As in, don't read this if you have not watched the episode of Doctor Who originally aired on September 29th, 2012, and preferably all or most of the episodes prior to it in the revived series.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Team-Adjusted Wins in the 2012 National League
A while back I wrote a post detailing a proposed new baseball statistic called Team-Adjusted Wins, which involves adjusting a pitcher's win-loss record for the overall record of their team. The logic is that it's easier to have a winning record on a winning team, so, for instance, when Felix Hernandez went 13-12 the other year and won the Cy Young, that record was a lot more impressive than it looked because the Mariners were so awful in general. The hope with this statistic is that it preserves a lot of what people like about wins and losses while correcting for one of their chief deficits. No, it doesn't adjust for the randomness of when the bullpen blows a lead or a pitcher gets taken off the hook after leaving the game, but I think it's a major improvement.
So, in keeping with my interest in promoting the 2012 National League Cy Young Award candidacy of one Robert Allen Dickey, better known as the sun god Ra, let's take a look at the starting pitchers in contention for that award this year: Dickey, Clayton Kershaw, Matt Cain, Gio Gonzalez, and Johnny Cueto. Spoilers! Dickey comes out way the hell ahead.
Using the version of the statistic where you calculate a pitcher's expected wins and losses from their team's record in games not charged to that pitcher, we get the following numbers: Dickey, with 25 decisions, would be expected to have 10 wins, but instead has 19 wins, giving him +9 wins above team expectations; Kershaw, with 21 decisions, should have 10.66 wins, but instead has 12, for just +1.34 wins; Cain has 20 decisions, of which 11.04 would be expected wins given the Giants' overall performance, turning Cain's 15 wins into +3.96 wins above expectations; Cueto has 28 decisions, and his 19 wins are just +2.69 wins ahead of the 16.31-win expectation; and Gonzalez, with the same 28 decisions and 16.31 expected wins, has one more win, and thus one more expected win, than Cueto, at +3.69.
Dickey's way the hell ahead. The other four candidates combined have just 11.67 wins above team expectations, compared to Dickey's 9. All of the other contenders have worse numbers than King Felix did in his 13-win Cy Young season. Dickey, on the other hand, has a better score by this metric than Dwight Gooden did in 1985, when he went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA. That's right: Dickey has improved the on the overall performance of his team by more than Doc Gooden did in one of the greatest years of pitching in the last half-century. He's been filthy good, in other words, racking up win after win for a heavily-challenged team. And, by the way, it's a team that's been mainly challenged not in its other starting pitchers but in its offense and its bullpen, the two factors that every starting pitcher has to contend with in each of their starts. (Well, okay, Dickey's thrown quite a few complete games, taking the bullpen out of the equation, but that's just part of why he's so awesome.)
Long story short, Dickey for Cy Young!
So, in keeping with my interest in promoting the 2012 National League Cy Young Award candidacy of one Robert Allen Dickey, better known as the sun god Ra, let's take a look at the starting pitchers in contention for that award this year: Dickey, Clayton Kershaw, Matt Cain, Gio Gonzalez, and Johnny Cueto. Spoilers! Dickey comes out way the hell ahead.
Using the version of the statistic where you calculate a pitcher's expected wins and losses from their team's record in games not charged to that pitcher, we get the following numbers: Dickey, with 25 decisions, would be expected to have 10 wins, but instead has 19 wins, giving him +9 wins above team expectations; Kershaw, with 21 decisions, should have 10.66 wins, but instead has 12, for just +1.34 wins; Cain has 20 decisions, of which 11.04 would be expected wins given the Giants' overall performance, turning Cain's 15 wins into +3.96 wins above expectations; Cueto has 28 decisions, and his 19 wins are just +2.69 wins ahead of the 16.31-win expectation; and Gonzalez, with the same 28 decisions and 16.31 expected wins, has one more win, and thus one more expected win, than Cueto, at +3.69.
Dickey's way the hell ahead. The other four candidates combined have just 11.67 wins above team expectations, compared to Dickey's 9. All of the other contenders have worse numbers than King Felix did in his 13-win Cy Young season. Dickey, on the other hand, has a better score by this metric than Dwight Gooden did in 1985, when he went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA. That's right: Dickey has improved the on the overall performance of his team by more than Doc Gooden did in one of the greatest years of pitching in the last half-century. He's been filthy good, in other words, racking up win after win for a heavily-challenged team. And, by the way, it's a team that's been mainly challenged not in its other starting pitchers but in its offense and its bullpen, the two factors that every starting pitcher has to contend with in each of their starts. (Well, okay, Dickey's thrown quite a few complete games, taking the bullpen out of the equation, but that's just part of why he's so awesome.)
Long story short, Dickey for Cy Young!
Nationalizing the Race
At the time, a lot of people thought that Elizabeth Warren's fairly prime-time speaking role at the Democratic National Convention may have been designed to nationalize her race, to reduce the number of Massachusetts voters supporting both Barack Obama and Scott Brown. It appears to have worked, with essentially every post-convention poll has shown Warren with a non-trivial lead, despite the fact that Brown's approval and favorability numbers haven't really deteriorated and Warren's favorables haven't really improved. But a pretty solid majority of Massachusetts voters want Democrats to control the Senate going forward, so they're voting for Warren. Likewise, a recent PublicPolicyPolling survey of Connecticut shows the not-very-popular Chris Murphy (D) leading the not-very-popular Linda McMahon (R), basically because as with their northern neighbors, Connecticut voters want a Democratic Senate.
As someone who remembers being gleeful when Lincoln Chafee, the last Republican one could make a plausible case for calling liberal rather than just moderate, lost his 2006 re-election campaign to Sheldon Whitehouse, and who then also voted for Chafee for Governor of Rhode Island four years later, I find this trend very encouraging. Senate and Congressional elections are conducted locally, but they concern national governance, so voters ought to behave less idiosyncratically in them than in, say, gubernatorial races. At the end of the day, the single most important fact about a candidate to the national legislature is which party they'll caucus with, and which leadership slate they'll support. So it's nice to see these blue-state Democrats becoming more willing to vote blind partisanship, whether that means resisting the charms of an oft-moderate Republican incumbent in Massachusetts or holding their nose to vote for a somewhat scandal-tarred Democrat in Connecticut.
Of course, the flip side is that we've got several important Senate contests in Republican-leaning states like North Dakota, Montana, Arizona, and--particularly after the recent deadline for Todd Akin to depart--Missouri. There's been less polling in these red-state races than in the blue-state ones of late, I think, and there's a much less solid sense of where they stand. If the race is getting nationalized all around, one might expect to see Republicans moving into the lead. Of course, if what's really going on is just a generalized Republican collapse, that might not be the case. It'll be interesting to see, as it looks to me like these races are the ones that might let Democrats expand on their current Senate majority, rather than merely holding their position.
