==========

Maybe I’m missing a point, but I don’t follow this. By the most common technique, AFTER SAMPLING, you ADJUST for how many of each party are actually in your target area.

For example, suppose you’re phoning random numbers and you only have enough money to phone 100 people. Suppose you get 75 women and 25 men, and all the women say No and all the Men say Yes.

You don’t report ” 75% of residents oppose X ” even though that is waht your raw data says. You ADJUST for how many men and how many women actually live there — presumably 50/50 — and report ” 50/50 support/oppose X “

Clinton warns of Pakistan nuke risk
U.S. concerned over Taliban fighters creeping toward Islamabad

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Thursday that Pakistan has dispersed its nuclear weapons throughout the country, increasing the risk they could fall into terrorist hands as Taliban fighters move closer to the capital.

Her comments came as new satellite images suggested Pakistan is increasing its capacity to produce plutonium, a fuel for atomic bombs.
Mrs. Clinton, testifying on Capitol Hill for the second day in a row, had earlier accused Pakistan’s government of abdicating to the Taliban. She was referring to a truce finalized this month that gave Taliban fighters control of a scenic valley just 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad, after two years of fighting.

“Why are we so concerned about this? One of the reasons is nuclear weapons,” she told a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday when asked about the truce. “We spend a lot of time worrying about Iran. Pakistan already has them, and they are widely dispersed in the country – they are not at a central location.”

The imposition of Islamic law was part of the truce that gave the Taliban control of the Swat Valley. Within days of the agreement, the Taliban used Swat as a base from which to take control of another valley just 60 miles away from Islamabad.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office defended the Swat peace deal even as it deployed about 100 paramilitary troops in an attempt to reverse the Taliban’s latest conquest.

“Pakistan continues to play a positive and constructive role in the war against terror. It is victim of terrorism and with its inherent national resilience and strength, the country will succeed both against internal and external threats,” Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit told reporters.

Gunmen attacked the Pakistani force, killing one officer as local officials made an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate yet another truce with the Taliban.

On the nuclear front, U.S. officials said that Pakistan continues to expand and improve its nuclear capabilities, but they conceded that Washington has not discussed the issue with the Pakistanis in depth for several years.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, declined to be more specific.
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) released images Thursday from Pakistan’s Khushab plutonium-production facility that appear to support the U.S. assessment.

The organization said the images show that “major construction of the buildings associated with the second Khushab reactor is likely finished and that the roof beams are being placed on top of the third Khushab reactor hall.”

“This suggests that Pakistan is increasing its plutonium capacity, and went from one reactor several years ago to having three,” with the third yet to be completed, said Paul Brannan, senior research analyst at ISIS who co-authored an analysis released with the satellite photos. The institute is led by former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright.
Another think tank, the Arms Control Association, says on its Web site that Pakistan has about 60 nuclear warheads.

The latest satellite photos show a cylinder, a core component, inside the third reactor building. It is visible because the roof has not been completed.

In addition to the plutonium effort, Pakistan’s uranium-based – and its original nuclear – program, started by Abdul Qadeer Khan, has experienced “enormous growth” in recent years, Mr. Brannan said.
Throughout the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, the United States has been a “worried bystander,” he said.

“The anti-terrorism agenda has pushed out the concerns about expansion of the nuclear program,” he said. “l’d like to think that you can do both at the same time.”

Pakistani officials have always insisted the country’s nuclear facilities are safe from terrorists.

“What we are sure of is that there is no likelihood of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists or extremists,” a senior Pakistani official told The Washington Times. He requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration reportedly spent $100 million to help Pakistan upgrade security at its nuclear sites.
Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at Council on Foreign Relations, said Pakistan’s nuclear weapons “are as safe as anything in the Pakistani military,” which he said “is the institutional backbone of the Pakistani state.”

But when it comes to defending the country from the Taliban and its allies, the Pakistani army suffers from “weakness and a lack of capacity” and “needs to be jolted out of complacency but it hasn’t happened. We are in for a tough slog,” Mr. Markey said.

