This Nate Silver post eviscerating John Lott is pretty damned funny:
This possibility appears not to have crossed Lott’s mind. Faced with two alternatives…
1. The Canvassing Board somehow determined that this was a Franken ballot;
2. The Star Tribune screwed up.…Lott took Occam’s Razor and cut himself with it, and concluded that the former must be true, using it as his primary piece of evidence to allege the recount was slanted in Al Franken’s favor.
LIEBERAL MEDIA! Presumably, this is the same John Lott who is responsible for all the gun research we hear quoted all the time in NRO and elsewhere.
Zifnab
Gee, I wonder what he’d be saying if the recount swayed Coleman’s way?
The absence of evidence is no evidence of absence, but it does prove you with more room to endlessly bitch and moan.
Phoenix Woman
Mary Rosh rears his Putin-like head!
Mary Rosh
How dare you besmirch Professor Lott’s research? His work is impeccable!
Montysano
Even though the ballot in question was added back to Coleman’s tab, Fox News doesn’t let reality get in the way of demagoguing an issue.
Phoenix Woman
By the way: All the crap about the recount being in "chaos" is just crap. It’d be over by now, and Franken would be certified the winner already, if not for Coleman’s lobbing bogus legal motions at the state supreme court, which is busily shooting them down. (Fun fact: Former Minnesota Viking Alan Page is a Minnesota Supreme Court justice.)
Be patient — Franken will be sworn in as our newest Senator by this time next month.
The Moar You Know
You underestimate the power of wingnut. I think we’ll be fortunate if he’s sworn in by this time next year.
The Other Steve
John Lott has never been one to understand situations where there are more than one variable. He just jumps on the conclusion that supports his preconceived notions.
So increased concealed carry = lower crime!
Of course if crime goes up, that is not related to more guns.
TheHatOnMyCat
People do that?
That explains a thing or three.
So, you’re saying that correlation really isn’t causation?
TheHatOnMyCat
Mr. And Mrs. Atanajurat photographed in their back yard.
The Other Steve
I think the recount is going fairly well. If you watch the video feed either from the startribune or from my friend Chris Dykstra’s site Theuptake you can see how these things are being decided.
There’s nothing hidden here, it’s right out in the open.
As for the ballots Lott goes on about, part of the determination of whether a cross means a cross out or a selection is dependent upon how they voted on other races. You have to see the full ballot to understand how they ruled on them.
There’s still a lot of ballots out there. A lot of rejected absentee ballots have yet to be examined and determined what to do with them.
I have to applaud Franken for going at a state-wide strategy. Al Gore back in 2000 was a fucking idiot for trying to cherry pick only certain counties.
Shinobi
Don’t be ridiculous, everyone knows republicanism causes stupidity.
Punchy
Has Franken held any political office of importance b4 this election, or wuz he juss voted in on the strength of his Stu Smalley gig?
The Moar You Know
Yeah, the same guy. And he’s getting sodomized with the Truth Stick over there in 538’s comment section; he’s left quite a trail of bullshit behind him and the posters are putting it all together. He’s…quite the character.
r€nato
I prefer to think it’s the other way around.
cleek
and vice versa
TheHatOnMyCat
True, true.
He’s getting the job for the same reason that Caroline Kennedy should get the job: He’s a woman, and he has raised a lot of money for the schools.
You are really not watching enough cable tv, my good man.
r€nato
Clearly the groundwork is being laid so that Republican dead-enders can propagandize that Franken’s victory is tainted.
I mean, Coleman led the whole way and then suddenly Franken surges ahead at the end? Clearly the fix was in!
Conservatism is not a political philosophy; it’s a malignancy on our democracy.
TheHatOnMyCat
I was thinking more along the lines of swollen lymph node.
The Moar You Know
If you say "Mary Rosh" three times she’ll kill you right in your own bathroom.
Phoenix Woman
@The Moar You Know:
It’s not a question of who can screech the loudest, as it was in Florida. We have settled law in place thanks to a similarly-close election in 1962, and nothing Coleman or his buddies can do will change that. They might try running to the US Supreme Court, but not even the Roberts court is going to want to try to overturn nearly fifty years of settled precedent, especially since the 1962 laws have been used to determine several recounts since then. The only reason Scalia got away with it in 2000 was because Florida didn’t have a recount law in place at the time.
