American Power And Husky Chest Thumping

I'll admit that one of my guilty little pleasures when fucking with my portly conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power is watching him insist that he has consistently gotten the best of me in our rhetorical online back and forths. Actually, I'm probably understating his insistence: apparently he constantly destroys me, decimating my arguments with infallible logic such as calling me an idiot and then yelling from the rooftops about how badly he's beaten me, and then yelling even louder when others don't agree that he's as super cool as he insists (you'll notice that both of his recent posts about me preclude anyone from commenting; Don just loves the First Amendment and the free exchange of ideas). As I've said before, real bad asses don't need to tell other people how bad ass they are because everyone already knows. Now I'm not saying that I'm a bad ass (although I totally am) but the converse to the above is also true: someone who is constantly bragging about what a bad ass they are is more than likely merely a douche nozzle instead, and this is also usually pretty apparent to everyone else as well.

With that in mind join me, won't you, as I fisk Don's latest screed about yours truly, "JBW Polling 'Analysis': NEW. MORE. DESPERATE. FAIL." Don't worry, I have plenty of wine for this, and please forgive me if my typing becomes a bit slurred by the end but if I didn't intoxicate myself in the process it wouldn't be fair to Chubs Mackenzie here:

ROTLMFAO!!

It worked! My post this morning caused JBW to shoot his twaddle-wad like the adolescent dork he is. See, "I Don't Think Donald Douglas Likes Me..."

It worked? What, is Don implying that his last post about me was just the first chess move in a grand Machiavellian plan to get me to... write a response to a post attacking me? Damn! He's always so many moves ahead of me (and so many pounds heavier).

Actually, I don't even know JBW, although I don't particularly care for atheist online-troll sex-predators who harass attractive women across the web. And besides, what I really don't like is noodle-headed analysis like this ... JBW misspecifies my essay as predicated on polling data, and then he even gets that wrong:

He ... quotes two polls concerning Obama's approval ratings that seem to definitively prove that the president is also subject to this bout of "epic fail", except of course that they don't. The most recent RealClearPolitics accumulation of polling data shows the Rasmussen poll to be a statistical outlier (there is a consistent right-leaning bias in Rasmussen's methodology; pay attention to how often the right points solely to this organization's polling data to back up their talking points) while every other major polling firm shows Obama's approval rating to be either positive or within the margin of error (he's +2 overall)

Actually, RCP's "accumulated" polling averages have been dismissed by experts as wildly inappropriate indicators of public opinion. I wrote about that here, "Mixed Poll Averages Risky as Handicapping Tool" (in political science lingo, the pooled findings are flawed due to "incommensurability"). Moreover, leftists call Rasmussen an "outlier" not because of methodological errors, but because they disagree with the results. Or, as JBW puts it, "pay attention to how often the right points solely to this organization's polling data to back up their talking points) ..."

Atheist? Of course I am and quite proud of it, although I hardly see how it's relevant to this discussion unless Don is using it as a pejorative insult like "adolescent dork", which of course he is. Hey Don, how's all that Jesusy Christy stuff working out for ya? Magic lover. Online-troll? Debatable and highly subjective, although it was I who had to scold Don on several occasions about link-whoring back to himself on my site. Sex-predator who harasses attractive women across the web? What would he have me do, harass ugly chicks? Life's too short for such nonsense.

And my citation of the RealClearPolitics aggregate poll wasn't to use it as an indicator of public opinion but rather to illustrate how much of an outlier Rasmussen is, and I'm pretty sure I said just that. And I disagree with the results because of methodological errors. Which do you think is more likely: that Rasmussen leans rightward because they give more weight to likely Republican voters in their polls or that every other polling outfit is wrong, consistently so and all in the exact same way? Whether one agrees with the results or not, a statistical outlier is still a statistical outlier. Could someone please translate that into political science lingo for Butterball?

I hate to be hard on the boy, but JBW's proven badly wrong by this morning's CBS poll, "Obama's Approval Rating Hits New Low." (hardly a "wingnut" outlet):

Last week, President Obama signed historic health care reform legislation into law -- but his legislative success doesn't seem to have helped his image with the American public.

The latest CBS News Poll, conducted between March 29 and April 1, found Americans unhappier than ever with Mr. Obama's handling of health care - and still worried about the state of the economy.

That's after ObamaCare passed. So yes, JBW. EPIC. FAIL.

Don's point in discussing the two polls he cited was to illustrate so-called "Obama fail" i.e. "Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove ..." and "last week at CNN: "Majority Disapprove of Obama for First Time." In other words, he was claiming that Obama's disapproval ratings were higher than his approval numbers. I disputed this assessment by stating and showing that Obama's current approval numbers are in fact higher than his disapproval numbers, and Don's masterful rebuttal was to post the above graph. Notice anything similar to what I just said? Yes, his approval numbers are down but they're still more positive than negative. Hell, Don's political jerk-off fantasy boy Ronald Reagan had approval numbers just like this in April of 1982. How that translates to "EPIC. FAIL." is something only Don can explain.

