Recreational Poli Sci

WaPo cracks Mr. Alvin Greene’s USAF records wide open...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:28:45 -0400

WaPo cracks Mr. Alvin Greene’s USAF records wide open today. I’ve written here about how military service interacts with electoral efforts, and, well, not sure this is going help Mr. Greene at all.

Migration to Austin

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:22:52 -0400

Migration to Austin: I think it is funny that there are two notables from Wisco. It seems like I met...

"Corrections, June 15, 2010: The original stated that Uzbeks appear East Asian, while Kyrgyz look..."

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:34:48 -0400

“Corrections, June 15, 2010: The original stated that Uzbeks appear East Asian, while Kyrgyz...

More news for those paying attention to military service and...

Wed, 19 May 2010 09:48:54 -0400

More news for those paying attention to military service and elections.

Joe Sestak, whom we followed as part of the “Fighting Dems” of 2006, convinced PA Dems that he was the right man to be on the ballot yesterday.

From NYT story: “When I went to Congress just a few years ago, after 31 years in the wonderful United States Navy, I found too many career politicians are a bit too concerned about keeping their jobs, rather than serving the public and rather than helping the people.”

How Sestak will fare against Toomey is uncertain, of course, but some hypothetical matchups in polls show he is inside the MOE. Toomey is too young to have been a Vietnam veteran himself (as was Sestak, he was Annapolis ‘74), and did not serve.

Candidates: Don’t Fake Service. The NYT’s Raymond...

Tue, 18 May 2010 10:33:00 -0400

Candidates: Don’t Fake Service.

The NYT’s Raymond Hernandez broke a story this morning that Richard Blumenthal (CT’s AG and hopeful for US Senate in 2010) has been saying he served in Vietnam when he did not serve in Vietnam. Further, after a FOI request, Hernandez discovered that Blumenthal not only exaggerated his service but also worked very hard to avoid service in Vietnam.

This stretching of the truth regarding military service is not new. Quayle and W both received heaps of criticism for avoiding Vietnam service through Guard or Reserve service. LBJ quite famously wore a Silver Star for his entire life after WWII, one he almost certainly earned dubiously.

What makes this story more remarkable is Blumenthal’s expectation that no one, apparently, would ever find out, considering how damning this giant-above-the-fold-in-the-gray-lady story will become. Richard, the Pentagon keeps records. Journalists will find them. It’s not 1992 or even 1964 anymore.

We do not have a lot of reason to think that military service attracts scads of votes in a general election, but the impulse to exaggerate one’s record tells us that aspirants still believe it to be very valuable. Worth lying about in public, anyway.

[FOLLOW-UP: Maybe Blumenthal should be punished per Ricks’ advice about another poseur.]

Poll: Does Jersey Blow According to Jersey?There are a handful...

Tue, 11 May 2010 21:34:30 -0400

Poll: Does Jersey Blow According to Jersey?
There are a handful of reasonable polling outfits that specialize in polling the Jersey electorate, and I suppose it is my job to keep my eye on inferences that they make. Rutgers recently grabbed David Redlawsk from U Iowa to serve as director, and their Eagleton poll recently asked residents of the Garden State about their attitudes toward their home. Here is the press release. Apparently, despite what Triumph the Wonder Dog thinks about New Jersey, people like it here, or, more precisely, “less than a quarter say they would move out of the state if they had the opportunity to do so” [authorial gasp].
Patrick Murray (who does his own polling over at Monmouth) criticizes this inference from the numbers by looking at a time series and finding that on a temporal trend line, NJ’s folks like it less than they have in the past, in other words, feel the context. Redlawsk retorts that we should mentally control for the state of the economy (“worst recession since the depression”), so really it’s not that bad after all.
I’m afraid I think both these approaches are flawed, however. The analysis needs a much lower n (how often to you hear that?). A much better comparison would be to compare NJ’s views of NJ to the other 49 states’ navel gazing. If someone did that, I’ll bet NJ’s self-estimation trails most other states, and especially Texas. Why? Because in the few years I’ve been in NJ, I have yet to see a bumper sticker that says “I wasn’t born in NJ, but I got here as fast as I could.”

Moving beyond his usual job at the Times, A. O. Scott serves up...

Sun, 09 May 2010 16:07:12 -0400

Moving beyond his usual job at the Times, A. O. Scott serves up an introspective today. The headline, “Gen X Has a Midlife Crisis,” pulled me in of course, but having not read Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask yet, I’ll refrain from jumping in too deeply on Scott’s attempt to hogtie Coupland, Hot Tub Time Machine, and a bevy of other recent takes on my generation into one article. Let me read The Ask first.