The explosive mix of a growing nuclear arsenal and a growing Islamist insurgency reflects shifting ground beneath Washington and Islamabad even before the Obama administration has a chance to implement its strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Pakistan is facing societal shifts of great consequence,” Lisa Curtis, a South Asia specialist at the Heritage Foundation, told a recent symposium on the region.

“The spread of a well-armed, well-prepared Islamic insurgency is starting to consume the country,” Ms. Curtis said.

She accused the government of President Asif Ali Zardari of “pursuing a policy of appeasement” by signing a peace deal in Swat, as well as a separate decision last week to free a militant cleric who led a 2007 standoff with security forces at the Red Mosque in the heart of Islamabad.

The siege brought militant Islam within walking distance of Pakistan’s parliament, Supreme Court and presidential offices. In the months leading up to the siege, Red Mosque vigilantes terrorized the city by attacking movie and music shops, kidnapping Chinese entertainers and heavily arming the mosque compound.

“We need a contingency containment strategy if the Pakistani military decides it’s not going to hold the line against the militants,” Ms. Curtis said.

Pakistan’s army has suffered a series of embarrassing defeats in nearly every battle against Taliban forces in the mountainous northwest. The Taliban has killed hundreds of Pakistani troops and captured scores, sometimes without firing a single shot, and traded its hostages for imprisoned terrorists.

April 24th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I have often wondered how each of us went about naming ourselves for our online moniker. At first I was Disinfranchised in FL [spelled incorrectly as to distinguish myself from other disenfranchised people]. You know the story about the disenfranchisement of voters in FL and MI I am sure. Both parties were complicit in that.
&&&&&&&&&&

I raised this a while back.

rgb are my initials, my real name being Regis Geronimo Blofeld (okay, you might be suspicious if that’s real).

44 and HRC were just completely randomized alphanumeric characters.

April 24th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Fascinating post about that AP poll. When I read his approval rating from Repubs in that poll was just 24 percent and his overall rating was 64 percent, I knew they had to be undersampled.

That’s why Rasmussen consistently has Obama’s approval 5-10 points lower than every other poll: He samples more GOPers.
&&&&&&&&&&

And don’t forget, there was some ambivalence among Repubs in the 2008 general election:

* McCain was not that partisan
* McCain didn’t throw the extremists “red meat”
* even among Repubs, there was some feeling that after Bush, let the Dems inherit Bush’s mess
* some of them may have bought into obama’s “post-partisan” rope-a-dope non-antagonistic schtick

Now:
* they see how bad obama really is (even while he’s been disappointing his own left-wing base!!!)
* NOW they see what Hillary and McCain were talking about when they mentioned “the ‘experience’ thing”
* now they’re livid, they want obama out (why wait, raise the birth cert issue)

Editorial Director’s Note:

Get ready for a fresh dose of high-powered (and maybe rifle-scoped) controversy… Taipan’s own freedom-loving contributor-at-large Jim Amrhein is back, and today he has a question: Got Guns?

As a long-time Nevadan, your humble editorial director is embarrassed to admit he (still) doesn’t own a firearm, having let the item languish on his to-do list for many years. But that may soon change… How about you? Do Jim’s strong words resonate? Send your cheers (or jeers) here and I’ll pass ‘em along: justice@taipandaily.com

——————————————————————————–

A Kind Word and a Gun (Part One)

by Jim Amrhein, Contributing Editor, Taipan Daily
Now that I’ve settled comfortably into the rotation as a regular contributing editor to Taipan Daily, it’s time to take the gloves off. But before I do that, I’d like to thank all those who’ve written in response to my four articles in this venue thus far in 2009.

Your voluminous feedback has meant a lot to me, whatever its tenor. Just as I have over the past six years of regular contributions to the freedom and free markets debate in other forums, I read and carefully consider all reactions from Taipan Daily readers – be they affirmations, condemnations, kudos or criticisms.

That’s why today, I want to start off by firing a shot back at one particular species of critics that so often fire at me from all points on the spectrum. I’m talking about that handful or so who continually write in with variations on this theme:

“I subscribe to Taipan Daily for investing advice, not for political rhetoric. Keep your opinions to yourself, or I’m canceling my subscription…”

Let me get this straight: You would cancel your subscription to a FREE source of proven contrarian investment intelligence to avoid spending 10 minutes a month pondering the erosion of liberty, the bastardization of the Constitution, the institutional racketeering and extortion on The Hill, the corruption of the “watchdog” media, and other major issues confronting us as Americans – or as members of the human race?