Not only that, I actually added this poll to my previous JBW decimation, so the only reason he would have omitted it from his entry is denialism, especially since JBW sits lapping his tongue across the keyboard all day waiting for blog updates at American Power so he can create yet another photoshop that's somehow supposed to convince people that he's got skills (although to his credit the latest iteration isn't racist).

Oh, the decimation! I can't convey to you how traumatic it is to be so decimationified. And I cut and pasted Don's last post vilifying me in full, minus the previously farmed out Photoshop of myself he commissioned and some video apparently likewise vilifying Obama that I never watched. If the poll he speaks of here was in that video then I guess my denialism is also precognitive because I somehow knew not to watch it. And if Photoshopping a paunchy neoconservative as Jabba the Hut doesn't convince people that I have skills (what the hell does that even mean?), what would? For the record I make the Photoshops to amuse myself, and I thought that Glenn Beck came out looking the best in this one. And don't you just love the whiny minority victim race card Don plays, and many on the political right decry, every time he yells "RAAACIST!"? Although to his credit none of his latest insults were homophobic.

And one more thing: JBW, being the small-penis prick he is, tries to act big nevertheless, by throwing down some kind of challenge that's supposed to, er, put me in my place on predictive analysis? Too bad I've never predicted that the GOP will take control of Congress in November:

If however Don is so certain about Obama's dismal approval ratings translating into epic failure then I'll offer him this meager yet serious wager: $100 says that the Republicans fail to gain a majority in either house of congress this November. I'm making the offer publicly so that every one reading this will be privy to it. I think Obama's a chess master of the highest caliber Don, and he's moved his pieces into position to retain his party's majorities through the remainder of his first term. Care to put your money where your mouth is, Fat Boy Slim?

No, I don't want that bet, JBW FAIL. Simply because it's still way too early to predict what will happen in November. But also because congressional elections aren't generally national referendums. The president almost always loses seats in the midterms. And this year will be no different. But we're talking individual House and Senate races around the country, and the GOP's defending even more open seats than the Dems. It's a tough political environment for both parties, which is something the tea parties frequently remind stupid RINOs.

You know, for a homophobe Don sure does love to engage in a fair amount of cock-talk. And yeah, it's early; that's why it would be a fun wager. If you could predict what will happen in November then there would be no point in betting on it. And although Don has indeed never predicted GOP victory for this fall I don't blame him for pussing out: if I were him I wouldn't want to take that bet either.

Anyway, Obama's epic fail no matter what. He and the Pelosi-Reid Dems rammed through an unpopular bill while ignoring the economic crisis. The reckoning will come in November, and I hope it'll be the 40 or so seats needed in the House and the 8 or so in the Senate. But it'd be foolhardy to put money on something like that so soon, and without enough critical indicators. That said, Stanley Greenberg, who was President Bill Clinton's pollster in the 1990s, suggests that 2010 is shaping up to be a 1994-style election. See, "Clinton Pollster: If Election Were Today, It Would Be Like '94."

If JBW wasn't so stupid, he'd at least catch up on the latest analysis before throwing down the gauntlet.

Typical though.

EPIC. JBW. FAIL.

"Obama's epic fail no matter what"? What the hell does that even mean, other than that Don just repeats the phrase "epic fail" as some kind of mantra to keep himself warm and safe at night? To date, Obama has passed the biggest reform of our health care system in decades, including near universal coverage; for all the criticism he took about the length of his Afghanistan deliberation, including that he was projecting a lack of resolve that would undermine the cause, we now have an undeniable momentum; the Administration's efforts in Pakistan have resulted in some very positive trends, including an increased willingness to take on the Taliban; the reset with Russia has resulted in a new nuclear arms treaty, along with moving the Russians far closer in line with us in terms of sanctions on Iran; the economy is poised to start creating jobs and oh yes, hardly a week goes by in which we don't kill a substantial number of terrorists and/or pirates. "Epic fail" never looked so good.

And I never tire of hearing right wing talking points about how Obama "rammed health care reform down people's throats". I seem to recall a certain recent president waging an incredibly unpopular war in Iraq that was antithetical to the polled desires of most Americans and he was lauded by the right for ignoring polls and doing what he believed, yet when Obama does anything that hasn't been signed off on by the majority of Americans (ignoring the painfully obvious fact that a similar majority elected him president on a platform of promising to reform the health care system, exactly what he's done thus far) the right constantly squeals about how he's ignoring the will of the people.

And if my election bet gauntlet is too heavy for Don to lift then he's perfectly within his rights to continue to effeminately mince about and complain that taking me up on my wager is too risky for a soft, suburbanite community college prof with a wife, kids and a bloated mortgage. Most men I know don't need to lean on excuses of comprehensive analysis before they'll take up a simple bet but I understand: long gone are the youthful days of washboard abs and skateboarding punkitude for domesticated wage slaves like Don Douglas. I guess I'll just have to content myself with my own life of alcohol binges, illegal mind-expanding drugs and casual sex. It's my own cross to bear to be sure but who am I to dispute God's plan? Oh that's right, I'm an atheist. Sweet...