some statistics on the geographical distribution of those interested in Ron Paul

Due to my dissatisfaction with the MSM polls, I dug a bit more into google analytics today regarding the hits to my blog regarding Ron Paul. Here's the breakdown by state:



Pretty interesting. Fascinating how the 2nd largest total of unique reads (461) came from New York, the home state of the leading candidates of both parties. I also dug a bit more into where the blog hits came from:

lewrockwell.com (referral)	4,608	58.87%
google (organic)	1,355	17.31%
(direct) ((none))	570	7.28%
gumstix.org (referral)	323	4.13%
images.google.com (referral)	128	1.64%

I also found that over a third of my regular non-Paul reads this month came from a funny piece I'd written years ago about chair hanging sex. None of my other serious pieces come even close. I sure hope those readers go away satisfied, as that idea never turned into the career I'd humorously hoped for. Sigh.

The most interesting piece of data I've seen today regards the number of people that list their employer when making a campaign donation. What the author calls The Corruption Quotient is here.

And, if you care about the entire series of articles in this thread about the election, not just this little piece of it, click here

Labels: election 2008, hillary clinton, online polling, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 1:27 PM 4 comments

  Researching Ron Paul

Over the last two days, my blog, which averages 74 readers a day normally, 90+/day or so when an A-list blogger bothers to link back - got over 6450 unique readers, according to google's adsense report, primarily through links from Lew Rockwell's blog, technorati searches for Ron Paul, and google searches.

I am publishing this data because they are the closest thing to an accurate poll of readership and interest that I can assemble and a hell of a lot more accurate than any other self selecting poll I can think of. I did some further analysis to see where in the US the readership came from, here.

My reaction? Wow. People are really motivated about Ron Paul. I got over 30 comments on my reluctant conversion, and some good points were made. I didn't know about how the Interstate superhighway system came to be, for example, and I got a steer to some excellent reading material.

Few stayed long enough on my blog to read anything else (roughly 1 in 4 clicked on another link). I still hope that I could get people on all sides of the issues to put away their axes and try to come up with constructive answers to my top 10 questions for America, but I'll keep plugging away at that, on my own, I guess.

Also I now have a little more sympathy for the redstaters (not a lot!) who have tired of the violent debates taking place in their living room. If this is the kind of welcome a typical new Ron Paul convert can expect, it's going to be a massive uphill climb for his supporters. Then again, several responses to my simple question about deficit spending on redstate did not make me feel particularly warm and fuzzy about that crowd either.

Probably the most comprehensive, well researched and heavily linked 4 pieces about Ron Paul's negatives that I know of was published at the Daily Kos (1, 3)

I'm still working through those articles. There are some potentially good points made, but far more research and thought is required on my part before coming to a conclusion. I'm still reading. I for sure don't think Ron Paul is doing himself a disservice by ignoring this sort of stuff.

Some notes:

The Kos author certainly wears his biases on his sleeve. As the fence sitter I am, I would be better persuaded by reading a piece with less adverbs and adjectives and more facts.

People of any political persuasion that use dialectic of "left vs right" or "far left and far right", lose me every time. I would really, really, really like to convince people that are trying to argue coherently about politics to frame their arguments in terms of the Pournelle Chart or something similar.

The Kos series depends heavily on descriptions of the content of a copy of a newsletter called the “Ron Paul Survival Report”, during 1993, which Paul claims he did not write. In particular, some racially insensitive comments about Rodney King in that newsletter offended many.

It would be good for the truth if somebody out there, on any side, would actually go and photocopy more of these newsletters and put them up on the web. According to At least one issue is preserved at the university of Wisconsin. Maybe more copies survive.

The Kos also relied heavily on an interview with Paul published in the October, 2001 issue of the Texas Monthly. It's behind a paywall. I invested 12 bucks in a subscription, and read that article on Dr No for myself. It was 12 bucks well spent. I also emailed the author of the piece and asked him to remove the paywall. The full content of Paul's statements on this matter were:

In spite of calls from Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, and other civil rights leaders for an apology for such obvious racial typecasting, Paul stood his ground. He said only that his remarks about Barbara Jordan related to her stands on affirmative action and that his written comments about blacks were in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time." He denied any racist intent. What made the statements in the publication even more puzzling was that, in four terms as a U. S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this.
When I ask him why, he pauses for a moment, then says, "I could never say this in the campaign, but those words weren't really written by me. It wasn't my language at all. Other people help me with my newsletter as I travel around. I think the one on Barbara Jordan was the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady." Paul says that item ended up there because "we wanted to do something on affirmative action, and it ended up in the newsletter and became personalized. I never personalize anything."

