I Like Obama

I like Barack Obama because he's willing to lose face on the political side in order to do the right thing on the governmental side. He's willing to do things that voters don't hear about or understand in order to do the right thing. He's willing to take a hit in the House and Senate in order to do the right thing. And yeah, you can argue that he lost jobs for the people who supported him, those people never reallys supported him. And while I know it's only a thought experiment, I don't really even want to think about where we'd be if Hillary Clinton were president today.

All of this is summarized in a much better way by Timothy Egan in an op-ed piece from Tuesday.

"I am the Key Master" . . . "I am the Gate Keeper"

It finally happened.

Vinz Clortho and Zuul. In the same room.

The sound you just heard? The simultaneous breaking of millions of Tea Partiers' backs under the weight of the sheer awesome and win that is

Glenn Beck interviewing Sarah Palin for the first time!!!!!!!

(Can your fingers be out of breath? Because mine sure feel that way after typing that.)



Now what did we learn here?

• Politicians tend to fall on the untrustworthy end of the spectrum
• Glenn Beck would totally suck the labia right off the Statue of Liberty
• Glenn also keeps a journal (though I bet off-screen he calls it his diary)
• Glenn and Sarah were the top two Halloween costumes (I couldn't verify this, but perhaps my Google Fu is weak today; it's the kind of thing that sounds reasonable -- after all, there are a looooooot of supercrazy folks out there who think these two are just the tops, you betcha! -- but it came out of Glenn Beck's mouth, so it must be wrong. I mean, I heard Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. I'm supposed to trust his statistics? Not until he produces that girl and proves he didn't rape and kill her.)
• Glenn utters the phrase "radical, revolutionary crazy people" without a hint of irony or self-awareness
• John McCain supported the bank bailouts, aka TARP -- a point which Glenn makes to illustrate what McCain got wrong, why it was so hard to vote for him last fall. Right at the 7:43 mark, listen to how much disdain Glenn conjures when uttering the word "bailout." And the sweet-natured, common-sense conservative Hockey Mom of the Great (Very) White North, the one who spent the start of the interview bemoaning the lack of trustworthiness in Washington politicians, basically nods in agreement. What went unmentioned? BOTH GLENN BECK AND SARAH PALIN SUPPORTED THE BANK BAILOUTS. Man, I absolutely adore these two. It's goddamn spectacular, the things that come out of their mouths!
• At about the 5:37 mark, Glenn tells us about some lists he and Sarah appeared on, one of which was "Most Admired." Now, I believed this instantly because duh, obviously, you guys. I didn't need any sort of proof or anything, despite what I said up there about Glenn and numbers and murdering and raping and stuff. But the good folks at Fox were kind enough to show a graphic of the poll indicating that Glenn and Sarah were, in fact, among the Most Admired Men and Women in the country. Here's what they showed us:

Now, I know what you're thinking -- where the hell is David Wright on that list? I was thinking the same thing, so I checked the original list, and here's what I found:


Again, no D-Dubs. And then I was like, waitaminnithere... Can I see those two next to each other, please?



Uh, those numbers, like, aren't the same.

A-ha! The Fox poll is only of independent voters, voting only on political figures. Which makes sense, right? I mean, it's not like either person on screen was recently on the national ticket of one of the two major parties, right? It was nice of Glenn to mention those parameters when he told us how admired they both were. And also, I'm sure it had nothing to do with getting Sarah's name above Hillary Clinton's, or Glenn Beck's over some old black guy's.

Being the industrious little scamp I am, I decided to look a little further into those numbers. Gallup says that it interviewed 1,025 people for this particular survey. And according to Pollster.com, about 38% of Americans identify themselves as Independent. That means about 390 Independents were surveyed. Of those 390, Sarah Palin was voted Most Admired Woman by 14% and Glenn Beck was voted Most Admired Man by a whopping 3%. In other words, 55 people said they really like Sarah and TWELVE whole people said the same about dear Glenn.

