Bernie Sanders refuses to acknowledge that he has no path to the nomination, turns to super delegates for help. Update!

Courtesy of Mediaite:

The math isn’t there and a lot of pundits are saying this is over, and yet Bernie Sanders affirmed on CBS this morning that it’s not “impossible.” 

Sanders acknowledged it’s an “uphill fight” as John Dickerson told him it is mathematically impossible for him to win now. Sanders said it’s still possible he wins the majority of pledged delegates, but if not his campaign is ready to make their case to superdelegates.

During the interview Sanders repeatedly makes the case that polls show he is in a stronger position to beat Donald Trump than is Hillary Clinton, but the facts are that the only reason that appears true right now is because the Republicans have mostly left him alone.

Once the GOP really ramps things up Sanders will find his poll numbers dropping like a lead balloon.

Of course the Republicans will never get that chance, because Bernie Sanders simply does NOT have a path to victory.

Period.

Update: Sanders is also predicting that there will be a contested convention: 

In a news conference from Washington, D.C., on Sunday, the Vermont senator urged superdelegates from states where he has won the majority of the vote to reconsider their support. 

"It is virtually impossible for Secretary Clinton to reach the majority of convention delegates by June 14 with pledged delegates alone," he said. 

"She will need superdelegates to take her over the top. The convention will be a contested contest," he said.

This can only make those who despise Hillary Clinton happy. 

Democrats having their act together and acting like the grownups while the Republicans bicker and fight at their convention is our best strategy moving forward.

If the American voter sees infighting in both parties, it takes away much of our advantage.

Explaining "Bernie-math."

My favorite line:

"Then you add ten momentum points for every state he won in a row, multiply that by how much birds like him."

I totally feel that first guy's pain. I have been trying to explain this same thing for weeks right here on IM. All I've manged to do so far is piss a whole lot of people off.

Conservative attorney argues that allowing same sex marriage would lead to 900,000 more abortions. I'm sorry, what?

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Gene Schaerr, who specializes in constitutional and appellate litigation, is perhaps best known for defending same-sex marriage ban in Utah and Idaho, and is a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Now, as The Washington Post points out, he's filed an amicus brief on behalf of "100 scholars of marriage" asking the Supreme Court not to recognize same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.

This is how Schaerr made his case over on The Daily Signal:  

On the surface, abortion and same-sex marriage may seem unrelated. However, as explained in an amicus brief of 100 scholars of marriage, filed in the pending Supreme Court marriage cases and summarized here, the two are closely linked in a short and simple causal chain that the Supreme Court would be wise not to set in motion. 

In a nutshell: A reduction in the opposite-sex marriage rate means an increase in the percentage of women who are unmarried and who, according to all available data, have much higher abortion rates than married women. And based on past experience, institutionalizing same-sex marriage poses an enormous risk of reduced opposite-sex marriage rates.

Actually marriage rates are dropping all over the country and it has NOTHING to do with gay marriage. In fact the argument could be made that allowing same sex marriage would bring those marriage numbers back up.

Then using some of the most convoluted math I have seen since the conservatives assured the country that Mitt Romney was kicking Obama's ass during the 2012 election, Schaerr makes this startling accusation:

Nearly 900,000 more children of the next generation would be aborted as a result of their mothers never marrying. This is equal to the entire population of the cities of Sacramento and Atlanta combined. 

So there you have it folks. Thanks to all of you wanting to allow two dudes to get married, NOW we have a pile of dead fetuses to contend with.

Are you happy?

Okay you know conservative math always gives me a splitting headache, I think I will go lay down now.

Texas Republican Congressman Louis Gohmert combines mathematics with religions to prove...well essentially to prove what a dumb ass he is.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

Proving God exists or does not exist has been a difficult endeavor for many, but Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) gave it a try at a prayer rally held in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. 

"Bob Murphey used to say, ‘You know, I feel so bad for atheists, I do,'" Gohmert said of the country music singer at the "Celebrate America" event. "‘Think about it, no matter how smart they think they are, an atheist has to admit that he believes the equation: nobody plus nothing equals everything.’" 

He continued: "How embarrassing for an intellectual to have to say 'yeah, I believe that. Nobody plus nothing equals everything.' Well, you couldn't get everything unless there was something that was the creator of everything. And that's the Lord we know." 

You all may be surprised to learn that this argument does not embarrass me in the least. 

But then again Gohmert is NOT my Congressman.

