Statistically Proven: No Republicans Watch CNN!

Well, by now you've heard about Barack Obama calling the small-town people who aren't voting for him firearms-humpin' Jebus-lovin' xenophobes. Even worse than that, protectionists!

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations...

Most fascinating is CNNPolitics.com's report, with hundreds of comments---but not one from an apparent Republican, just a few Hillaryistas being gobbled up by a swarm of Obamans.

Now, a commenter at the righty blog The Ace of Spades says CNN is censoring his $0.02. Either way, censorship or 100% Democrat readership, CNN is toejam.

Equally fascinating---in over 800 comments at the Daily Kos, scarcely a whisper from the Hillary corner. Since the Obamans descended on them with all their savagery last month, Daily Kos, the jewel of the leftosphere, is a Hillary no-go zone.

I used to think when I got into a scrap with a lefty, it was all in the game. But after seeing how they treat each other, I'm thinking something more pathological is at work, if not downright eerie.

No more Republicans at CNN, no Hillary people left at Kos. The Disappeared. Soon all that'll be left is the Obamans, unified, hopeful, agents of change...

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Numbers Don't Lie! (Though sometimes people do bend them).

Larry Bartels, a political science professor at Princeton, has gotten a lot of play in "the internets" (as a friend of mine calls it) for his argument that Democratic presidents help create more economic growth and more egalitarian distributional effects than their GOP counterparts, at least since WWII. Jim Manzi's dismantling of at least the inequality claims over at NRO almost make me wish I had spent more time doing stats in grad school and less reading Plato or whoever. Well, almost.

What's remarkable about Manzi's analysis - and deadly for Bartels' claims - is that he makes clear that Bartels is playing a shell game with his numbers. When calculating presidential effects, Bartels gives himself a "lag year" and so Jimmy Carter gets credit for whatever happens economically for a year after he stopped being president. (That's 1980 for you young'uns). But as Manzi shows, if you get rid of the lag year or make it two years, all of Bartels' effects disappear. Poof! Now, maybe there's something robust about a year, but my guess is that Bartels fidgeted around a bit with the lag until he got what made sense to him.

Someone Ought to be Fired

Another example of university administrators not having a clue as to what the First Amendment requires of them: a state university has reprimanded a tenured professor because they've decided that the things he's posted on his door constitute "harassment", not "protected free speech." Nonsense upon nonsense. Administrators are not going to learn their lesson on these things - if you're working at a state university, you can't tell someone not to say something except under very limited circumstances - until people start losing their jobs. The professor and his legal team should do more than ding the school for some cash, they should demand firings.

Condi for Veep?

Speculation abounds.

My first instinct is that she's too connected with the Current Occupant to be anything but a drag for McCain.

But according to the ABCNews blog, not only does she want the gig, but

The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted during the last few days of March, found that the Secretary of State enjoys a solid favorability rating: 56% expressed a good opinion of her, compared to 29% who did not.

I mean, if she could split the 15% "Don't Know" crowd, who right now are busy getting abducted by aliens and writing letters to Elvis, her favorables would be over 60%, even better than Barack ["I'll Unify Your Ass"] Obama's.

An interesting thought, anyway. If John ["I'll Unify Your Ass Even Better"] McCain finds himself in a poll hole come convention time, Condoleezza could be a helluva Hail Mary.

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