... meritocracies may be fairer and more efficient than some alternatives. But fair in an absolute sense? Think about it. A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career ( Read more... )

“You know that if the President is re-elected, he will still be unable to work with the people in Congress. He has ignored them, attacked them, blamed them. The debt ceiling will come up again, and shutdown and default will be threatened, chilling the economy.”

Poll

We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.

Poll

In reference to the big, Big Bird controversy:

You can kill things and still like them.

Poll

Social Security right now is a collectivist system, it’s a welfare transfer system … Poll

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This week they rested. Only two national polls came out besides the two tracking polls, and one was the regularly scheduled weekly PPP poll for Daily Kos. So all we have are Gallup Tracking: Obama -2, Rasmussen tracking +2, PPP: +2, YouGov: +3.

Obama: 46.3%
Romney: 45.0%

This week's and previous week's dataObama : 46.3 47.7 46.8 45.8 46.9 46.0 ( Read more... )

You don't have to take on somebody else's problems. You really don't.

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Various statistical measures of Mr. Ryan peg him as being quite conservative. Based on his Congressional voting record, for instance, the statistical system DW-Nominate evaluates him as being roughly as conservative as Representative Michele Bachmann, the controversial congresswoman of Minnesota.

-- Nate Silver

And it's a good idea to snapshot these scurrying beasts before they run off and sample the race now that Paul "Medicare Crusher" Ryan is Romney's pick for Vice Presidential nominee. This way next week we'll have a clean picture of how that choice has affected the race.

There were eight polls via Pollster.com and Real Clear Politics this week ( ( Read more... )