by HillBuzz

Hat tip to Bulldog!

This is really intended for Republicans who did not follow the primaries on the Democrats’ side this year (because, well, we guess you took a nice long Atlantis cruise to Mars, in which case, color us jealous).

The same pattern that unfolded during our primaries is happening again, because the media has just one tattered old used playbook (written by David Axelrod, of course), and they have not deviated from it yet. What the media and Obama campaign did, in concert, to Hillary Clinton before every major primary is what they are doing to McCain/Palin now.  Here are the top three media/Obama head tricks to watch out for in the last days before the election.

If you, collectively, can keep Republicans and other McCain voters from falling for these, we believe there’s nothing Obama can do to win this election. The ONLY way McCain loses is if you Eeyores allow the media to keep you from the polls.

Head Games Coming Your Way:

(1) Calls for McCain to just give up and quit, because the race is over. This one is a favorite of the trolls who lurk on pro-McCain sites.  We get them here, despite all the spraying and fumigating we do, but notice how we ignore these trolls.  We’ve identified two paid Obama staffers who have been assigned to HillBuzz. We picked them up around the same time people from Ace and LGF started picking up some of our stuff — so our guess is they were assigned to us by whoever was monitoring those sites. They’re different trolls than the ones assigned to us during the primaries (we only had one back then, so evidently we’ve gotten more on the radar now). One of them starts posting “her” concern troll remarks here at 8am.  The other one starts “his” remarks around 5pm or so. It appears there are two shifts for the trolls — and from what we can see, they share the same computer and IP address. And it’s an address right here in Chicago. Imagine that. We wonder if we’ve ever run into these people at Houlihan’s on Michigan Avenue after one of their shifts, as that’s where a lot of Obama staffers like to go for a drink, and where we often hang out to see what we can overhear while pretending to read a book over a little dinner. Since we’re going to be in Ohio the rest of the time before the election, we’re okay with letting you in on that little bit, as we won’t be able to eavesdrop on you anymore. But the information these Obama staffers inadvertantly provided was really helpful on a lot of things.  A great way to see how the race was going was to listen for how “audacious” these people felt that day. That’s their internal lingo:  “Are you feelin’ it? Are you feelin’ audacious today?”.  “Nope, not feelin’ the audacity today, ’cause we know those PA polls are bogus and BO’s not gonna take the state”. Word to the wise: these staffers were never as “audacious” as the media and skewed polls have insisted they should be.

It’s so funny, but when you work on these campaigns every day and give up all of your free time and all other activities for this, you just know when the media’s lying and reading from an Axelrod script. The coerographed calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race before New Hampshire, before Super Tuesday, before Ohio and Texas, before Pennsylvania, before West Virgina, before Kentucky, before Indiana, and before South Dakota were completely ridiculous to us — and yet, Eeyores always listened, and lost enthusiasm and drive because ‘the TV said Hillary needs to just quit”. We know this kept some Eeyores from going out to vote, because they thought, “Why bother? The TV told me she’s gonna lose!”.  Well, the TV lies. And the toaster says you’re fat. Unfortunately, the toaster’s telling the truth. The microwave tells you to set fires – and that just means you’re nuts, because why would it do that?

The ONLY way McCain loses this race is if the media, operating as a full-fledged wing of the Obama campaign, breeds enough Eeyores amongst you to keep enough people home for Obama to squeak out wins. Hillary Clinton should have won Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, by larger margins that she did. Ohio should have been a 13-point win, Pennsylvania should have been a 12-point win, and Indiana should have been a 9-point win. Eeyores staying home, saying, “Oh bother, TV say me stay home, me sad, need dydee changed!” is what cost Hillary those extra points.

Don’t be Eeyores on Tuesday! Get those Eeyore butts off your couches, away from toxic TV, and GO VOTE. Get everyone you know to vote — tell them if they don’t, then Obama will turn America socialist, and we’re going to start with their house and bank account when we begin redistributing wealth. That should motivate them.

(2) Wild claims of Obama winning states that shock and surprise you. Since Obama believes there are 57 states (maybe 58 or 59, depending on how he’s counting that day), the Obamedia will report huge wins for Dear Leader in the states of Confusion, Denial, and Undress, with Atlantis, Oz, Hopetopia, and Leningrad all going to Obama early on November 4th — because everyone loves Obama so much, that places that don’t even exist have voted for him (with 100% of the vote of the dead, cartoon characters, and historical figures going to Dear Leader in unprecedented numbers). The best example of the Obamedia making up lies like this was on Super Tuesday, when every Eeyore we knew ran through the streets crying and pants-wetting, gnashing their teeth and yanking their hair as the sky fell around them — BECAUSE OBAMA IS WINNING CALIFORNIA!  MASSACHUSETTS! ARKANSAS! TENNESSEE! NEW JERSEY! NEW YORK! WAAAAAAAAH!  DOOOOOOOMED!