Now that is something worth bragging about. Kudos, Beckster.

I don't really know what all this means or why the hell I just spent all this time looking into it, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that if those two spent enough time together, they would eventually spawn some Gozer-like thing so full of insanity, we'd all have to deal with a situation requiring one of us to say, "Nobody steps on a church in my town!"

Or, "Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!"

Or something. Oh, and I get to be Venkman. Dibs.

Anyway, hey -- check out this lady dancing!

Mr. Dinkins, Would You Please Be My Mayor?You'll Be Doing Us A Really Big Favor.

I don't exactly understand Mike Bloomberg's strategy in running this election for his third term. I mean, if he didn't have ads on every 20 seconds saying how bad Bill Thompson sucked, I would bet a good amount of money that most New Yorkers wouldn't have the slightest idea of who was running against him. The only reason people know Bill Thompson's name is because of those ads.

What he should have done was just put those ads on where he's walking around an idealized city and people talk about how great he is, whether it's actually true or not, and just put out the image of himself that he wants out there. He's outspending this gie a trillion to one, but he's essentially advertising for Thompson. The smear campaign is so overused at this point that it's just standard fare. All it really serves to do is get the names out there. Bloomy doesn't need to counter any negative ads from Thompson, because Thompson isn't running any ads at all. I know it's just a reflex to run negative ads at this point, but seriously, you're doing yourself a disservice here.

Open Bar's man-crush on Nate Silver, plus some stuff about sabermetrics, and yet another sneaky insult of Side Bar

The brain is the biggest erogenous zone.

First off, you may have noticed on the left side of this here blog a lil' website called FiveThirtyEight. If you're following the current election, shame on you if you haven't already RSS'd that sucker. Because if you haven't -- and I'll put this bluntly -- you don't know shit about what's going on.

Second, I've occasionally referenced another lil' site over there called Fire Joe Morgan. That's prolly my favorite site, as it combines awesome baseball writing with funnier jokes than even I can come up with. (You'll also notice, observant reader, that FJM is in both the funny section and the sports section. Yeah, it's bilingual, and it's tops on both lists. Kinda like Salma Hayek. Wait, I don't mean I find Salma Hayek funny and sporty; I was going more for the bilingual thing. And that she's really hot. Maybe she is funny too, I dunno, I've never met her...that I know of.) 

Anyway, FJM's writers view and analyze baseball in a nontraditional way, rooted heavily in sabermetrics, which sounds nerdy but ultimately makes for a much clearer and accurate analysis of how good baseball players are. At one point on this site, I mocked Side Bar's usage of batting average -- traditionally the primary statistic used to determine how good a hitter is -- because sabermetrics has revealed that batting average, while interesting and somewhat revealing, is way way way overrated and overused by all the announcers we all grew up hearing and all the writers we grew up reading. If you want to know how good a hitter is, before batting average you should be looking at on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Since, after all, not making outs is really good -- OBP -- and a home run is way better than a single -- slugging -- so a stat that ignores such obviousness -- batting average -- shouldn't be held in such high regard, should it?

(And for the record, I wasn't very funny when I mocked Side Bar; it was actually rather snotty and I regret that. We all know how I hate to point out when he says something stupid around here -- cough, cough, Facebook, Sarah Palin, cough. My bust, SB. I should treat your wisdom with more respect. Mea culpa.)

But as our awesome new subheading indicates, we love talking baseball and politics, so believe it or not, I have a point here. As I said before, the guys at FJM were heavily influenced by sabermetrics, and one of the more prominent sabermetricians of the past decade or so is a guy named Nate Silver. Nate invented something called PECOTA, which, essentially, is a complex statistical model that predicts the future performance of baseball players and teams. 

