Hi, Mister Campaign Fundraiser Technician?
Yes, you. I don’t care if you work in a campaign, or just sell your services to campaigns. I’m talking to you.
We at RedState.com do enjoy asking our readers to give money to candidates. When a good Republican needs help, we want to find that help. And one thing you guys have already figured out is that nifty website widgets draw attention and can fire up donors.
So please, when you make those widgets, design them to be flexible. Help us help you by making them resizeable, or at least available in a variety of sizes. Don’t make them a javascript which embeds unknown HTML and runs unknown code on our site, possibly conflicting with other code or even our ads, forcing us to take down the widget and helping nobody.
A Flash widget is best. Make it as easy on us to embed your widgets as Youtube makes it to embed their videos. With those, we can paste in the code, change the size if we want, and ship it. The easier and more reliable that process is, and the more compatible your widget is, the more likely it is we’ll be able to drive money to your candidate or client.
And I’m sure it’s not just us who has these problems. So by helping us, you’ll help others make your widgets work, too.
Thank you.
First id sold out, now The Pirate Bay goes, too.
Dizzying change on the Internet. The Pirate Bay can and probably will be replaced by some other group and its site if the new owners change things, but id? If id can no longer do its own thing, if John Carmack gets shackled, then that’s a permanent loss.
I have been waiting a while to use that one.
Representative Mary Bono Mack (R-California) has been a thorn in my side for years. An RMSP ‘moderate’, she’s been shifting left ever since she took the seat vacated by the late Sonny Bono, her first husband. But now that she’s one of the difference makers for the Cap and Tax bill, suddenly the whole party’s grumbling about her.
Welcome to the club. Have a seat and we’ll catch up to the latest.
I’m not the greatest fan of American Conservative Union (or any) legislative ratings, because they’re in practice too opaque and difficult to analyze, but in looking at Rep. Bono Mack’s record, the ratings are illustrative of the point. In 1997, Sonny Bono’s last full year in office, the ACU gave him a solid 87 in then-District 44. Then-Mary Bono’s first year, 1998 she missed the first five votes, but in the last 20 she compiled a 95 with the ACU. After the special election she seemed like a great choice, so she easily won the general that year after winning the special election.
There’s just one problem: she didn’t stay that way. Her ratings since, according to the ACU: 76, 68, 68, 71, 68, 56, 71, 68, 65, and in 2008 she capped things off with a 74. It’s clear, then, that her votes when she finished Sonny’s term were just a ruse to win the special election and get the seat for life, this being a solid Republican seat and all. You don’t drop from a 95 to a pretty steady 70 by accident.
So here we are. Bono Mack has drifted so far left that she now supported the President’s foolish Cap and Tax plan to manage “carbon dioxide pollution.” She has an excuse though, says Flash Report:
The last thing I want is the EPA coming in and regulating every small business and farm in California. This federal bill is actually LESS stringent than the regulations we’re seeing coming our way as a result of AB32. Furthermore, this legislation REMOVES the authority for the EPA to regulate GHG’s, and also puts the brakes on the State’s regime. Allowing for a more national approach to this issue is vital to me, as we aren’t in this alone. California has already taken steps to embrace clean energy options, and this bill will reward those efforts, rather than allowing AB32 to force Californians to foot the burden alone.
I worked hard to improve a bill that I never cosponsored and agree still needs improvements. This includes more domestic energy production like nuclear power, a clean, viable energy option California should aggressively pursue, along with enhanced focus on innovation and technologies that will put us ahead of the rest of the world.
I’ve snipped the statement down to the meat. Are we truly to believe that California will be better off with this bill, should it pass? Are we supposed to think that President Obama will fight California and force our state to have less taxation and regulation? I don’t buy it.
Neither do the area’s Republicans. She has at least two potential challengers in the wings, says Red County via Flash Report . It seems former Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia and former state Senator Jim Battin are both out there as possibilities. I’m not taking a stand on either at the moment, but I hope at least one of them steps up to the plate.
