14 Nov 08 Center-Right or Center-Left?
Watch Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart debate the question lol.
03 Nov 08 The Election Line
With one day left in the campaign, the national Pollster numbers show Barack Obama leading John McCain 51.5% to 44.3%, with 4.2% of the votes going to other candidates or still undecided. Their electoral college prediction is 311 votes for Obama, 142 votes for McCain, and 85 votes too close to call. These are the best predictions available in the US, but many people wonder how accurate they really are. For example, what if the people polled weren’t telling the truth?
There is a better way to predict elections than polling the voting population: ask the gamblers. Rather than dealing in hypothetical what-if’s, the gambling world deals in dollars and cents. Every potential fraud or screwup has to be taken into account when your livelihood depends on correctly predicting the outcome. A pollster can say “Ooops!” and move on, but a bookie who sets the wrong odds literally loses his shirt. Gambling on election outcomes is illegal in America, but perfectly acceptable in many parts of the world. Two sites, Intrade and Betfair, won’t let Americans place bets, but do publish their election odds lines. With only one day left to go, their numbers are likely to be very accurate. If not, they face going out of business the day after tomorrow.
This morning Betfair has Barack Obama at approximately 91% to win and John McCain at 8%, with the odds of Obama receiving more than 350 electoral votes at 59%. Those are overwhelming odds this late in the game. Their prediction model has Obama winning the following battleground states: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Over at the Intrade site they put the electoral college numbers front and center: 353 for Obama, 185 for McCain. Their model has Obama picking up the same swing states, plus Nevada. Here’s the bottom line: tomorrow night the newsboy bobbleheads are going to be talking about an Obama presidency, you can bet on it.
02 Nov 08 Political Advertising
This classic sketch from Mr. Show illustrates the basic rules of campaign ad wars, particularly the slow slide into the gutter lol.
Tip of the hat to Open Left
02 Nov 08 Best Election Ever
Bill Maher hilariously recapped the 2008 election on New Rules Friday night.
Americans were so sick of Bush that seven years after 9/11 they said “You know what sounds good? A black guy with a Muslim name.”
02 Nov 08 Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin
Everyone with an ounce of Republican left inside them is insisting that Sarah Palin will still be a force of nature in politics after Tuesday night. That doesn’t seem likely, based on the shelf life of all the past candidates for Vice President who lost elections. None of them ever made it to the White House or even got close.
But Sarah does have a future in the entertainment business. I’m reminded of the numbed out heroine Louise Lasser played in the classic faux soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” each time I see that deer in the headlights look on Sarah’s face. It wouldn’t take much to transform the raw facts of her life in Wasilla into a show every bit as good and twice as funny. Put a talking moose on the wall and plant Mr. Green Jeans’ hydroponic pot farm next door and it’s a winner for sure. For those who doubt her acting ability, just watch these audition videos.
She knows how to blow:
She knows how to strut:
You can dress her up in a Barbie gown:
Yes Sarah, I see stars in your future - on Hollywood Boulevard!
30 Oct 08 FUX Business News Slams McCain
In an amazing turnabout for a FUX newsperson, Neil Cavuto takes John McCain to the woodshed. He describes McCain’s economic policies as inconsistent and confusing. To wrap things up, Cavuto says there’s no straight talk on economics from the straight talk express.
Video thanks to Crooks & Liars
28 Oct 08 The Corpse of the Republican Party
A source in the McCain campaign has called Sarah Palin a “whack job”. The rats aren’t headed straight overboard, they’re taking a bite out of the party before they jump. Perhaps the neocons and extreme religionists will be able to coexist with moderate Republicans after this election, and perhaps not. It seems clear they’re doing their best to rip each other to shreds this week.
28 Oct 08 FUX News: Unfair & Unbalanced
It is becoming very clear to the American public that television and radio need “Fairness Doctrine” laws to provide a level playing field for all political viewpoints. In the past 20 years the media, mainstream and otherwise, has become consolidated under the ownership of a handful of large corporations. One company in particular, News Corp., owned by Rupert Murdoch, has taken the practice of promoting right-wing viewpoints to extremes. FUX News hosts regularly shout down guests who attempt to provide a counterpoint to the biased claims of Murdoch’s propaganda. Today Fox News operates without any regulatory boundaries on content, free to broadcast self-serving political viewpoints presented as news, as discussed in this video by Bill Burton and Megyn Kelly.
Video from Daily Kos
26 Oct 08 Big Losers Always Make Excuses (BLAME)
McCain and Palin are on their way to being big losers and the knives are coming out. James Carville and Paul Begala threw a few on the table today to get the party started.
