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Does Redskins Loss Presage A Kerry Win?
Puny Human Nick writes "As mentioned before, the last home game the Redskins play before the election has predicted who will win since 1944. Well, the Redskins v. Green Bay game ended a few hours ago and it looks as though Kerry is going to win on Tuesday."
The Redskins suffered a bad call with 2:35 when they were about to tie the game. If Kerry does win, this must mean he does it unfairly.
Red Sox win 8 in a row, Patriots lose today, old sports adages are breaking all over the place when MA is involved.
I believe a better question is does collective consciousness somehow affect the outcome of certain events, and could some events be tied together?
o .com/sections/scitech/WhosCounting/whoscounting021 006.html
Remember September 11th 2002, the New York Lottery came out 9-1-1? That was very coincidental.
http://www.saliu.com/bbs/messages/911.html
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:more.abcnews.g
The Weekly Reader has also correctly picked the president for about the same length of time. They chose Bush.
I was at this game only a few short hours ago - the mood there was incredible. I was actually surprised at the number of packers fans who showed up - there was plenty of jeering amongst everyone in the stands (me included, being both a packer fan and a democrat).
At one point there was what seemed to be the scoring play of the game from Washington Redskins - it would have made the score 21-20, but it was called back for a very interesting foul. (NFL.com reports: " The flag apparently was thrown because Thrash was not set for a full second after going into motion on the play. He said he didn't want to comment on the call because he "didn't know for sure" if it was the right one.")
Seems to me to be the exact kind of tone of the election too - very close, with some contested calls!!
You're going too deep; the Packers won by a 2:1 margin, so Kerry will win by a 2:1 landslide.
What?
Then again, yesterday on the radio, Daniel Schorr said the electorate is looking for something, anything on which to base a final decision. This is why stories that would normally not be gaining a lot of attention any other time (flu shots, 'Azzam the American') are getting so much play.
#!
It died in 1996 - the Redskins lost to the Bills 38-13 and Bill Clinton was reelected two days later.
I should also point out that the Red Sox broke 80+ years of losing the World Series, the Patriots just lost for the first time in 18 games, and all three major schools in Florida lost on the same day for the first time in almost 30 years.
Ignoring which team was better each year, the odds are 1/2^14 that the game would predict the outcome of the election (14 elections since 1944). That's .0061%, roughly.
Of course, you gotta realize that they look at all the games played over the years and look for patterns, and ANY football game of the season could possibly be a predictor of who will be elected. In the NFL, there are 32 teams, which have played about 8 games each so far this year. So total number of games played = 32 * 8 / 2 = 2^7. that brings our odds to 2^7/2^14 = 1/2^7 = .75%. Not at all negligible.
Now you can start including multiple criteria for each game. For instance, if the total points stored in the Redskins game is over 30, the incumbent wins. Or, you could change it to a certain party winning. And we're just considering football, imagine if we included games from other sports played this year. The sheer number of baseball games almost guarantees that one annual match-up will be a good predictor of any "coin-flip" event such as a presidential election.
So, the moral is, this isn't the least bit extraordinary.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
IMHO Just like dealing with 'indian' violence had to be put on hold until after the Civil War. I really think the war on terror is likely going to need to be put on hold till the US solves some of it's internal problems. And I think this election will reflect that.
The biggest problem that no-one is talking about, but everyone is going to half to face is the trillion dollar question about copyrights. They simply can't survive in an age defined by the unrestricted flow of information so something is going to half to be fought out soon. The question is will the Government finally get it and back off on the copyright gestapo - or will they go full blast untill all hell breaks loose, and they fail crash and burn.
Since Bush is more accountable to the tech industries, and Kerry is more accountable to the legal and hollywood sector. I think a Kerry win will symbolize the copyright battle being fought inspite of the system, a Bush win will symbolize the battle geing fought within the system. It's a tough call.
Here is a link to one of many articles that talk about the cell phone problem here.
