Month: October 2006
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Futures market on House seat swing
Bloggers have been speculating wildly about the outcome on Election Day, so I thought it was worth taking a look at the new Tradesports futures market contracts for House seat swings. Using basic rules of probability, I translated the contract prices into the following graph: I’m struck by the steep dropoff above 25 seats. Given
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Great moments in George Will
Flagged by Brad DeLong — George Will criticizes Americans for worrying about “nominal rather than real gasoline prices” and then claims in the next sentence that the Dow has reached “record highs,” which is only true in nominal (ie non-inflation-adjusted) terms: Economic hypochondria, a derangement associated with affluence, is a byproduct of the welfare state:
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Return of the 18 provinces line
General George W. Casey Jr. is trying to downplay the severity of the situation in Iraq: “Make no mistake about it, we are in a tough fight here in the center of the country and in Anbar Province” to the west of Baghdad, base to much of the Sunni insurgency, the general said. “But I
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Bush campaigns for ethically challenged
President Bush on “the responsibility era” in 2004: At home, the job of a president is to help cultures change. The culture needs to be changed. I call it, so people can understand what I’m talking about, changing the culture from one that says, “If it feels good, do it, and if you’ve got a
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Alcee Hastings as Intelligence chair?
The news that Nancy Pelosi is considering Alcee Hastings for chairman of the Intelligence Committee is disturbing: Two candidates whom Ms. Pelosi is said to be considering for Intelligence Committee chairman are Representatives Alcee L. Hastings of Florida and Silvestre Reyes of Texas, both of whom currently serve on the panel. The selection of Mr.
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Alterman buys into Barron’s 2006 analysis
Eric Alterman buys into the silly Barron’s analysis of the 2006 election that I bashed yesterday: I don’t really relish being right about this election, but Barron’s did a race-by-race analysis, all 468 Congressional contests, taking into account cash on hand, as well as organization assets on the ground, and comes up with small Republican
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CNN poll shows Hillary leading McCain
A CNN poll released Friday shows Hillary Clinton leading John McCain in a trial heat: If presidential elections were held today, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would likely have a comfortable edge over Sen. John McCain, but take away her maiden name and McCain has a better shot of landing in the Oval Office. So say
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Silly Barron’s analysis of ’06
In a story linked by Drudge, Barron’s projects that “the GOP will hang on to both chambers, at least nominally” in the November election. How do they reach that conclusion? We studied every single race — all 435 House seats and 33 in the Senate — and based our predictions about the outcome in almost
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Bush: “we’ve never been ‘stay the course’”
Think Progress catches President Bush trying to distance himself from “stay the course,” a phrase he has used repeatedly over the last several years: STEPHANOPOULOS: James Baker says that he’s looking for something between “cut and run” and “stay the course.” BUSH: Well, hey, listen, we’ve never been “stay the course,” George. We have been
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Ben Fritz on The Perfect Thing
My friend Ben Fritz has written a hilarious review of The Perfect Thing, Newsweek columnist Steven Levy’s book about the iPod: The iPod is in many ways the No. 1 star of our tech-obsessed culture, so it’s perhaps no surprise that it has gotten its own celeb bio. Steven Levy’s account of Apple’s uber-popular digital