Not only did Nate Silver correctly predict the outcome in all the states but his vote share projection was incredibly accurate. For the swing states, where his model really mattered and where he had the most data, he was off by an average of only .3 per projection. (standard deviation of the difference between projected and actual was .9) But his ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I went in to work late because I wanted to watch the SCOTUS decision coming in live. What a complete clusterfuck that was.  CNN blaring that the mandate was struck down, then I checked Drudge who said the same thing. I went over to Globe and Mail and it was saying that it had been upheld. WTF? I went to Twitter and started seeing the ( Read more... )

When Obama made his announcement in support of gay marriage, I commented that I was impressed. It's not, to my mind, a stand that does him any favours politically. Most everyone who supports gay marriage was already planning to vote for him and I suspected it would hurt him more than it would help him amongst undecideds. Several people argued ( Read more... )

The SCOTUS is hearing objections to the Affordable Care Act and people are making a big deal of the fact that they're going to listen to six whole hours of oral arguments! OTOH, the Michael Rafferty (the scumbucket accused of killing Tori Stafford)  trial ( Read more... )

Just so I have this straight, executing US citizens w/o due process, we're going to let that slide, but driving to Canada w/ a dog in a protected crate atop your car? clearly unfit to be president. That's how we're playing this one?

It's really hard for me to imagine Obama losing the presidential election next fall. Romney is just sort of a joke of a candidate who has made it as far as he has because he's been able to spend a lot of money, but he completely lacks charisma and vision. This Onion article captures it beautifully: Romneymania Sweeps America. He's been able to ( Read more... )

There was something heartening and encouraging about the SOPA/PIPA protests yesterday. It's good to see that grass roots political action is possible, the extent to which the internet facilitates it and the fact that it might actually even have an effect. And I agree that both bills are troubling, an attempt to kill a gnat w/ a hammer and possibly ( Read more... )

Motivated by a posting of George Clooney's quote that he's "disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama" and that "Democrats eat their own. Democrats find singular issues and go, ‘Well, I didn’t get everything I wanted.’ ", I've jotted down some of my main concerns and disappointment with the Obama presidency just to underscore that ( Read more... )

There's a reason that individual mandates were a conservative idea in the first place. In theory they can bring down costs and keeps the "free market" in play. Now that conservatives have suddenly decided to change their mind and hope they're declared unconstitutional, I'd love to hear any other clever ideas they have for bringing down costs while ( Read more... )

I love Glenn Greenwald because I mostly share his liberal values and he never lets partisan politics bias his point of view, happily tearing into the Democrats when they deserve it, which is way too often. On the flip side, I've started following the FrumForum pretty closely, thanks to Twitter, and they're pretty good about doing the same thing but ( Read more... )