Honestly, we are never kidding when we say what a true living Hell Eeyores have made our lives since January. We never joke when we tell you how much damage these people have done.  Just using HillBuzz as an example, there are at least 3 essays each day we would love to have time to write, on topics we feel are important, or on intel we get from sources in the Democratic party (or eavesdropped off Obama staffers or at Obama events), but we don’t have time to get to them because we are on the phone with Eeyores, or answering Eeyores frantic emails with questions we’ve answered 1,000 times before, or talking Eeyores off their ledges after they’ve been listening to MSNBC again. Eeyores are time burglars.

Ironically, we have to admit that HillBuzz wouldn’t even exist without these people, however. We started this blog in February of 2008 because we couldn’t focus the work we were doing for upcoming primaries because Eeyores needed constant reassurance that,  yes, Hillary would win Ohio and Texas.  So, instead of individually sending articles to prove to Eeyores that, yes, Hillary would win Ohio and Texas, we just started the original HillBuzz at Blogspot as a quick and easy clearinghouse for information Eeyores could access and calm themselves down with. Five of us teamed up here in Boystown to maintain this blog as thoroughly as possible, which became a running stream of our thoughts on our campaign and what we thought of the latest Obamedia lies.

So, we realize HillBuzz would have never been started if it wasn’t for this need to treat Eeyores and calm them down. Not that we excuse any of you people for you crippling pessimism and gloom meets doom, but we have truly enjoyed running HillBuzz (and will enjoy maintaining it as we support Hillary Clinton for the next 4 years in her role as junior Senator from New York, working with President McCain and Vice President Palin on energy indepedence, JOBS, and whatever else Clinton champions during the McCain Administration).

We’re glad we’re here right now to remind Republicans who’ve found us through Rush, LGF, Ace and other places that the Obamedia deliberately called states for Obama he had no hope of winning, just to freak Eeyores out and keep them from voting.

If you do just ONE THING today, we ask you a personal favor: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to as many Republican blogs as you can and WARN THEM that the Obamedia will tell you all weekend that Obama is winning Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Florida, Iowa, Virginia, West Virginia, and other states we do not believe Obama will win (except for Iowa, which we still think goes to Obama, but our best sources claim McCain now leads in internals by 1 point). They are already starting to say truly crazy things like “Obama will win Louisiana and Arkansas!”, and that’s just nuts. That is your equivalent of the Obamedia swearing up and down that the Kennedys and Oprah would win Massachusetts and California for Obama. WE knew that was pure cockamamie nonsense, but Eeyores wet their pants on cue over this. So, the Obamedia’s marching orders are to freak all of you out with SHOCKING DEVELOPMENTS! in Lousiana, Arkansas, Georgia, etc. just to shake your faith and confidence.

This is like in Little League when the opposing team would chant, “Hey batta hey batta hey batta hey batta hey batta sa-weeeeeeeeeng batta” when you were at the plate, to make you swing too soon or too late. Just to psych you out. And that nonsense actually worked on Team Hillary, because we lost a lot of volunteers who Eeyored off the face of the Earth just before Super Tuesday, so convinced of unprecedented blow-out doom.

So, when you see the Obamedia doing all of this to McCain, please know they are crying wolf again. Don’t let that demoralize you!

(3) Repeated insistance that blacks and young people will decide this election, and they are all going to vote in record numbers for Obama. First of all, black voters have always voted Democratic in massive numbers. We don’t think blacks have ever voted for Republicans in any substantial way in any race we can think of. Blacks vote as a race-bloc, and they always vote for the Democrat. Maybe Obama will get blacks who have never voted before to vote for him, or blacks who don’t bother to vote on Election Day to show up and vote, but we doubt that it will be very many people. Black voters were highly motivated to vote in 2004 because they felt George W. Bush stole the 2000 election, and they saw that as a civil rights issue that increased black turnout to one of the highest levels we have ever seen. Remember, Jesse Jackson almost won Election 2000 for Gore but was stopped by the Gore campaign, in the form of Donna Brazile. Watch the HBO movie Recount.  Jackson felt the Florida Recount was a civil rights/voter disenfranchisement issue at its heart, and wanted to press that to the public. He revved the black community up and flew down to Tallahassee, but Gore and Brazile made him get back on a plane to Chicago. That was a critically stupid move…and you know how the recount ended.