Now I can't find a link, but I'd swear I read an article this morning saying that Gallup (or some other big poller) just did an SMS survey and found that Kerry was way ahead with that group...
In 1994, we were in a war and the incumbant won.
On the other hand, Monday Night Football might have saved some lives September 11, 2001. One of the New York teams was playing September 10th, and I suspect a few groggy stockbrokers and office workers got into the office late.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
Bush is cheating - and this fraud screws up the natural order of things.
This looks to be reverse cause and effect? The Redskins lost *because* Kerry wins. It makes perfect sense when coupled with Hawking's views on gravitationally depressed chronospaces.
I find this to be intriguing - yet dangerous, as it is not wise to play with local cosmic areola.
Umpire -- Primary responsibility to rule on players' equipment, as well as their conduct and actions on scrimmage line.
I was hoping for a tie...then this pattern theory could really be put to the test...
So 1944 to 2004 is 60 years - 15 elections (excluding this one) - so the odds of the elections going the same way as the Redskin games (if there is no connection between them) is 1 in 32768.
With the vast numbers of unrelated binary-outcome public events happening close to the elections, it should be possible to find plenty of them with seemingly better predictive power than this one...
Numbers of Florida voters pushing out the wrong cardboard chads for example.
www.sjbaker.org
And every college game at Michigan's "Big House" draws 110,000+ fans, but I keep going there every home game. I'm sure as hell not going to let anyone scare me away from living my life.
They did stop allowing advertising planes above/around the stadium during games though, probably to reduce the risk. This happened right after 9/11.
On a side note, the most powerful moment of silence I have ever taken part in was the Michigan football game following 9/11 when EVERY fan in the stadium was silent, not even breathing. It was the only time that every person in the stadium sung the national anthem, I think. And the only time the anthem was followed by humbled silence, instead of rowdy cheers. I don't remember who won the football game, but I remember that.
Real eh?
Florida recount study: Bush still wins
... and furthermore
I wouldn't be surprised if Bush & Co. decided on a major offensive Monday:
It's certainly interesting that a huge number of fresh troops just arrived in preparation for just that.
Would it work against the administration to do this? Polls say no.
Obviously, I'm not sure if they'd be that daring, but if they are, you heard it here first (if they're not, this comment, like most conspiracy theories, will just lapse into oblivion).
Of course as a cheesehead I am very happy the Packers won, but I am not counting on that to hand Kerry the election. Fortunately, there is another game that will decide it... it is called the election 'ground game'. In this game, armies of volunteers knock on doors, talk to their neighbors, drop off flyers, and give rides to the polls. It is grass roots politics at its finest.
The republicans seem to be finally getting into the ground game this year. Compared to previous elections, their ground team this year is very impressive. Unfortunately for them, the democratic and Kerry supporting groups are fielding a force that is probably four or five times larger. I've been talking to campaign veterans that have been doing this for over 30 years, and they describe the current groundswell of grasroots activism in support of Kerry with words like 'unprecedented' and 'staggering'.
It is also interesting to see the differences in how to ground game is run by both sides. The republican effort is pretty much all the RNC. It is top down, hierarchical, very organized. There are great many dedicated volunteers, but their actions are very cordinated by the campaign.
On the Kerry side, however, it is much more bottom up. There is a huge swath of liberal leaning non-profits and newly created ad-hoc citizen groups all doing their own part. The DNC itself is very experienced at the ground game and just by itself can put up a good fight against the RNC effort. Add all those third party groups to the mix, like MoveOn.org, ACT, the NAACP, the Seria Club, and newcomers like The League of Pissed of Voters... and you begin to see what the Republicans are up against.
Lets put it all in perspective for a moment. Gore was trailing in the polls by up to five points but ended up winning the popular vote due to unexpectedly high democratic turnout. Kerry is now polling about even with Bush, even ahead in some polls, going into the election. All indications are that the Democratic turnout will break records this year. To me, that looks like a Kerry win.
