Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Politics

  • Sushi?

    This chart amuses me:

  • Senator John McKeynes

    The hilarious quote from this post is:

    …we need to add to our working definition of a Keynesian.  It used to be ”a Republican in a recession.”  Now it’s also “a Republican facing defense cuts.”

  • Obama Hates Death Stars

    Because we have some funky rule that any petition with a certain number of signatures requires an official response, the Obama administration has an official response to the request to build a Death Star by 2016. Or maybe it’s just that they have an actual sense of humor:

      • The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
      • The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
      • Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

  • Video Games are Evil

    That seems to be the gun lobby’s response to Newtown. Guns aren’t the issue, video games are.

    Here’s an interesting graph:

    Courtesy of Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture.

    The vertical axis is guns per 100 people. The horizontal axis is homicides-by-guns per 100,000 people. That light green dot in the upper right corner is the United States.

    Now I’ll be the first to say that correlation doesn’t prove causation, but we appear to be a bit of an outlier.

  • Pollsters are Funny?

    Who knew? A recent report from Public Policy Polling, a prominent polling firm just did their first post election national poll.

    49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.

    They also polled on people’s opinions of Bowles/Simpson. But with an amusing control:

    The 39% of Americans with an opinion about Bowles/Simpson is only slightly higher than the 25% with one about Panetta/Burns, a mythical Clinton Chief of Staff/former western Republican Senator combo we conceived of to test how many people would say they had an opinion even about something that doesn’t exist.

    Seriously, I would have never guessed that pollsters were this funny.

  • Seize the Moment

    Possibly the most profitable tweet last night came from Nate Silver after a largely perfect prediction:

    This is probably a good time to link to my book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Signal-Noise-Predictions-Fail-but/dp/159420411X …

    Sales are up 800% today…

  • Amazon Reviews get Political

    These days, everything is connected. To much amusement:

  • Austerity vs. Growth

    I like good beer. That’s been well established. There are two good local beer joints that I go to. Both are more or less on the way home from work. Both have a good and always changing beer menu. Both have WiFi (one better than the other). Both have friendly bartenders.

    So either one is a nice stop on the way home from work. Have a beer, finish some work, chat with the bartender, go home.

    One of them has been around forever and I’ve been going there for about 16 years. Most of the bartenders are the same. The other place is newer, but I’ve probably been going there for 5 years. It’s safe to call me a regular in both places.

    With the bad economy, both places were affected. And they reacted in completely opposite ways.

    The older place went with austerity. Prices went up. Food portions got a little smaller. One chef got let go (with an accompanying decline in food quality). Bartenders got new strict buy back policies (i.e. don’t). Bartenders were no longer allowed to hang out after work (can’t have the help getting free drinks).

    The newer place went the other way. More promotions. Free wings on Mondays. Free cheese and crackers on Wednesday with wines $1 off. More promotions with local breweries. Plenty of buy backs.

    Now it’s not like I can see either bar’s balance sheet or know the real cost drivers. But this really does seem to be a microcosm of austerity vs. spending policies. The older bar may be saving money, but fewer people are coming so their revenues have to be down even with the price increases. The other place is packed. Revenues have to be up despite the promotions.

    There’s a lesson here, having nothing to do with beer…

  • We Trust Nobody

    This is just not good…

  • Why I still love Twitter

    After Romney says:

    When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem.

    A Twitter hashtag, #RomneyPlaneFeatures is born…

    Update: funniest one I’ve seen:

    Has a dog carrier on each wing.