As someone who remembers being gleeful when Lincoln Chafee, the last Republican one could make a plausible case for calling liberal rather than just moderate, lost his 2006 re-election campaign to Sheldon Whitehouse, and who then also voted for Chafee for Governor of Rhode Island four years later, I find this trend very encouraging. Senate and Congressional elections are conducted locally, but they concern national governance, so voters ought to behave less idiosyncratically in them than in, say, gubernatorial races. At the end of the day, the single most important fact about a candidate to the national legislature is which party they'll caucus with, and which leadership slate they'll support. So it's nice to see these blue-state Democrats becoming more willing to vote blind partisanship, whether that means resisting the charms of an oft-moderate Republican incumbent in Massachusetts or holding their nose to vote for a somewhat scandal-tarred Democrat in Connecticut.
Of course, the flip side is that we've got several important Senate contests in Republican-leaning states like North Dakota, Montana, Arizona, and--particularly after the recent deadline for Todd Akin to depart--Missouri. There's been less polling in these red-state races than in the blue-state ones of late, I think, and there's a much less solid sense of where they stand. If the race is getting nationalized all around, one might expect to see Republicans moving into the lead. Of course, if what's really going on is just a generalized Republican collapse, that might not be the case. It'll be interesting to see, as it looks to me like these races are the ones that might let Democrats expand on their current Senate majority, rather than merely holding their position.
You Can't Talk About IVR Polling Without Talking About Rasmussen
It's often a major error to analyze some shift in American politics, especially in the demographics thereof, without asking first whether it's really a nationwide phenomenon you're observing or just a really strong Southern phenomenon. For instance, I recently saw some numbers showing that essentially all of Obama's national deficit with white working-class voters comes from the South. Surprise! Southern whites, including the not-terribly-rich ones, don't like Barack Obama. Who'd've thought?
I think this study suggesting that IVR polls, commonly known as "robo-polls" where there's no live human interviewer, just prerecorded questions that one answers by pressing buttons, are "copying" live-interviewer polls to get better accuracy struggles from somewhat of a similar situation. Their evidence is that IVR polls have really lousy accuracy when they're conducted in a race that no standard-methodology pollster has yet touched, but once a race has seen a standard pollster check it out, IVR polling is just as accurate as live-interviewer thereafter. The people at PublicPolicyPolling, an intensely prolific and typically really accurate IVR polling firm, are naturally not thrilled with this. But I think the real problem with the survey is that, just as one errs by treating all of America, South and otherwise, as being one integral nation, one errs by treating all IVR pollsters alike.
Specifically, of course, I'm talking about Rasmussen Reports. Because here's the thing: we liberal polling junkies have been noticing for several years now that there's a distinctive pattern to Rasmussen's polling. Very early in a cycle, their polls look ridiculous. Specifically, they're ridiculously skewed toward the Republican candidates. Later in the cycle, if they continue to poll at all, their polls become much more sensible, and end up being quite accurate. What it looks like, given that it's pretty well-known that Rasmussen is a deeply partisan firm with a pretty substantial history of hackishness, is that early in cycles Rasmussen is engaged in polling-as-messaging, trying to create a buzz around Republican candidates that, perhaps, no one's ever given much heed to. That happened with Scott Brown, for instance. Then, since polling firms are basically only judged on the last batch of polls they release, later in the cycle Rasmussen starts using more sensible turnout models, etc., perhaps "copying" from the consensus of the polling to get good results and maintain their reputation, such as it is.
The result is that the largest chunk of robo-polling is conducted by a firm that is deliberately being inaccurate early in the cycle, when few of the traditional pollsters are yet at work, and deliberately making itself more accurate at crunch time, when most contests have already received a whole bunch o' polling. That would easily be enough to produce the kind of data that study found, I'm guessing, so I'd like to see the study run again excluding Rasmussen. I'd be pretty surprised if the result didn't change.
I think this study suggesting that IVR polls, commonly known as "robo-polls" where there's no live human interviewer, just prerecorded questions that one answers by pressing buttons, are "copying" live-interviewer polls to get better accuracy struggles from somewhat of a similar situation. Their evidence is that IVR polls have really lousy accuracy when they're conducted in a race that no standard-methodology pollster has yet touched, but once a race has seen a standard pollster check it out, IVR polling is just as accurate as live-interviewer thereafter. The people at PublicPolicyPolling, an intensely prolific and typically really accurate IVR polling firm, are naturally not thrilled with this. But I think the real problem with the survey is that, just as one errs by treating all of America, South and otherwise, as being one integral nation, one errs by treating all IVR pollsters alike.
Specifically, of course, I'm talking about Rasmussen Reports. Because here's the thing: we liberal polling junkies have been noticing for several years now that there's a distinctive pattern to Rasmussen's polling. Very early in a cycle, their polls look ridiculous. Specifically, they're ridiculously skewed toward the Republican candidates. Later in the cycle, if they continue to poll at all, their polls become much more sensible, and end up being quite accurate. What it looks like, given that it's pretty well-known that Rasmussen is a deeply partisan firm with a pretty substantial history of hackishness, is that early in cycles Rasmussen is engaged in polling-as-messaging, trying to create a buzz around Republican candidates that, perhaps, no one's ever given much heed to. That happened with Scott Brown, for instance. Then, since polling firms are basically only judged on the last batch of polls they release, later in the cycle Rasmussen starts using more sensible turnout models, etc., perhaps "copying" from the consensus of the polling to get good results and maintain their reputation, such as it is.
The result is that the largest chunk of robo-polling is conducted by a firm that is deliberately being inaccurate early in the cycle, when few of the traditional pollsters are yet at work, and deliberately making itself more accurate at crunch time, when most contests have already received a whole bunch o' polling. That would easily be enough to produce the kind of data that study found, I'm guessing, so I'd like to see the study run again excluding Rasmussen. I'd be pretty surprised if the result didn't change.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
R.A. Dickey and Median vs. Mean
The other day I saw an analysis of the various National League 2012 Cy Young Award contenders by average game score (excluding Craig Kimbrel, who being a relief pitcher doesn't get game scores). Game Score, by the way, is a metric devised by Bill James to evaluate the quality of a starting pitcher's performance on a given night, where 50 is average and up is good. (Over 100 is technically possible, and under 0 may be as well, though I'm not sure I've ever seen it.) Now, since this was a Mets fan site on which I saw this analysis, I wasn't surprised to see that R.A. Dickey came out on top by it. Good for him, and in my opinion he deserves to win the award. But I'd like to delve a little further into the data and look at median Game Score, and then possibly some other variations as well.