The Bolachek Journals
It is very easy to tell if your ATM withdrawal/deposit went through, by simply calling the bank/going on-line/waiting for your monthly statement. If there was any hint of a impropriety, the bank would drop Diebold like a hot rock (banks rely on their own reputation of trustworthiness in order to be successful).
There is no way to check if your vote was recorded, let alone tallied correctly. The unelected civil servants who run the elections don't give a Tinker's Damn whether your vote went through or not; they just care about their yearly rating and doing just enough to not get written up. The cherry on top of the cupcake is the fact that the average politician is incapable of understanding the technical issues and operational risks behind e-voting, so you won't get any help from that corner.
Yeah, right.
so are you saying that it's GWB's fault that we did nothing before 9/11 (like a response to the first WTC bombing, the African embassies bombings or the Cole bombing)? Or are you saying that after Bad people knocked down two huge buildings in lower Manhattan and killed a bunch people in a multi pronged assault hitting 3 out of 4 targets that it was wrong for GWB (and the congress) to try and take steps to stop it from happening again?
Isn't Bush supposed to be done in by an assasins bullet?
I mean, the 0 year "curse" has been responsible for the deaths of US Presidents longer than the Redskin election "prophecy" has been around.
So I'd say the 0 year curse trumps the Redskin Prophecy and I see you one war before 2006.
I'm still wondering why people think that correlation is causation? It's not like a football game has any logical bearing on this.
;-)
But yes, I suspect the rest of the world will be mortified to discover that Bush is their leader even now
Is this the same Major who said he never saw an IAEA seal on any of the bunkers he visited? The same Major who said he blew up "munitions" and couldn't say if any of it was the high-grade explosives that are in question? The same Major who said he was at Al Qaqaa 5 days before the embedded KSTP TV crew shot video of US Soldiers at Al Qaqaa breaking IAEA seals, opening the bunkers, and examining the barrels of the high explosives still contained therein? Same guy? How can you conclude from his testimony that the explosives had been detonated?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
arrogant or ignorant? I find a lot of other countries to have much more arrogant population on average but usually a lot less ignorant.
You know, it's interesting that people (even Republicans, i find) totally ignore Democratic cases of voter fraud. Republicans are not the only ones responsible for it -- in fact, they seem to me like they're less likely to do it than Democrats, on the whole.
Some of these are really biassed, but here are some examples:
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article385 5.html
http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/004765.html (LOTS of articles about it here)
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/007968.php
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1250035/p osts (admittedly, Free Republic is a pretty bad place to go for potentially reputation-harming information about Democrats, but there it is anyway <_<)
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/fund20040913 0633.asp
Even The New York Times had a story about Democratic voter fraud.
This isn't to say that the Las Vegas thing and Chuck Hagel's involvement with that voting-machine company and the convenient Diebold incident in Georgia aren't troubling, because they are, very much. But so many people mysteriously forget that the other party isn't the only one that can be 'filthy'.
My favorite beers are made in England, Germany, Denmark and Belgium (Ok, I admit I like beer a lot...), while my girlfriend is addicted to Swiss and Belgian chocolates.
What, no Ireland (Kilkenny, Guinness) nor Czech Republic (Staropramen, Pilsner Urquell, Kozel) on the favorite beer list!?
As to chocolates... Any chocolate connoisseur owes it to herself to check out Finnish Fazer Blue chocolate. It's legendary.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
Jerry Rice's Catches and the Niners' games where they scored at least once among many others.. I think this could be another one of those streaks coming to an end very soon..
"Make it idiot proof, and someone will make a better idiot."