What I wanted to know straightaway, were what temporal parameters Scott uses to describe Generation X by years. The self-proclaimed experts of the hive mind have temporarily agreed that Gen X refers to people born “during the later years of, and the decade following the Vietnam War.” I have always sort of thought of 1965-1975 or so, but A.O. Scott (self-) describes us as with birth years between Tonkin Gulf and Tehran. I’m fine with the years (it keeps Obama out, whom I feel to be too old for Xers and too young for Boomers), but I’m uncomfortable with the events, as if they somehow marked a shift in something germane.

Legal legacy of WWII service

Fri, 07 May 2010 11:45:00 -0400

From Unger, I got a point toward an interesting bit on out-going justice Stevens. Elements of...

There are a few MDs running for Congress this fall. I doubt the...

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:22:45 -0400

There are a few MDs running for Congress this fall. I doubt the candidates’ degrees will attract any more vote share ceteris paribus, but will engender media attention.

I’m guessing that Google Trends might pop...

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:50:00 -0400

I’m guessing that Google Trends might pop regarding Eyjafjallajökull.

Should coverage of polling info be so smug?

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:33:24 -0400

From the tail-end of an NYT story on Tea/Party/whatever supporters: Some defended being on Social...

Petraeus hunting season has begun again. Expect more.

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 10:31:26 -0400

Petraeus hunting season has begun again. Expect more.

Screen capture of the New York Times politics subsection of its...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:25:42 -0400

Screen capture of the New York Times politics subsection of its website at 13:25 on March 17, 2010. Worth a bit of a chuckle.

Heads up, friends, it’s Census time. Yes, the Ye Olde...

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:33:51 -0500

Heads up, friends, it’s Census time. Yes, the Ye Olde Tradition from the first article of the Constitution says we must count heads to apportion congressional juice, but we also learn a lot about population changes from the form that folks fill out. I’m looking forward to learning what percent of Americans self-describe themselves with Scotch-Irish ancestry. That “ethnicity,” as you might describe it, is central to a particular senator’s identity without doubt (who sought to “redeem them from their redneck, hillbilly stereotype and place them at the center of American history and culture”).

Yet, there was a massive drop in the number of people identifying as Scotch-Irish between 1990 and 2000— according to the Census Bureau’s report on ancestry, from 5.6m to 4.3m, representing a 23% drop. So, if you’re S-I, fight your way to that census and make your belligerent presence felt!

Almost the anniversary of the start of my little tumblrblog, and...

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:17:00 -0500

Almost the anniversary of the start of my little tumblrblog, and I thought I’d ~~celebrate~~ bemoan visually how the number of entries appears like most folks’ gym membership usage patterns for their new year’s resolutions…

"The plan to cut $62.1 million in funding to the state’s public colleges and universities is..."

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:47:34 -0500

“The plan to cut $62.1 million in funding to the state’s public colleges and...

A late development in MA’s off-cycle senate race involves...

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:53:04 -0500

A late development in MA’s off-cycle senate race involves AG Martha Coakley, the Democrat, committing an unthinkable gaffe in Boston: referring to Curt Schilling as a Yankee fan. Oops. Maybe Coakley should take heart from John Kerry, though. As ‘Sconis can remember, John Kerry referred to the hallowed ground in Green Bay as “Lambert Field,” and still carried the state (if only by a whisker) two months later despite mangling Curly Lambeau’s name.

"We see vast untapped grounds in our home base and we believe there are still plenty of prizes to be claimed by the best players."

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:06:00 -0500

In all this Google / Beijing dust-up, I wanted to see what this “Baidu” engine was...

What is the North? What is the South? Does it matter where we...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:55:44 -0500

What is the North? What is the South? Does it matter where we draw our fuzzy lines defining groups? Turns out, this is a common question. The Brits do it. The Americans have the post-carnage Civil War legacy that will continue to bedevil us, but it’s good to remember that the M/D line is too far north and not extrapolatable westward. Try Zelinsky instead. But the most recent and most amusing one is North Jersey v. South Jersey. Ben Franklin called Jersey a barrel tapped at both ends, and it’s a suburban zone divided by its NYC and Philly sides (media markets too). The Yankees / Phillies world series made this even more evident. Turns out that someone has made a documentary about where this fuzzy barrier is in the Garden State (here’s their blog) (trailer). Maybe I’ll pop in in my netflix queue.

Extra credit goes to knowers of which side Jay and Silent Bob are on.

Sexy iPhone apps? Clever? Funny? Useful? YES! Political? NO!

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:46:00 -0400

Saw this via Engadget. Some eAdvocacy effort, in the form of “iSinglePayer,” can help...