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After looking at it last night, I've been watching the numbers on the gambling sites. During Georges speach last night, there was a snap towards McCain, but as soon as it was over, it drifted back over the next half an hour. then all day the odds have been sliding In Obamas direction, slowly all day  Suddenly in the last hour though theres been a couple of percent leap towards Obama, No Idea what has caused that. McCains odds have been drifting out more slowly, gradually losing ground.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:13:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I noticed that.  I wonder if our rogue trader caught Nate's piece.  Intrade has shown a much larger Obama surge.  He's approaching 59% to win now.  What do the others have it at?  I know Iowa Electronic has it at about 63, or did a few hours ago.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:16:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm looking at UK betting site agregators, Obama was at 2/1 on and climbed to 2.5/1 so thats a move from 66% to 71%, as the day has gone on, more bookies have been shifting towards the new odds level,as the intrade has been crawling up.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:25:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
and he's just leapt up again, another percentage point, this is surreal.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:26:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It might have something to do with this:

Daily Kos: McCain Hasn't Read Paulson's Plan

ANCHOR: As for the massive Wall Street bailout McCain insists it have...

JSM: Oversight that is effective and transparent. We need people like Warren Buffet and Mike Bloomberg and Mitt Romney to have an oversight of this. We can't put that responsibility in the hands of one person.

ANCHOR: The crunch question. Would you vote for it as it's presently constructed?

JSM: I have not had a chance to see it in writing so I have to examine that.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:33:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yeah, that's going to be big if it gets any coverage.  McCain's whole play of "suspending" his campaign seems to be evaporating.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:36:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
McCain's whole campaign seems to be evaporating.

Are the debates still on, or is Obama going to be having a conversation with an empty podium tomorrow?

(Not that's necessarily an either/or.)

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:46:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Obama has apparently told Lehrer he's willing to do a sit-down with Lehrer or a townhall in which the folks in the audience can ask questions.

He should, if that happens, offer to foot the bill.  Ole Miss and the city of Oxford spent a lot of money to get this together, and it really is bullshit, unbelievably selfish, that McCain has done this to them.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:50:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't think John McCain understands stuff like cost. After all, his wife pays for everything. As for selfish, well duh !! He's a republican.

keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 01:06:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I reckon the Onion or Jon Stewart must see stuff like that and wonder how they can top it.

keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:37:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
well that takes me back to the Tom Lehner quote

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."


Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:58:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There's a reason Weekly World News does better satire than The Onion these days without either of them having changed their game in years.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 01:40:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

INVESTMENT BANKERS FLOOD INTO MEXICO & CANADA

TORONTO, CANADA - Thousands of proud but recently fired investment bankers are flooding into Mexico and Canada in a desperate bid to find steady work and job security that are no longer available in the U.S.!

A spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol says an astonishing 500 to 1,000 citizens are crossing our Northern and Southern borders every day, some with the help of smugglers who charge up to $10,000 a pop to pack them in refrigerator boxes or roll them up in carpets and sneak them over in trucks.

Mexican border patrol officers are now working around the clock to stop this new influx of American immigrants.

"They used to try to stop us from heading over there, but now they want to come over here," says one member of the Mexican policia whose squad lines up to stop flow of briefcase-carrying freeloaders.
"They make fun of us and don't want us over there," he says. "Well, we don't want them over here either!"

"I grew up in America and I love my country, but Lord knows, I have to make a living," Peter Starmeyer, 38, says from the makeshift plywood and cardboard shanty he now calls home on Toronto's increasingly seedy west side.

"When Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and I lost my job, I had no other choice. The only way for me to keep living the American dream was to move to Canada where businesses value and respect workers and try to help them hold on to their jobs."



In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 03:05:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]
My favorite is still the scene in The Day After Tomorrow, in which Americans try to get into Mexico only to find Mexico seals the border.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 03:11:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yeah I almost posted that one to the salon yesterday.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 03:46:45 PM EST
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But the thing to worry about is if these guys have some tie-in with Diebold, they run Obama into an overwhelming favourite and then clean up.

And it don't matter who the favourite is, and it don't matter what the exit polls say, it doesn't even matter who anybody actually votes for, it's who the USSC says is President gets to be sworn in. Maybe the bookies have a sweetheart deal with them.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:36:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The thing is, they can't steal it if it's not close, and when you see Obama pulling into the lead in places like North Carolina and Florida -- maybe even Indiana by now -- it's a sign that this election could -- not necessarily will, but could -- turn into a massive landslide.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:41:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
And if you don't believe me, I offer McCain's behavior as solid evidence.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:43:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Without a paper trail, how could you ever know it was ever anything other than close ? People lie to pollsters you know.

And the repugs have barely started their voter suppression stunts yet.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 12:59:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]
People don't lie to pollsters enough to change results on that kind of scale.  Polls are almost always correct.  It's the imperfections of modeling where they get it wrong, but the differences aren't great enough to account for Obama going from winning (say) 350 EVs to 250.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 01:08:55 PM EST
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Yup, plausible deniability. And they already stretched that pretty far in the last few elections.
by Trond Ove on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 01:20:06 PM EST
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See Drew, many Europeans have now a hard time believing there can be any such thing as free and fair elections in the US of A.

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
by Bernard on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 04:26:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There are two types of obvious rigging I can think of, and what goes on in the US is more complicated.

  1. Old communist style - votes are counted, but there is only one party on the ballot, and/or the penalty for voting for opposition parties is imprisonment or death.

  2. Sham democracy style - multiple parties on the ballot, but the country's leader has enough power to falsify the results.

In the US there are signs of localized corruption - "soft" rigging like not having enough poll stations in poor and heavily democratic districts, and potentially some "hard" rigging with some diebold machines.

In states where the republicans have a lot of control, they might be able to move the results one or two percentage points. Given how close the 04 election was, some shenanigans in Ohio was all that was needed (whether or not the results actually were tainted). In 2000, Florida was so close it was within the margin of error (even within the margins of the best possible design of an election system, in my opinion); from there, the local power apparatus finished the job.

The disenfranchisement of fellons is another issue.

A few other things to keep in mind - Obama is pro business. He is not a left wing radical. McCain is unstable - to the point where I think the business community is worried. Thus I don't see a reason to expect higher levels of corruption than we've had indicators of in the past two elections.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 08:25:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]
McCain's second hail mary pass today will have pissed off almost everyone.

He probably thinks he's being Mr Mavericky, or something, but it's more likely that he's shot his campaign in the head.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 08:30:19 PM EST
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yep, and I don't think this election will be close enough for the corruption that is present to effect the outcome anyway.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 08:33:57 PM EST
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The McCain/Palin campaign is so screwed-up even the US press is starting to notice, and report it.
by ATinNM on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 08:50:51 PM EST
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Events are outside of their control at the moment thought.

Fake outrage is difficult to produce when the entire economy is unraveling in front of the voters.

And they are running out of time.

by Trond Ove on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 01:19:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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