On War: Its funny you criticize Bush's war policies when Jimmy Carter and President Clinton refused to confront terrorism repeatedly throughout their administrations creating the debacle George W. Bush had the courage to face. Jimmy Carter's reckless pacifist idealistic foreign policy cost us our relationship with Iran, when he pressured the Shah to change policy based on U.S. will, and when this looked like a weakness to Iraq and Sudan, he refused to send help to the Iranians. The result? The government overthrown and replaced by a despotic terrorist regime - Iran - once our closest ally in the middle east now one of our worst enemies - and this still has to be cleared up. Clinton witnessed numerous, indisputable terrorist declarations of war ON US SOIL, and averted an eye in every, single instance. When our embassies were bombed in 1992, 1997, and 1998 - these are attacks on US SOIL. And the WTC bombing of 1993. Liberals consistently pursue a policy of appeasement, thinking idealistically that peace begets peace. No. Peace and appeasement historicaly has created a worse situation than confrontation, Neville Chamberlin leaving Germany telling his people in Britain that all is well, we've reached peace with the Germans allowed Nazi Germany to further develop into a breeding ground for terror. Evil/Terrorism/Despotism must be confronted wherever, not appeased and accomodated. On Economy: If you remember, Reagan lowered the HIGHEST tax bracket in his administration from the high 70's to 28%, and government revenue increased 99.5%. The top income earners in this country have demonstrated that they are the most efficient at investing income. Middle class and low class earners especially (or people who just live off the government) are inefficient in investing. Its not good or bad, it just doesn't make sense to give more money to people who can't spend it effectively. I didn't think I'd see the hideous specter of socialist thinking on this bored but its been getting to that in this thread. People please, recognize what's going on for what it is - a policy of appeasement versus a policy of confrontation, a man bent on creating a socialized health care and expanded social security system that doesn't even beat inflation, to a man concerned with setting competitive blocs to earn your dollar in health care, and allowing you the option of investing your own social security accounts, beating the 1-2% you're getting with the government investing your payroll taxes.
The U.S. military forces in fact were shockingly successful.
I suppose that depends on your definition of success. If you consider barging in there with size 12s, blowing up innocent civilians left, right and centre thus alienating the entire population to be success, then yes.
Iraqis weren't ready to be liberated.
Correction, they weren't ready to be liberated by fuckwits barging in there with size 12s, killing innocent civilians left, right and centre, then setting up shop capitalising from the nations rich natural resources.
Not a troll - this is my opionion. You have yours, and this is mine.
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
Actually, my wife will be working her first election, tomorrow. She's VITALLY interested in the process, and cares that it work correctly. Her father worked the elections, years ago. (In this light, the question we asked ourselves yesterday was, "Why did it take her this long to sign up to work an election?") For that matter, my mother used to work the elections, too. As far as I can tell, most of the election workers are locals, ordinary people, hired for the day, and share that motivation with my wife.
Aside from the part of your post denigrating the poll workers, I have to agree with you. Fortunately in our precinct, we have optical readers and use 'fill in the circle' ballots. I didn't realize how lucky we were until the Diebold fiasco started brewing in the past year or two.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
We didn't have to pay for the war in Iraq, we borrowed all that money. It's like putting it on a credit card with no limit, and we don't even have to make a noremal minimum payments - just cover the interest! I can't imagine what could be more american (or more foolish) than that!
(You wonder if GW got his financial savvy from his daughters)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If Bush won it would be a bad omen for his last 4 years, if Kerry won it would mean next election would be even more dumbed down - millions of people would be watching the Redskins to see the result, and political journalists and news stations would actually be basing their predictions on it. Then there would be some kind of scandel over who got paid to take a fall. All I can say is GO GREENBAY! DOWN WITH BOOSH W00T!
However, this really doesnt fill me with confidence:
"Oh, yeah, he's going to win. It's guaranteed," said Packers safety Darren Sharper, a Kerry supporter. "I don't have to vote now. Don't even have to go to the polls. Saved me a trip."
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Low earners pay plenty of taxes. FICA and the like take up a substantial percentage of most working folks' paychecks. The scam is that social security fund is then raided by politicians who dip into these revenues for general funds--it's an income tax in all but name for those who draw a paycheck from an employer and have that as their only income.
The working poor have it bad enough, they don't need be looked down as "lucky duckies" for not paying in their fair share of taxes. I'd much rather be where I am than in the position of not having to pay federal income tax.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
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