Clonk!

I was disturbed by the loud "Clumpeta clumpeta THUMP" sound comming from outside. Apparently it was just Wall Street falling down the stairs when it forgot to turn on the light to the basement. Looks like it's going to close down over 300 points. [UPDATE: yep, closed down 315]

I don't know anything about anything but it looks like a bad year coming for the economy. Some people apparently think there's more reconing to be done in the structured finance markets.

Closing the Gap

It's really interesting how effective a campaigner Obama is. Hillary had a pretty wide lead in Ohio and Texas just two weeks ago. Now, Obama is in a statistical tie in Texas (he's even ahead in the latest ARG poll) and he's narrowed the gap considerably in Ohio.

From pollster.com here is the Ohio race. SUSA (so far this primary season the most accurate) has Obama going from 9 down to 6 down. Rassmusen has the margin dropping from 14 to 8 to 5. Quinnipiac has the longest history (26-20-11) but they don't have a result after Feb 23.

The Texas numbers are here (also pollster.com). Again, you can see a really sharp dramatic rise in Obama's numbers as his name recognition grows throughout late 2007 and early 2008. Also interesting is that there's a fairly steep decline for Hillary right after Super Tuesday. She's accually fallen behind in the composite numbers. The latest Fox, Zogby, SUSA and ARG polls all have Obama ahead.

Keep this in mind. When looking at polls, you shouldn't really compare nubers from various polls against eachother. Often they are quite different in selection of the participants, the actual questions asked, etc. Those differences can create different results, even when the questions are superficially similar. What is informative though are trend lines of each polling outfit against itself. The methodology and questions of, say, an SUSA poll do not vary over a race. So while they are frequently wrong as to the absolute state of the race, they accurately reflect the dynamics of the race. And in both OH and TX the dynamics are decidedly on Obama's side. He has been notching up solid gains in both states, and it looks like he will contest them both.

If I were to guess, I'd think that I think he'll win both. Honestly I do. A win in both would really be a knockout blow. If Hillary wins both, we have a contest again. Then she can say she has a legitimate claim to being the best candidate, and gets a major upset to set up for Pennsylvania in April. If they split them, I think it still goes to Obama, especially if his lead in Super Delegates continues to expand.

Ok, that's all the horserace coverage for today. Have a good weekend.

Leap Day

It's leap day. Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria.

For some info on leapyears you can go here.

If you know anyone who's birthday is today, buy that 6 year old a drink.

Situation in Iraq Worsens

As if this wasn't bad enough, there's yet more bad news for our troops in Iraq.

Jessica Simpson will be "performing" there on a USO tour. Please consider sending a care package consisting of earplugs to any service members you may know there.

More Endorsements

Another in a string of endorsements: Manlove for Congress.*

He's a "rock solid conservative." Oh yeah. Rock solid baby. Because if there's one thing we learned from Senator Craig and Rep. Foley, it's that there's not enough conservative manlove on capitol hill.

*note: no actually I don't want anyone to vote for him. It's his real name though.

How Could This Possibly Go Wrong?

Ok, so get this:

Scientists at Duke have taught a monkey how to remotely control a robot using it's mind.

Sweet Jesus have these people never watched or read any science fiction? Don't they know what the consequences of meddling with dark forces which they cannot hope to control? What we're seeing here is act 1 of pretty much every scifi suspense/horror story ever told come to life. If popular culture has taught me anything, a monkey/robot alliace is sure to doom all of humanity within two hours. Also, there probably will be lots of jump cuts in the action sequences.

Official Endorsement

I'm hereby announcing my endorsement for president in the 2008 election will go to Lobster Man.

Thank you.

Salute to Ms. Pac-Man

Feminist Icon

And the nominees are:

Eddie Murphy and Lindsy Lohan swept the Oscars.

Oh wait, no that's the Razzies. Technically they didn't sweep, as neither was involved in Daddy Daycamp which won Worst Sequel or Prequel. But since it was a sequel of an Eddie Murphy movie that was so bad EVEN EDDIE MURPHY refused to perform in it, I'll calling a win for him too.

I would also like to congratulate Murphy for winning Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor, and Worst Supporting Actress (all in Norbit).

Hi I'm Incompetent, Buy My Book

I was listening to Fair Game on my ipod. (Get podcasts from their website here) They had Doug Schoen on and he said something... well dumb.

Basically he was on the show promoting the idea that it would be a really good idea to have someone run as a third centerist political party. In and of itself that idea is a really good way to AFFECT the outcome of an election (see Ross Perot, Theodore Roosevelt, etc), but it never results in such a person actually winning anything. Besides which, it doesn't really work ever because while lots of people say they are "independent" or "centerist" that means very different things to different people. Someone who was against legal abortion but in favor of progressive social programs might define themselves as "centerist" but so might a pro-choice libertarian who believed in gay marriage and small government. But those two people don't have anything in common.

Anyway, Faith Saile asked a question like "well, Obama is running in the democratic race, but he's adopted very cooperative inclusive rhetoric, isn't he essentially running a centerist campaign?" and Doug Schoen basically said "well I don't know about his specific policies."

I'm sorry but if you're job is analyzing politics, shouldn't you know the various candidates' platforms? I mean, it's not like Obama is running some highly secretive organization which encrypts all of it's policy proposals with a 144 bit key. He's got a whole website and everything. People have spent a lot of time putting together the policies of candidates and organizing them in a convenient and useful fashion. If you can't be bothered to go to the damn website, why should anyone listen to your opinion? Seriously. Acting like this stuff all doesn't exist because they weren't mentioned in the five speeches you watched isn't helping anyone.

Needless to say I'd encourage everyone to give the book the amount of patronage it so richly deserves (which is to say, none). It probably should also be noted that Mr. Schoen has done polling work for Bloomberg. Third party/independent candidates rarely succeed in actually winning, but they always succeed in spending money on consultants. hmm.

Not that it was especially surprising coming from someone who wrote this, but still...