Bradley Effect

Is it gone?. Good stuff from fivethirtyeight.com

California Bullet train?

Prop 1A - a 10$ billion bond authorization for a bullet train. A tough cell in a broke state? Or an easy sell with high gas prices?

Young people on politics

Oct 14th Polls

Cuz I like good news.

Perhaps the CBS poll that shows Barack Obama with a 14-point lead among likely voters (12 points when third-party candidates are included) is a modest outlier. But if so, John McCain has more and more outliers that he has to explain away these days. There are now no fewer than seven current national polls that show Obama with a double-digit advantage: Newsweek (+11), ABC/Post (+10), Democracy Corps (+10), Research 2000 (+10), Battleground (+13), Gallup (+10 using their Likely Voter II model) and now this CBS News poll.

These are balanced by other results that show the race a hair tighter. Our model now projects that, were an election held today, Obama would win by 8.1 points. It also expects that the race is more likely than not to tighten some.

Nevertheless, we are a full month beyond the Lehman Brothers collapse in mid-September. Obama has enjoyed quite a remarkable run, turning a 2-point deficit into an 8-point advantage. What's especially remarkable about it is that Obama's lead has continued to increase with an eerily consistency. The collapse itself precipitated an almost immediate 3 or 4 point gain in Obama's poll numbers, moving him from a point or so down to a point or so ahead. But since then, Obama has won news cycle after news cycle, adding another two points or so to his national lead every week.

It's fairly unusual for a candidate to have such a sustained run of momentum so deep into the campaign cycle. And it does appear to be real momentum, with some real feedback loops: the worse McCain's poll numbers become, the more desperate his campaign looks, and the more desperate his campaign looks, the worse his poll numbers become.

McCain now has to go on a run of his own, a large enough run to wipe at least 8 points off of Obama's lead, and perhaps more like 9 or 10 to cover his inferior position in the Electoral College and the votes that Obama is banking in early and absentee balloting. It is imperative that McCain does not just draw tomorrow night's debate, does not just win a victory on points, but emerges with a resounding victory, the sort that leaves the spin room gasping for air. Failing that, we are getting into dead girl, live boy territory.

Targeted advertising

Look closely - this is an ad on a billboard in an XBox 360 game.

The politics of Politics 2.0

or, Open Source Politics in the US and Canada (btw - the Canadian election is today)

In the U.S., those true believers have created the extraordinary online juggernaut that appears poised to propel Barack Obama to the White House next month.

Obama uses the web for all the usual campaign functions; raising money, pushing his message, keeping supporters and the press abreast of what he is doing and saying.
But the revolutionary aspect of Obama's online operation has not been so much its ability to use the web to talk to supporters as its ability to allow them to talk to each other, to form real and virtual communities that inspire others, especially young people, who have never before been politically engaged.

On his website, Obama writes "I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington. I'm asking you to believe in yours."

He is not just running a campaign, he is using the web to try to create a political movement.

I guess the next election will incorporate aspects of the geospatial web for even more targeted campaigning.

Ads

McCain is running this nationally. Waddya think? This doesn't seem to strong to me. the blind ambition bit might work, but it is so vague that it isn't really credible. And the second bit seems especially odd - especially since it goes against the standard "wisdom", i.e. "Liberals want more regulation"...

THE GREAT SCHLEP

Don't be a douchenozzle.
[viewer discretion advised]

For those who missed it

The debate in 10 minutes

All your polls are belong to us

Want the latest number crunching on the pres race? Go to fivethirtyeight.com.

Keating Economics

Linking the Keating 5 affair and the economic meltdown... They have a 13 minute documentary. Looks like Obama has his own Oct. surprise.

lil' bill

http://view.break.com/581294 - Watch more free videos

Gettin' Ugly

So, it looks like the McCain campaign, obviously eager to change the dynamic is going to *shocker* get even more ugly. Palin has already started by saying the Obama pals around with terrorists.

On a related note, Rolling Stone has come out with a set of articles deconstructing McCain. My favourite is a piece on Palin: "Mad Dog Palin"

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

[update]This is Obama's jujitsu move:

Vote for the MILF

Too funny

Science of Meditaiton

Time did an issue on it

Here are pretty pictures

Fiddlesticks

The Politics of Fear

Science that explains a lot

he authors first conducted a random telephone survey of Lincoln residents to find some who held strong political opinions. Then 46 selected respondents were invited to come in to the lab and fill in questionnaires to reveal political beliefs and personality traits. Participants were then given two types of tests to measure physiological responses to threat.