The smartest people in the conservative movement are already pointing like a bird dog on a South Georgia quail hunt. David Brooks and Bill Kristol are leading the way. Mr. Brooks, representing the intellectual wing of the conservative movement, called Ms. Palin, “a fatal cancer to the Republican Party.” Attaboy, Brooksie. Score one for the brainiacs.
Mr. Kristol, on the other hand, blames neither Ms. Palin nor Sen. John McCain, but rather McCain’s campaign advisers, writing of the campaign: “Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic.” See? That’s how you do it. Kristol can’t say McCain’s problem is that he supported the Iraq war, (which Kristol advocated) or that he chose Sarah Palin (whom Kristol praised). So rather than play defense, Bill went on offense, blaming McCain’s Steve Schmidt-led campaign. But we have a feeling this fight will only begin when the Schmidt hits the fan.
But where are the other voices? We need to hear, for example, from Karl Rove. Whom will he blame? We stipulate that Karl is a genius — albeit a genius whose advice took Pres. Bush from a 91 percent approval rating down to 26. With the House of Bush ablaze, Karl is going to have to do some quick finger-pointing before they change his nickname from The Architect to The Arsonist.
How about Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other radio personalities? They never liked McCain much — but his campaign cratered only when he embraced their wild attacks on Sen. Obama. It was only after Mr. McCain borrowed the Limbaugh-Hannity line on Bill Ayers, only after Gov. Palin accused Mr. Obama of “pallin’ around with terrorists,” that the bottom fell out for Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin. We’re betting the hot air boys will blame the intellectuals. After all, if you want to make an omelet, you’ve got to break a few eggheads.
Huffington Post link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-carville-and-paul-begala/let-the-blame-game-begin_b_136223.html
26 Oct 08 Red Baiting in Florida
Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando, Florida attempts to paint Biden and Obama with the old McCarthy “Red” brush. Biden cuts her off at the knees.
24 Oct 08 McCain Pwned
When the McCain campaign began publicising allegations that one of their campaign workers had been robbed and mutilated by a pro-Obama mugger yesterday, several elements of the story just seemed wrong. In the first place, someone desperate enough to attack an ATM-user in public isn’t likely to hang around for any extras. Take the money and run is the usual MO, for good reason.
Then there was that backwards “B” on her cheek. Either we were to believe that she ran into a dyslexic thief who cared more about politics than getting away, or the story was a fake. Now we know the truth, the “B” was backwards because the confused girl who attempted to perpetrate the hoax wrote it herself.
It’s unbelievable that anyone associated with the McCain team participated in the fabrication of the lie. However his campaign staff showed the same impetuous disregard for fact-checking that McCain demonstrated in selecting Sarah Palin as a running mate. And once again, John McCain is pwned.
Image thanks to C=Venus at The Barack Spot
24 Oct 08 McCain & Palin Get An Endorsement
Not that they wanted this one hehe. Will Ferrell and Tina Fey rock the house!
21 Oct 08 Keith Olbermann On Mob Rule
Keith Olbermann weighs in on the paranoid, polarizing, and sometimes racist statements of the McCain campaign team and their supporters.
20 Oct 08 Brzezinski On Obama
Former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared on the Morning Joe show this morning. His primary purpose in being there was to discuss the Colin Powell endorsement of Barack Obama, which led to his analysis of Obama’s qualifications to be President. It’s a fascinating interview.
20 Oct 08 Obama Endorsements
The endorsements have been pouring in for Barack Obama in the past few days. Everyone’s heard about the Colin Powell appearance on Meet the Press yesterday, but the real surprises are coming from small town conservative papers all over the country. To put it simply, the endorsements for John McCain are few and far between.
The most surprising endorsement of all came from “The Eagle” in College Station, Texas, home to the Texas A&M Aggies. That paper has never before endorsed a Democrat, not even Lyndon Johnson back in the 60’s, but they came out for Obama yesterday. Their web site is swamped this morning, so I’ve included the full text of their editorial after the jump.
It’s well worth reading to find out what “the best of America”, to use Sarah Palin’s words, is thinking. To put it simply, they don’t think the idea of her running for Vice President is a very good one. “Pro-America” newspaper editors want to send her back to Alaska ASAP, and rightly so.
19 Oct 08 Sarah Palin on SNL
Did she chicken out on a skit, or was that part of the skit? Decide for yourself lol.
Live from New York it’s Saturday Night:
Weekend Update:
