Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Election 2012: Things to Consider

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Four years ago, then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) promised us the world if we elected him president. He would cut the deficit in half, he would bring about a new era of bipartisanship in Washington, he would get unemployment back in-check, and he would run the most transparent presidential administration in history. Well, the people of the United States elected him by an impressive margin with a mandate for all of these things, and none of them happened.

In his first two years as President of the United States, he nearly quadrupled the annual deficit from the previous record set under President George W. Bush. When Republican leaders in Congress presented their economic ideas to the president days after his inauguration, he dismissed them out-of-hand and declared that, “Elections have consequences. . . . I won.” That killed any chance for a productive relationship between the leaders of our two major parties for the four years that followed. Meanwhile, unemployment rates remain stubbornly high. The promises of transparency never materialized, and, on the contrary, Obama has engaged in the very ‘politics as usual’ that he decries, protecting his cronies (like perjurer Attorney General Eric Holder) and crafting major bills (like the ‘ObamaCare’ health care reform bill) behind closed doors.

In the two years that the Democratic Party had a monopoly on our government, holding the presidency and strong majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, things didn’t get better. No, they got worse. The deficits grew astronomically, and the money we spent seemingly just disappeared into the ether. Obama’s ‘stimulus’ plan cost more (inflation-adjusted) than the entire New Deal under President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D), and what do we have to show for it? You’d be hard-pressed to identify any significant ‘stimulus’ accomplishment. Obama’s only major policy accomplishment—the health care reform bill—was badly botched, did not address the worst problems with our health care system, and undermined individual liberty and ran afoul of the Tenth Amendment. A majority of Americans consistently favor repealing it.

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Windows 8: Upgrade and Early Impressions

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Over the last week, I upgraded my two PC’s—one custom-built desktop and one Asus notebook—to the recently-released Microsoft Windows 8 Pro operating system. This is my first time playing early adopter since switching back to Windows after a decade running Apple Macintosh machines as my primary computers and, although I did hit some snags along the way, I can count it as a success. Both machines are now happily humming along with the new system.

The Upgrade Process

Microsoft clearly attempted to make the process of upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8 pretty painless. You just download the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant to your machine and run it. The assistant scans your system, identifies any potentially problematic or incompatible applications, and then allows you to purchase the upgrade (at about $40, for the time being) and launch it almost immediately. When you launch the actual upgrade process, you have to enter your license key (which you just got from the upgrade assistant; why can’t it pre-populate if you just bought one?) and then you get a screen asking you what you want to keep from your current installation. You can keep everything (your apps and data), just keep your data (i.e., your home directory), or ‘nothing’ (i.e., wipe everything and start anew).

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Reading the Electoral Signs

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I live in Northern Virginia, which has long been one of the Democratic Party enclaves in an otherwise Republican-friendly state. I now live in Loudoun County, which tends more to the ‘right’ and has a predominantly Republican set of representatives in the local, state, and federal governments . . . but neighboring Fairfax County almost always votes Democratic, as does Arlington County and most of the nearby cities, at least in the federal races. As long as I can remember, political signs and bumper stickers in the area have clearly reflected this tendency. Gore and Kerry signs outnumbered Bush signs in Fairfax County in 2000 and 2004, and Obama signs far outnumbered McCain signs in 2008 (a race that saw Virginia go for the Democratic Party candidate for the first time since 1964).

The number of signs for each presidential candidate in a jurisdiction doesn’t necessarily reflect how its vote will go. Plenty of people have a favorite candidate and will vote for him, but don’t like him quite enough to advertise it. Some people—conservatives in predominantly liberal areas, and liberals in a predominantly conservative areas—won’t advertise their views for fear of vandalism, or of alienating their neighbors. Measuring signs as a measure of electoral strength would also under-represent the voters who suffer under overly-restrictive homeowners’ association rules (like mine in South Riding), or who live in condos and apartments. As such, the Democratic presidential candidates won Fairfax County by narrower margins than a sign poll would have indicated in 2000 and 2008. But it is still an interesting measure of voter passion. Poor candidates—like Kerry in 2004 and McCain in 2008—tend to find themselves under-represented in people’s yards as compared to their same-party candidates in other years.

So how does Northern Virginia look today? First of all, the Virginia Department of Transportation now has authority to remove political signs from highway rights of way—the First Amendment be damned—so the number of signs in shoulders and medians is far, far less than it has been in past years. But even putting this aside and looking only at political signs on private property, there are far fewer signs than there usually are. This indicates a distinct lack of passion for both President Barack Obama (D) and former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA). But the really amazing thing is that Romney seems to be winning the sign war. In Fairfax County, I estimate that he is ahead of Obama at least 60/40 in yard signs. Even in reliably Democratic Arlington County it seemed to be about 50/50 when I drove through last weekend. In the twelve years I’ve lived here in Northern Virginia, I’ve never seen a Republican presidential candidate win the sign war until now.