So, in 2004, THAT’S what the black community thought about, and THAT’S what made people vote to kick Bush out of the White House,  for stealing it from Gore in 2000. We just don’t know what people are left to vote in the black community who didn’t vote in 2004, when they were revved up to vote against Bush — a president the black community hates. What we think the Obamedia ignores is the fact the black community is totally ambivalent to McCain and is focused totally on Obama, and the race-pride they feel voting for a black candidate. If this race-pride could be quantified, we feel it would be a positive force pushing Obama forward almost exactly equal in impact to the force pushing Kerry forward the black community generated by hating Bush. There’s no McCain hate working against the Republicans this year, and there was no Kerry love in 2004.

So, mathematically this works out as:

Obama-love + McCain-hate = Bush-hate + Kerry-love = impact of black voters

We, thus, believe Obama will not have much more support from blacks than Kerry did, since Democrats win almost all black voters anyway. This year will be no different.

We also feel young voters are the Holy Grail of election delusions, because every Democrat, every election, claims “young people love me and will come out in record numbers to vote for me!”. Well, let us just tell you that early voting ended today in Chicago.  In our building, there is a suite full of about 6 frat boys who sometimes stop us in the laundry room to talk politics.  They are all hot DePaul hockey players, so we are glad to chat them up any time they want. All of them said they were going to vote for Obama, and all of them forgot to early vote. All of them have class and work on Tuesday. We honestly believe all 6 of these guys are going to forget to vote on Election Day — and the polling station for our neighborhood is literally one street away. We think this will happen not just with the hot hockey players in our building, but in many other buildings in Chicago, and in cities across the US.

As you move out of urban areas, it becomes more of a challenge to get to polling places, as they get further and further apart. That means college students, and Obama’s youth army, need to move further and further out of their daily norm to actually vote. With class, work, and Nintendo Wii, that becomes a big burden, especially since they’re going to whoop it up all Halloween weekend having an absolute drunken blast, and will have a lot to catch up on come Tuesday, since Monday they will be still hungover and not functional.

We’re astonished no one has ever thought of this before to explain why young people don’t turn up to vote in the numbers the media predicts: it’s because of Halloween. Not JUST because of Halloween, but Halloween has a lot to do with it, especially this year, when Halloween falls in perfect synch to form three days of wild, costumed debauchery. Monday is hangover day, which means nothing got done Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and now Monday, so Tuesday pressure builds to catchup on class or work or whatever.

Ironically, the Obamedia’s constant drumbeat that Obama’s so far ahead will, ironically, keep a lot of these people from actually voting — since they think he will win in a landslide without them, and one vote doesn’t matter. “Oh, we meant to vote, but we got, like, busy. And stuff.”

We hear this every 4 years. Why should this year be any different?

So, in essence, if just comes down to Republicans getting out to vote and ignoring the above head games the Obamedia is already cooking up for you.

This reminds us of the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson — not the lame movie versions, but the actual truly terrifying book.  In it, there’s a man in a house who’s the last sane person in a world gone mad, filled with infected people, who come out every night and stand outside his house and shout terrible things at him to make him kill himself or come outside so they can do the job for him. People this guy used to know and love are infected, and come out each night to use every psycholgical trick they can to get this guy out of the house so they can kill him. And the guy sometimes starts to buy into this, because it’s such pressure, and the taunts and jeers are relentless, and sometimes he just can’t take it, and he crumples to the ground in the face of all this negative saturation. He cracks. He breaks. It’s brutal. And this happens each and every day.

That’s what the media is doing for Obama right now.

You do realize that, don’t you?

It’s all a head game, a fake out. All of this talk about Obama being ahead is just garbage the Obamedia shovels to make you give up and sit home so Obama can win. That’s what breeds Eeyores. And Eeyores giving up and staying home is why Hillary Clinton won Indiana by only 1% when she should have won it by 9%. It really is as simple as that.