You know I recognize that scientific knowledge is not necessarily important to the day to day job performance of  a member of Congress, however this kind of almost crippling ignorance must certainly impact Gohmert's ability to understand even the simplest of problems that he was sent to Washington D.C. to address.

The Math of the Great Flood

Courtesy of the YouTube page:  

I was surprised to find very few places where the math of Noah's flood was discussed, so I made this video to illustrate the scale of what the bible describes. Seeing it calculated out makes the myth seem a lot more fantastical and less feasible. After researching this video, it became clear to me that the people who wrote this myth originally did not understand how outlandish their claims were at the time, because they didn't know how big the planet was, or how tall the highest mountain was, or how many species there are, or what that much rain looks like. Once you do the equations, you can see that this is all made up. For the ignorant desert tribes during the time of Gilgamesh, there was no danger that anyone would call the authors out, but the people of modern times have no excuse for blindly accepting it.

The fact that the Creationist use Noah's flood to explain virtually everything about the fossil record, the geographical  landscape, and the importance of avoiding sin, is mind boggling.

As the video demonstrates the facts simply do not support the possibility of anything like a great world encompassing flood ever having taken place. But beyond that, at least to me, the story demonstrates an almost psychotic rage on the part of God that he would drown potentially billions of people, many living in cultures that had never heard of the Jewish god, simply in response to the disobedience of a comparative few.

In my opinion anybody hoping to convince people about the compassion of the Christian, Islamic, or Jewish god would want to ignore this story, and multiple others, like the plague.

Former Bush spokesperson Ari Fleischer attacks President for using too many Twitter characters. Math says, "I'm sorry, what?"

So this was the tweet where Fleischer got all outraged over the fact that clearly Twitter loves the President more than everybody else.

Question to @gov: how come @BarackObama 's last tweet was more than 140 characters? Does he play by different rules???
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September 24, 2013

Yeah, why does the President get to break a rule that should be impossible to break since the 140 count thing is automatic?

Wait, who did the counting here? Uh oh!

Then the Twitterverse weighed in:

To be fair once Fliescher started to receive these tweets he took his socks off and did a recount.

Of course it was too late and the mocking continued for days. As well it should.

After all what can we expect from a man who had to play dumb on a daily basis about all of the criminal activity undertaken by the Bush administration?

And it is not like his other tweets are bursting with intellect either.

Congress passed it. Then the voters through out the Congress that passed it.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September 26, 2013

Yep, they certainly "through" them out all right.

You know people sometimes say that I unfairly mock the Republican party as being full of assholes and idiots.

I think I take exception to the word "unfairly."

Sean Hannity has a freshly scrubbed and deloused Sarah Palin on his show to lie about the President, ALMOST apologize for being a bitch, and to teach us all a little about history. (You don't HAVE to drink alcohol before reading this, but I strongly suggest it.)

In response to a survey which indicates that Americans have a more favorable opinion of socialism than he can stomach and a less favorable opinion of capitalism than he considers patriotic, Hannity decides to ask the Lunatic from Lake Lucille her opinion, because well contractually he still has to.

"I think what the survey represents Sean is perhaps some survey recipients (I'm pretty sure she met "participants" here) who answered the questions are confusing corrupt, dirty crony capitalism with genuine free market capitalism. Which is the good kind of capitalism. You know we've shown a bright light on the problems caused by crony capitalism in recent months and last year to, and I think that capitalism in general has taken a hit because of this new public awareness, because of that light that has been shown on crony capitalism perhaps people are believing that capitalism in general isn't such a good thing, of course that's a mistake to believe that."

In his next question Hannity COMPLETELY misrepresents the President, the situation the country faces, and the reason for the situation. Of course mooseshit is where Palin wallows, so she doesn't bat an eye in responding.

"Well first let's address President Obama's flip flop on his philosophy thee when it comes to raising the debt ceiling, he certainly condemned President Bush in those years of raising the deb ceiling and..uh..look where he's taken this country. (Obama explains the change in his point of view about the debt ceiling here: "I think that it's important to understand the vantage point of a senator versus the vantage point of a president. When you're a senator, traditionally what's happened is, this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit - for the United States by a trillion dollars. As president, you start realizing, you know what, we, we can't play around with this stuff. This is the full faith and credit of the United States. And so that was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I'm the first one to acknowledge it." Oh and look he even takes responsibility for his naivete.) 

