Those Darn Liberal Facts

After all of the election predictions I read, and after the election dust has settled, I have lost a ton of respect for several right-wingers, from pundits to people I know personally, who just knew Obama would lose.  Moreso for the ones I know personally, because, 1) The pundit's job is, in part, to incite, and 2) There wasn't as much respect to lose with the pundits in the first place.

Here's the reason: There was so much data for political followers to, well, follow. It all pointed to Obama. Even after the first debate. Even up to Sandy. The Electoral College still pointed to Obama.

Now, I'm not talking about an opinion, simple prediction, hunch, or anything qualified with, "I don't know for sure, but I think..." What I'm talking about are the cocksure, no-doubt-about-it proclamations that Romney was for sure going to win.  Even in a "landslide" as one Facebook friend put it. I simply can no longer respect anything he has to say of opinion in political discussion.

Because the data didn't support it, and yet he made his assertion without any qualifier.  Sure, some doubted the validity of the polls.  So qualify your claim by predicating it with that for your reasoning.  But even so, ALL polls being wrong on the Electoral College?  REALLY?

I was following Nate Silver's work at http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/. As a stats geek, I found it fantastic reading every day. Yet these right-wing critics called him liberal and biased. Fine, but then explain what in his writing is showing bias in his picking Obama day after day. (Crickets.)

They couldn't, because there was nothing.  The guy simply had too much of a reputation at stake to risk it on bias.  Unlike, say, a Dick Morris who seems to make a career out of being wrong.  Dead wrong.

So Silver ends up nailing it, spot on:  332 electoral votes for Obama, just like his most likely scenario showed on his final post before the polls opened.  Fantastic.

Perhaps Steven Colbert was right when he said, "Reality has a liberal bias."

...and to think the Dixie Chicks' careers were ruined

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell

I haven't posted too often about political issues on my blog, although I hope to do more of that in the near future, perhaps even starting separate blog to do so. Part of the reason is that I don't want to alienate friends who may disagree with my points of view. I believe reasonable people can disagree reasonably, but you never know who's going to go unreasonable on you.

This whole Ted Nugent vs. President Obama thing compels me to write at least a little. As might be apparent in my few political posts, I tend to "lean left." The best way I could describe what I mean by that is if you were to take, say, 20 hot-button issues of the day, I would probably be on the "left" on about 13 of them, give or take. Relative to, that is, the general populace, NOT what the Fox News folks would want you to believe.

So while Bill O'Reilly no doubt would call the likes of me "far left" (to help move the perceived center as he is wont to do), the Nuge reminds me of one issue that gets me going sometimes. If you were to believe him and his NRA brethren, you'd believe guys like I want to take everyone's guns away. They even use the fact that Obama has attempted no such thing as an argument that he will do so if reelected.

That people believe this stuff is mind numbing.

It won't help, I'm sure, but I can definitively say that I know many, many people who are left of me politically. My wife, in fact, is a deer-lover. She'd swerve to miss a deer even if it meant putting pedestrians' lives in jeopardy. And yet I can say this with 100% honesty: I know of absolutely no one who wants to take away your or anyone's guns.

Sure, many like myself want reasonable laws to keep up with the times. Did our Forefathers have semi-automatics, or even nuclear weapons in mind when they considered the Second Amendment? So laws like waiting periods seem to make sense. This is no less an attack on the 2nd than saying you can't scream "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is on the 1st.

Put simply, it's a lie that people like the Motor City Madman keep perpetuating.

But if anyone reading this already believes it, I doubt my words have made an iota of difference.