So, heads up out there — if you can get Rush to talk about this stuff on air, it would do Republicans a world of good. Make as many people see the media for what they are — a paid extension of the Obama campaign — as humanly possible, keep your heads up, and let’s put another crack in the glass ceiling by making Sarah Palin the nation’s first female Vice President, while putting a good and decent man we trust behind the Resolute Desk where all of us Democrats know he’ll work effectively with Senator Clinton and other Democrats to fix our economy, create good jobs, and make America energy independent for good.

If we work hard, we will win.

A Scary Lesson of Economic Incentives

Trick or Treat, Kids

Parents, try this one at home.  Gather the kids around you this afternoon for a special announcement regarding Halloween.

Carefully note the kids’ expressions as you explain to them that our beloved Big Government has issued a new law effective today – The Goodies Re-Distribution Act.  An elite Academic study has discovered that some kids (48.7 Million!) do not receive any treats on Halloween – regardless that some don’t make the effort to dress up very creatively, or take the time to hit the streets persistently, or their fuddy-duddy parents don’t even believe in celebrating the gory, pagan holiday.

[Cue scary sound effect]

For the coup de grace, convincingly wipe away a phony tear as you reveal that there may even be a kid out there who wasn’t allowed to go trick-or-treating on Halloween for some no-good reason… <sniff>   And, some kids simply aren’t as good at collecting the sweet goodies as some other elite kids who manage to make a great haul – at their expense!

The government’s new deal is that when your kids arrive back home after a hard night’s work, blissfully tired-out from the pursuit of their delectable bounties, explain that under the new law, King Barry, The Spreader, has deemed it necessary to “contribute” 40%, 60%, or 80% of each child’s income, depending upon how much they actually bring home – the most successful kids, who were awarded with the most goodies, would of course find themselves in the highest brackets.

Explain to them, that when they have spread their loot out upon the floor or the kitchen table, and have carefully sorted it into various mounds of hard candy, taffy, and chocolate bars, suckers and lollipops, and fruit.., within a half hour afterward, a smiley-faced, armed Government agent will come knocking on your door and kindly confiscate their progressive quota of the sweet haul – with chocolate bars, being their first priority.  But, no worries, the King’s share shall be gleefully spread around to all the other ‘under-privileged’ kids throughout the community (and some for the bureaucracy, too) as he sees fit – for this “sharing” of your wealth will be good for everybody.

Oh, and when your candy is distributed to everyone (but you), the eager recipients of your candy will never be told that it came from you – and your hard work – see, because the King reserves the special right to tell these kids that he is giving them their equitable reparations out of the goodness of his gracious heart.

How well are your kids going to accept this ‘new and improved’ version of Halloween?

Next task: Explain to them, an additional law just passed that will also affect them – The Windfall Candy- Hoarders Tax.

Note any expressions of Change which begin to overcome them.

What changes in your kids’ motivations, because of the economic incentives, do you foresee when you explain to them the Government’s looming Fair Dress-Costume Doctrine?

Trick or Treat, Folks…

-ThoughtRogue

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1720366&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

Philip J. Berg Will Be Arriving U.S. Supreme Court, Washington, DC at 3:15 p.m. today to file for an Injunction to Stay Presidential Election Pending Writ of Certiorari regarding Obama who is “NOT” qualified to be President of the United States

(Press Release – 10/30/08 – Contact information and pdf of press release at bottom)

 (Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania – 10/30/08) – Philip J. Berg, Esquire, the Attorney who filed suit against Barack H. Obama challenging Senator Obama’s lack of “qualifications” to serve as President of the United States, announced today that he will

be at the United States Supreme Court today, October 30, 2008 to file:

1. Application to Justice Souter for an Immediate Injunction to Stay the Presidential Election of November 4, 2008; and
2. Writ of Certiorari.

Berg stated, “I am hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court will grant the Injunction pending a review of this case to avoid a Constitutional Crisis by insisting that Obama produce certified documentation that he is or is not a “natural born” citizen and if he cannot produce documentation that Obama be removed from the ballot for President.

Berg’s case, Berg vs. Obama was dismissed from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Docket # 08-cv-4083 for lack of standing. This is a question of who has standing to uphold our Constitution. If I don’t have standing, if you don’t have standing, if your neighbor doesn’t have standing to question the eligibility of an individual to be President of the United States – the Commander-in-Chief, the most powerful person in the world – then who does?

What happened to ‘…Government of the people, by the people, for the people,…’ Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address 1863.

We must legally prevent Obama, the unqualified candidate, from taking the Office of the Presidency of the United States,” Berg said.

Our website obamacrimes.com now has 86.1 + million hits.

