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Number-crunching doesn't work for everything
Aberdeen American News ^ | September 20, 2009 | Art Marmorstein

Posted on 09/20/2009 5:47:34 PM PDT by ancientart

More bad news for President Obama. A survey released by Public Policy Polling shows that 8 percent of New Jersey voters think the president is the anti-Christ. Another 13 percent indicated that they were unsure of whether he was the anti-Christ or not.

What has to be worrisome for Obama and his supporters is that it's not just conservative Republicans who believe Obama is in league with the darkest of dark forces: 19 percent of those who self-identify as political moderates, 13 percent of those who call themselves Democrats, and 10 percent of those who claim to have voted for Obama in the last election say that the president is, or at least might be, the anti-Christ.

The demographic cross-tabs suggest particular problems for Obama among Hispanics, with 24 percent of Hispanic respondents saying they think Obama is the anti-Christ. Young voters (those in the 20-29 age bracket) respond similarly. Is Obama anti-Christ? Nearly one of four young New Jersey voters say he is.

Now what is going on here?

Some of this is a quite understandable reaction to the personality cult that has grown up around the president. Fawning media coverage and (even more) things like the creepy Demi Moore/Ashton Kutcher “I pledge” video radiate the “my-leader-is-god” attitude that, throughout history, Christian people have regarded as, at least in spirit, a sign of the anti-Christ. And it's not at all unusual for people to interpret the otherwise-inexplicable rise of a leader from obscurity to power as the result of some sort of league with the devil. If Joan of Arc weren't a witch, how could she have beaten the English?

But I suspect that what's really going on here is that many people are having fun with the pollsters. One blogger says that, if a pollster asked him such a silly question, he'd say “Oh, yeah, definitely the anti-Christ.” If asked where he thought Obama was born, he'd say, “The third planet in Epsilon-Bootes.”

But people don't give silly answers just for amusement. Many people are sick and tired, not just of pollsters, but of the number-crunching approach to life in general - an approach that, more and more, decision makers everywhere have chosen to adopt.

The academic world particularly is filled with number-crunching stupidity. We gather all sorts of data just to show that pre-school children are afraid of snakes and spiders, to find out that men like violent video games more than women do and to discover that people who can't afford cars are more likely than others to use public transportation.

We gather numbers to show that happy people tend to be healthier people, to show that accidents are no more common on Friday the 13th than on any other Friday and to show that depression-sufferers tend to improve slightly when they get married.

Much human behavior is simply too complex for a number-crunching approach to work. But the bureaucrats who control our lives are insatiable: Give us numbers, give us numbers. More numbers. Six. Better numbers. Six. Take a number. Six. Get a number. No buying and selling (or anything else) without a number.

So are bureaucratic number-crunchers anti-Christs? Oh, yeah. Definitely anti-Christs. Obama brought them with him from Epsilon-Bootes.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Philosophy; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: antichrist; numbercrunching; obama

1 posted on 09/20/2009 5:47:34 PM PDT by ancientart
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To: ancientart
Number-crunching doesn't work for everything

In some circles this view would be considered blasphemy.

2 posted on 09/20/2009 5:48:51 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand (hang the Czars.)
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To: ancientart
That basically just proves how stupid folks from New Jersey are raised. The Anti-Christ is loved by all. Obama is a dumbass, it hardly compares.
3 posted on 09/20/2009 5:51:31 PM PDT by eyedigress
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To: ancientart
Obama isn’t brilliant enough to be the Antichrist.
4 posted on 09/20/2009 5:55:30 PM PDT by GAB-1955 (I write books, love my wife, serve my nation, and believe in the Resurrection.)
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To: ancientart
Many people are sick and tired, not just of pollsters, but of the number-crunching approach to life in general

Many people? How many?

Inquiring minds want to know!

5 posted on 09/20/2009 5:57:42 PM PDT by Nervous Tick (Stop dissing drunken sailors! At least they spend their OWN money.)
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To: GAB-1955

...not yet.


6 posted on 09/20/2009 5:58:44 PM PDT by madison10
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To: ancientart

Another well-written opinion piece.

Thanks for posting the article.


7 posted on 09/20/2009 5:59:17 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Where's this tagline thing everyone keeps talking about?)
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Only eight percent.......? He should be happy with that.


8 posted on 09/20/2009 6:00:13 PM PDT by Godwin1
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To: ancientart

8% probably think at least one person in our government is an alien from another planet...


9 posted on 09/20/2009 6:04:54 PM PDT by DB
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To: ancientart

PPP is a Democrat party polling propaganda group. So now the Dem amd Dem media are using phony polls with odd questions to attack the GOP !


10 posted on 09/20/2009 6:09:09 PM PDT by ncalburt (Read all about)
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To: DB

Heck, that’s far more likely. The anti-Christ wouldn’t be as incompetent as the -9bama.


11 posted on 09/20/2009 6:11:43 PM PDT by farlander (Sic Semper Tyrannis)
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To: ancientart

Boy, would I love to be a fly on the wall when Rahm and Satan’s son kick this around.

Ha! Ha!


12 posted on 09/20/2009 6:12:09 PM PDT by ryan71 (Smells like a revolution)
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To: ancientart

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation . . .”

—Barack Obama


13 posted on 09/20/2009 6:17:49 PM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: ancientart

He only aspires to be the anti-christ.


14 posted on 09/20/2009 6:28:12 PM PDT by dangerdoc
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To: ancientart

Anti-Christ? ,, no ,, just a communist plant who is doing a brilliant job tearing down our defenses and our ability to rebuild by nationalizing tremendous portions of the economy.


15 posted on 09/20/2009 6:28:42 PM PDT by Neidermeyer
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To: ancientart

A Shiite Hadith describes a “Promised Warrior”, a tall black man will assume power in the West and herald the fall of the West and the victory of Islam to conquer the world.

http://swordattheready.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/antichrist-obama-islamic-world-lauds-obama-as-the-mahdi/


16 posted on 09/20/2009 7:01:05 PM PDT by broken_arrow1 (I regret that I have but one life to give for my country - Nathan Hale "Patriot")
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To: ancientart

The anti-christ is likely insulted: Obama is TOO STUPID for the job; it’s above (below?) his pay-grade.


17 posted on 09/20/2009 7:07:22 PM PDT by kromike
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To: ancientart

“What has to be worrisome for Obama and his supporters is that it’s not just conservative Republicans who believe Obama is in league with the darkest of dark forces: 19 percent of those who self-identify as political moderates, 13 percent of those who call themselves Democrats, and 10 percent of those who claim to have voted for Obama in the last election say that the president is, or at least might be, the anti-Christ.”

Hey, in New Jersey we are constantly on guard against the anti-Christ.

Somehow, this does not seem to alert us to more garden variety corruption and badness, but we are doing the best we can!


18 posted on 09/20/2009 11:06:49 PM PDT by jocon307 ( We're dealing with COMMUNISTS here, folks!)
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To: ancientart

Hmmm... this gives me a new idea for answering pollsters when I get telephoned.

I’ll just ask the if one of the questions they are going to ask me is whether Dear Leader is the anti-Christ. If they answer affirmatively, I’ll answer the rest of their questions, too... if not, I’ll just abruptly hang up the phone as I usually do.


19 posted on 09/21/2009 3:04:25 PM PDT by AFPhys ((Praying for our troops, our citizens, that the Bible and Freedom become basis of the US law again))
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