While anyone paying attention could tell right away that someone like Albert Pujols was gonna be the shit because the dude could very clearly hit the crap out of a baseball at a very early point in his career, it's much harder to predict marginal players. Or basically anyone unless it's Pujols-level obvious. PECOTA's genius was to realize that since people have been playing baseball for over a hundred years and there are enormous amounts of data available about every player and team dating way the hell back, it's possible to discover patterns in that data that can help you a great deal in predicting how good your new first baseman is gonna be or how many games your team will probably win. PECOTA has been remarkably accurate in its ability to predict these things. 

A fairly well-known recent example was the 2007 Chicago White Sox. Just two years removed from winning the World Series, PECOTA nonetheless predicted the White Sox to finish with a pathetic record of 72-90. Many people unfamiliar with PECOTA who heard this prediction laughed. But lo and behold, the 2007 Chicago White Sox finished 72-90. PECOTA was exactly right.

Nate Silver's model took into account the various ages of the players on the White Sox, their recent performances, the players they had lost and gained, and compared it to all of baseball's history, trusting that the patterns baseball had established over the last hundred years or so would hold. And they did. 

It wasn't PECOTA's intent to give a big fucking middle finger to the conventional wisdom espoused by baseball "writers" like Mike Lupica and Jay Mariotti. It just happens to be that if you can properly analyze empirical data, that often leads to you to more accurate conclusions than "going with your gut" or any other such subjective "analysis." 

This PECOTA-style sort of analysis, as anyone who has read Moneyball knows, is slowly overtaking the old ways in baseball. Teams like the Oakland A's in the late '90s/early 2000s and, more recently, the Boston Red Sox have reached new levels of success by valuing things like OBP and slugging in player evaluation, rather than the old standbys like batting average and RBI's. While other folks such as Bill James and Rob Neyer, for example, have long been at the forefront of this revolution in baseball analysis, Nate Silver's PECOTA deserves its place as a monumental achievement in that field.

And fortunately for us political junkies, Nate has turned his attention to politics. FiveThirtyEight takes the same sort of heavily data-based approach to predicting elections. I've been following the site since around March or so, when Hillary Clinton won the Texas and Ohio primaries over Barack Obama. Six weeks later, she took Pennsylvania. This was when Hillary appeared to be peaking. 

At the time, though I knew from folks like Chuck Todd that the delegate numbers told the true story -- that Hillary couldn't possibly catch Barack -- I was getting a little worried. After that night in Pennsylvania, there were two weeks until the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. If Hillary could somehow capture those, who knows? Maybe she might be able to win this thing.

If you were reading the papers and watching cable news at the time, you might remember hearing a lot of people saying that Hillary would probably win Indiana by 5 or 6 points. And since North Carolina had always been considered a lopsided Obama state, if Hillary could pull even within 7 or 8 -- as many predicted she would -- that could seriously turn things around for her.

So there you had it: The conventional wisdom was that Hillary would win Indiana easily, by 5 or 6 at least, and cut Barack's once-enormous 15-20 point lead down to 7 or 8 in North Carolina. It was gonna be a huge night for Hillary, cementing her "comeback kid" persona following her Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania wins.

But there was one site that said, in the words of Lee Corso, Not so fast, my friend.

Nate Silver made the absurd prediction that Barack would win North Carolina by 17 points and lose Indiana by a mere 2.

I remember reading those predictions that night and having two thoughts: 1. That's ridiculous; everyone else is saying something completely different; and 2. PECOTA is awesome, so maybe -- just maybe -- Nate could be onto something.

As it turned out, he was remarkably accurate. Obama won North Carolina by 14 points. He lost Indiana by 2. He got Indiana exactly right. He was far closer on North Carolina than anyone else. It was oddly reminiscient of his 2007 Chicago White Sox call. Once again, it seemed, in-depth data-based analysis had won out over the conventional wisdom. Just as reading Moneyball and Nate's stuff over at Baseball Prospectus had drastically changed my way of interpreting baseball, it now seemed like I had to look at political polling and demographics in a brand new way. A better way.

