He’s a millionaire and the interim leader of one of the country’s largest political organizations but he still flies Economy Class.
We were in the same row.
He has very white hair.
Peter MacKay: I didn’t want to sit here, but DND made me. They misled me. They told me it was the only jet suitable to sit in. How was I supposed to know there might be other jets out there? What am I, defence minister? (via Blame Peter MacKay for ther F-35 mess | Full Comment | National Post)
I hardly knew ye.
Stephen Harper must have heard about how much Canadians love Poutine.
Except he must have been so dense and thought they were saying how much they love Putin.
That’s one way to explain his penchant for voter suppression and anti-democratic behaviour.
They seem to have transported this country back to the 50s.
The shit hit the fan in the trans blogosphere last night, when it came to light that there is a disturbing new section in the Identity Screening Regulations used in airports throughout Canada. Simply put, Transgender People are Completely Banned From Boarding Airplanes in Canada.
The offending section of the regulations reads:
5.2 (1) An air carrier shall not transport a passenger if …
(c) the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents;
Although this obviously discriminatory smear of regulation did not come to significant public attention until very recently, it apparently came into effect on July 27th, 2011.
It is important to note that these regulations are not actually a piece of legislation, which would have had to pass through readings and votes in the House and Senate (which is probably why it went unnoticed until now). Rather, the Identity Screening Regulations are a set of rules implemented unilaterally by the Ministry of Transportation, as part of Canada’s so-calledPassenger Protect, which is essentially the Canadian Federal Government’s equivalent to the U.S.’s “no-fly” list.
Minister of Transportation Denis Lebel is, of course, a federal Conservative MP appointed to the cabinet position by Stephen Harper.
This is abhorrent.
While no one has been denied boarding as a result of this regulation, it is still in the books and could have serious repercussions.
I’m really sorry. I tried, I really tried.
GUYS. I DID IT.
The Cookie Cake is complete!
I feel like I’m going to die. I used 2 entire bricks of butter for everything.
The cake recipe I used is from Paula Deen. No explanation needed.
My Girlfriend > Your Girlfriend
Man on the street (by Nerdist)
Campaign Announcement (by Nerdist)
No Mo Bullshit
As requested, here are the election prediction maps for the 2012 US Presidential election. Click on the maps to enlarge them.
Because it’s not clear whom the Republican candidate is going to be, I’ve mapped things out for Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, and Ron Paul. I’m using all the two-way matchup polling data I could track down from the last two months. This is hopefully going to be a semi-regular feature around here, depending on the availability of polling data and also on how the nomination race progresses.
The model I’m using here is called national uniform swing. Basically, it works like this: I take national level polling data, and then assume that all the shifts in national numbers since 2008 correspond to uniform shifts across the entire country. (I realize this is a big and dubious assumption, but in practice a national uniform swing model does a pretty decent job of predicting changes. Once the Republican candidate is determined then it will be more worthwhile to look at state-level data.) Anyway, after that I use the margins of error on the polling data to generate win probabilities for each state, and then translate that into electoral college votes. Nebraska and Maine’s special system for allocating electoral votes is included here, but I haven’t drawn the results on the map for the sake of clarity.
Under current polling, note that Romney is the only viable candidate. The election is still a long ways away, and obviously lots of things could happen to shift the polling (e.g., a big new war, large-scale bank failures, Rapture, raptors) and also other candidates like Huckabee could conceivably enter the race - but right now, Romney is the only Republican candidate who has any chance of winning. Bachmann and especially Perry still have relatively low name recognition, so that could change as more people learn about them, but right now Romney is by far the most competitive candidate the Republicans could nominate.
Interestingly, with Romney as a candidate it’s entirely possible that the electoral college returns a tie, with 269 electors for each of Obama and Romney. You can read what ilyagerner has to say about how that would be handled. It would not be pretty.
Also, many states are entirely locked out of consideration in the presidential election, because they have a greater than 99% chance of sticking with the same party as last time. Only the following states (or districts) went with the same party as last time with probability less than 99% under any scenario:
- Arizona
- Florida
- Georgia
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska (and its first and second districts)
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- West Virginia
Don’t see your state on that list? Then there’s basically no Republican candidate who could make your state at all competitive. And many of these states only come into play if Romney is the Republican candidate. Notably missing are four of the five most populous states, which collectively account for about 100 million people.
If you have any questions or feedback (especially on the data visualization, because that’s something I’m really trying to work on), please let me know.
I swear, I’m gonna follow this election and finally understand how the popular vote/electoral college system works this time around.
Ugh, civils. It’s not that hard.
There are a bunch of fancy pants old white guys. They make up the electoral college. There are a certain number from each state. More populous states have more representatives.
The popular vote, as determined state by state, determines who these representatives will vote for.
It’s a flippin’ stupid system.
What is this country’s main problem? Too many politicians…our elected government needs less lawyers and more business men, scientists, and engineers.
Less businessmen.
More Scientists. More Engineers. More Doctors. More Professors. More Economists.
Fewer*
(via theold-foxwithsocks)