Broken Embassy Window Fallacy
This is going to be a bit more economics-y and a bit more snarky than I usually get, but apparently at the U.N. today (or recently) Barack Obama was giving a speech. Part of that speech was a segment where, addressing the people who engage in violent extremist-y protesting that's largely motivated by the fact that they live in an economically woebegone part of the world, Obama suggested that their protests aren't doing anything to help their economic problems, and that perhaps they should channel their energy into doing something more productive. Okay, fine, whatever. But he apparently said that "attacking an embassy won't create a single job." Now, my understanding is that in a normal economy, that's true. However, in a depressed economy suffering from a demand shortfall, attacking an embassy creates new demand for construction work, and because there's slack in the economy as a whole, the person who gets hired to fix the embassy is shifted not out of some other job but out of the "unemployed" sector of the economy. In other words, jobs! Of course, that's not the most socially-efficient way to create work that needs doing, and it probably doesn't scale in any meaningful way to become a relevant policy response to economic stagnation, but hey, you can't say destroying an embassy doesn't create jobs. Someone's got to rebuild it.
Rory McIlroy and the Ghost of Bobby Jones
During the final round of last week's TOUR Championship, Rory McIlroy was in genuine contention to win the 2012 FedEx Cup, the payout for which is $10 million. Then, on a certain hole, he was setting up to his approach shot when his ball moved. According to Rory, he put his club behind the ball, and then backed away for some reason, possibly because he was afraid the ball would move, and then somewhat more than 10 seconds later it did in fact move. He called an official over to ask whether he had incurred a penalty. In the course of this discussion he said very clearly that the ball had moved because he put his club behind it, though there had been a substantial time delay involved. The rules officials decided the time lag was the controlling factor, and declined to penalize him.
Now, the TOUR Championship is held at East Lake Golf Club these days, which is where the great amateur golfer Bobby Jones learned the game. Among other things, like being the most dominant golfer of all time including Tiger Woods, Bobby Jones was famous for his extreme devotion to following the rules of the game. More than once he called a penalty on himself for having moved the ball at address when no one else on the planet could've noticed the movement, in the heat of competition in major championships. So, being somewhat of a Bobby Jones fan, I commented at the time of McIlroy's ruling that Bobby Jones did not approve, thinking to myself that it would be poetic justice if McIlroy played poorly from that point on. Which he did, and Brandt Snedeker won the FedEx Cup. Good for Sneds*.
But now I'm not sure if I didn't have the angle on Rory's little incident backwards. After all, McIlroy himself was basically saying that he had moved the ball. It was the officials who overruled him on this issue. In my opinion it's wrong for rules officials to hear a player say something like, "it was definitely because I put my club behind the ball" and then conclude otherwise, and I have a feeling that Rory McIlroy might agree with me there, and that this might have been at least somewhat responsible for his poor play thereafter. During a certain practice round with my high school golf team, I hit a beautiful long drive on the second hole to a great position, only to find my ball sitting at the very bottom of a big ol' divot. Now, normally I'd have looked at that as an interesting challenge, but I happened to be playing with my in-general-really-cool coach, who instructed me in no uncertain terms to remove my ball from the divot and place it on some nice ground nearby, on the grounds that the shot out of a divot is not an important one to practice. Of course, I obeyed him, as he had formal authority over me, and of course I hit that shot badly and of course I played badly for the next nine holes. Until, that is, the next round, when on that very same second hole I again hit a really nice drive that again went into a divot. Only this time I played the ball as it lied, I hit a nice shot, and I was back to playing well again.
To those of us who have a deep internal commitment to the rules of the game and to the spirit of those rules, getting an unfairly favorable ruling can feel much worse than getting an unfairly unfavorable ruling. (This is one of the things that mystifies me about a game like baseball, where gaining an unfair advantage by tricking the umpires into thinking you were safe or the other guy was out or whatever is considered somewhere between acceptable and obligatory.) It can weigh on your spirit, and having something weighing on your spirit makes it hard to play good golf. In a way, then, it was the ghost of Bobby Jones that caused Rory McIlroy to play his last several holes of the 2012 PGA Tour season badly, but it was the ghost of Bobby Jones as internalized by Rory McIlroy himself.
*This is actually what he's called. His cap says "SNEDS" on it. The first time I ever heard of him, at one of the majors several years back, one of the announcers said that "his friends and family call him Sneds." I find that quite unlikely, but it's still an awesome line.
Now, the TOUR Championship is held at East Lake Golf Club these days, which is where the great amateur golfer Bobby Jones learned the game. Among other things, like being the most dominant golfer of all time including Tiger Woods, Bobby Jones was famous for his extreme devotion to following the rules of the game. More than once he called a penalty on himself for having moved the ball at address when no one else on the planet could've noticed the movement, in the heat of competition in major championships. So, being somewhat of a Bobby Jones fan, I commented at the time of McIlroy's ruling that Bobby Jones did not approve, thinking to myself that it would be poetic justice if McIlroy played poorly from that point on. Which he did, and Brandt Snedeker won the FedEx Cup. Good for Sneds*.
But now I'm not sure if I didn't have the angle on Rory's little incident backwards. After all, McIlroy himself was basically saying that he had moved the ball. It was the officials who overruled him on this issue. In my opinion it's wrong for rules officials to hear a player say something like, "it was definitely because I put my club behind the ball" and then conclude otherwise, and I have a feeling that Rory McIlroy might agree with me there, and that this might have been at least somewhat responsible for his poor play thereafter. During a certain practice round with my high school golf team, I hit a beautiful long drive on the second hole to a great position, only to find my ball sitting at the very bottom of a big ol' divot. Now, normally I'd have looked at that as an interesting challenge, but I happened to be playing with my in-general-really-cool coach, who instructed me in no uncertain terms to remove my ball from the divot and place it on some nice ground nearby, on the grounds that the shot out of a divot is not an important one to practice. Of course, I obeyed him, as he had formal authority over me, and of course I hit that shot badly and of course I played badly for the next nine holes. Until, that is, the next round, when on that very same second hole I again hit a really nice drive that again went into a divot. Only this time I played the ball as it lied, I hit a nice shot, and I was back to playing well again.
To those of us who have a deep internal commitment to the rules of the game and to the spirit of those rules, getting an unfairly favorable ruling can feel much worse than getting an unfairly unfavorable ruling. (This is one of the things that mystifies me about a game like baseball, where gaining an unfair advantage by tricking the umpires into thinking you were safe or the other guy was out or whatever is considered somewhere between acceptable and obligatory.) It can weigh on your spirit, and having something weighing on your spirit makes it hard to play good golf. In a way, then, it was the ghost of Bobby Jones that caused Rory McIlroy to play his last several holes of the 2012 PGA Tour season badly, but it was the ghost of Bobby Jones as internalized by Rory McIlroy himself.