Since then, I've followed FiveThirtyEight daily. Nate's analysis goes beyond simple numbers-crunching; he also happens to be a great writer. His posts often use humor to illuminate the more mundane statistical stuff. If people on the Obama and McCain campaigns don't read this site as often or more than I do, then that's political malpractice.

Just as I used to believe that if you could hit .300, you were therefore a great hitter, I used to listen to political analysts who told me that -- regardless of demographics or recent polling data -- they knew what was gonna happen. Not anymore. 

And, in conclusion, here's a perfect look at the marriage of baseball stats and political data, and how Nate Silver understands and explains those things better than just about anyone. And as a bonus, it's filmed at Shea Stadium (R.I.P.). 

(Full disclosure: This is a 20-minute interview with Dan Rather and Nate Silver. So, ah, you may want to take lunch.)

Holy Crapballs, Bailoutman

I'm in disbelief that the bailout didn't pass. And the vote had essentially nothing to do with party lines. The vote was 228 to 205, with 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats in opposition. Then 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans were in favor. It's fucking chaos. At least 90% of these gies are trying to politicize the issue and it seems likely that there won't be any real resolution until after the election.

I guess everyone can blame this on everyone else, but from my biased perspective it seems like this might be something that would push undecideds or independents away from Republicans in all the races, not just the presidential race. Maybe the Republican gies are voting against this in an effort to save their jobs in their districts.

Really at this point I have no idea what's happening. In fairness, I don't think anyone in Washington or on Wall Street seems to know what's going on either. I just don't know what to think at this point. I'm not sure this is an issue that's going to hold its breath until November.

This Just In!!!!!!

Breaking news tonight!!! Extra, extra read all about it!!!

Jesse Jackson said something rude about Barack Obama on an 'open mic'.

Sources say it had something to do with Senator Obama and black people.

He has apologized.

The Obama Camp says that Senator Obama accepts his apology.

More on this sensational story at 11.

It's Too Early For Election Talk, But I Got Sucked In

A non sequitur. I started reading the New York Times online instead of in print. Can you start with a non sequitur? Probably not. Given that a non sequitur is a statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it, you can't start with a non sequitur since there is nothing that proceeded and therefore no logical lapse. Like I was saying, reading the Times online is way easier than reading it in print. I had recently cancelled my subscription to the Times because I wasn't really reading it and what not, but if you use the Today's Paper link on the website, you get an organized list of every headline, and you read the ones you want and it's fucking fantastic. I find I read a lot more of the articles in the online edition instead of just flipping directly to the op-ed and crossword. The only drawback is that you can't do the crossword online, or I think maybe you can but you have to pay for it. And if you didn't get to read a section or something, it stays online for a week. If I got busy and didn't read the Science Times on Tuesday, let's say, the whole Science section is online until the following Tuesday, when it's replaced by the new one. Awesome. And I just recently made the NYTimes site my home page, which more or less ensures that I look at it every day. I still go out and buy the Sunday Times, though, for the magazine, which I'm addicted to.

My point is that I was reading today about the Republican debate yesterday and some other related articles about the primaries, and I wanted to comment on some things even though it seems way to early to start discussing this shit given that the election is over a year away. Except this shit has been in the news for at least 6 months now, and is dominating the Sunday Meet the Press/Chris Matthews type shows too.

First of all, it boggles my mind that Rudy Giuliani is currently the leading Republican. If he's nominated, he's going to get Killed with a capital K between February (when the nomination will likely be decided) and November about all sorts of shit from his past, including his multiple marriages, his carrying on with his current wife while still married to his previous wife, his association with Bernie Kerik, who turned out to be a dude you don't want to be associated with, and all sorts of other shit. I mean, I get the idea that a lot of his personality quirks (if that's what you want to call them) won't really fly outside New York. Also, Giuliani is way more liberal than a lot of Republicans seem to realize. Or else he's way more conservative than I realize, but I lived and worked in New York for most of his term in office, and within his zone of influence for his entire tenure.

