Internal Monologue

Kevin Drum : I will just say this. If this turns out to be right — if Al Franken really does win by 27 votes — then I suggest we eliminate elections entirely and simply allow Nate Silver to tell us who our congressional and presidential winners are in the future. It would be a lot cheaper, and probably just as accurate. Heh. Stepping back a bit, I'm going to make a prediction: As the amount of data available on the Internet increases, there will be more and more "Nate Silvers" in different areas: geeky individuals who use publicly available data to equal or outperform the professional priesthood of a given sector. Calling market fluctuations, predicting what movies will be hits, who knows what else. In the past, the information necessary to do this was locked in expensive reports that only insiders had access to. These days, the information available publicly is often good enough to make professional level decisions. Also, people who post their models and predictions on

This is Roubini saying we need a $500 billion fiscal stimulus package immediately. Every economist I've heard basically agrees. Even defecit hawks are saying that a looming depression overrides their customary squeamishness about government spending. Why can't congress get its act together and do this? Our government is fucking broken, and it's not just Bush's fault. Congressional Democrats can't just wait for Obama. We need action now. http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dz6cyOtGnhyQ&v=z6cyOtGnhyQ [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typographical errors.] --Zachary Drake

James Fallows has a good discussion of something I didn't know about: Benford's Law: It turns out that if you list the population of cities, the length of rivers, the area of states or counties, the sales figures for stores, the items on your credit card statement, the figures you find in an issue of the Atlantic , the voting results from local precincts, etc, nearly one third of all the numbers will start with 1, and nearly half will start with either 1 or 2. (To be specific, 30% will start with 1, and 18% with 2.) Not even one twentieth of the numbers will begin with 9. This doesn't apply to numbers that are chosen to fit a specific range -- sales prices, for instance, which might be $49.99 or $99.95 -- nor numbers specifically designed to be random in their origin, like winning lottery or Powerball figures or computer-generated random sums. But it applies to so many other sets of data that it turns out to be a useful

Narrative one: There was nothing special about this election, it was determined by large scale phenomena that neither candidate had much control over: Demographic trends are shifting towards the Democrats. The Republican coalition of 2000 and 2004 just doesn't add up to electoral victory anymore When the sitting president is unpopular, the party of that president won't do well. On economic issues, voters favor the Democrats. Economic issues were salient for voters. When economic times are difficult during an election year, the party of the sitting president is at a disadvantage. Narrative two: This election was the result of highly specific circumstances unique to this particular election and could have gone the other way had the campaigns done things differently: Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime uber-being who has superpowers of rhetoric, organizing, and political manoevering that no one else could possibly equal. John McCain shot himself in the foot so many times: Palin, not kno

Nobody in Left Blogistan wants Obama to put John Brennan in charge of the CIA, due to his support of torture. People who have been particularly forthright about denouncing Bush's torture regime, like Sullivan and Greenwald , are particularly outraged at the possibility. Greenwald : But John Brennan is a different matter. To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction. Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due

In response to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' support for California Proposition 8, and taking a cue from the Mormon practice of posthumous baptism, RfrancisR on DailyKos has decided to embark on a program of posthumously converting Mormons to homosexuality: My first Conversion is Joseph Smith. Dear God of the Homos, With your great and everlasting love that blessed the covenants of Achilles and Petroclus, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and of Jonathon and David, bless then the soul of Joseph Smith of Sharon, Vermont with your divine penis. Let it pierce the anus of his soul, and let you be forever joined to him, since on this oppressive earth, he was denied the pleasure of the male sex. Forever and ever, our brother Joseph Smith has now joined our family ( We Sing the Hymn to Praise God of the Homos! ). Blessed be God of the Homos, Amen

Here's our president, Tan Le, on the cover of the December issue of Inc . magazine: And here's me, quoted by name, in the article: "Welcome to demo hell" is probably my most famous quote at this point. If you Google the phrase , the top two hits are about the event described above.