*This is actually what he's called. His cap says "SNEDS" on it. The first time I ever heard of him, at one of the majors several years back, one of the announcers said that "his friends and family call him Sneds." I find that quite unlikely, but it's still an awesome line.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
BAbip and the Count
BAbip, or "batting average on balls in play," is an integral statistic to current analysis of baseball. It's calculated by dividing the number of hits other than home runs (probably excluding inside-the-park home runs in theory, although I'm not sure in practice) by the number of at-bats other than home runs or strikeouts. The idea is that these at-bats are the ones that result in a batted ball for the defense to handle, and the times when a hit results are more about some combination of luck and the defense than the hitter or the pitcher. Now, the logical extreme toward which that idea is tending is that hitters and pitchers should receive basically no credit or blame for abnormal BAbip performances, and that all that matters in evaluating them is home runs, strikeouts, and walks. I don't think very many people believe that, especially as regards hitters, who are known to have characteristically high or characteristically low BAbip tendencies. Pitchers, who have to face the entire league of hitters with above- and -below average BAbip tendencies, are assumed to have less ability to have genuinely non-average tendencies in this regard, although not no ability; in particular, knuckleballers are known to have systemically low BAbips. But the fact still remains that a lot of people think that pitchers have fairly little control over whether a ball that's put in play results in a hit or an out.
Enter this article by Fangraphs, which analyzes On-Base Percentage and home runs per batted ball for each count. (Note: OBP is for any plate appearance which at any point reaches that count, even if the at-bat doesn't end on that count, while HR/batted ball is just when the ball's put in play on that count.) There are strong and very-nearly-matching tendencies for some counts to favor hitters on both measures and for other counts to favor pitchers on both measures. Overall we get the following order of counts from most pitcher-friendly to most hitter-friendly (more or less): 0-2, 1-2, 0-1, 2-2, 1-1, 0-0, 2-1, 3-2, 1-0, 2-0, 3-1, 3-0. Now, if we find that home runs per batted ball varies tremendously with the count, that seems to suggest that balls are hit systemically harder on some counts than on others. Obviously the count is substantially subject to the pitcher's control. So, are there any interesting splits in batting average on balls in play by the count on which the ball got put in play?
Looking at data for the 2011 National League as a whole, the answer seems to be "yes." Here are the BAbip numbers for each of those 12 possible counts, in that order from most- to least-pitcher-friendly: .272, .275, .297, .293, .296, .300, .316, .303, .296, .325, .304, .305. There's a pretty clear trend here, with higher BAbips on more hitter-friendly counts, though it's not monotonally increasing or anything. What if we do something I've often been intrigued by, and consider that, while the defense isn't involved on home runs, it's not clear that the details of whether the ball flies just over the wall or just short of it and into a waiting glove is much more under the pitcher's control than whether the ball happens to land where no one can touch it? That is, suppose we create the statistic "batting average on batted balls," or hits divided by at-bats minus strikeouts, and list that for each different count? Then we get .290, .294, .318, .316, .321, .329, .346, .330, .328, .369, .346, .366. That's much closer to being strictly increasing.
Now, with graphs!
The orange dots are batting average on batted balls, the blue dots are batting average on balls in play.
The count seems to determine about 55.3% of the variance in batting average on balls in play, and about 82.4% of the variance in batting average on batted balls. Both metrics seem to suggest that 2-0 is a more friendly count for the hitter than 3-1, unlike home runs per batted ball or on-base percentage after reaching. Likewise, these metrics like 2-1 better than 3-2 or 1-0, in contrast to the ones discussed by Fangraphs. But overall we can see pretty clearly that getting into favorable counts should permit a pitcher to have a substantial degree of control over the batting average against them on balls in play, or on batted balls. And since everyone admits that pitchers have substantial control over the count, that should mean pitchers have substantial control over BAbip. A pitcher who's routinely getting hitters into two-strike counts should experience a lower BAbip than one who's running up lots of 3-ball counts, or letting hitters put the ball in play on 1-0, 2-1, etc.
And we're what, surprised by this?
Enter this article by Fangraphs, which analyzes On-Base Percentage and home runs per batted ball for each count. (Note: OBP is for any plate appearance which at any point reaches that count, even if the at-bat doesn't end on that count, while HR/batted ball is just when the ball's put in play on that count.) There are strong and very-nearly-matching tendencies for some counts to favor hitters on both measures and for other counts to favor pitchers on both measures. Overall we get the following order of counts from most pitcher-friendly to most hitter-friendly (more or less): 0-2, 1-2, 0-1, 2-2, 1-1, 0-0, 2-1, 3-2, 1-0, 2-0, 3-1, 3-0. Now, if we find that home runs per batted ball varies tremendously with the count, that seems to suggest that balls are hit systemically harder on some counts than on others. Obviously the count is substantially subject to the pitcher's control. So, are there any interesting splits in batting average on balls in play by the count on which the ball got put in play?
Looking at data for the 2011 National League as a whole, the answer seems to be "yes." Here are the BAbip numbers for each of those 12 possible counts, in that order from most- to least-pitcher-friendly: .272, .275, .297, .293, .296, .300, .316, .303, .296, .325, .304, .305. There's a pretty clear trend here, with higher BAbips on more hitter-friendly counts, though it's not monotonally increasing or anything. What if we do something I've often been intrigued by, and consider that, while the defense isn't involved on home runs, it's not clear that the details of whether the ball flies just over the wall or just short of it and into a waiting glove is much more under the pitcher's control than whether the ball happens to land where no one can touch it? That is, suppose we create the statistic "batting average on batted balls," or hits divided by at-bats minus strikeouts, and list that for each different count? Then we get .290, .294, .318, .316, .321, .329, .346, .330, .328, .369, .346, .366. That's much closer to being strictly increasing.
Now, with graphs!
The count seems to determine about 55.3% of the variance in batting average on balls in play, and about 82.4% of the variance in batting average on batted balls. Both metrics seem to suggest that 2-0 is a more friendly count for the hitter than 3-1, unlike home runs per batted ball or on-base percentage after reaching. Likewise, these metrics like 2-1 better than 3-2 or 1-0, in contrast to the ones discussed by Fangraphs. But overall we can see pretty clearly that getting into favorable counts should permit a pitcher to have a substantial degree of control over the batting average against them on balls in play, or on batted balls. And since everyone admits that pitchers have substantial control over the count, that should mean pitchers have substantial control over BAbip. A pitcher who's routinely getting hitters into two-strike counts should experience a lower BAbip than one who's running up lots of 3-ball counts, or letting hitters put the ball in play on 1-0, 2-1, etc.