Mitt Romney seems like a weird dude to me. I don't really know anything about him, but how many Mormons live in Massachusetts? He might be the only one. It's kindof strange that there isn't really one candidate that stands out for the Republicans to hang their collective hat on. McCain seems like he should be running away with this nomination, but he isn't, in fact he's behind both Rudy and Romney. I was reading that some of the influential Republicans feel like Mike Huckabee is the most qualified candidate, but some of the stupid things that shouldn't matter are holding him back, like his name, and the fact that he's from Hope, Arkansas, which is where Bill Clinton is from. I guess no one wants to talk about "President Huckabee". It seems clear over these past couple weeks that Fred Thompson is not going to be a real player in the election. I don't think he really even wanted to run, he just got talked into it by somebody.

It astounds me that motherfuckers have been underestimating Hillary Clinton for over 15 years. She's clearly the best pure politician on either side of the race and has the most experience out of all of them too. It seems like people just have it in their minds that a woman can't win, and that may by why she's sneaking up on us as not just the frontrunner for the nomination, but to win the whole damn thing. I'm not in love with Hillary or anything, but clearly she'd be a competent leader and those who don't think so are going to find themselves bowled the fuck over by her momentum before they realize it.

I like Barack Obama and I like the idea of having a relatively young president with at least a moderate amount of idealism left, which is kindof the platform that he's running on. I think he would be a competent leader as well, and if he builds up some momentum, I can see the country getting caught up in the Obama wave. He seems to be the only one aside from Clinton who has the wherewithall to mount a serious campaign after the primaries.

I do not like John Edwards. That's all I have to say about that.

It seems like Bill Richardson should be putting up a better fight. And Dennis Kucinich is short. What are the names of the other Democrats, because I forget? Dodd, Biden, these guys are hopeless. I like Joe Biden, though.

The really interesting part about this whole thing is that the states are scrambling for their primaries to mean something, and for the first time in my voting history (since 1996), my primary vote is going to actually mean something. I was proud to vote for Bill Bradley in the 1999 primary, but Gore had sown it up by then, and I think Bradley was off the ballot in every other state except New Jersey at that point.

Anyhow, states like Michigan and Nevada are scheduled to have their primaries even before New Hampshire. Michigan, who feels like its being ignored and that it has issues like unemployment and the auto industry that need to be taken seriously have made sure that they are not taken seriously by actually schdeduling their primary for January 15, against the wishes of the DNC and therefore forcing every candidate to promise that they will not campaign there. In fact, all of them pulled out of the Michigan primary yesterday except for Clinton (who was leading in polls despite not having campaigned) and Dodd (I don't know why he stayed, maybe trying to get some name recognition by getting a significant number of votes ahead of some of the important primary dates).

In fact, almost all of the states have moved up their primaries into January and February and both of the nominations should be wrapped up by February 5th of next year when over 1,600 delegates will be decided on in 22 states including California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. The only big states to be decided after Feb. 5 are Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. I'm kindof surprised that Pennsylvania hasn't tried to move up from April 1 to at least March 4, when Texas and Ohio vote.

So that means that from basically Feb. 5 of next year until election day in November it's going to be a 2 horse race (unless they convince Bloomberg to run as an independent (which isn't going to happen, but I'd be enormously interested in a Bloomberg candidacy for president)). The conventions are going to take place in the summer, long after any sort of relevance has passed.

I find it strange that there aren't federal guidelines for primaries. I know you're going to pull out the states' rights argument here, but electing the president is the most important decision that the country makes as a whole, and putting all of the eggs in Iowa/New Hampshire/South Carolina basket is kindof strange.

Anyway, my prediction, Clinton v. Romney, and I almost don't believe it myself, but I think Clinton is going to win.