Phoenix Woman
@The Moar You Know:
A-yep. Some of them are organizing a drive to undo the whitewashing of Lott’s Wikipedia page.
Zifnab
@TheHatOnMyCat:
Win.
burnspbesq
Is it time for the airing of grievances yet?
If so, I wish to state for the record that I am profoundly aggrieved by the fact that the "mobile edition" of Balloon-juice does not work properly on my iPhone. I respectfully request that the management of this fine establishment DO SOMETHING!!!!!
Keith
All you need to know is that this guy wrote something and decided to call it "Freedomnomics".
AhabTRuler, V
@Keith:His Wiki page already looks like a Wingnut’s wet dream. The only things missing were a diatribe against Fluoride and a description of what the queers are doing to the soil, Stuart.edit: damn slow-acting coffee!
mattH
Phoenix Woman beat me to it, but left out the obligatory link.
Who is Mary Rosh?
Tim Lambert has more.
John Lott
1) The mistake in this one ballot was corrected on my website before 538 noted the mistake. Fox News corrected it shortly thereafter. The error in classifying that one ballot was originally reported in the Star Tribune database. Calls had been made to numerous sources to check the different ballots before they were written up. For a web picture of the original ST listing see:
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-analysis-piece-at-fox-news.html
2) The point of the piece was: "The primary problem isn’t the rules. The real problem is the lack of consistency." I believe that the other ballots show this.
3) No intent is required to have mistakes.
Cyrus
I think he was voted in more on the strength of Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them, The Truth: With Jokes, and several other political books with varying degrees of comedy mixed in. Stuart Smalley can’t have hurt, though.
Especially not in Minnesota. I had known about Jesse Ventura, but apparently there’s a former pro football player on the state’s Supreme Court? Wow. And I thought Vermont had really cool elected officials because Jim Jeffords had a black belt and Pat Leahy has made cameos in Batman movies. I’m afraid Minnesota has us beat.
liberal
@Punchy:
Huh? He was involved in Air America, wasn’t he?
And Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot actually had useful facts ‘n things (e.g. about Rush’s lies about Reagans taxes or budget, IIRC).
J. Michael Neal
He was just voted in on the strength of his gig of not being Norm Coleman. That’s the only qualification he has for this job. It was enough to get for me to vote for him, mind you, but not happily. I’m still hoping that the result is an actual tie, and that there’s an obscure law somewhere saying that that means we need to hold another election in which neither of these clowns can run.
liberal
@mattH:
Right. Tim Lambert has written a lot about Lott.
TheHatOnMyCat
It’s best to plan big mistakes in advance. That way, you can take advantage of economies of scale.
Don’t leave things to chance. Proper planning prevents poor performance.
And yes, I just made that up.
Unabogie
@John Lott:
Come on, Mary. Are you going to run around the whole blogosphere trying to patch things up?
Post a correction on your own blog and move on. You’ve been bested.
liberal
@J. Michael Neal:
Right—currently seated Senators, and most candidates for Senate, have awesome qualifications.
The Other Steve
Norm Coleman is the guy being investigated by the FBI for bribery. The allegations are that one of his friends funneled about $75k through a corporation into Mrs. Coleman’s checking account… claiming it was a "job".
The Other Steve
@John Lott: Are you serious?
Comrade Ed Drone
Aha! so correlation really is causation!
As the math blokes say, QED!
Ed
Shinobi
I just looked at Lott’s piece and someone needs to mention to him that cherry picking to make a point is not a random sample.
If he really wanted to prove that the rulings were inconsistent he should have also included some of those inconsistent calls for franken. Maybe, y’know taken a less partisan tone.
The Moar You Know
@John Lott: You’ve got one option left, buddy. DELETE FUCKING EVERYTHING
But remember, the internet never forgets.
TheHatOnMyCat
Qualifications are not the issue. What matters is that a candidate runs for office, exposes himself to the various tests, and stands up to examination by the voters. Answers the questions, addresses the issues, makes a case.
That’s why even the clubby Senate became a body of (in normal situations) elected members. People like the opportunity to see a candidate in action and make a choice. Then the voters, and not cronies or insiders, can decide on things like qualifications and other criteria. In the current example of a certain Northeastern member of a royal family who wants to schmooze for the job, most suggested alternates are people who have run for office and been through those tests and been selected by voters.
I know, it’s a radical concept. They may not have it in Lower Blogovia where some of our brethren here live.