And we're what, surprised by this?
Thursday, September 13, 2012
It's Really, "Are We Better Off Now?"
"Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is Ronald Reagan's famous campaign line from 1980, attacking incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter over the state of the economy. Of course, the answer was "yes," real per capita GDP had gone up during Carter's Presidency, though it was in a period of decline right around the election and the line probably helped Reagan win that election. Sensing that Barack Obama's greatest weakness is the continued mediocrity of the economy, Mitt Romney has taken to using the same line. The assumption seems to be that if you are better off than you were four years ago, you should vote for the incumbent, but if you're not better off, you should vote the incumbent out. Now, as I've seen Matt Yglesias point out in various posts and/or Tweets, that's a curious framework through which to view partisan electoral politics. Most of the most important aspects of individual-level well-being are not even plausibly under the control or influence of the President, or even the government, really, like romantic success or the lack thereof. Even when we narrow things down to economic well-being, there are vast amounts of idiosyncrasy and serendipity involved at the individual level. Whether I get hired, fired, promoted, or what depends at least as much on my own personal circumstances, choices, and attributes as it does the general macroeconomic climate. If I happen to have been promoted at my job because I'm really good at it, or because the guy in front of me got caught in a scandal or something, does it really make sense to interpret that as evidence that I should vote for the incumbent President?
In that light, I found this post from Dave Weigel interesting. First, as he points out, people's views of whether they're better off or not don't seem to be particularly objective or independent of partisan politics, since non-whites seem to think they are better off, whereas actual economic data begs rather strongly to differ. But what interests me is the gender gap in this question. Men split pretty damn evenly on whether or not they're better off, while a huge plurality of women say they're worse off than four years ago. I'm not entirely sure what the data are on that, though I think I remember hearing that the initial burst of recession was especially bad for men but that the recovery has helped women less than it's helped men. I'd just like to point out that women will be supporting the incumbent President in this election much, much more than men. So, something isn't working the way Romney thinks it ought to; shouldn't these women, who feel like things have gotten worse for them, be his natural constituency? I mean, it's not like the Romney campaign hasn't made that very argument on numerous occasions.
I think what's going on is that the more sensible way to interact with this question, as a matter of partisan electoral politics, is to ask whether we, as a nation, are better off now than we were four years ago. And it looks like people know it. This goes beyond the gender gap; looking at the regional data, one sees that the least happy regions are the West and the Northeast, while the South is feeling pretty good about itself. But, uh, the South ain't voting for Obama. I bet that if you asked people whether they think the country is doing better overall than it was four years ago, you'd see some rather different patterns here, and that that question would have more predictive power of people's voting intentions. Of course, one can bring a boatload of skepticism to the idea that answers to that question would be independent of people's partisan allegiances, and rightfully so. One way or another, though, it looks like voters are not taking up the Romney campaign's call to vote against Obama if your life has been rough over the last four years. Good for them.
In that light, I found this post from Dave Weigel interesting. First, as he points out, people's views of whether they're better off or not don't seem to be particularly objective or independent of partisan politics, since non-whites seem to think they are better off, whereas actual economic data begs rather strongly to differ. But what interests me is the gender gap in this question. Men split pretty damn evenly on whether or not they're better off, while a huge plurality of women say they're worse off than four years ago. I'm not entirely sure what the data are on that, though I think I remember hearing that the initial burst of recession was especially bad for men but that the recovery has helped women less than it's helped men. I'd just like to point out that women will be supporting the incumbent President in this election much, much more than men. So, something isn't working the way Romney thinks it ought to; shouldn't these women, who feel like things have gotten worse for them, be his natural constituency? I mean, it's not like the Romney campaign hasn't made that very argument on numerous occasions.
I think what's going on is that the more sensible way to interact with this question, as a matter of partisan electoral politics, is to ask whether we, as a nation, are better off now than we were four years ago. And it looks like people know it. This goes beyond the gender gap; looking at the regional data, one sees that the least happy regions are the West and the Northeast, while the South is feeling pretty good about itself. But, uh, the South ain't voting for Obama. I bet that if you asked people whether they think the country is doing better overall than it was four years ago, you'd see some rather different patterns here, and that that question would have more predictive power of people's voting intentions. Of course, one can bring a boatload of skepticism to the idea that answers to that question would be independent of people's partisan allegiances, and rightfully so. One way or another, though, it looks like voters are not taking up the Romney campaign's call to vote against Obama if your life has been rough over the last four years. Good for them.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
WTF? No seriously, WTF?
I've just been watching Ezra Klein hosting The Ed Show on MSNBC, discussing the recent Egypt/Libya crisis. The segment that just finished featured two guests, one, Lawrence Kolb, basically from the left, and the other, Michael Medved, basically from the right. One thing Medved, a talk radio host, said shocked me so much that I've felt the necessity of writing a post about it despite its being 11:49 p.m. the night before my 9 a.m. class tomorrow. Specifically, in response to having had a bevy of instances of the Bush Administration issuing straight-up apologies for various things that offended Muslims, he said, basically, that those actions hadn't made the country safer. Indeed, he said, then-Senator Barack Obama was very critical of how the Bush Administration had caused America's image in the Muslim world to deteriorate!
Seriously, that's what he said. He then proceeded to confirm, in basically no uncertain terms, that in his opinion, that "apologetic tone" was responsible for poor American standing in Muslim areas. Not the two wars we were fighting in that part of the world at the time. He seemed to be oblivious to the idea that it wasn't the Bush Administration's occasional apologies for offensive cartoons or whatever that made Muslims dislike us, it was the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seriously. It was one of the most unbelievable demonstrations of sheer amnesia about the past decade I've ever seen. I just couldn't let it slide.
WTF, Michael Medved?
Seriously, that's what he said. He then proceeded to confirm, in basically no uncertain terms, that in his opinion, that "apologetic tone" was responsible for poor American standing in Muslim areas. Not the two wars we were fighting in that part of the world at the time. He seemed to be oblivious to the idea that it wasn't the Bush Administration's occasional apologies for offensive cartoons or whatever that made Muslims dislike us, it was the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seriously. It was one of the most unbelievable demonstrations of sheer amnesia about the past decade I've ever seen. I just couldn't let it slide.
WTF, Michael Medved?