Snowdrift Snooki continues: He's taken us in to a state of bankruptcy...um..with his changed idea on it being a good thing to raise the debt ceiling. A very scary proposal was recently revealed to by Geitner essentially saying let the President have free rein in raising the debt ceiling to whatever level he wants it. That's a very scary thought because Barack Obama is a socialist, He believes in socialism, in redistributing the wealth, in confiscating hard earned dollars of our small business men and women so that they cannot reinvest their dollars and hire more people, and grow and expand. Instead he believes in these failed socialist policies, and I say that not to personally condemn our President (Ri-i-i-ght!). I say it because I face reality (I'm sorry, you face what?), and I see what's going on, and I see the path that we are on and the fact that Barack Obama has not had a budget in the four years he's been in office and not been worried about it and continues to spend recklessly other people's money, and that is a sign of that idea of loving socialism."

Next Ins-Hannnity makes us all chuckle when he tries to use "math" to make his argument and then uses the old Romney talking point of claiming that people want "free stuff" and that is why they support Obama. He then reminds Klondike Kardashian that she called Republicans "wusses" during her interview with Greta.

"Well I guess I shouldn't call politicians names."

Hannity: "Why not?"

"I apologize for calling the "wobbly ones" wusses (Did Palin just apologize? Can somebody check the temperature in hell for me?) because that distracts from the point that has to be made (Oh never mind, still hot as ever, and likely to stay that way), and the point is that we are a bankrupt country sixteen trillion dollars in debt, and with entitlement..um..future lookings..um..really we're sixty...seventy...eighty dollars in debt. (Did that economic genius Sarah Palin just arbitrarily increase the national debt by sixty plus trillion dollars? Are we sure her father was a teacher?) There isn't enough money in the world to pay back the future generations that we have stolen from, AND foreign countries that we have borrowed from, AND through quantitative easing..uh..the money that's been printed out of thin air so I say, Republicans, go back to what the planks in your platform represent. It represents reining in government, putting back the power and the responsibility in the individual, not in the state, not in government. Again, that gets us towards socialism. What goes beyond socialism…is communism. I know I’m going to get slammed for speaking so bluntly about what’s going on here, but that’s exactly what is going on. Just, you know,  read history, see what's going on, see how these once very mighty empires have fallen because of government being so burdensome on the people and taking away opportunity, and freedom. Taking away individuals work ethic that leas to the downfall of that country, of that empire.” (You know interestingly enough historian Mark Curtis attributes the fall of the English empire, to in his book 'Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World', to the exactly appositive reason: "The reality is that British governments bear significant responsibility for global poverty-not only as a former colonial power that shaped many of the current unjust structures, but in their championing of a world trade system and economic ideology that enriches the few and impoverishes many more...Yet I do not think I have ever seen a media article that mentions that Britain might in some way systematically contribute to poverty in the world. Is this not extraordinary?" Remarkable certainly, and extraordinary perhaps so, but somehow this tallies with everything anyone who merely wishes to be honest about the British Empire, and about the realities of empire; those of unequal power and wealth relations, and of little or no moral culpability or responsibility. The fuel of the British Empire was not coal or wool after all, but an incredible lack of concern for those trampled underfoot in the quest for bigger and bigger profits.)

Wow, math lessons from Sean Hannity and History lessons from Sarah Palin, I can almost hear my brain cells screaming in anguish.

Revenge of the nerdy number cruncher. Or Nate Silver becomes a God among men. Update!

"It's math"

Remember this from two weeks ago?  

Silver currently writes about the polls and politics at a web site called FiveThirtyEight.com that is affiliated with the New York Times. His currect projections of the presidential race look quite favorable to the incumbent, President Obama, both nationally and especially in the swing states. Routinely he assigns percentage odds of a candidate (usually his beloved Obama) winning a state far higher and disproportionate any reasonable odds of that candidate winning a state as indicated by the polls. 

His blog site has an article yesterday arguing that Mitt Romney's momentum in the polls has stopped. This is wishful thinking of a liberal given that the polls continue to improve for Mitt Romney. He still has Obama winning in Virginia and Colorado even though the most recent and credible polls in those states show Romney winning them. He gives Obama a 73.4 percent chance of winning Ohio, which is downright absurd, as Rasmussen has the candidate tied in Ohio, which really means the undecided voters tip the state of Ohio to Romney if the election were held today. So much for that fantasy-land 73.4 percent chance of Obama winning Ohio. 

Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the “Mr. New Castrati” voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program. In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound. Nate Silver, like most liberal and leftist celebrities and favorites, might be of average intelligence but is surely not the genius he's made out to be. His political analyses are average at best and his projections, at least this year, are extremely biased in favor of the Democrats.