First, they were attached to equipment to measure skin conductivity, which rises with emotional stress as the moisture level in skin goes up. Each participant was shown threatening images, such as a bloody face interspersed with innocuous pictures of things such as bunnies, and rise in skin conductance in response to the shocking image was measured. The other measure was the involuntary eye blink that people have in response to something startling, such as a sudden loud noise. The scientists measured the amplitude of blinks via electrodes that detected muscle contractions under people's eyes.

The researchers found that both of these responses correlated significantly with whether a person was liberal or conservative socially. Subjects who had expressed a high level of support for policies "protecting the social unit" showed a much larger change in skin conductance in response to alarming photos than those who didn't support such policies. Similarly, the mean blink amplitude for the socially protective subjects was significantly higher, the team reports in tomorrow's issue of Science. Co-author Kevin Smith says the results showed that automatic fear responses are better predictors of protective attitudes than sex or age (men and older people tend to be more conservative).

If this is right, then meditation, which reduces one's physiological reaction to such stimulus, might actually make people more liberal.

happy guy

he's back

Part 9 of 10:
Others here.

Head of Skate

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Tactics and strategy

Astute commentary on the debate

Less astute commentary:

US Americans!

Btw - that second video has been seen over 29 *million* times.

[update] A little more:

Katie and Sarah

Quaint

Looks like they hacked

into Obama's emails too

No comment

Sarah Palin's emails

Apparently someone cracked into her yahoo account, but then tipped her off.

More info on the hacking here.

The only kind of reading I can stomach

due to election stress.

The Ugly New McCain

and

MY GAL

The Palin-Gibson Interview

SNL reality

Register to vote

Make sure you do

Google backs project to connect 3bn to net

Google has thrown its weight behind ambitious plans to bring internet access to 3bn people in Africa and other emerging markets by launching at least 16 satellites to bring its services to the unconnected half of the globe.

Ready on day 1

Change

This seems to be shaping up as a change election. The republicans have bought into that meme. The funny thing is that it would seem to be a losing proposition for Republicans, but they are good at verbal jujitsu. It is time to take on McCain at his supposed strength. This is a good start:

I fear

that I am not going to sleep well for 2 months.

In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote. The survey of 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, has a margin of error of +/— 3 points for both samples.

Long lines expected

Democrats post big gains in voter registration

Since the last federal election in 2006, volunteers like Graham combined with the enthusiasm generated by the Obama-Clinton struggle to add more than 2 million Democrats to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states.

Here's hoping they turn out and their votes get counted...

Robot bartenders

in Burmingham

i dunno - call me old school, but me thinks people like to interact with people. 

The reason why Repubs rely on culture wars

Economics just ain't their bag

The stark contrast between the whiz-bang Clinton years and the dreary Bush years is familiar because it is so recent. But while it is extreme, it is not atypical. Data for the whole period from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent under Democrats.

That 1.14-point difference, if maintained for eight years, would yield 9.33 percent more income per person, which is a lot more than almost anyone can expect from a tax cut.

Dept. of Counterprogramming

Obama to appear on O'Reilly Thursday. Interesting move - it counters McCain's RNC speech on Thursday. Looking forward to watching that

I also like these ads directly talking about McCain and a woman's right to choose.

Obama’s new radio ad, airing widely in at least seven swing states, tells voters McCain “will make abortion illegal.” It’s airing as McCain courts female voters with the addition of the staunchly anti-abortion governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, to his ticket.

Democrats had, until now, sought to appeal to women primarily on economic issues such as health care and workplace discrimination; abortion rights were hardly mentioned at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week. But women’s rights groups have been urging Obama to attack McCain on the issue, pointing to polling showing that some women who support McCain think he supports abortion rights. In fact, the Arizona senator has long supported a ban on abortions, with exceptions for victims of rape and incest, and for pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother. Palin has an even firmer anti-abortion stance: She would require rape and incest victims to carry their pregnancies to term.

GoogleVet

One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate's closest supporters as "keeping their fingers crossed" in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.

Wow, just wow.

The "Eagleton Scenario"

Could Sarah Palin become the first running mate since Thomas Eagleton in 1972 to be dropped from a major-party ticket? Joshua Green offers a look at how such a scenario would unfold.

It won't happen, but it is interesting nonetheless...

Getting ugly

Oh man. I'll just steal the whole post:

Seems that those who read US Weekly aren't big fans of Sarah Palin (R):

Also, Mark Halperin says this is the magazine's upcoming cover. Not exactly a flattering one:

UPDATE: It gets worse for Palin, OK Magazine has its own cover.

I can only imagine how many million of women these two magazines reach -- not to mention overall eyes at the checkout stands...

UPDATE #2 (5:38 pm ET): ABC News' Rick Klein offers this on the US Weekly cover:

[T]his, to me, is the clearest evidence yet that the McCain-Palin campaign is losing the battle over Palin’s image. US Weekly readers are the voters her selection was designed to attract. There’s not much to like in this early take -- and not much to indicate that the next round will be much better.

