Will's Good Idea for the Week of 10/16/22

The gout is flushed. The foot is fine. We'll be hitting the gym this morning. 

We had a fine afternoon with an Arturo Fuente and bottle of Cavaliere D'Oro. 

The Phillies eliminated the world champion Atlanta Braves yesterday to advance to the National League Championship Series. We warned Mrs. Stroock that the Phillies were a tough little team, and we wouldn't want to meet them in the playoffs. A bittersweet moment though, as we lost Mrs. Stroock's father this year and his absence was definitely felt. 

In Israel, as the polls have shown for years, the polls show political deadlock. We remain baffled. Israeli politics won't change till Bibi decides to retire, write his memoirs, and tour the US giving speeches. The mega-churches will love him. Bibi, we can't extol your existential greatness while you remain in office. 

The constant politicking these last four years must be a civic blight on Israel.  

Interesting question, why is polling in Israel spot on, but horrible in the US? As noted before, polls in 2021 had New Jersey governor Phill Murphy beating GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli by eight. He won by three. Polling nationally has undercounted Republicans since 2014. Is polling undercounting Republicans again? By five points? 

Hot Air has an article on efforts by Real Clear Politics to fix the polling mess. RCP is 20 years old, and we say with pride that we've been following them and their poll aggregates for 20 years now, long before the mainstream media even knew who they were.* We think Fox started using RCP polling averages in 2004. Hot Air quotes RCP, 'However, there are also pollsters and news organizations that are doing less-than-stellar work and, unfortunately, many of the polls from these organizations receive a disproportionate amount of attention.' 

Ya think? Heh, back in 2000-2004 the big news magazine polls were useless, Time, Newsweek, etc etc. We weren't a Rasmussen convert then. Zogby reigned supreme but destroyed his rep by waiting till 5 PM on election day to make his prediction using badly flawed exit poll data. Zogby said Kerry would win 390 electoral votes. Stop laughing. 

And so we've rambled. 

Ideas...? Yes we have some.

This month we've spent our mornings on World War 1990: The Final Storm, and then popped over to The New American Order for some light work in the afternoon. We're reversing and will go full bore on TNAO and do some light work on TFS. Bashing our head against TFS isn't going to fix it. The goal here is to unsnarl TFS by thinking about it less and just tidy things up here and there. 

*We'll do a Pointless Nostalgia: 2002 post tomorrow.