Hugh Hewitt is Stealing My Lines

From Hugh’s piece posted yesterday around noon:

The network is either incompetent in a way no serious news organization should be, or wholly captured by agenda journalists of the left.

From my “Another Plant” post:

If Anderson Cooper and his staff weren’t checking the backgrounds on their chosen questioners, then they’re incompetent. If they did know the background of their questioners, they’re partisans for the Democrats.

Where’s the love, Hugh?

Seriously, though, it just shows that great minds are thinking alike. And we aren’t the only ones.

H/T:  Instapundit.

Sometimes a Depression is Just a Depression

Looks like the National Hurricane Center is drawing fire for a “rush” to name tropical depressions storms. This year we had a large number of storms, but the majority of storms were tropical storms, and critics are now wondering if some of those tropical storms even deserved an actual name.

Just to give you a bit of background, there are three types of Atlantic tropical systems (the Indian and Pacific storms have different names): depressions (wind speeds of 0-39 mph), storms (40-74 mph) and hurricanes (75+). The wind speeds are determined by hurricane hunter aircraft which drop probes into the storm to determine wind speed at the center of the low. A system is only “named” (give a proper first name) if it reaches tropical storm strength.

Four of this years storms (and possibly another two) may have never progressed past tropical depressions. While hunter aircraft determined the speeds of the winds, another telltale sign of storm strength is the internal pressure of the storm system. Surface lows like tropical cyclones cause a decrease in atmospheric pressure as they spin. (The sea-level pressure of the atmosphere is 760 mm of Hg, or 760 torr, or 1 ATM– the Atmospheric Science definition is typically “bar”, where 1 bar = 760 torr = 1000 milibar, or mb.) Hurricanes can cause dramatic decreases in pressure. Hurricane Andrew hit in August of 1992 with an internal pressure of 922 mb. Hurricane Humberto which formed this past season was only a category 1 hurricane at its peak with winds of 80 mph and an internal pressure of 985 mb at its lowest point.

Now, some storms reached 40 mph with their winds but the internal pressures never dropped below 1000 mb. Some see this as a sign that there was no clear organization and the storm was “upgraded” to pad the season to match forecasts. If that’s the case, it’s horribly irresponsible because insurance companies are calculating their rates based upon the activity of the hurricane seasons. If you’re worried that you’re not going to get close to your 15-storm prediction and you’re fudging your results, you’re increasing the insurance rates of people all along the gulf coast! Now you can see the concern.

Now, I’m not going to call the people at the NHC liars. Each of the storms mentioned is a borderline case for a tropical storm. I know how exciting these storms can be to track and monitor. But would getting concrete proof it’s a tropical storm to save a few million people billions of dollars in insurance premiums be that much of a hassle?

27%! And 1 in 8.88x 10^22 7×10^15.

So the running total on “faux undecided voters” at the YouTube Republican debate is now eight.

• LeeAnn, our Union Rep with ties to John Edwards
• “Journey“, the abortion questioner, who “Can’t Stop Believin’” for John Edwards
• David, the maybe-Log Cabin Republican, maybe-Paulbot, but certainly an Obama supporter
• Ted, the farm subsid guy, who just happened to show up on Politico with SoandSo who is video pals with…
• David McMillan, who asked about black voters (nice catch on that Jason)
• Mark, the Paulbot who wanted a Ronulan Independent run, is actually in the tank for Bill Richardson. Mark obviously wants Paul to split Republican votes.
• Adam, a former Dick Durbin (Senator, D-ILL) worker
• “The Gay General”, Keith Kerr, who apparently still works the Clinton Gay Steering Committee.
• And now, much to everyones non-surprise, there’s Yasmin, who’s a former CAIR intern.

So, there were 33 videos, and 9 of them come from Democratic activists, not “undecided voters”. That’s 27% of the selected videos coming from activists. CNN/YouTube had over 5000 videos to surf through, and they managed to pick 33 where over one-quarter were activists of various Democratic candidates!

27%!