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
A Really Good Night
A recent PublicPolicyPolling survey for the League of Conservation Voters in Arizona showed Jeff Flake (R) leading Richard Carmona (D) just 44-43 for the state's open-seat Senate race. That's a Republican-held seat, i.e. a Democratic pick-up opportunity. That poll makes a good occasion to start thinking about, in light of the apparently-pretty-decent Democratic convention bounce, what a very good night for Democrats might look like on Election Day. By "very good night" I basically mean for things to get a little better over the next couple of months than they even quite seem now. Obviously Obama would be winning, probably with around 350 electoral votes. The more interesting thing is gaming out the Senate and trying to estimate the House.
One can get a good handle on the Senate state of play by using the nearly-month-old FiveThirtyEight subjective forecast of all the Senate races. We observe 10 "safe Democratic" race (DE, MN, NY, RI, VT, MD, CA, PA, WA, and WV), along with just 5 "safe Republican" ones (TX, UT, MS, TN, WY). Now, obviously on a good Democratic night we'll be winning the "likely Democratic" races, NJ, CT, MI, and HI, and also the "leans Democratic" ones, OH and NM. Angus King will also pick up his race in Maine, and caucus with the Democrats for another pick-up. Then there are 11 races rated between "toss-up" and "likely Republican," with the Arizona race falling into that latter-most category. Of those 11, 7 are held by Democrats right now, and 4 by Republicans. Note, however, that those are all the Republicans' pick-up opportunities, while Democrats have already picked up the Angus King seat. So Democrats need just 6 of those 11 races to hold their position, and just 3 of them to hold the Senate, including Biden and King. Even conceding Nebraska, then, we've got 10 races each of which looks perfectly winnable on its own terms. On a really good Democratic night, we might win 8 of them, and pick up a couple of seats. If we were to treat the Arizona race as Republican +1, and assume that that's representative of the national climate in general, then we might win 9 races.
Building on our Senate majority, in other words, seems distinctly possible, and that really wasn't expected earlier in this cycle. And I've got to believe that if we manage to elect more Democrats than this class elected in 2006, we'll also take back the House of Representatives. Now, I'd like to see a whole bunch of polling from these competitive races in the aftermath of the convention, to get a sense of whether all of these knife-edge battles seem to have shifted the Democrats' way. But the Arizona poll looks really good to me (and, note, it doesn't even have ridiculously favorable Presidential numbers, with Obama trailing by 9 points), and if the rest of the country is like this right now, it's starting to feel like November 6th could very easily be a really good night.
One can get a good handle on the Senate state of play by using the nearly-month-old FiveThirtyEight subjective forecast of all the Senate races. We observe 10 "safe Democratic" race (DE, MN, NY, RI, VT, MD, CA, PA, WA, and WV), along with just 5 "safe Republican" ones (TX, UT, MS, TN, WY). Now, obviously on a good Democratic night we'll be winning the "likely Democratic" races, NJ, CT, MI, and HI, and also the "leans Democratic" ones, OH and NM. Angus King will also pick up his race in Maine, and caucus with the Democrats for another pick-up. Then there are 11 races rated between "toss-up" and "likely Republican," with the Arizona race falling into that latter-most category. Of those 11, 7 are held by Democrats right now, and 4 by Republicans. Note, however, that those are all the Republicans' pick-up opportunities, while Democrats have already picked up the Angus King seat. So Democrats need just 6 of those 11 races to hold their position, and just 3 of them to hold the Senate, including Biden and King. Even conceding Nebraska, then, we've got 10 races each of which looks perfectly winnable on its own terms. On a really good Democratic night, we might win 8 of them, and pick up a couple of seats. If we were to treat the Arizona race as Republican +1, and assume that that's representative of the national climate in general, then we might win 9 races.
Building on our Senate majority, in other words, seems distinctly possible, and that really wasn't expected earlier in this cycle. And I've got to believe that if we manage to elect more Democrats than this class elected in 2006, we'll also take back the House of Representatives. Now, I'd like to see a whole bunch of polling from these competitive races in the aftermath of the convention, to get a sense of whether all of these knife-edge battles seem to have shifted the Democrats' way. But the Arizona poll looks really good to me (and, note, it doesn't even have ridiculously favorable Presidential numbers, with Obama trailing by 9 points), and if the rest of the country is like this right now, it's starting to feel like November 6th could very easily be a really good night.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Not Just Suggestability Making Republicans Credit Romney for Killing Bin Laden
So, PublicPolicyPolling continued its long trend of asking slightly oddball questions this past weekend by asking people in Ohio whether they think Barack Obama or Mitt Romney deserves more credit for the death of Osama bin Laden. The splashy headline is that 15% of Republicans say Romney, while just 38% gave credit to Obama. Their Twitter feed informed us that they asked this question to see if Republicans will give Obama credit for anything, and the answer seems to be no. Except, well, people will say anything if you prompt them to. Maybe they just credited Romney because the poll suggested that one might plausibly credit Romney?
But no, that's not it. Because, you see, they gave results for the two other partisan groups as well. Among Democrats, it's 86% Obama, 1% Romney. Among independents, it's 64% to 1%. It looks like raw suggestibility isn't enough to generate a non-trivial number of people saying Romney killed bin Laden. And, I mean, there are plenty of independents who don't much like Obama. But they're not trying to credit Romney, they're just slightly less willing to credit Obama than Democrats. It's just partisan Republicans who are even remotely willing to say Romney should get credit here.
So, the moral of the story is to be every bit as shocked and outraged as the headline numbers suggest you should be. It's not just suggestability, it's over-the-top partisanship.
But no, that's not it. Because, you see, they gave results for the two other partisan groups as well. Among Democrats, it's 86% Obama, 1% Romney. Among independents, it's 64% to 1%. It looks like raw suggestibility isn't enough to generate a non-trivial number of people saying Romney killed bin Laden. And, I mean, there are plenty of independents who don't much like Obama. But they're not trying to credit Romney, they're just slightly less willing to credit Obama than Democrats. It's just partisan Republicans who are even remotely willing to say Romney should get credit here.
So, the moral of the story is to be every bit as shocked and outraged as the headline numbers suggest you should be. It's not just suggestability, it's over-the-top partisanship.
Don't Ever Judge Me By Your Standards, Collectivist Football Edition
(Because the Doctor is relevant to absolutely everything.)
George Will apparently wrote a column in the past couple of days arguing that football, and college football in particular, is part of an effort by progressives to turn higher education into a cauldron of collectivism. There's a lot about it that's really silly, but since I'm not a football guy I'd just like to focus on this line in particular:
Because, you see, when conservatives do collectivism--and yes, conservatives do collectivism!--it is about subordinating the individual to the collectivity. We can see this in a lot of areas, but I think the best example is war. The military, of course, is about subordinating the individual to the collectivity. Hell, "insubordination" is practically a criminal offense. And while there are certainly lots of military persons who are left-wing and lots of left-wingers who like to talk about how awesome the military is, I think it's fair to say that the American conservative movement is much more devoted to the militaristic worldview and way of thinking than American liberalism is. One can see a similar sort of subordinating collectivism in various other things, again, not things that are the exclusive province of conservatives but that are disproportionately conservative. Things like patriotism, and other hierarchical social structures, for example, and to various extents religion.