Berg again stressed his position regarding the urgency of this case as, “we” the people, are heading to a “Constitutional Crisis” if this case is not resolved forthwith.

* * For copies of all Court Pleadings, go to obamacrimes.com

# # #

Philip J. Berg, Esquire
555 Andorra Glen Court, Suite 12
Lafayette Hill, PA 19444-2531
Cell (610) 662-3005
(610) 825-3134
(800) 993-PHIL [7445]
Fax (610) 834-7659
philjberg@obamacrimes.com

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NC Sez: I know you have heard the Obama youth sing before,  but watch the video and look at the Hitler youth for a comparison of how our children are used to propagate Marxism as a good thing as Hitler used Germany’s youth to propagate the National Socialist Party that destroyed Europe!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH-2Fwx5RU0]

by Paul Revere

A man named Norman Thomas was a candidate for president in 1927. He ran six times, actually, under the socialist party. He said the American people will never vote for socialism, but under the name of “liberalism” the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.

 We are there. If you need a quick flashback to Economics 101, you’ll remember that socialism kills a country because: a) it thwarts the will to excel, b) it encourages mediocrity, and c) it creates an ever-increasing dependent class of people, which the government eventually cannot pay for, and then it implodes on itself, just like the former Soviet Union.

 We have lots of the fragments of liberalism, smoothly conveyed and attractively packaged in the person of Barack Obama. You know: the “most liberal” Senator. He doesn’t even hide it. He wrote about it in his book. Scary stuff; Just in time for Halloween.Read it yourself, if you have time before the election.

 But more than that, there is negativity about spending yourself further into the hole (Obama wants 800 billion (with a “B”) in newspending in these tough economic times). Ronald Regan said, “No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income.” There is positivity about getting government off people’s backs and setting them free. We are the land of the free and every time we get government out of the way, the United States thrives!

There is a fascinating brief video about it here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moTAI4VDIJw]

“It’s going to come down to what we believe in, and our opponents put their faith in government. John and I put our faith in all of you.” – Sarah Palin

 Aside from the military – and ours is the best in the world – I haven’t seen anything of real value produced by a federal program. The best the U.S. has to offer comes from individuals liberated from the shackles of government.

 So there you go…

 Faith in the government: vote Obama

Faith in U.S. Citizens: Vote McCain

NC Asks: Seriously, folks, who cares if the Obamunist commits crimes.  He briinnngggs the nation together!

by No Quarter

First, I must warn readers that the “C” word is used below. “C” as in “crime.”

Lest the #1 item come as a shock to you, I suggest reading these two fine stories by NoQuarter writers who owe much to a fellow we know as “Curious Craig”:

• “My Contributions To The Obama Campaign Under Fictitious Names” by Uppity Woman
• “Campaign Contribution Limits? No Problem, Just Contribute Online” by Matthew Weaver

It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that Mr. Obama has yet to fix his, um, porous donation page, and that is the point where “Curious Craig” dropped the “C” word bomb. It was “Curious Craig” who, early last week, gave Mr. Obama’s donation page a test by using a single credit card, but donating under several names, all with fictitious addresses, and without being asked for that three-digit number on the back of credit cards.

“Curious Craig” had no problem using the same credit card number to donate to Obama under the names John Galt, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Bill Ayers, and Tony Rezko, with fictitious addresses.

Given the growing questions and news stories, Curious Craig anticipated Obama would implement the AVS system. He wrote to me:

Just to cover their butts; don’t you think they would have turned those features back on? So they can claim “yes, we discovered the issue and have rectified it several days ago…blah, blah, blah….”

So, I tested the system, yet again, this morning with the same credit card – this time with Karl Marx as the donor – and sure enough, it went thru.

But Why? Why would they continue to expose themselves to this potential scandal?

We join Curious Craig in our befuddlement, beginning with why this system wasn’t in place throughout, as every other presidential candidate has done. This is where Curious Craig drops the “C” word bomb:

My bet is (in spite of their claims that it’s too difficult to make the info available) they know down to the penny the exact details of all their under $200 donors and the serial-CC-fraudsters and the simply can’t afford to give up the money. Also, as reported here, it’s actually costing them more per transaction to process all their online donations. Even the ones that aren’t fraudulent.

So they know this is a PR issue, and it’s more expensive on a per transaction basis, yet the AVS remains disabled.