UPDATE #3 (5:43 pm ET): An excerpt from the US Weekly story:

“Within hours of McCain’s surprise introduction of the little-known, charismatic mother of five as his running mate, the scandals began to emerge as quickly as flies at a Labor Day picnic,” Mara Reinstein writes for the magazine.

“While putting to rest one scandal, Palin appeared to have opened another of even greater significance. Staunchly antiabortion (even in cases of rape) and opposed to sex-education classes (she believes in abstinence instruction for teens), ques tions began to arise about not just her judg ment, but that of McCain’s as well,” Reinstein writes.

This is really, really bad news for Palin.

Is it possible to withdraw her from the ticket? It seems that people are beginning to speculate on that. Is that possible? I suppose so... has this ever happened before? This is McCain's Miers moment.

New word

a-Palin: adj. not thought through. Example: That idea is a-Palin!

Google to launch new browser (today)

Its called Chrome

Luntz focus groups

Undicided independent voters in Minneapolis

Another week, another Frank Luntz/AARP focus group of undecided voters--this one in Minneapolis and with some bad news for John McCain: they don't like the choice of Sarah Palin for vice president. Only one person said Palin made him more likely to vote for McCain; about half the 25-member group raised their hands when asked if Palin made them less likely to vote for McCain. They had a negative impression of Palin by a 2-1 margin...a fact that was reinforced when they were given hand-dials and asked to react to Palin's speech at her first appearance with McCain on Friday---the dials remained totally neutral as Palin went through her heart-warming(?) biography, and only blipped upwards when she said she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere--which wasn't quite the truth, as we now know.

Then there was this, from a woman named Teresa, who went to the Democratic Convention as a Hillary delegate and is leaning toward voting for McCain--obviously the target audience for the Palin pick: "His age didn't really bother me until he picked Palin. What if he dies in office and leaves us with her as President? Also she leans toward the rigid right, and I always thought he was a moderate...You know, I change my mind almost every day, but right now I"m wondering where the John McCain I really liked in 2000 went, what happened to the moderate? This John McCain has the look of someone who is being manipulated--probably by Karl Rove."

Teresa still wasn't willing to vote for Obama, whom she considers too inexperienced, but she was clearly wavering. Afterwards Luntz, good Republican that he is, made the case that Palin could win all these people back with a good convention speech, but that seemed far-fetched to me. They really saw this pick as a gimmick--and one that reflected badly on John McCain's judgment.

It really seems as if she wasn't fully vetted.

But that's ok, because Biden is a Big Blowhard Doofus.

Palin for GOP VP

Looks like McCain choose Sarah Palin Gov of Alaska for VP. Who is she?

Going off the deep end

A Speech to the Delegates, by David Brooks. I think he has really lost it - it sounds like someone stole his star wars action figures and is having a tissy fit. He makes Dowd look like a responsible adult who sticks to the important issues. Damn.

On Joe Biden

On polling

An interesting insiders look at the Obama campaign and how they use polling data.

Hillary

I want to pump

up your tires. Go Arnie, go Arnie, it's your birthday...

Hacking airport wi-fi

Get Free Airport Wi-Fi with a Simple URL Hack

I found that I could easily visit sites like slashdot, Google, or even this weblog, when adding a ?.jpg at the end of the url. The next logical step was to automate that. I downloaded Greasemonkey and wrote a 4 line script that would add ?.jpg to every link in a document. That way I was able to browse most sites without a hassle.

Does this work?

Mrs. Obama

Tarnishing

Assuming that the Obama campaign isn’t scared off by the P.O.W. thing, can it really win in an exchange of character attacks? Probably not — but it doesn’t have to.

The central fact of this year’s election is that voters are fed up with Republican rule. The only way Mr. McCain can win the presidential race is if it becomes a contest of personalities rather than parties — and if his campaign can instill in voters the perception that Mr. Obama is a suspicious character while Mr. McCain is a fine, upstanding gentleman.

The Obama campaign, on the other hand, doesn’t need to convince voters either that he’s the awesomest candidate ever or that Mr. McCain is a villain. All it has to do is tarnish Mr. McCain’s image enough so that voters see this as a race between a Democrat and a Republican. And that’s a race the Democrat will easily win.

Especially since 8 in 10 say the country is going in the wrong direction.

houses

you know, i *wish* politics could be civil and fairly rational and issues based... but its not.

anyway, while I find all these sorts of attacks silly (e.g., obama is a celebrity, ooh! McCain doesn't know how many houses he has, aah!) I am glad to see that finally Obama is starting to play the game.

And it is amazing how the media loves this trivial shit. It is easy to understand, petty, and right up their alley.