So, why does that matter? Because that military ethos, which is, again, very much about subordinating the individual to the collectivity, informs a conservative's view of what collectivism is, and must be. So when liberals extol the virtues of collective enterprise, and community, and so on and so forth, conservatives assume they mean something like the spirit of the military. But it's not that at all. It's really the other way around: liberals believe that the collectivity can be harnessed to do good things for the sake of its constituent individuals, in ways that those individuals acting individually could not. That's very different from the team-sport mentality where the welfare of individual team members only matters insofar as it contributes to the team's future success. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any issue where modern American liberalism favors such "subordination," although certainly liberalism is not just hedonism and often thinks that people need to be prevented from doing exactly what they want in every way at every time to advance some commonly-beneficial goal.
And note the difference in how Democrats and Republicans treat the military. Republicans love to attack Democrats for not supporting the troops, but then don't give those troops sufficient battle armor while they're abroad "fighting for our freedom," and don't provide much in the way of veterans' benefits. It's Democrats who want to do that stuff. Republicans like to talk about how "freedom isn't free," i.e., a whole bunch of individuals must sacrifice so that the nation (a collectivity!) can enjoy freedom. Democrats want to do everything they can to enhance the well-being of those individuals who have made those sacrifices, during their active duty and thereafter.
So the "progressive value" Will describes is anything but. He's describing the Republican approach to collectivism, and then assuming that when Democrats promote various collectivist ideas they have the same sort of thing in mind. And then attacking them for it. I'm not sure why; I'm sure he's written columns over the years about how much better everything would be if the world had a more militaristic ethos, or if those damn kids would just learn some respect for authority. Maybe he's just saying it because it sounds scary.
Another interpretation, of course, is that he really does just mean that Democrats want people, especially rich ones, to pay somewhat more in taxes than Republicans do, and that this constitutes a desire to "subordinate" the individual to the collectivity. In which case, we just have the same old philosophical overreaching on taxes. Ho hum.
George Will apparently wrote a column in the past couple of days arguing that football, and college football in particular, is part of an effort by progressives to turn higher education into a cauldron of collectivism. There's a lot about it that's really silly, but since I'm not a football guy I'd just like to focus on this line in particular:
"Football taught the progressive virtue of subordinating the individual to the collectivity."That segues into something about how much attention (and money!) gets paid to the coaches of college football teams. Whatever. "The progressive virtue of subordinating the individual to the collectivity"? What? That's, um, not a progressive virtue. So, is Mr. Will just making stuff up here? Is he just delusional? No, I think there's a pretty specific effect at work here, and it's basically projection, or, as the Doctor would put it, judging us by his own side's standards.
Because, you see, when conservatives do collectivism--and yes, conservatives do collectivism!--it is about subordinating the individual to the collectivity. We can see this in a lot of areas, but I think the best example is war. The military, of course, is about subordinating the individual to the collectivity. Hell, "insubordination" is practically a criminal offense. And while there are certainly lots of military persons who are left-wing and lots of left-wingers who like to talk about how awesome the military is, I think it's fair to say that the American conservative movement is much more devoted to the militaristic worldview and way of thinking than American liberalism is. One can see a similar sort of subordinating collectivism in various other things, again, not things that are the exclusive province of conservatives but that are disproportionately conservative. Things like patriotism, and other hierarchical social structures, for example, and to various extents religion.
So, why does that matter? Because that military ethos, which is, again, very much about subordinating the individual to the collectivity, informs a conservative's view of what collectivism is, and must be. So when liberals extol the virtues of collective enterprise, and community, and so on and so forth, conservatives assume they mean something like the spirit of the military. But it's not that at all. It's really the other way around: liberals believe that the collectivity can be harnessed to do good things for the sake of its constituent individuals, in ways that those individuals acting individually could not. That's very different from the team-sport mentality where the welfare of individual team members only matters insofar as it contributes to the team's future success. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any issue where modern American liberalism favors such "subordination," although certainly liberalism is not just hedonism and often thinks that people need to be prevented from doing exactly what they want in every way at every time to advance some commonly-beneficial goal.
And note the difference in how Democrats and Republicans treat the military. Republicans love to attack Democrats for not supporting the troops, but then don't give those troops sufficient battle armor while they're abroad "fighting for our freedom," and don't provide much in the way of veterans' benefits. It's Democrats who want to do that stuff. Republicans like to talk about how "freedom isn't free," i.e., a whole bunch of individuals must sacrifice so that the nation (a collectivity!) can enjoy freedom. Democrats want to do everything they can to enhance the well-being of those individuals who have made those sacrifices, during their active duty and thereafter.
So the "progressive value" Will describes is anything but. He's describing the Republican approach to collectivism, and then assuming that when Democrats promote various collectivist ideas they have the same sort of thing in mind. And then attacking them for it. I'm not sure why; I'm sure he's written columns over the years about how much better everything would be if the world had a more militaristic ethos, or if those damn kids would just learn some respect for authority. Maybe he's just saying it because it sounds scary.
Another interpretation, of course, is that he really does just mean that Democrats want people, especially rich ones, to pay somewhat more in taxes than Republicans do, and that this constitutes a desire to "subordinate" the individual to the collectivity. In which case, we just have the same old philosophical overreaching on taxes. Ho hum.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
The Tyranny of Automatic Bipartisanship
The recent voting-rights controversy in Ohio hinged around a curious institutional feature. In each of the state's 88 counties, a local elections board determined county electoral policy. But these boards weren't just elected by the general county population. Instead, they had a predetermined equal number of Democrats and Republicans. So, when each county was considering whether or not to have early voting in this year's Presidential election, a curious dynamic started up. Democrats, who favor voting rights generally, supported early voting everywhere. In most counties, their Republican counterparts also supported early voting. The exception, of course, was the handful of urban counties where Ohio Democrats rack up big margins to stay competitive statewide. In those counties, every Republican voted against early voting, creating a tie. The Ohio Secretary of State got to break those ties, and sided with the Republicans, preventing early voting. Net result? More generous voting provisions in Republican-leaning counties than Democratic-leaning ones.