Cyrus
@John Lott:
This is, as
MikeJ
Oh that silly Gore, following the law. If only he’d had the foresight to have the election be screwed up in a state where the local election laws were more favorable!
Cyrus
Wow, that comment got completely messed up, despite more than one attempt to edit it. FWIW, when I went to the "edit" window the text box left some characters the way I had typed them but changed others to what I’d use if I were trying to make HTML symbols appear as symbols, stuff like an ampersand followed by "quot".
But anyways, long story short, I was trying to link to this, pointing out that Lott’s idea of a correction is a joke.
He says there’s a mistake but doesn’t say what it is, just gives a link. And the page he links to just gives the corrected information rather than saying they had the wrong info up earlier. You’d have to compare half a dozen spreadsheets against each other to even see the problem without being told.
What a piece of work.
r€nato
Maybe Mary Rosh can straighten this all out.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
What about Lott’s wife? Didn’t she turn into a pillar of water softener salt?
AkaDad
He’s never held a political office, but he can do this.
Comrade Stuck
Absolutely/ that’s why your (cough cough) mistake has now become a huge viral hit in Greater Wingnuttia, where, of course. there is no intent of correcting your mistake.
TenguPhule
Then you should have opposed decision 2000 to the bottom of your soul.
BIOIYAR.
TenguPhule
WIngnuts roasting on an open fire’
Jackoffs whitening their sleighs
Many times many ways, Merry Festivous to you~
demimondian
@John Lott: Hey, John! Good to see you.
Now, about those studies of gun ownership? Can you point us to the people who performed them? Or even at the data?
I know, no intent is required to store your data in such a way that it can conveniently disappear. Right?
Comrade Stuck
Well, that’s because we as a nation leave voting mechanisms up to each state and each state often leaves it up to their counties and local voting precincts. Nothing in the system is consistent and what we rely on are for each of those counties and precincts to have a republican and a democrat at each counting table to ensure that whatever votes are tabulated are done so consistently for that locale. You can’t sanction an election that is inherently inconsistent and then expect a recount not to be, at least on the precinct to precinct level. This was the fact lost on the SC in Bush v Gore, or the wingnuts who voted in Bush for Presnit. And the rest, is shall we say, History.
Objective Scrutator
I think this is the same Lott that made an argument against women’s suffrage… or at least strongly suggested that.
I still think that’s my favorite thread of all time.
Comrade Stuck
@Objective Scrutator:
Sometimes you make sense OS. It’s great wingnut logic Lott puts forth in his Freedomonics . That single women vote liberal because they want big daddy guvment to provide them with "security" and when they get married they vote conservative to protect their "security ‘ from the govmint taking away their wealth accumulation, That’s worked out really well from the past 16 years of GOP rule, hasn’t it.
Zuzu's Petals
@The Other Steve:
Working from memory here:
He didn’t have much choice. Florida law (at the time) only authorized requests for manual recounts when the results could affect the outcome of the election. That would narrow his choices quite a bit.
Second, there was no provision in state law authorizing a request for a statewide recount. The state supreme court ordered it under their general authority to fashion a remedy, as I recall.
Egilsson
Lott indicates that no intent is required to make mistakes.
Certainly that’s true, but he’s implying all kinds of bad intent in his Fox News piece, in what is clearly an article with no attempt at balance. If it were, he’d actually examine mistakes that have cut against Franken.
Instead, we’re treated to breezy, yet unsupported conclusions that "Mistakes have been made against Franken, but fewer".
Quite the researcher there, our Mr. Lott.
I say, he’s a hack.
Zuzu's Petals
@John Lott:
Well no, they don’t. As you’re well aware, from "stoatmaster’s" comments at your own site last night.
PS, I can’t wait until somebody pulls up some screenshots to prove you’re uhm, "mistaken" about the timing of your "corrections."
Brian J
I have nothing to add to this post except to say that my senior year of college, John Lott was a visiting professor at my school. I never had any classes with him, because I had switched majors and became a history major my junior year, but I am almost positive I stood next to him on the coffee line near the main library building one day. I remember this tall guy near me, and when I went home and read a post on my computer than concerned him, I saw a picture of him. If it wasn’t him, there was someone else at my school that looked a lot like him.
dobrojutro
Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly et al.: talk talk talk talk talk…
Franken: Walk.