Some quotes from that article the kos author omitted are:

Back in his quiet, high-ceilinged office in the Capitol, the dreaded Dr. No turns out to be something different from the gun-toting, fire-breathing, right-wing militia nut his opponents would have you believe he is. Instead of a libertarian Genghis Khan, I am talking to a friendly, slender man with graying hair, wearing a standard-issue chalk-stripe suit. He would strike you as a kindly, crinkle-eyed, slightly absentminded family doctor, direct from central casting. In fact, he is a doctor, a prominent obstetrician in Brazoria County who has delivered four thousand babies, a good portion of those while serving as a congressman. He is answering, in a patient and good-natured way, a question asking if he thinks the federal government has become too powerful.
"I think it's a police state that is absolutely out of control," he says placidly, eating a modest lunch of canned soup and a white-bread sandwich at his desk. "We have eighty-three thousand federal officials carrying guns. Every regulation that is made, every federal law that is written, is done with the idea that there is a gun waiting right there to enforce it. If you don't pay your taxes or follow the regulation or use your land exactly as they tell you to, if you cut down a tree you're not supposed to or fill in a ditch, a gun will come and take your money, take your land, or put you in jail. Everything that is done up here is based on a gun. It's an armed state. It has gotten so big already, it's going to be hard to stop." He pauses, then smiles and says, "You know, I'm for gun control. I want to get the guns out of the hands of the bureaucrats."

...

What launched Paul into politics were two distinctly un-Misean actions taken by President Richard Nixon in 1971: He intervened massively in the U.S. economy by establishing wage and price controls, and he took the country off the gold standard. For Paul, these actions were unthinkable exercises of federal power. We all have our moments of clarity. His epiphany came on August 15, 1971. "I remember the day very clearly," he says. "Nixon closed the gold window, which meant admitting that we could no longer meet our commitments and that there would be no more backing of the dollar. After that day, all money would be political money rather than money of real value. I was astounded."

...

For reasons that even he cannot quite explain, in 1987 Ron Paul became the Libertarian party's candidate for president of the United States. Though his positions on most issues are identical to those of the Libertarians (abortion being the main exception), Paul admits that this was a strange, almost Sisyphean move, considering his prospects for victory. "I probably invested close to a year," he says. "It was a lot of time and effort. Sometimes I had some ambivalence about how productive it was."As it turned out, it was hugely productive but not in ways that Paul could see then. Though he got less than one percent of the vote in the 1988 presidential election, he managed to unite a vast network of true believers—not only staunch Libertarians, but also anti-gun control folks, fiscal conservatives, home-schoolers, right-to-lifers, school prayer advocates, isolationists, and people who generally felt that the U.S. government was veering out of control. Their financial support would become a key factor in Paul's return to congressional politics.

Labels: election 2008, online polling, red state, Ron Paul

  ¶ 8:36 AM 1 comments

  My top ten presidental debate questions

I've noted elsewhere how much I like the msnbc poll, as it both educates and polls, and is at the same time, fair, and easy to understand. The candidates and issues are listed in alphabetical order; the results are shown in shades of green (good) to red (bad). I'd like the poll to also have a tab that showed the number of votes, and various other statistics (repeat votes, vote locations, etc), and for msnbc to publish its source code for this poll so it can be reused and re purposed– but I can't have everything.

The one thing I'd really like to have in that poll – and most others – is the ability to frame the questions myself in categories that I cared about, and for me to be able reach statistically significant numbers of people with those questions.

I'm tickled that 10 questions is trying to pull together a democratically created poll – but IMHO it's too little, too late. The questions need to be sent in via video, and uploading video from where I'm at is an exercise in tedium, even if I looked halfway good on camera. Still, I'd like to participate so I'll use this blog for my questions. Perhaps others will film questions like these.

My top 10 issues for 2008 at the federal level:

1)(Economy) The deficit

2)(Economy) The estate tax

3)(Economy) Alternative minimum tax

4)(Politics) Personal freedom

5)(Science) The space program

6)(Politics) Gerrymandering

7)(Health Care) Health Care

8)(Politics) Immigration

9)(War) the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations

10)(Politics) Enhancing the internet

My top 10 election 2008 questions

If I had control of a polling system, or of a presidential debate of democrats or republicans, these are the questions I would ask. To keep the question short and fair, with a maximum amount of screen time for candidate answers, I might skip the first background sentences entirely, and just ask the questions. I don't want to be as guilty of framing the debate as others are, and I'm doing enough merely by framing the questions thusly:

1)(Economy) In 1999, the budget of the federal government was in surplus, with the elimination of the federal debt seemingly feasible. Now the debt is past 9 trillion dollars and the yearly deficit stands at an amount so staggering I can't even print it. What would you do to cure the debt and restore a balanced budget?