I can only conclude; they know this is such a significant percentage of their overall revenue, that it spite of the publicity they have to continue to allow the fraud in order to meet their budget goals. They must know just how many of those small donations are coming from fraudulent sources, and if they turn the security on it could drastically impact those $150-million donation months?

Also, if they did publically announce that they restored the security features and a big drop in the fundraising figures ensued, it would only confirm all the fraud up to that point. Meaning, if the fundraising reports show a big drop in CC transactions after they turned the AVS back on, it would be evidence of the crime.

And let that be the last word in this story.

Hat Tip to Hill Buzz!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg8B7fSlJeY]

Balls and Urns

Statisticians love balls and urns. A typical Stats 101 midterm, for example, usually includes a question along these lines:

“You take a simple random sample of 1000 balls from an urn containing 120,000,000 red and blue balls, and your sample shows 450 red balls and 550 blue balls. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the true proportion of blue balls in the urn.”

After choking back a giggle about “blue balls,” you whip out your calculator and text your frat brother who has a copy of last semester’s midterm. He instantly recognizes the correct formula is

95% confidence interval for P = p +/- 1.96 * sqrt( p*(1-p) / n) * FPC   where P = the real, true, actual, honest-to-god proportion of blue balls in that great big f’ing urn 
p = the sample proportion of blue balls, or  0.55
n = the sample size = 1000
FPC = the “finite population correction” = sqrt((N-n)/(N-1))  where N=120,000,000
and the 1.96 has something to do with the 95% probability area under a standard normal distribution

That second part, after the “+/-”, is what you know as the “margin of error.” Your frat brother texts you back and reminds you that since the population is very large, the FPC is very close to 1 and can be dropped. He also reminds you to uses the conservative estimate of p= 0.5 in the margin of error calculation, since you don’t know the true value of p, only the sample estimate. So the whole formula simplifies to

p +/- 1.96 * sqrt( .25 / n)

=p +/-  0.98  / sqrt( n)
Assuming you still have juice in your calculator batteries and you’re not hung-over from the Sig Eps kegger last night, you should get

0.55 +/- 0.031
Now you could probably say you are 95% certain the real proportion of blue balls in that great big f’ing urn is 55%, plus or minus 3.1%. If you wanted to get extra credit points, you should probably say that “95% of all random samples of this size will have a computed confidence interval that contains the true population value.” But that’s just quibbling and brown-nosing the professor, who’s probably late for a faculty meeting anyway.

This is, for all intents and purposes, how political pollsters compute the mysterious “margin of error,” which has everything to do (and only to do) with pure mathematical sampling error. If you look at the formula above and round it just a smidge, you get a simple rule of thumb for the margin of error of a sampled probability:

Margin of Error = 1 / sqrt(n)
So if the sample size is 400, the margin of error is 1/20 = 5%; if the sample size is 625 the margin of error is 1/25 = 4%; if the sample size is 1000, it’s about 3%.

Works pretty well if you’re interested in hypothetical colored balls in hypothetical giant urns, or survival rates of plants in a controlled experiment, or defects in a batch of factory products. It may even work well if you’re interested in blind cola taste tests. But what if the thing you are studying doesn’t quite fit the balls & urns template?

• What if 40% of the balls have personally chosen to live in an urn that you legally can’t stick your hand into?
• What if 50% of the balls who live in the legal urn explicitly refuse to let you select them?
• What if the balls inside the urn are constantly interacting and talking and arguing with each other, and can decide to change their color on a whim?
• What if you have to rely on the balls to report their own color, and some unknown number are probably lying to you?
• What if you’ve been hired to count balls by a company who has endorsed blue as their favorite color? 
• What if you have outsourced the urn-ball counting to part-time temp balls, most of whom happen to be blue?
• What if the balls inside the urn are listening to you counting out there, and it affects whether they want to be counted, and/or which color they want to be?

If one or more of the above statements are true, then the formula for margin of error simplifies to

Margin of Error = Who the hell knows?

Because, in this case, so-called scientific “sampling error” is completely meaningless, because it is utterly overwhelmed by immeasurable non-sampling error. Under these circumstances “margin of error” is a fantasy, a numeric fiction masquerading as a pseudo-scientific fact. If a poll reports it — even if it’s collected “scientifically” — the pollster is guilty of aggravated bullshit in the first degree.

The moral of this midterm for all would-be pollsters: if you are really interested in how many of us red and blue balls there are in this great big urn, sit back and relax until Tuesday, and let us show our true colors.

 -Author Unknown