So let’s have some fun with some numbers. Say 30% of the country is Democrats. And say 2% of that 30% are political activists. That means there are 1,680,000 political activists for the Democratic party in the US (that number sounds a bit high, but let’s play benefit of the doubt). So if you put them into the US population, essentially 6 out of every 1000 would be a political activist from the Democratic party.

So if you have a sample of, say, 5000 videos, then about 30, statistically speaking, would be from Democratic activists, if the stats for video submission mirror those of the public at large.

So the odds of picking 1 of those videos are approximately 1 in 167, if the sample is conducted at random and all 5000 videos present viable questions.

So what would be the odds of picking 9 videos from those 30 Democratic activists?

1 in 8.88 x 10^22. Or, for the scientific notationly challenged:

1 in 88,800,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 576000. So for this to randomly occur, it is like being struck just under 4 times in your life by lightning.

Now, it’s late and I’m tired, but I think that math is correct (feel free to correct me any math folks out there).

UPDATE: Yes, I’m tired. 8.88 x 10^22 was a little large, but I was too tired to reason out why. The Conductor pointed out my math was for all 9 to be picked in a row, not out of a random sample of 30. When you take that into consideration, the number drops to a paltry one in seven trillion, or 1 in 7,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 1 in 7.0 x 10^15). So I was off by a factor of 7. I apologize to CNN and say that the corrections make the probability much more likely (than my original guess)!

Another Plant?

Questioner LeeAnn Anderson is the assistant to one Leo Gerard, President of the American Steel Workers Union and John Edwards supporter. I didn’t find a direct link, but it’s certainly odd that all of these people with connections to unions or Democrat political operatives are well-represented of the 40 questions brought up in the YouTube debate.

Update: So far 4 of the 40 questions (and a possible fifth and sixth) are verified as Democratic political activists. What are the odds that 10% of the chosen questions (of 5000+ questions) come from DNC partisans?

If Anderson Cooper and his staff weren’t checking the backgrounds on their chosen questioners, then they’re incompetent. If they did know the background of their questioners, they’re partisans for the Democrats. One thing is for certain: I’m think I know who the Mole is.

Welcome readers from Michelle Malkin. Feel free to explore this blog in its tiny little glory!

UPDATE:  The statistics are in. You just won the lottery– twice!

Debate Reactions

Well, in between getting the kids into bed and watching Shrek and the Grinch, I caught blurbs of the first hour and most of the 2nd hour.  I think Hunter was strong, as was Mitt.  Huckabee had the best performance, but I wasn’t surprised.  Who were they going to feed questions to– Rudy, Romney, McCain or Thompson, the candidates who could soundly trounce Hillary, or Huckabee, who will turn out to be someone most Republicans won’t be able to get behind?

Hillary’s Planting Questions

At the Republican debate tonight, the Gay General is a member of Hillary’s Gay Steering Committee.

The Fred Thompson Tax Plan

There’s a lot there to like.

Let’s go through it:

Permanently Extend the 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts.

1. Reduced individual income tax rates, saving every tax-paying family a minimum of $600.
2. Preserving the $1000 child tax credit, which was doubled from $500 per child.
3. Protecting Marriage penalty relief.
4. Retaining Education tax incentives, including Coverdell Education Savings Accounts, 529 college savings plans, and deductions for higher education expenses.
5. Reduced tax rates on capital gains and qualified dividends.
6. Increased expensing of investment for small businesses.

All good stuff so far.  Bush’s tax cuts have really helped the economy, and making them permanent will keep the economy happy.

 Permanently Repeal the Death Tax.

Excellent.  You shouldn’t be taxed twice on your money.

 Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Now that the AMT is hitting people who aren’t considered “rich” anymore, it makes sense to either change it or remove it entirely.

Reduce the Corporate Tax Rate. 

And where does that money go?  To the UBER RICH, of course.  (And that means Democrats!)

I kid, of course.  It gets reinvested into the economy!  Better than being flushed down the government moneyhole.

 Permanently Extend Small Business Expensing.

 Update and Simplify Depreciation Schedules.

Both would do wonders for small business.

 Expand Taxpayer Choice.