If you’re one of these people, skip to the bottom of this page right now and unsubscribe to this e-letter, I beg you. You’re part of the problem in this country, because you believe that wealth generation is simply a matter of speculating appropriately on the right information…

But there’s something you just don’t get. Wealth – not the wealth of a state, but the individual, personal kind you’re so hungry to receive tips on FOR NOTHING in this forum – only flourishes where liberty flourishes. History has proved this time and again.

And where does liberty flourish? Where government stands aside and allows it room to grow, and gives it the proper nourishment. Like what used to happen in a place called America. Think about it this way…

Without the systemic liberty that allows companies and entrepreneurs to innovate, free of arbitrary regulation and punitive taxation, there are no hot new investments to ride to wealth.

Without the individual liberty that allows free consumers to choose how they live without the Nanny State making them buy this kind of car and eat that kind of food and carry this much insurance and use that type of light bulb, there’s no free market to innovate in.

But most importantly, without the liberty that we all have to voice our opinions with our dollars, there is no demand for all the things that give us the ability to show our support for, or opposition to, the modern Ameri-comedy. Things like burgers for those for whom cholesterol is just a number, and tofu for those who really want to die young…

Big trucks and mansions for those who scoff at the global warming hype, and electric roller-skate-cars and pre-fab mud huts for those who buy into it…

Harley-Davidson Road Kings for those who want to have enough horsepower to tote a passenger and a POW/MIA flag off their backseat at highway speed, and little imported Italian scooters for those who need only putt-putt their own metrosexual selves between a city flat and the local coffee shop…

To my handout-happy critics, here’s the bottom line: I would argue that the topics I write about in this forum – and have written about for years in other venues – have as much of an impact on your money and bottom line as the tips, market analysis and economic projections you’re getting the other 28 days a month. You should worry less about the value of what you’re getting free, and worry more about the value of being free.

That having been said, here’s some cool irony for you: Today, I’m actually caving to the critics I’ve just given both barrels to. That’s right – instead of reflections, warnings and genius commentary about freedom and other such apparently worthless dreck, I’m actually going to offer you readers some real, actionable and important investment advice. Here it is…

Buy a gun. Now.

“One man with a gun can control 100 without one.”

- V.I. Lenin

Everywhere you look, the mainstream media is screaming about guns.

A Wall Street Journal headline from April 16 trumpets: Fear and Greed Have Sales of Guns and Ammo Shooting Up.

The article opines that “… no one knows exactly what is behind the gun-buying craze” that has seen a 27% year-over-year increase in firearm-sale background checks. But clearly the authors have an opinion (even though it was a Page One news piece, not an Op-Ed): The boom in sales is due largely to speculation on firearms of types that gun owners fear are soon to be banned by the Obama administration. The piece cites several examples of people who are indeed viewing their firearms and ammunition collection as investments…

The subtle implication of the piece is that the “fear” at play in this sales boom is more the worry of not being able to obtain certain kinds of guns under anticipated restrictions than public safety concerns in an increasingly shaky economy – and in an America in which psychopaths seem ever more regularly to shoot up schools, malls and workplaces.

The fact that the very kinds of high-capacity, semi-automatic, night-sighted and Mil-Spec guns that are surely soon to be in the Obama/Democrat crosshairs are EXACTLY the kinds one would want in defending his home or person is not mentioned in the Journal article at all…

Further, an April 14 New York Times Op-Ed piece by Bob Herbert pithily titled The American Way characterizes incidences of wrongful-death gun violence as “common to the American scene as changes in the weather.”

His claim that 120,000 Americans have been killed since 9/11 in “non-terror homicides, most of them committed with guns” cites no source (of course), and is misleading in several ways…

According to FBI crime statistics, there were 10,100 domestic murders committed with firearms in the year 2005. Using this as a rough baseline average, multiplying by 7.5 times (the number of years since 9/11/2001), you end up with a figure of around 76,000. Of course, not every year is the same, and other credible sources have slightly different numbers – some more, some less. And none of these are small numbers, to be sure…

Or are they?

