Here is a link to a professional statistician's analysis of why the USAToday/Gallup Polls are fundamentally unreliable.
http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/68/4/588?ijkey=053EosjdTO0oc&keytype=ref
Sorry the link is not hot - but TMP is it's usual unreliable self today - refusing to paste the URL using the 'link' feature.
Why does she not simply ask each of the 18 million+ supporters she can't shut her mouth about to each send her $1?
Easy to do - not a major impact on ones home budget - and she doesn't have to waste either Obama's or his supporters valuable time or resources.
And who knows - a few might be able to afford even $2 or $3??
Just a thought!
The world of humor, social commentary, and political satire has lost
its brightest light today with the passing of George Carlin.
As
possibly the best there was at not only sniffing out bullshit - but
denouncing it with no hemming or hawing or window-dressing, his always
on-the-money intellect was always there to point out the absurdities
and inatities of modern life - from religion to politics to culture,
George saw through the crap and called it like he saw it. He took no
prisoners - and brooked no euphemism or metaphor when a good, simple,
accurate word or sentence filled the bill.
I understand Keith Olbermann is doing a tribute to him MONDAY night during his broadcast. Don't miss it!
I
know George wouldn't want me to say anything as silly as 'God bless' -
and being an atheist, I am with him 100% - so I will only say,
1. I am logged in - try to reply to a thread - and am ASKED FOR MY USERNAMe and PASSWORD (even though the system already has me LOGGED IN and ACKNOWLEDGED!!!!!)
2. I am able to post this BLOG without being queried - yet I can't reply to a friggin post?????
3. When I DO enter my SN and PASSWORD, the effing software says it is INVALID!!!!!!
Is there ANY competent software employee at TPM?????Are you EVER going to get the bugs out of this software? Never mind FISA - concentrate on the bugs that affect those of us HERE every day!!!!!
The latest INSIDER ADVANTAGE poll numbers from Georgia. Who says 3rd party candidates don't influence elections?
McCain: 44%
Obama: 43%
Barr: 6%
Undecided: 7%
5% +/- MOE (408 likely voters)[...]
“Georgia is competitive for Obama for several reasons. First, it has a high African-American voting age population (VAP). Second, it has an unusually high percentage of younger voters (18-29). Both of these groups are more in the Obama camp, with black voters already at the 83 percent level and likely to climb.
“Equally important, like its neighbor Florida, Georgia has a high percentage of voters who consider themselves independent. Obama is carrying that critical swing vote by about 10 percent in the poll.
Obama continues to pile up the numbers as tonight's pre-Gore endorsement polls released by Rasmussen have Obama now AHEAD of McCain in VIRGINIA - and 12 points closer in KANSAS than a month ago.
The ramifications of these numbers is astounding - and speak to a potential blowout if they hold and spread as widely as they have in the past 2 weeks.
Pablano now has Obama at a 65.7% probability of victory in November - the highest for any candidate since he began his projections for 2008.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
John McCain recently 'offered' to debate Senator Obama in a series of 10 'town hall' style 'debates. Largely unmoderated, and in casual settings, while this would seem to favor Obama (who is rhetorically and presence-wise many levels above McCain), in reality, the outcome could do nothing but maintain Obama's advantages - while potentially HELPING McCain in three ways:
1. The free nationwide exposure and publicity (desperately needed in what will be a far-less cash-flush campaign).
2. The free platform from which to attack Obama - obviating the need for expensive attack ads.
3. The potential for a campaign-ending stumble or misstatement or event.
Obama should respectfully but firmly DECLINE this 'generous' offer and maintain what has been political history - a series of 2-4 national moderated debates, with conditions and moderators agreed upon by both camps well in advance.
What more can one say other than this?
http://www.236.com/blog/w/ian_gurvitz/to_the_hillary_supporters_who_6998.php
Thank you FiveThirtyEight.con for doing the final math for all of us - and bursting Hillary Clinton's final remaining 'talking point' about who the real winner was this past campaign season. As you can see, Hillary wins the PV metric ONLY IF WE GIVE HER ALL MICHGAN VOTES and ZERO for Obama.
That leaves eight potential ways that we can handle Michigan.
1. Ignore Michigan entirely. That gives Obama a win by 155,782 votes.
2. Count Michigan at 100 percent and give no votes to Obama. That givesClinton a win by 172,527 votes.
3. Count Michigan and give all uncommitted votes to Obama. Obama +65,641.
4. Count Michigan and give all uncommitted and write-in votes to Obama. (Note that we have included a new option to treat Michigan's 27,694 discarded write-in votes as uncommitted). Obama +93,335.
