Having been without an Economist for several weeks, I just finally saw their cover story about McCain. Amazingly, it was written before Sarah Palin was chosen as his running mate, which only makes the argument that McCain has sold out even stronger.
I would have liked to respond to John's post by arguing that McCain hasn't changed, that he's still immune from the far right's influence. I even started a post to that effect. I'm not sure I can. I feel like every day that goes by brings me closer and closer to voting against the man I've so long admired. It's hard to think about.
Perhaps it is not coincidental that McCain is surging in the polls. I have never voted for a winning presidential candidate, which means that Obama should be doing all he can to lose the Me demographic...
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
More from the South
I've been derelict in my photoblogging of late, as usual, but this is one of my favorites from this summer's North Carolina trip! Today, while it's rainy as all get-out up here in the CT I thought it would be nice to toss a little color up on the ole blog.
I snapped this photo as we were preparing to climb up Chimney Rock. There were a slew of bees flying around in a patch of flowers. The purple you see in the background is cabbage, planted in the same flower bed.
Damn Statistics
Apparently Obama had a nice chat with Bill O'Reilly last week and Keith Olbermann as well... the two loud talkers went head-to-head last night airing their interview action, and among other things O'Reilly was particularly catty on the subject of taxes. He went after Obama, using some squirrely math to try and paint a picture that economic growth has been stellar under the Bush administration and was relatively limp in the Clinton years.
Obama didn't have the math on hand so couldn't respond in kind, but did react by offering a quote that there are, "lies, damn lies and then there there are statistics." What he didn't have in front of him were the analysis of O'Reilly's numbers that would have demonstrated how his stats weren't adjusted for inflation which would have put growth numbers from 2001 until now at around 5% compared with about a 30% growth rate from the start to the end of Bill Clinton's time in office. Oops. Salon's War Room did the math I'm quoting and you can check their work via the post here.
Still, I'm just as interested in some other math Salon did today to fact check Sarah Palin on the trail and on the attack over earmarks. See, the McCain camp still wants to paint Palin as a maverick fighter against the evil that is earmarks in spite of her extensive work with Ted Stevens and other indited hooligans to secure just as much earmark cash as possible for Alaska's pet projects. Palin claimed that Obama has spent his days in Washington greedily chasing pork $$ to the tune of about $1 million for every working day, a piece of math Salon checked over and said, "Ok, looks good." However, they also went on to compare apples to apples and found that if you use Palin's measuring standards on her own pork tally, you find she actually has chased slightly more earmark cash for Alaska on a $ per work day basis. Hmm... nicely done, Salon. I like your calculations.
Check it all out here: Post on O'Reilly and Statistics, Post on Palin and Pork Shadiness. Here we go folks... looks like we can expect a fall full of fun with more crap like this flying! YAY!
Obama didn't have the math on hand so couldn't respond in kind, but did react by offering a quote that there are, "lies, damn lies and then there there are statistics." What he didn't have in front of him were the analysis of O'Reilly's numbers that would have demonstrated how his stats weren't adjusted for inflation which would have put growth numbers from 2001 until now at around 5% compared with about a 30% growth rate from the start to the end of Bill Clinton's time in office. Oops. Salon's War Room did the math I'm quoting and you can check their work via the post here.
Still, I'm just as interested in some other math Salon did today to fact check Sarah Palin on the trail and on the attack over earmarks. See, the McCain camp still wants to paint Palin as a maverick fighter against the evil that is earmarks in spite of her extensive work with Ted Stevens and other indited hooligans to secure just as much earmark cash as possible for Alaska's pet projects. Palin claimed that Obama has spent his days in Washington greedily chasing pork $$ to the tune of about $1 million for every working day, a piece of math Salon checked over and said, "Ok, looks good." However, they also went on to compare apples to apples and found that if you use Palin's measuring standards on her own pork tally, you find she actually has chased slightly more earmark cash for Alaska on a $ per work day basis. Hmm... nicely done, Salon. I like your calculations.
Check it all out here: Post on O'Reilly and Statistics, Post on Palin and Pork Shadiness. Here we go folks... looks like we can expect a fall full of fun with more crap like this flying! YAY!
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