What the Times piece doesn’t talk about is the estimated 2.5 million crimes thwarted annually by Americans with lawfully owned and carried guns. Things like home invasions, robberies, carjackings, theft, rapes, assaults and domestic disputes that threaten to get out of control. Of course, since they were prevented, there’s no way of proving how many unlawful homicides these crimes would have resulted in…

However, if even an absurdly low 1% of these crimes would have led to a homicide had it not been halted by a lawful firearm, that number of saved lives would dwarf the number of gun murders in the U.S. annually, no matter what numbers you claim as the gospel.

This begs a logical question:

Where are the “Gun-wielding citizen thwarts crime” headlines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or any other major news outlet?

There are two possible answers:

1) The Mainstream Media is biased against guns. (Nah, couldn’t be!)

2) The “hero gun” story ISN’T NEWS.

Think about this second reason for a minute, because it’s an angle on the gun-rights debate that I’ve never seen in any other discussion, anywhere. It may be out there somewhere, but I’m betting it isn’t…

The famous journalism quote attributed to New York Sun Editor John Bogart goes like this: “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”

Translation: Even if the media were 100% unbiased about the role of guns in American culture, the use of a gun in the prevention of a crime or in defense against bodily harm still would not be in the headlines – because it is so commonplace compared to random gun terror.

And anyone who’s done even a cursory review of the facts would come to this same conclusion. Yes, even journalists…

The fact that they are in the headlines proves that the shocking gun homicides we read about in the MSM are the freak exception in America.

The rule – blasphemous as it may be to politicians, newspaper editors, mainstream rock musicians, and other high-profile anti-gun voices who can afford to live in patrolled, gated communities – is that the presence of a gun anywhere in America is far more often a deterrent to harm than the cause of it.

That’s why you should buy and carry one, if you aren’t already doing so. And if you’re in a state that won’t let you carry, you should move yourself and your money to a state that allows you the right you’re guaranteed under your own Constitution…

“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would
be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”

- The Dalai Lama

As my long-time readers know, I don’t give much in the way of financial advice. I leave that kind of thing to the money wizards I work with…

However, there is one cardinal rule of money and investing that EVERY ONE of the world-class investment minds you’re used to reading in Taipan’s sources would put at the very top of their list of personal financial recommendations. Here it is:

You can’t make money if you’re dead.

And given the rash of random mass murder that does in fact pervade modern life in the United States, the very best safeguard against sudden death that the average American can get isn’t a seat belt or a bottle of cholesterol pills or a portable defibrillator – but a firearm and training in how to use it instinctively and effectively.

The truth of this needs no statistician’s hocus-pocus, government report, or newspaper article of peerless integrity to bear out. The mass murderers, cop killers, and hard-core gun criminals themselves show us what exactly what they’re afraid of every time they go nuts and start shooting…

They’re afraid of guns and bullets.

Why do you think Seung-Hui Cho chose the Virginia Tech campus in which to unleash his hellish slaughter? In such a state-mandated “Gun Free Zone,” (one of the few he’d have been able to find in liberal-carry-law Virginia) no one else could shoot back…

And why did Cho, Binghamton shooter Jiverly Voong, Pittsburgh cop-killer Richard Poplawski, the 1997 North Hollywood bank robbers, and so many other infamous modern gun-criminals wear body armor?

Because these gunmen sought protection against the only thing they knew could stop them: Another gunman. Like V.I. Lenin, the Dalai Lama, Julius Caesar, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and anyone else with half a brain, killers know that the only match for their force is equal or greater force…

My question today is: Do YOU know it? And do you have the guts to grapple with this unpleasant truth – if not for the fundamental rightness of standing against terror and rampant criminality, at least for the protection and enhancement of your own assets?

Aiming to please,

Jim Amrhein
Contributing Editor, Taipan Daily

At the very heart of this is capitalism, but at the same time, the gross overcharging by pharmaceutical firms et al needs to be addressed.

And in both cases it’s due to high tech
————————————-
It is like Sun Tzu: the forces disperse to the wind and then coalesce, reconfigure and direct irresistable force against the enemy at some unguarded point at the critical moment and tear their heart out.