Anyway looks like McCain's houses gaffe is going to get some play for a while.

Here's Krugman's take on the issue.

Yes we can parties

Despite the powerful arguments made by one commenter against Fraudbama the communist... I'm going to continue to promote Barack, and if I could, I'd attend this, a Move-on sponsored DNC convention night party:

It's the biggest political night in a decade--and we're throwing our biggest party ever!

On Thursday, August 28th, MoveOn members will gather around the country to witness history: Barack Obama officially accepting the Democratic nomination in front of 75,000 supporters in Denver.

We'll share ice cream and desserts, unveil MoveOn's gigantic new campaign to help elect Barack, and watch what promises to be a "barn-burner" of a speech.

Already, an incredible 1,500 MoveOn members are hosting "Yes We Can" Parties around the country. Can you host your own or come to one that's already planned? Just

click here

to get started.

Here's what will happen at the parties: We'll get together--hopefully you'll meet some new people--and share ice cream and desserts with other Obama supporters. Every party in the country will be on a nationwide conference call where we'll kick-off a massive new effort to put Obama in the White House. Then, we'll watch Obama's speech together--and share a historic moment that we'll be talking about for years to come.

Nights like these don't come along very often, and you won't want to experience it alone. Please sign up for a "Yes We Can" Party near you and bring along some dessert to share and a few friends--or even sign up to host your own party.

Hope to see you next Thursday, and thanks for all you do.

--Eli, Lenore, Anna, Patrick S. and the rest of the team

A tale of two candidates: on how to deal with evil

Theremin

Stephen Spoonamore

He's a sweetie. There are 7 other parts to that interview.

Move on

Special Election Briefing: 5 Things You Should Know

Happiness

When being rat-brained is incredible

Rise of the rat-brained robots

A picture of a thousand words

From here.
I tell you - the hope candidate wins.

Lonely Night in Georgia

The Bush administration's feckless response to the Russian invasion

He'll make Cheney look like Gandhi

more soetoro '08

could be why hillary has never officially dropped-out of the race

although i can't say i know anything about this larry johnson guy, other than he has a bad haircut.

Baghdad, 5 years on

Part 1 of 3: City of walls

Part 2 of 3: Killing fields

Part 3 of 3: Iraq's lost generation

Parez

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

55 minutes, 5 days a week

For optimal weight loss, for women. Seems like a lot.

Soetoro '08

COLB?

Randy Pausch

has died. I can only hope to accomplish 1/100th as much as he has accomplished. See Last Lecture.

Send Karl Rove to Jail

Last TED for the day

Yochai Benkler & Billy Graham

Bob Thurman: Becoming Buddha -- on the Web

Outsourcing life and living biblically

My outsourced Life - a really entertaining read).

TPMtv: Iraq Back-to-Back

hydrogen cars

are out
- with a funky techno beat.

The Nissan FCV (fuel cell vehicle) is on display at the Science Museum in London. The hydrogen-powered vehicle can drive up to 500km (300 miles) before refilling and has a maximum speed of 150 km/h (95 mph).

and apparently you can make hydrogen at home.

The American Okey-Dokey

Squirm-y

Boy I'm going to miss him

Depressing

Senate Passes Unconstitutional Spying Bill And Grants Sweeping Immunity To Phone Companies.

Obama fully caved on this one. He wants to avoid the political attacks, but I think it could have been a point to attack from. Oh well. At lest the ACLU will challenge.

The Ugly American

23%

The survey found public approval of the president's job performance at a new low for a Times/Bloomberg poll: 23%, compared with 73% disapproval.

Wow. 23%.

There is other news there too, like that Obama has a 12 point lead, at this moment.

Filibuster

They couldn't get the hold so it looks like Finegold and Dodd are filibustering the FISA law. At the moment you can see a live streaming video of Dodd filibustering.

My political compass

Economic Left/Right: -5.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.49

I like the fact that these results from this test puts me closest to the Dalai Lama.

Just cookie

and something else

The GOP Ralph Nader

Here's hoping he's named Bob Barr.

Ted: bottom billion

And some more interesting stuff:

Bad guys really do get the most girls

taking the shotgun approach to procreation

Swing!

Great white north issues

Oh the lovely internets

Beware, contains bad word.

A genetic modification I like

A bug that eats waste and sh*ts petrol

Seriously.

To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

...

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.

However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.

“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

Last lecture

Kucinich presents Bush impeachment articles

"Resolved," Kucinich then began, "that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate. ...

The Varying Impact of Gas Prices

Gas prices are high throughout the country, but how hard they hit individual families depends on income levels, which vary widely. Some people pay up to 16% of their income on gas... 16%!

Hillary Clinton's Concession Speech

Schadenfraude

No more Hummers?

Never thought I'd be happy to say that.