Tag: poll

Can you pick The Onion without hovering your mouse over the links? Not much of a challenge really, but if you just looked at the headlines you’d have an easy 50 / 50 shot at being wrong.   Connecticut teen tests fire-breathing, turkey-roasting drone Richard Weizel, Reuters MILFORD, Conn. (Reuters) – A young Connecticut man …

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Can you pick The Onion without hovering your mouse over the links?



Not much of a challenge really, but if you just looked at the headlines you’d have an easy 50 / 50 shot at being wrong.

Woman stops intruder with medieval combat skills, sword

An Indiana woman says her training in medieval combat helped her corner a home intruder.

The Indianapolis Star reports 43-year-old Karen Dolley of Indianapolis threw punches until she had the man cornered during the Thursday night break-in. She then kept him subdued with a Japanese sword she keeps near her bed.

Dolley says she learned to fight as a teenager in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that recreates skills of the Middle Ages. She also skates with roller derby team Naptown Roller Girls.

Police responding to Dolley’s 911 call arrested 30-year-old Jacob Wessel of Greenwood, charging him with residential entry. Police say he forced open the home’s back door. Police reports say he was taken to a hospital because he was high on an unknown substance.

Popular New Exercise App Just Tells Users They Ran 5 Miles A Day No Matter What

LOS ALTOS, CA-Having reached nearly 2 million downloads within its first month of release, the new smartphone app ProMiler has quickly become one of the nation’s most popular exercise tools by informing users that they ran five miles each day no matter what, the app’s creators told reporters Friday. “With ProMiler, achieving your exercise goals is as simple as turning on your device in the morning and being notified that you’ve already run five miles,”

ProMiler spokesman John Lyons said while demonstrating the app, which uses advanced GPS technology to display a new, randomly generated five-mile running route near the user’s location every day. “The more you take advantage of ProMiler, the better runner you become, as the app automatically reduces your running time by several seconds per day. And with our ‘Calories Burned’ counter staying fixed at the number 1,000 each day, 100 percent of our users report hitting their fitness targets.

The results speak for themselves.” Officials added that the app comes pre-synced with Facebook, allowing users to automatically post their time and running route on their feed for all their friends to see.

Can you pick The Onion without hovering your mouse over the links.



I know I know, not much of a challenge.

But these are fun for me and you still have a 50 / 50 shot of being wrong.

Bernie Sanders Clearly In Pocket Of High-Rolling Teacher Who Donated $300 To His Campaign

BURLINGTON, VT-After accepting a check sent to his campaign office by a local elementary school teacher, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was roundly criticized Monday as being firmly in the pocket of the high-rolling educator who had donated $300.

“He might have the reputation of being the people’s candidate, but when your candidacy is effectively bankrolled by the multi-hundred-dollar donation of a fourth-grade teacher, it’s clear who’s really pulling the strings,” said political analyst Peter Mathews, who noted that when a check arrives with a handwritten note that says “Behind you 100 percent, Bernie!” it comes with certain expectations.

“He’s already spouting off talking points about supporting unions and increasing funding for education. Where do you think he got those ideas? He might think he’s not influenced by that money, but when someone has deep enough pockets to drop $300, you pick up the phone when they call.”

Mathews went on to say he wouldn’t be surprised if Sanders’ strong support for a living wage could be directly traced to the fat $20 contribution he got from a fast-food worker.

Michigan township draws more people to meeting with hot dogs

VICTORY TOWNSHIP, MI – Here’s a way to boost interest in local government: potato salad.

A township board in northern Michigan held a lakeside picnic Monday before its regular meeting. After an hour of hot dogs and side dishes, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and the Victory Township board meeting was officially in order.

The Ludington Daily News says about two dozen people attended the picnic and meeting at Upper Hamlin Lake in Mason County. Only three people attended the June meeting at the township hall.

There were reports from law enforcement and a lake preservation group. The board also discussed a junk ordinance.

Can you pick The Onion without hovering your mouse over the links.

Hint: It has nothing to do with gardening.

Connecticut town’s Boom Box Parade celebrates its 30th year

WILLIMANTIC, Conn.- The town’s annual Independence Day parade once again will include the traditional Little League teams, floats sponsored by local businesses, fire trucks and politicians. But, for the 30th consecutive year, there will be no marching bands.

In what has become an offbeat tradition, the participants and the spectators will instead be carrying radios tuned to the same local station, which will provide traditional marching music. More than 5,000 people are expected to attend the town’s annual Boom Box Parade, which kicks off at 11 a.m. Saturday.

“I didn’t think the idea would work,” said Wayne Norman, the WILI-AM radio personality who has served as grand marshal for all 30 parades. “I didn’t think people would get the concept. Boy was I wrong.”

The parade dates to 1986, when the town couldn’t find an available marching band for its Memorial Day parade. Organizer Kathy Clark approached the radio station for help. Station officials said it was too late to organize and publicize for that holiday, but they began planning with Clark for July Fourth, and the tradition was born.

Norman said the staging area was empty two hours before the parade but by the time it was ready to start more than 2,000 people were there, all carrying boom boxes.

Norman said there were some evolutionary pains as the portable radios, ubiquitous in the 1980s, went the way of the cassette tape and were replaced by iPods and other portable electronic devices.

He said any radio or device with a speaker and a way to access the radio station is welcome. “We ask people to please not wear headphones,” he said. “We don’t outlaw them, but it kind of defeats the purpose.”

The parade, he said, celebrates independence in all its connotations. There is no registration to march. Anyone can participate, and people are free to bring signs, promote causes, even advertise for their businesses.

Norman said that in an ironic twist the Windham High School band, which was not around to march in 1986, this year provided a recorded piece that will be played during the parade.

