Month: April 2008
-
Presidential vote models: Fair and Hibbs
Ezra Klein highlights Ray Fair’s model of presidential election outcomes in a recent post. Fair is projecting that the GOP will receive 48 percent of the two-party presidnetial vote, but (a) his projection assumes a much stronger economy than we’re likely to have and (b) he tinkered with the specification a lot over the years
-
Leon Kass on ice cream cones
I apparently missed this back in 2003 — University of Chicago bioethicist Leon Kass, the chair of President Bush’s bioethics council, objects to the public licking of ice cream cones (via Kieran Healy): Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone –a
-
Idiotic DNC gotcha on McCain
In the hierarchy of idiotic online criticism, this DNC release attacking John McCain for a Google banner ad that appeared on some sketchy blog is one step above comparing him to a Nazi: Even as he quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words that “someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off
-
I love state politics
Via TNR’s Josh Patashnik (here and here), the New York Times has run two hilarious articles in the last few days on the strange things that happen in state politics. The first tells the story of a referendum that ends the Wisconsin governor’s bizarre ability to edit specific words out of bills: Wisconsin governors have
-
Misleading Obama donor statistics
Reader Joel Wiles points out that one of Barack Obama’s latest fundraising emails presents a little case study in the use of misleading statistical comparisons: In February alone, more than 94% of our donors gave in amounts of $200 or less. Meanwhile, campaign finance reports show that donations of $200 or less make up just
-
NY Times cheap shot at San Francisco
Since when did this sort of crack become acceptable in a straight news story? Seattle would appear to be the first in the United States to impose fees on both kinds of shopping bags. Last year, San Francisco banned plastic grocery bags outright, but paper bags can still be used, and without a fee. Seattle,
-
FYI: Additional Obama charts
If you missed it, I added some new charts to my post on interpreting primary results after it was linked on Talking Points Memo today. Also, don’t miss Josh Marshall discussing David Sirota’s column and my post in a TPM video:
-
Bogus FL/MI disenfranchisement claims
Ezra Klein flags an email from Hillary Clinton claiming that “It is a bedrock American principle: we are all equal in the voting booth… But millions of people in Florida and Michigan who went to the polls aren’t being heard.” This statement echoes her husband’s claim that Obama has “this new strategy of denying and
-
Be careful interpreting primary results!
My posts analyzing state-level predictors of support for Barack Obama were cited by Richard Florida, the academic guru of the “creative class,” in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail: Ms. Clinton is more popular among voters without college degrees. Meanwhile, Duke University political scientist Brendan Nyhan has crunched numbers that show a college education