This is the only part of the plan I’m not entirely enamored with, although it’s better than what we currently have.  Effectively it’s “pay income tax like it normally goes OR pay a flat tax”.  It’s like the old square on the Monopoly board where your Income Tax was 10% of the money you had or $200 (if only it were that simple!).  I don’t like it because it’s a cop out.  Fiscal conservatives have been after a Flat Tax for a long time, and what Fred has in his tax proposal is a good start.  But homeowners aren’t given an incentive to select the flat tax so long as they have a mortgage, because with the Flat Tax there are no deductions for mortgage interest.   If there’s one deduction that people really want, it’s the mortgage interest deduction because it helps people buy a house and live the dream.

Flat tax doesn’t account for it.  But otherwise, it’s great for single people who rent (which the current system is not good for) or people who have small deductions.

Fred missed an opportunity here.  The Flat Tax can allow some deductions, like for mortgage, if it’s built in.  Go ahead, allow the mortgage deduction and child-related expenses, but toss every other deduction that’s out there.  If you simplify the tax code to a Flat Tax with minimal deduction, there’s no reason to have the staffing of the IRS as it’s been with the current tax code.  Reducing the number of IRS accountants frees up government money and reduces overhead and bureaucracy.  So why not go whole hog?

But this is the kind of thing I like to see from candidates– plans.  Not a nebulous “what I would do if I were Prez” type of BS.  I’m talking steps to a tax plan.  Steps to reducing government.  Changes that need to be made at certain levels.  And for goodness sake, don’t say stupid things like “No Muslims in my cabinet”, Mitt.

Rudy’s Dirty Little Secret?

Looks like Rudy was hiding tabs for trips to the Hamptons for his illicit affair with his then-mistress Judith Nathan by charging them to lesser-known city agencies.

Rudy’s been a solid guy on crime. He’s good with finances, too. But I never really liked the way he’s run his personal life (he ditched his wife after he recovered from cancer). And now I like him even less.

More coverage:  Hot Air

Big Oil is Manipulating the Satellites

According to Christopher Booker’s Notebook, satellite data for 2007 shows a notable decline in global temperatures.  He doesn’t say where he gets this data, and I haven’t been able to find a corroborating sources just yet.  But if it’s true, we all know what that means.

Big Oil has taken over the satellites in the sky.

In all seriousness, I’m not going to take one year’s worth of data and say it’s a trend.  But one thing’s for sure– 1998 was one hot year.  But if you compare it to the years 1999-now, the temperatures haven’t been any hotter, which means 1998 may be an anomaly.  Or it could be that 2007 is an anomaly.

We’ll see what the trend looks like in 2012, which means we have another 5 years of Global Warming activism, at least.

Tom Brokaw Doesn’t Get Limbaugh

It should be noted that Tom Brokaw was, IMHO, the best of the Jennings/Rather/Brokaw triumvirate that dominated nightly news in the 80s/90s. But he’s a member of the MSM machine, the same machine that doesn’t see a problem with the current journalism that dominates the airwaves. And in his latest discussion with Laura Ingraham, he still doesn’t understand that it was the media culture that he propagated that led to the rise of conservative talk radio. With the anchors and reporters on 60 Minutes, the Nightly News shows, Dateline, 20/20, and others (with the exception of straight-shooter John Stossel) during the 80s/90s all propping up a liberal bais, it’s clear that many people wanted an outlet– a second option. And that option was conservative talk radio.

Had the news been “fair and balanced”, there would have been less of need for people to seek out an alternative market. Many people didn’t like the constant harangue that came from ABC/NBC/CBS, and CNN and the cable market were not influential in the 80s. You couldn’t watch CNN at work, and you couldn’t surf the web to read news stories. Instead, you had your radio, and on that radio you could listen to NPR for more of the same or find Rush Limbaugh for something very different.

Market forces drove the rise of Rush Limbaugh, make no mistake. There was an untapped market of people who were alienated by the MSM in the 80s and 90s, and Rush and Co. recognized it. They arrived with a new message on an old medium, and suddenly there was outcry from the MSM. In their arrogance, instead of understanding why Rush was so popular, they condemned talk radio and treated it with great contempt. Instead of nipping it in the bud, they let it blossom, all the while claiming their garden was better looking.