Now, fortunately, a federal judge has put a stop to this whole regime, thanks to a quirk of the law permitting the roll-back of early voting in Ohio that exempted the military, and therefore ran afoul of the Equal Protection Clause. But I'd like to point out a different aspect of the whole affair, namely the dangers and, in a sense, tyranny of requiring everything to be bipartisan. Because the problem here was only that Republicans held genuine policymaking power in the Democratic-dominated areas. If, in Cuyahoga County where Obama won more than two-thirds of the vote, two-thirds of these board members were Democrats, they'd've just voted to continue early voting, and no problem. In each county, if the boards reflected the political composition of their constituents, they would automatically have an interest in promoting their constituents' rights to vote. Instead, we had a system that gave people control over the political voices of their opponents.
Another way in which insistence upon bipartisanship leads to undemocratic results can be seen through the "grand bargain." If there's a culture that says all major legislation must have substantial support from both parties, and both parties' leadership, then it doesn't matter in the slightest who wins the elections. Policy gets made by the two caucuses together, and the people stop being allowed to choose which policies they prefer. It's a slightly different dynamic to the Ohio situation, but serves similarly to illustrate the problem. An a priori decision that everything must be bipartisan amounts to a decision to reserve power for the losers of elections. It means you don't need to win an election to hold substantial political power. That is, almost tautologically, undemocratic. And the result is what we saw in Ohio.
Good thing we've got the countermajoritarian judiciary to police these things.
Now, fortunately, a federal judge has put a stop to this whole regime, thanks to a quirk of the law permitting the roll-back of early voting in Ohio that exempted the military, and therefore ran afoul of the Equal Protection Clause. But I'd like to point out a different aspect of the whole affair, namely the dangers and, in a sense, tyranny of requiring everything to be bipartisan. Because the problem here was only that Republicans held genuine policymaking power in the Democratic-dominated areas. If, in Cuyahoga County where Obama won more than two-thirds of the vote, two-thirds of these board members were Democrats, they'd've just voted to continue early voting, and no problem. In each county, if the boards reflected the political composition of their constituents, they would automatically have an interest in promoting their constituents' rights to vote. Instead, we had a system that gave people control over the political voices of their opponents.
Another way in which insistence upon bipartisanship leads to undemocratic results can be seen through the "grand bargain." If there's a culture that says all major legislation must have substantial support from both parties, and both parties' leadership, then it doesn't matter in the slightest who wins the elections. Policy gets made by the two caucuses together, and the people stop being allowed to choose which policies they prefer. It's a slightly different dynamic to the Ohio situation, but serves similarly to illustrate the problem. An a priori decision that everything must be bipartisan amounts to a decision to reserve power for the losers of elections. It means you don't need to win an election to hold substantial political power. That is, almost tautologically, undemocratic. And the result is what we saw in Ohio.
Good thing we've got the countermajoritarian judiciary to police these things.
Friday, September 7, 2012
"Supposed" by Whom?
It's been a while since one has had to think about her, fortunately, but this line from some recent comment from Sarah Palin caught my eye. Apparently John Kerry's convention speech last night took a dig at her, and she responded by asking:
This sort of reminds me of the common conservative judicial habit of reading liberal jurists' disagreements with conservative jurisprudence as a deliberate abandonment of the task of interpreting the law honestly, and a substitution for that task of simply making stuff up. Maybe that's how it looks to you, but that's really not how we like to think of ourselves. That's not what we think we're doing, that's not what we think we are.
How does he even know my name? I mean aren’t these guys supposed to be these big wig elites who don’t waste their time on the little people like me...Now, one could just stop and marvel at the silliness of this quote. She may have forgotten, lord knows the rest of us have tried to, but four years ago most people in this country kind of knew her name. But I'd like to seize on the words "supposed to." According to whom? Okay, sure, in Sarah Palin's worldview people like John Kerry fall into that category. Odd for her to say, out loud, "hey, wait, this piece of evidence conflicts with what my worldview tells me!", though. So... does she think that Kerry goes around telling people that he's a big wig elite who doesn't waste his time on little people? It's pretty rare for people to say that about themselves, I think.
This sort of reminds me of the common conservative judicial habit of reading liberal jurists' disagreements with conservative jurisprudence as a deliberate abandonment of the task of interpreting the law honestly, and a substitution for that task of simply making stuff up. Maybe that's how it looks to you, but that's really not how we like to think of ourselves. That's not what we think we're doing, that's not what we think we are.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Michelle Obama's speech was so good...
...that her name has been added to the Ladbrokes list of odds on people to win the 2016 Presidential election. Okay, so she's at 200/1, tied with Clint Eastwood, George Clooney, and Karl Rove, but still. But still.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Policy Isn't Everything...
...it's the only thing. Okay, well, the only thing that matters. Here's an example of how:
This is an image I saw on Pundit Kitchen, the Cheezburger network site devoted to news and politics. The implication is that it's hypocritical/ironic/something to talk about respecting women while highlighting a man notorious for his affairs. But that's entirely wrong, because Bill Clinton favors policies that promote the well-being of woman and fight against the long-term oppression of women. Mitt Romney, on the contrary, has probably been completely faithful to his wife, but favors policies that would, relatively speaking, reduce the welfare of women and continue their long-term oppression. And in politics, that's what matters. Sure, Bill Clinton's personal life may not be a paragon of respecting women, although I'm not sure one can deduce that just from his promiscuity and since I wasn't particularly aware of his Presidency in real time I'm not sure I can comment any further than that. But that doesn't mean that, as a person and a political figure, he doesn't respect women. He respects them in the most meaningful way possible, by wanting to shape public policy in a pro-woman direction. Likewise, Republicans can talk all they want about how important women are, etc., but until they stop favoring relatively anti-woman policies it's just talk, and just empty talk at that.
This is an image I saw on Pundit Kitchen, the Cheezburger network site devoted to news and politics. The implication is that it's hypocritical/ironic/something to talk about respecting women while highlighting a man notorious for his affairs. But that's entirely wrong, because Bill Clinton favors policies that promote the well-being of woman and fight against the long-term oppression of women. Mitt Romney, on the contrary, has probably been completely faithful to his wife, but favors policies that would, relatively speaking, reduce the welfare of women and continue their long-term oppression. And in politics, that's what matters. Sure, Bill Clinton's personal life may not be a paragon of respecting women, although I'm not sure one can deduce that just from his promiscuity and since I wasn't particularly aware of his Presidency in real time I'm not sure I can comment any further than that. But that doesn't mean that, as a person and a political figure, he doesn't respect women. He respects them in the most meaningful way possible, by wanting to shape public policy in a pro-woman direction. Likewise, Republicans can talk all they want about how important women are, etc., but until they stop favoring relatively anti-woman policies it's just talk, and just empty talk at that.
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