to their own monied interests. But then again, I don't watch the X Files or believe in UFO's, so maybe I'm just strange like that. :)

I will say that KCTitus opened my eyes to some liberal bias at CNN and I myself have been floored by some of the heavily-biased stuff I've heard falling from CBS's Dan Rather's mouth these past few weeks!

[This message has been edited by DanT (edited 11-30-2000).]

[This message has been edited by DanT (edited 11-30-2000).]

[Chieficus]

Didn't I say I would quit beating this dead horse? What a bozo I am.

I just want to add that Dyslexia is a disorder in which the sufferer has problems processing language, including written language. I'd thought that George W. Bush had admitted suffering from it, but after a quick search on the Internet, I see that he has yet to do so. His brother Neil is an admitted sufferer and a lot of observers familiar with the disorder believe that President-elect Bush also has it, but he is on record as denying that he does. Also, he hasn't been tested for it. So, I was wrong in thinking that it was confirmed that he had dyslexia. I'm sorry I didn't check the facts first.

[ColoradoChief]

DanT - Dan Rather has been horrible and very bitter about this whole thing, heck I knew he was biased, but wow. I believe in UFO's, though, its the whole Alien thing I have questions about.

[Chieficus]

raiderhader,

By the way, thanks for the link to the Limbaugh site. The pictures of Al with the OJ gloves and the OJ hat have me chuckling http://www.chiefsplanet.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[Chieficus]

morphius,

Yeah--Wow! is right. He really makes sure the Dem spin comes through, doesn't he? He must be one of those Yellow-Dog Democrats that Texas used to produce bushels of. He obviously got out of that state before the Yellow-Dog Democrat Kennel got boarded up, I'll tell you that.

[Chieficus]

morphius,

LOL! Yeah, that good! You mind if I steal that from you--"I believe in UFOs; I just don't believe in aliens."? Classic! http://www.chiefsplanet.com/ubb/smile.gif

[ColoradoChief]

Dan - He leans so far to the left I'm surprised he can walk in anything but circles to his left.

[ColoradoChief]

Dan - be my guest, I just have never seen the sense in saying that a person doesn't believe in UFO's, but it is just being nitpicky.

[Chieficus]

Must be why they have him reading the news sitting down, ya' think?

Now that I think about it, didn't President Bush famously ambush Rather back in the 80's? I think Rather asked him some pointed question and Bush zinged him by reminding him of when Rather had a tiff that resulted in CBS having to broadcast dead-air. Rather looked like he'd sh*t his pants after Bush had gotten through with him. Maybe that has something to do with the favoritism being shown toward his son's opponent.

Of course, I'm sure everyone knows about the other famous ambush of Dan Rather--the one that inspired REM's "What's the frequency, Kenneth" song...

[ColoradoChief]

Dan - Somehow I missed both of those, what was the second one, if you don't mind.

[Chieficus]

Morphius, here's the answer from a FAQ for REM lyrics:
http://www.flim.com/remlafaq/monster/wtfk.html
What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
The title of the song itself, it needs to be explained, refers indirectly to the incident in Oct. 1986 in which Dan Rather, anchor for C.B.S.'s network news broadcast, was attacked by two unknown men in the street in New York City wearing suits and sunglasses. The men kept asking Rather "What is the frequency?" and called him "Kenneth" while they shoved and accosted him; to date the incident has never been explained completely (though some have theorized that "Kenneth" might be Ken Schafer, an electronics expert with whom Rather had worked in connection with Soviet TV broadcasts). Since the incident, "What's the frequency?" and calling a clueless person a "kenneth" have become a trendy youth culture catch-phrases (which is probably, why Stipe wanted to use it, rather than an interest in Rather). [Ron Henry]<P>

[Chieficus]

Myself, I'm partial to the idea that the men were so disgusted with the major broadcast news reporting unimportant and sensational information about American sexual habits and such, instead of hard news about world affairs, that they decided to go find Dan Rather and kick his *** , all the while asking for "news" regarding the number of sexual encounters the average American has per week (i.e. "frequency").

[This message has been edited by DanT (edited 11-30-2000).]

[Chieficus]

Here's some information on then-Vice-President George Bush's "Ambush" on Rather, which happened in January, 1988, during Bush's successful campaign for the Presidency. It's from an outfit called ratherbiased.com, and I can't vouch for how fair or unfair they are, but their report of this incident jibes with my memory:
http://www.ratherbiased.com/bush_attack.htm

[This message has been edited by DanT (edited 11-30-2000).]

[ColoradoChief]

DanT - Thanks for the info.

[htismaqe]

Dan, If you are just know realizing that the media is biased, than I have to ask, were have you been? Corporations may invest in both parties, but we are not talking about Co., we are talking the media. And most of the media is extremely biased in the direction of the Dems. I assure you that USA Today is biased this way as well. Take it from someone who has been on top of the media bias issue for a while.
You still have not answered my question of what the chances are of so many people suffering from dyslexia, or anything like it, living in one county. Oh, and thank you for making my point about the telemarketing issue. You admitted that they called and suggested to the voters that they might have made a mistake when they voted. Exactly. The voters never would have thought twice abou it if they did not receive that call. They wouldn't have thought twice about it because they were not confused. They went along with this masquerade to help out thier party. Period. And you will not convince me that someone who can not follow an arrow that is approx. a quarter inch from the correct hole is not a complete MORON. That is with the exception of our dear dyslexic friends of course.
Glad you liked OJ II. I did not realize how much these two incidents (that is if these can be considered incidents) had in common untill I heard Rush play the parrody. Amazing isn't it?

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[AustinChief]

Having lived 14 years with a sufferer of serious, diagnosed dyslexia, Bob Dole finds it hard to believe that the disorder would have any significant impact on the ability to read the butterfly ballot.

Bob Dole also believes that GW probably suffers from the disorder to a certain extent, as it is often seen in siblings.

That said, Bob Dole has first-hand experience seeing sufferers of dysexia lead normal, productive and quite successful lives. (2 PhD's and a successful electrician-turned-land-developer.)

[htismaqe]

Senator, thank you for proving my point.

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