The Third Variable Problem, the Red Phone, and the Sham Science of Polling
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 Posted in Punditry, polling, pundits | No Comments »We get more speculation on the effectiveness of the red phone ad. Did it work, the way pundits assume it worked in Texas and Ohio? There's no way to know. Ever. There are too many other variables. That's a classic problem of ...
Monitor Thyselves
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »If you're one of those people who waits for tragic self-destruction and then cozies up to it in self-righteous revulsion, then ....SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Monitor Thyselves", url: "http://www.ketchupandcaviar.com/of-interest/morons-monitor-thyselves/" });
Obama Trades Nomination for Malt Liquor and Fried Chicken
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 Posted in Hillary, Obama | No Comments »I have the sense that Clinton thinks she can take the nomination from Obama the way Manhattan was taken from the Indians. He is a black man after all. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtal0bsnJTQ]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Obama Trades Nomination for Malt Liquor and Fried Chicken", url: ...
Spitzer Violates the White Slave Traffic Act
Monday, March 10th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »The only part of this that interests me, from Scott Horton: The prosecution is opened under the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. You read that correctly. The statute itself is highly disreputable, and most of the high-profile cases brought under ...
Stanley Fish, The Unmoved Blogger
Monday, March 10th, 2008 Posted in academic conceit, doxosophia, knowingness, stanley fish | No Comments »Sigh, yawn. I'm Stanley Fish, the academic, and having an opinion would require about 75 footnotes. What I'm here to do is help you regular folk -- those unsophisticated enough not to have qualified your feelings with a hundred indecisions -- ...
Toughen Up?
Monday, March 10th, 2008 Posted in Hillary, Obama | 2 Comments »James Wolcott and NYCweboy tell the Hillary haters to "toughen up"--politics is a rough game. The corollary here is that Clinton and Obama aren't really different; they "both" played rough. It's all the same. Nonsense. Calling for decency and intellectual honesty ...
Obama and the Art of Political Self-Defense
Sunday, March 9th, 2008 Posted in Hillary, Obama | No Comments »Dick Morris has a new bit about the need for Obama to attack Hillary via surrogates. I don't entirely agree, although I made a similar call in this post. Here's the difference: if the Obama campaign were to bring up Norman ...
The Deaning of Obama (Almost)
Sunday, March 9th, 2008 Posted in Hillary, Obama, Of Interest | 2 Comments »What's happening to Obama in the press, incidentally, is remarkably similar to what happened to Howard Dean (with the exception that Obama is less vulnerable to negative coverage). Dean, like Obama, initially received positive press--not directly, but as a by-product ...
How they’re Preparing us for NObama (is it time for a third-party threat?)
Sunday, March 9th, 2008 Posted in Clinton, Obama | No Comments »The tenor of current political discussion suggests that the masters our preparing us for the possibility of undoing Obama's win: The superdelegate freeze (why not decide this now and spare us the pain?); claims by Gov Rendell and others that party ...
Bill! It’s for you!
Sunday, March 9th, 2008 Posted in Hillary, Obama | No Comments »As much as I loathe Dick Morris, this is a really succinct dose of reality and it ends with a great suggestion: The next time Hillary uses the recycled red phone ad, counter with one of your own. When the ...
Hillary Must Reads
Friday, March 7th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »I rest my case (for now): http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/9271?in=00:34:15 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/breaking-the-final-rule_b_90420.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-david/on-the-red-phone_b_90338.html http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ba30ff16-a5af-4035-a883-cf15ffee406c SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Hillary Must Reads", url: "http://www.ketchupandcaviar.com/of-interest/hillary-must-reads/" });
Poetry Friday: The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket
Friday, March 7th, 2008 Posted in poetry friday | No Comments »My weekly guest post on The Well Read Child: Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, I wear a tourist's shirt with "Nantucket" printed on the front. A nurse who had already done several embarrassing things to ...
Obama Campaign Strategy Suggestions (it’s time to take off the gloves)
Thursday, March 6th, 2008 Posted in Clinton, Obama | 3 Comments »The Obama campaign has avoided negativity and gratuitous attacks. That's a matter of integrity, and it's nice that someone has finally proved that it works. On the other hand, it's time to put Hillary out of her misery. It's important that ...
Once a Young Republican, Always … (Hillary Clinton Endorses McCain)
Thursday, March 6th, 2008 Posted in Clinton, Obama | No Comments »The latest from the Clinton campaign: McCain and she are read to be commander in chief, Obama isn't "I won't accept a caucus" in Florida (Hillary)--meaning, she would be comfortable seating delegates in a state where there was no campaigning (not to ...
Why Math will not be undone by Momentum Ex Machina
Thursday, March 6th, 2008 Posted in Hillary, Obama | No Comments »From Jonathan Alter, one of the few journalists who hasn't tucked tail as a response to Hillary's victim gambit: even do-overs in Michigan and Florida will not catch her up in the popular vote or pledged delegate count, and superdelegates ...
The Intellectually Vacuity of New York Times Political Analyses
Thursday, March 6th, 2008 Posted in Obama, Punditry | No Comments »Here's the New York Times, an "analysis": After Tuesday’s primary victories for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, her focus is momentum; for her Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, it is math. Math vs. Momentum: it's a simple opposition, and it alliterates. That's why ...
Hillary Contra Obama – In Five Acts (unabridged version)
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »Hillary Contra Obama – In Five Acts Act I, Scene I: Enter Clinton, stage right, wearing coronation robes—grand, radiant, inevitable. In the beginning the thought of not winning no more occurs to her than the thought of being a peasant occurs ...
The Momentum Fetish — taking entirely predictable results and pretending they’re shocking
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 Posted in Punditry | No Comments »Momentum: the idea is that if a candidate wins in one state, he or she will win in others. It is premised on the idea that voters are lemmings. It is a really dumb idea, and one that the press keeps ...
Pundit Shamanism
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »One small not on the press and pundits: part of their pseudoscience of political strategy is to assign causes to events. They do this with a disregard for analysis that amounts to superstition. Hillary won last night because of her ...
Rescuing Maiden Hillary
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 Posted in Clinton, Obama | 2 Comments »This will sound like sour grapes, but here goes. It's a measure of the delusion of the press that they treat Clinton's comeback as a resurgence. That's largely a function of a taste for drama, no matter what the realities--the desire ...