That exceeding unintelligent. insulting, and hysterically incorect post was written by conservative Republican, Dean Chambers, who was so pissed off that Nate Silver's 538 blog was making the case that the GOP's candidate Mitt Romney had ONLY the slimmest of chances of winning this election that he actually started his own polling site called UnskewedPolls.com, which has, for some odd reason, recently been yanked off the internet.

Dean Chamber, a man who CLEARLY should not be casting aspersions about sombody's appearance.

As we now ALL know the conservatives HATE facts, because of course they tend to have a liberal bias, and they hated on Nate Silver with the white hot intensity of somebody who has just found out their trophy wife is banging their son's math tutor.

So they threw everything they could think of at Nate Silver, while those on the liberal side virtually made him our informational guru. 

In the end Nate was so close to the final electoral tally as to be almost scary.

As of this post, Florida has not yet been called.  However it is leaning Obama's way and if/when he wins it he will have won 332 electoral votes, which is just nineteen more than was predicted by Silver's model.  If by some chance he does lose Florida he will only be nine shy of Nate's prediction of 303 electoral votes.

Statistically speaking THAT is un-fucking-believable!

In other words the math that the Republicans tried so hard to ignore essentially snuck up on them and bit them in their chunky pasty white asses!

Which also means my friends, that if tomorrow we wake up and Nate Silver posts that there is an 80% chance of an alien invasion, I am going to take the day off and drive to whatever open field they are predicted to arrive at and welcome our future alien overlords with open arms.

Hey, it would STILL be better than if Mitt Romney had actually won the election!

Update: Dean Chambers eats a big helping of crow.

The Washington Post Fact Checker gives Romney's job creation math four Pinocchio's

"Hey if I'm in the White House and jobs improve, how is that not all about me?"

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

This is a case of bait-and-switch. Romney, in his convention speech, spoke of his plan to create “12 million new jobs,” which the campaign’s white paper describes as a four-year goal. 

But the candidate’s personal accounting for this figure in this campaign ad is based on different figures and long-range timelines stretching as long as a decade — which in two cases are based on studies that did not even evaluate Romney’s economic plan. The numbers may still add up to 12 million, but they aren’t the same thing — not by a long shot. 

In many ways, this episode offers readers a peek behind a campaign wizard’s curtain — and a warning that job-creation claims by any campaign should not be accepted at face value. The white paper at least has the credibility of four well-known economists behind it, but the “new math” of this campaign ad does not add up. 

As readers know, we tend to judge more harshly claims in prepared speeches or ads that were the result of considered discussion by political aides. 

Clearly, some clever campaign staffer thought it would be nice to match up poll-tested themes such as “energy independence,” “tax reform” and “cracking down on China” with actual job numbers. We just find it puzzling that Romney agreed to personally utter these words without asking more questions about the math behind them.

As mentioned before in other articles, Romney's claim of his ability to create 12 million new jobs during his four year term, is predicted by economists to occur NO MATTER WHO gets elected! All Romney did was try and take credit for it ahead of time, kind of like noticing clouds rolling in and suddenly predicting rain.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, there is NOTHING in Mitt Romney's past experience that indicates that he has ANY idea how to create jobs in this country. NOTHING!


So the math produced by the Romney campaign to take advantage and credit for this ALREADY PREDICTED job expansion is essentially just smoke and mirrors.

You know, much like the REST of Romney's campaign of empty promises.

What is orange in color, leaks like a sieve, and cannot do math? This guy!

Courtesy of the Guardian:

In an embarrassing development for John Boehner, the Republican Congress speaker, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) ruled on Tuesday night that his bill would have only cut spending by $850bn (£517bn)over the next decade, not the $1.2tn he had aimed for. Republicans are now racing to rewrite the legislation, and have pushed back a congressional vote on the plan from Wednesday to Thursday at the earliest.

Although Boehner was already struggling to find support for his package, the delay increases the risk that Washington will fail to agree a deal to raise the debt ceiling before 2 August, when the federal government is expected to run out of money.

Just another reminder that Republican math does not work in the real world.

Nobody can call Glenn Beck an intellectual heavyweight. But dammit, he certainly knows his math!

I like how at the end he kind of stops and runs the numbers through his head again to make sure he was right.

I believe that pretty much everything you need to know about Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the Teabaggers is contained in this one YouTube video.

Yet another tat tip for Wonkette!