5. Count Michigan and allocate uncommitted votes based on the preferences of uncommitted voters in exit polls. We have that total at Obama +6,961, however it is so close that it can essentially be considered a tie.
6. Count Michigan and allocate uncommitted and write-in votes based on exit polls. That gives Obama a "safe" win by 28,008 votes.
7. Count Michigan and allocate all officially-recorded votes based on exit polls. This may be a truer reflection of voter preference because roughly 20 percent of Hillary Clinton's voters indicated in exit polls that they'd prefer to have voted for another candidate. Under this scenario, Obama wins by 90,398.
8. Same as above, but also include write-in votes in the total that we divide among the candidates. This is actually my preferred solution, because write-in voters were almost certainly included in exit polls even if they weren't included in Michigan's official tally. Counterintuitively, Obama's margin goes down slightly if we take this approach (because we are giving the majority share of a slightly larger pie to Clinton). But we still have Obama winning the national popular vote count by 87,351.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/06/final-popular-vote-estimates-obama-wins.html
Just over a decade ago, we were torn by racial riots and divisiveness over two trials that nearly tore us apart.
Less than 8 years ago, we were devastated by terror attacks by Muslim extremists.
And yet tonight, we will have a presidential candidate (and likely election winner) who is not only a former Muslim, but is African-American - has a multitude of racial connections in his background - and has 2 names that match avowed enemies of this nation......
And yet the majority of our fellow citizens have come together and said that we will not be divided by race - we will not cower in fear and irrational prejudgment - we will not give in to childish attempts to paint a fellow citizen as somehow unworthy of our respect and our assent simply because they have a background that does not precisely mirror our own experience or ethic identity of history.
I am truly proud today (and have been for some time now) that our country - and most of all our younger citizens - seem to have taken the rhetoric of freedom and equality seriously - thrown off the shackles of bigotry, intolerance, and prejudice - and listened carefully and closely to the voice, instead of closing their minds to the message solely because the messenger does not resemble most of us when we look into the mirror.
For the first time in a long time, I am proud of my country - and know precisely what Michelle Obama meant when she discussed her own experience of a heightened sense of pride in the United States.
Apparently Hillary Clinton did NOT receive 'unfair' or 'undue' negative press coverage during the most important period of the Democratic Primaries - as she and her fanatical fans have erroneously claimed:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-melber/media-doesnt-love-obama-a_b_104596.html
Time to haul out some other excuse to salve those wounds.
Is that had Clinton (or should I say the Clintons):
1. Run a halfway ethical and party-centered campaign.2. Refrained from whining and race-baiting.3. Refrained from criticizing those who 'can't stand the heat' and then proving themselves incapable of living up to their own expectations in others.4. Solidified their bases and planned for beyond SuperTuesday.
We would likely have ended up with what would have been a 350+ EV vote-collecting ticket for this Fall: CLINTON/OBAMA.
No hard feelings. No disenfranchised voters. No angered subgroups. A united and unstoppable front that could have secured the Presidency, Vice-Presidency and likely Supermajorities in one or both houses.
But no.
Once again, ego and entitlement are served up as 'drive and courage' - and what we have to live now is the legacy.
How pathetic and sad.
but I have been saying this since last October - and I still think it is has a high probability of happening:
OBAMA/CLINTON '08.
Because the near-perfect analogy would be:
KENNEDY/JOHNSON '60.
Now I may be crazy - but behind the much-subdued actual Clinton/Obama verbiage directed at each other since early May, I am more convinced than ever that most of what we have seen has been carefully scripted and planned for - and that they will come together for the public and their political bases in the end.
It amazes me that anyone can seriously consider this walking misfiring neuron for ANY office of any importance - let alone POTUS:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/29/mccain-declares-mosul-qui_n_104208.html
But seriously.....
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/25/barr.election/index.html
As a lifelong Libertarian, I am actually ashamed and mortified by this choice - and am trying to figure out why the LP made such an unqualifed and embarassing choice.
Could it be:
1. It is their way of causing trouble for McCain - by nominating someone who can only help Obama in close PURPLE STATES by siphoning off radical right-wing voters?
2. A way of galvanizing Independents to get out and vote for Obama in the face of such a radically fundamentalist social-issues wingnut?
3. Merely a death wish to bring down an already marginalized third party?
Who can say. All I know is, insofar as it will complicate McCains life in several close races, that is the only silver lining I can see to this VERY dark clouod.