This is all very anecdotal and unscientific. I admit that my impressions may be skewed because I spend most of my time in the western half of Fairfax County, and spend less time in the eastern half than I did in either 2000 or 2004 (as my ‘center’ has moved further and further west). But even if I look at the specific neighborhoods that I have visited regularly and consistently over the whole twelve years I’ve lived here—the part of Reston where my grandmother lives, or Franklin Farm, or Clocktower—the general trend still seems to have moved in a distinctively Republican direction. Will this bear-out on election day? Your guess is as good as mine.

Yet Another ‘Storm of the Century’

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NHC Forecast, 2pm Friday

Hurricane Sandy, currently centered just north of the Bahamas, is already being billed as a catastrophic storm of the kind that only hits once every hundred years. I might believe the hyperventilating media if they hadn’t already labeled quite a few storms with the same kind of hyperbole over the last decade. As I posted on Facebook this morning, “We’re twelve years into the century and I think we’re on our fourth or fifth ‘storm of the century’ so far.”

I don’t mean to characterize Sandy as an innocuous, run of the mill storm. It isn’t. Sandy is forecast to merge with a cold front and slam the east coast hard with gale-force winds and an impressive deluge of rain. We should expect widespread coastal flooding, and those of us further inland should expect flash floods, downed trees, power outages, and even accumulating snow (at higher elevations). A similar confluence of Hurricane Grace with a cold front in 1991 came to be known as the ‘Perfect Storm‘ and caused over two hundred million dollars in damage and killed thirteen. Thirty-foot waves lashed the coast, destroying hundreds of homes and inundating roads and buildings.

The ‘Perfect Storm’ happened twenty-one years ago, but in the mean time the east coast has been hit by plenty of other major weather systems. I personally remember the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area getting hit hard by Hurricane Fran in 1996, Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and Hurricane Irene in 2011. We had the ‘derecho’ storms this last summer and countless other severe thunderstorms, even some that produced tornadoes. We had the Blizzard of 1996, the Blizzard of 2003, and the repeated ‘Snowpocalypse’ blizzards of the 2010-2011 season. Across the United States you’ll find regular outbreaks of tornadoes, river flooding, droughts, blizzards, and major hurricanes.

None of this is out of the ordinary. If it seems like wacky weather is happening more often, it’s mostly because we’re more connected with the rest of the country (and the world) than we have ever been before . . . and because the television news outlets think they have to breathlessly cover every storm as-if it’s the end of the world. I guess it’s good for the ratings. But the reality is that weather patterns in the U.S. remain about the same as they’ve been for at least the last three hundred years. The fact that we’re all still here is proof that we can survive it.

So if you live in the path of the storm, take appropriate precautions. If the local authorities order an evacuation, get out of there. But let’s not engage in useless hyperbole and exaggeration. It’s a bad storm; it will probably cause damage, and maybe even a handful of deaths and injuries. But it’s not the apocalypse. Batten down the hatches, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Moving Toward a Complete Electoral Projection

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Back in August I launched the Off on a Tangent election widget on the home page, which includes a projected electoral map for the presidential race. I have been making regular updates as new poll data comes in, but I have so-far erred on the side of certainty and stability. I’ve only made changes to my projection when they are supported by very solid data. Generally I have only colored a state red or blue when reliable, nonpartisan polls consistently indicate that one candidate is ahead in that state by a margin greater than the margin of error. As of earlier today, Off on a Tangent had Obama ahead in the electoral college by 237-206, with 95 electors—those from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin—still listed as ‘swing states.’

With the election just over two short weeks away, I am making a change to my methodology. Rather than erring on the side of certainty and stability, I will now be erring on the side of completeness. In other words, I will be less cautious when I decide to color a state red or blue and will only leave a state gray if the polls there are too erratic or unreliable to discern a clear trend. Because many states are still polling within the margin of error, this means you should expect more instability in the electoral count as some shift one way or the other. My hope is that the Off on a Tangent projection on the day before the election will be a close, complete prediction of the race’s outcome.

After applying this new methodology, Off on a Tangent currently projects that Obama is still narrowly ahead in the electoral college vote by 253-248, with 37 electors—those from Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Ohio—still too close to call. Again, these numbers are likely to be quite volatile over the remaining weeks until the election. I will review and adjust them at least once per day until then.

The electoral map will remain available on the Off on a Tangent home page and (with some more detail) on the Off on a Tangent election site until the night before the election. On election day, I will clear the maps and they will reflect the live results as they come in on election night.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.