A lot of groups just have fun with the event. That would include the Traveling Fish Head Club of Northeastern Connecticut, which Norman said walks up from the nearby Hop River to join the parade disguised as a giant fish made from wood, wire and papier-mache. “We don’t have many rules,” Norman said. “We just ask people to wear red, white and blue and bring a flag and a radio.”

Members of the state legislature and Congress and the governor often march in the parade, though Norman said they usually get a bigger turnout of politicians during an election year.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal shows up every year. He said he loves the parade because it has a spirit that is quintessentially American. “It’s good old Connecticut ingenuity,” he said. “Let’s use boom boxes if we can’t have a band. Let’s make do. Let’s invent. Our ingenuity will make it happen.”

‘Vampires’ keep doctors in the dark for fear of stereotyping: study

SALMON, Idaho- It is not easy being a vampire, and even harder to come out of the coffin to a physician or therapist for fear they will misinterpret the habit of ingesting the blood of willing donors or succumb to stereotyping, a study finds.

Research led by D.J. Williams, director of social work at Idaho State University, indicated that people who identify themselves as “real” vampires – that is, needing others’ blood to gain energy – would not disclose their practices to those in the helping professions and risk reactions like ridicule, disgust and possible diagnosis of a mental illness.

The paper, published in the latest issue of Critical Social Work, a peer-reviewed journal based in Canada, found that authentic vampires as opposed to “lifestyle” vampires – black-clad figures with phony fangs – might be stereotyped by clinicians whose fields discourage biases.

Williams, who has studied self-identified vampires for nearly a decade, finds they come from every walk of life and profession, including doctors, attorneys and candlestick makers.

“They are successful, ordinary people,” he said. Except they are very, very tired. That’s apparently the chief reason they find a consenting adult willing to allow them to use a scalpel to make a tiny incision in the chest area so they can ingest a small amount of blood for energy, the study found.

Williams and another researcher based the paper on the responses of 11 people who had identified themselves as vampires for many years and could be relied on to be open and honest, and who gain permission from practicing adults before ingesting their blood, he said.

“The real vampire community seems to be a conscientious and ethical one,” Williams said. The challenge is finding non-judgmental clinicians to whom vampires can disclose their alternative lifestyles, he added. “Most vampires believe they were born that way; they don’t choose this,” Williams said.

The global vampire population is thought to number in the thousands, he said.

Trump Tells Iowa Dairy Farmers He Has Cows 500 Times Bigger Than Theirs

ARNOLDS PARK, IA- Appearing at a campaign event in the early primary state, real estate mogul and presidential candidate Donald Trump told an assembled group of dairy farmers Monday that his cows were 500 times bigger than theirs.

“Your cows are small and scrawny, and you should be embarrassed to milk them,” said Trump, adding that each of his cows was the size of “at least” a dozen Cadillacs and had “udders that’ll make your head spin.” “No one raises dairy cows as gigantic or successful as I do; everyone knows that. My cattle are winners, and you people would be lucky to have them graze here.”

Chatting with patrons at a diner later in the day, Trump reportedly said the apple pie was a disgrace and that his pies were a mile wide, with a perfect crust that made all the losers jealous.

Mr. President, if I had wanted to see the corporate-friendly policies of Mitt Romney enacted, I would have voted for the guy.

“When you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean a lot of commentators have said this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican Governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.

   “A lot of the ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation…”

And judging from the tepid polling (PDF) response the new HIR law has received, it appears I’m not alone.

16. Which of the following statements best describes your views about the health care bill that Congress passed this week: (ROTATE) Mar. 25-28 2010

15% You approve of the bill becoming law and have no reservations about it

27% You approve of the bill becoming law but you think it did not go far enough

31% You disapprove of the bill becoming law but you support a few of its proposals

25% You disapprove of the bill becoming law and oppose all of its proposals

  1% No opinion

A lot of rationalizing tealeaf reading over at Big O right now about what these less than stellar polling results actually mean.  After all, when your party finally manages to pass health care legislation after decades of futility, you would hope that considerably more than a measly 15% of the public would be wholeheartedly cheering your historic achievement.

mcjoan cites the 27% ‘did not go far enough’ number to argue that Dems need to start making fixes to the bill if they want to close the ‘intensity gap’.

One way that Dems could keep closing that intensity gap among voters would be to try to deliver more. They could keep taking on the insurance companies, on providing coverage to sick kids, on the anti-trust exemption, etc.–the elements even Republicans had a hard time arguing against.

mcjoan’s basically right of course; those changes would probably have some marginally positive effect on the Dem base’s enthusiasm. (She might have also mentioned that the easiest way to move the HIR poll numbers in a positive direction would be to turf the mandate, but unfortunately over at GOS that’s still considered crazytalk).



Yet whatever added Dem enthusiasm might be generated by tweaks to HIR before November (don’t get your hopes up), these fixes can’t possibly make up for the wet blanket President Obama throws over his base every time he brags about how Republicans wrote his healthcare plan.

But at its core, if you look at the basic proposal that we’ve put forward: it has an exchange so that businesses and the self-employed can buy into a pool and can get bargaining power the same way big companies do; the insurance reforms that I’ve already discussed, making sure that there’s choice and competition for those who don’t have health insurance. The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year.

The President must be quite impressed with his own powers of persuasion if he thinks he can convince his base between now and November that Bob Dole, Howard Baker and Mitt Romney are actually liberal Democratic icons.

Somehow, though, I doubt anything short of free Viagra will get too many on the left very excited about voting for Democrats who continually crow about passing Republican healthcare plans.  

The DOJ site has a poll widget to vote on the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate CIA torture. The link http://www.ticklethewire.com/