District 45 did squeak by for Barack Obama 52-47 in 2008, but that was an outlier (as was this election for many otherwise-Republican areas). We still voted Republican for other offices, as we’ve done for many years (President Bush won this district twice by more than Obama did once). Our district deserves better than a tax hiker like Mary Bono Mack.
Mary Bono Mack, California Republican, decided to vote for “Cap and Trade” taxes.
It’s time she got the primary challenge of her career. It’s also time that conservatives in California 45 make it clear that we will not give one dime or lift one finger for her in any election ever again. If the party doesn’t like that, then the party can nominate a mainstream Republican in place of this left fringe Republican.
id Sells out. I find this sad. It’s only a “win for fans of id,” as the press release says, if they’re going to continue to open up the source for people to play with for years after. I have my doubts on now that Carmack is just an employee. It’s also only a win if they will continue to support unix, and ditto on the concerns.
Fun little series. Nice style, interesting characters, and for me an unexpected ending.
Picked it up at Fry’s a couple weeks ago. Next up: Komugi.
Via Slashdot we come across SCOTUSScores.com, a site which purports to give a clear visual representation of the Supreme Court’s voting patterns over the years. Each justice is given a color coding for every term representing how he voted.
There’s just one problem with it: It’s biased.
Updated below the fold…
No, really? A biased chart of the Supreme Court just in time for a fight over Obama’s nominee to the court, and probably future nominations to come? Who’d have thought it? But take a look: The colors are skewed. The left and right are set to different scales, where the deepest red color shows up at about 5, for Clarence Thomas, while the deepest blue color only shows up when you get to about 6.5, for William O. Douglas. See the problem?
By cursory inspection, all left-leaning justices will look more ‘moderate’ and ‘centrist’ than the right-leaning justices. William Rehnquist’s “Lone Ranger” period is exaggerated, while Thurgood Marshall is moderated.
This cannot stand, so I have fixed the chart.
Sure, the chart’s not as colorful, but now it’s true to the data and that’s what counts.
Update: I got an email from Alex Lundry at TargetPoint. With his permission, it follows:
Neil,
I tried posting a comment to your RedState blog, but it won’t let me, as I’ve only just signed up for an account.
First, thanks for posting the link to SCOTUSscores.com and for the feedback. It’s especially great to see people interacting with the visualization and repurposing it. Well done.
Your point about the coloring is a legitimate criticism, and in fact, we plan on adding an absolute color reference in our next update. But perhaps some more details about precisely how the coloring works could clear up any lingering confusion about the existing display options.
There are actually four different ways to display color on the chart. The colors are chosen based upon the Min, Max, and Median of the area we are comparing. So, in the first view, the “overall” view, the darkest Red is anchored to the maximum ideology number across all justices and all terms, the darkest Blue is anchored to the minimum score, and the purest white is anchored to the actual median number.
The second “compare” option, “within each seat, row” calculates separate color anchors for each row.
Similarly, the third compare option, “within each year, column” calculates separate color anchors for each column.
I hope this helps you better understand the colors and the decisions we made on the chart. I would argue that the views in our chart and in your version are each, in their own way, “true” to the data.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
– Alex
p.s. As far as the lying and bias accusations go, you might want to check out my bio and TargetPoint’s work/client list and see precisely what is we do. We are most certainly NOT liberal apologists.
My reply: Yes, we do have a 24 hour waiting period before posting is allowed. We get that many troublemakers that it’s essential.
But as for TargetPoint, I do have to retreat from some of my claims. They have a track record of working for the right, most notably Bush/Cheney 2004. I’m now inclined to believe that this wasn’t malicious, but rather was just an unfortunate choice of a right-leaning group to give some fodder to the left on the eve of a big battle.
So no, I don’t think they’re lying. I just think their defaults are wrong. I thank Alex and hope TargetPoint keeps working on that chart to improve it.
Kotaku is whining that Obama is threatening to go statist on video games. Elections have consequences. If you don’t like it, vote the other guy next time.
The Lakers are the World Champions!
And as I’m saying, G’bye Red Auerbach. Phil is King.