I think I may know why. McCain, we find today, is taking a supplement used for Alzheimer's and dementia patients.
Coupled, as others note, with the fact that he referred to his audience today as his "fellow prisoners" rather than "fellow citizens," along with numerous other examples, this is not exactly reassuring.
If it becomes a massive story, I think we're done. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
I think after last night that's likely to hold steady.
It may even go up.
Aside from the Gallup poll, Obama went down in everything, although by such small amounts that I expect it's just noise (especially given the Gallup result).
I think something in between Gallup and Ras is generally the state of the race. Ras says O+6, Gallup says O+11. Call it O+8.5. Ras says Dems have a +6 party ID advantage. Gallup says it's about +10. Doesn't seem way out in left field.
Keeping in mind, too, that today's polls don't include reaction to the debate. If the snap polls were even in the ballpark, I expect Obama will go up. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
The Right has officially become a joke. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
There's still a bizarre idea that 'markets' are 'right' about things just because they aggregate average perceptions. Or informed perceptions. Or something. And if people have to bet real money they'll be more careful about speculation than people who are just speculating.
Well. We know how well that worked elsewhere.
So all that Intrade gives you is the chance to bet for or against common wisdom. If anyone had uncommon insight they'd be swamped by the mooing herd there. So if you're looking for high quality predictions, as opposed to a lagging indicator which is reliably behind the polls and can be gamed by zealots, Intrade isn't anything more than a curiosity.
The famous Bush win prediction was within any realistic MOE. And allowing for a rather right-leaning client base, it was never that much of a surprise.
Fascinating. She really is what Bush pretends to be -- she 's a true anti-intellectual. She's has this very Pentecostal view of the world. We don't need to study the Bible, we don't need ministers, we can just feel the spirit and let the spirit speak through us. It's this classically Alaskan value system that places experience over all other values. I know what mothers need because I am a mother. We don't need to read or even learn because that just fills our heads with confusing ideas and facts and figures. We feel. Bush plays at this anti-elite stuff but he's Harvard/Yale/Andover, all of that. She is really a celebration of a glorious know-nothingness that is truly dangerous.... She's terrifying and represents a streak of the Republican party that is a permanent minority. She will not play well with suburban women in Montgomery County [OH]. They want their kids to go to good schools and college. Palin basically says that isn't necessary. You can just speak plainly from the heart and that's good enough. But that's how you end up a fish picker from Alaska. It's not that she is an idiot that bothers me. It's that she celebrates non-learning and anti-knowledge. She celebrates ignorance. Terrifying.
She really is what Bush pretends to be -- she 's a true anti-intellectual. She's has this very Pentecostal view of the world. We don't need to study the Bible, we don't need ministers, we can just feel the spirit and let the spirit speak through us. It's this classically Alaskan value system that places experience over all other values. I know what mothers need because I am a mother.
We don't need to read or even learn because that just fills our heads with confusing ideas and facts and figures. We feel.
Bush plays at this anti-elite stuff but he's Harvard/Yale/Andover, all of that. She is really a celebration of a glorious know-nothingness that is truly dangerous....
She's terrifying and represents a streak of the Republican party that is a permanent minority. She will not play well with suburban women in Montgomery County [OH]. They want their kids to go to good schools and college. Palin basically says that isn't necessary. You can just speak plainly from the heart and that's good enough. But that's how you end up a fish picker from Alaska.
It's not that she is an idiot that bothers me. It's that she celebrates non-learning and anti-knowledge. She celebrates ignorance.
Terrifying.
David Brooks, the NYT's Very SeriousTM Conservative, also sez:
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
Worse than the educated morons that has been running the US for the last eight years? How can she be?
I have to agree with Helen on this. It's all about class. The insiders are horrified at the possibility some house wife from Alaska will stink up their cocktail parties.
I think it's more that she reminds them of the core of the Republican party. While 'Republican ideas' hide the racism, militarism and all-round vapid stupidity under a thin intellectual veneer - which is exactly what think tanks are paid to do - Palin dispenses with the veneer, and you get the true beating heart of Republicanism neat, with no fine wrapping.
And it's a loathesome thing. I don't think they hate her for being what she is, because in the end she is what they are. What they can't forgive her is not having the good political sense to put PR and marketing before personal ambition.
She's destroying the Reagan illusion and replacing it with directness and honesty.
Ironically we should be grateful to her for that, at least for now - because she's making it much more difficult for Republicanism to be taken seriously by anyone who isn't a racist kook.
the fact that Obama pronounces "Pakistan" correctly into a campaign issue. You see, it's "ostentatiously exotic" to do so.
what a radical notion, the idea that a president can correctly pronounce an ally's name...
as for 'exotic', i think they want him wearing overalls, chewing a grass stem, and calling mccain 'massa'. that and nothing less would make freepers happy...
obama is the biggest threat they ever had to their notions of white intellectual supremacy, they're waking up to a whole new world, most very unwillingly. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I am not a big fan of Obama policy-wise, but I do think the election of a Black Emperor will be a momentous (and positive) event. I'm actually looking forward to it. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
White supremacists will say that the election of a Black President proves the decay of America.
whaaa?
nice try, pull the other one!
...and they dance better... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I think I might loathe him more than George W. Bush. Is that even possible? "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
you are the media you consume.