2)(Economy) The estate tax, which used to raise 70 billion dollars a year, is due to expire in 2010. Would you reinstate it? If so, how would you change it?

3)(Economy) An increasing number of Americans are subject to the alternative minimum tax, rather than the normal income tax. What would you do about this situation?

4)(Immigration) How would you reform the H1B visa program?

5)(Space) The space shuttle is due to be retired in 2010, and the earliest a replacement is scheduled to come online is 2014. According to President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, a return to the moon is scheduled for 2020. Do you think these dates are reasonable? Would you continue these programs as is? Cut the budgets? Increase them? Encourage private development of space vehicles? Go for the Moon? Mars? Or aim for the near earth asteroids?

6)(Politics) What, if anything, would you do about gerrymandering?

7)(Health Care) What percentage of the public's health care financing should go to drugs and what percentage to treatment?

8)(Freedom) How would you maximize freedom in America and the world?

9)(Internet) America has fallen far behind the rest of the world in internet deployment and speed. What would you do about that?

10)(War) How would you more effectively govern the occupied territories abroad?

I note that there are three places above where I do directly challenge the conventional wisdom while framing the question.

I can't contain my outrage at the size of the federal debt. I tried.

The Iraq war ceased being a war shortly after Baghdad fell, and became an occupation. I can't bring myself to call it a war anymore, and don't know how anyone can.

The depth of my space question represents my deep interest in science and space and my utter despair at finding a candidate that had ever talked about the issues there.

And perhaps it's a little unfair of me to hyperlink to the facts containing my assertions. (I haven't finished revising this posting to add all the hyperlinks I'd like to add, so please check back later)

I couldn't help myself but frame things that way, but I did limit showing my biases as best as I could. Hopefully that's good enough. I do have my own opinions on all these questions, and I will publish them in my blog over the next week. I look forward to any comments on the above, and hope that others will ignore the current framing of the national debates, ignore me, too - and formulate their own top 10 questions and publish them, in some format, somewhere.

Perhaps some answers - or better questions - will arise.

Labels: debates, economy, election 2008, online polling, politics, space, statistics

  ¶ 9:25 AM 3 comments

  Keep the online polls

I have never seen a sorrier looking crop of presidential candidates than 2008's.

I have never seen such overwhelming evidence of media bias.

I have only once before seen an American economy so poised on the brink of self destruction.

I despise the current situation in America so much that I have packed my bags and left the country. Shortly, what little money I have to my name will exit with me. I know a lot of people that feel this way, and if they weren't buried by mountains of debt, they'd leave, too. I try not to care anymore, but America is my homeland, after all, and I think this election will make or break the country.

In a nutshell, the treatment of Ron Paul's Republican candidacy demonstrates everything wrong with America.

Paul has won, sometimes by outrageous margins, nearly every online post-debate poll conducted to date.

The result? Every major news outlet has stopped reporting on the results, citing vague allegations of probable spamming and fraud on the part of the Ron Paul supporters. One (CNBC) even stopped their poll in the middle when the results were going 75% in favor of Ron Paul. 30+ thousand people voted in MSNBC's poll, and Ron Paul won by an 85%+ margin.

OPEN LETTER TO THE MAJOR NEWS MEDIA ABOUT ONLINE POLLING

PLEASE assign a couple reporters and a talented programmer or two to investigate how the Ron Paul supporters are or are not spamming the online polls? THIS IS A STORY! A little investigative journalism is required, don't you think, before brushing off the results as obviously wrong, simply because they don't agree with what your perception of what an educated, literate electorate, like the internet community, should be thinking?

And – if you prove that spamming is the issue – you might want to hire a few talented programmers to help you fix the the problem.

In this same report, also please explain to me how text messaging based polls could be spammed. As a computer and cell phone expert I'm hard pressed to think of any that don't require major work to implement.

(Note: I actually watch the debates, and then TURN OFF the talking heads spinning the results and think about what was said, for myself. I'll replay portions, too, just so I am sure I understand something. Sometimes I even research some of the rhetoric on the internet until I find the truth.)

Hey, mainstream media, while you are at it, explain to me again how your 'scientific' polls are scientific? You've never called ME. Is that because, like a 100 million plus Americans, I am registered with donotcall.gov? Also explain to me why, exactly, you never post exactly what the questions in your 'scientific' poll were, so others can judge the poll's objectivity. What's scientific about that?

I promise to pay attention to a good hard hitting investigation of my fellow netizens, and the science of the official polling processes....

And in the meantime, keep the online polls going.

Labels: america, bias, election 2008, mainstream media, msm, online polling, Ron Paul

  ¶ 1:09 PM 3 comments