HorsesAss.Org

Last weekend’s contest was won by ‘w7ngman’ at 7:27. It was Addison, TX. This week’s is a little harder. Good luck!

Sarah Palin got loudly booed at the [Soon-to-be-named-for-whoever-buys-Wachovia] Center before the Philadelphia Flyers home opener.

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 363 electoral votes	Mean of 175 electoral votes

There was little change in the electoral map after the release of seven new polls in six states today. Obama led by a remarkable +8% in a Florida poll, and +2% and +5% in two Ohio polls. Oh…Obama led by +11% in Oregon, too. Today’s big surprise was that McCain’s lead in Georgia has dwindled to +3% in a new poll today.

After 100,000 simulated elections, Obama still wins every one of them. He receives (on average) 363 to McCain’s 175 electoral votes—same as he had yesterday. If the election was held now, Obama would almost certainly win.

Here is how this election has evolved over the past eight months. In early September we saw a Palin bump (as Goldy likes to call it) or a transient “Republican awakening” as I call it. Since about mid-September, Obama has rapidly recovered any lost ground and then some.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ.The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

I’m going to take John McCain at his word in the video below, where he essentially smacks down the GOP hate mongers. There are a lot of us who had a begrudging respect for McCain for a lot of years, and at least to me it’s pointless to worry about whether he should have said this a few days ago or whatever.

He said it, and as a fellow citizen I thank him. We all make mistakes. (Props to TPM for the video.) Naturally I cannot support McCain as I disagree wholeheartedly with him, but I’m no longer feeling like he wants the crazy people to get even crazier. That’s an act of patriotism in my book.

So when Sarah Palin talks about being a “reformer,” is she talking about this?

A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state’s public safety commissioner. The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn’t the sole reason for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan but says it likely was a contributing factor.

Once again, A. Birch Steen or Lou Guzzo?

Darcy Burner and Dave Reichert debated again this afternoon, and from what I’m hearing, she kicked his ass.  Watch for yourself tonight at 7PM, on KCTS Channel 9.

After a wild ride in which it opened with a 700 point slide, the Dow see-sawed back and forth, eventually closing down only 128 points.  So rather than redoing yesterday’s chart to reflect the decrease in the Bush-era return from -19% to -20%, I thought I’d take a stab at charting the NASDAQ, which actually closed slightly up today.

Let’s hear it for our “CEO President.”

Josh Marshall explains the bogus Republican claims of “fraud” surrounding ACORN and voter registration. Well worth a full read, but here’s a sample:

I’ve always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here’s the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for registering more people then they actually signed up. If you register me three times to vote, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won’t count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there’s very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit vote fraud. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated casing of actual instances of vote fraud.

As McCain’s crowds continue to turn nasty and hateful, the bogus attack on ACORN is simply one more cog in a Republican slime machine that is working overtime. The Swiftboating has little chance of working at this point, both because of the economic scandal and because Americans have seen this crap before and (by and large) aren’t falling for it. People could care less about anything except the ominous threats to their financial well-being.

Epic fail!

When the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) spends hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking Gov. Chris Gregoire for spending too little on foster care children, you just know there’s something suspicious about the ad… suspicions easily confirmed with a modicum of factchecking.

It turns out that Mary Radcliffe, the “child advocate” at the center of the ad, is a long-time Republican Party activist, the former co-chair of the anti-affirmative action Initiative 200, and a WA delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention, handpicked by the Bush campaign to add some color to the proceedings.  Her abuse of the title “Court Appointed Special Advocate” for political purposes has repeatedly drawn legal action from the the Washington’s Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA), and, not surprising, the charges made in the ad have already been debunked as total lies.

But that hasn’t stopped the BIAW from spending its illegal funds to attack one of Gov. Gregoire’s strengths, her unmatched advocacy on behalf of children, and it hasn’t prompted the amen editorialists at the Seattle Times from expressing their moral outrage, despite their patently ridiculous call on Gov. Gregoire to pull a factual accurate ad about embryonic stem cell research, because in their view “the issue is not real.”

Watch the video for all the details.

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 363 electoral votes	Mean of 175 electoral votes

Today there were 17 new polls for 16 states released, but not much has changed with the electoral map, except that a new West Virginia puts Obama in the lead by +8%. On the other hand, McCain leads in a Missouri poll today–following two consecutive leads by Obama in the state.

The Monte Carlo analysis employing 100,000 simulated elections finds Obama winning every single one. Obama receives (on average) 363 to McCain’s 175 electoral votes in a hypothetical election held today.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

Black Friday. Heh.

Less than 24 hours after The Columbian newspaper reported it is in deep financial shit and will have to move back to its cruddy old building while trying to sell or lease its new, $30 million tower across from Esther Short Park, the city of Vancouver is making noises about purchasing the new building and making it into a new city hall.

The newspaper building at 415 W. Sixth St. could be an ideal resolution to the city’s decade-long effort to consolidate city operations under one roof, said Eric Holmes, the city’s economic development director. He said the building is the right size, in the right place and the price is in line with the $35 million to $40 million the city expects to spend redeveloping the Esther Short Building into a new City Hall.

And it might make sense in more ordinary times.

However, right now this trial balloon is likely to be met with widespread catcalls if not pitchforks. The idea that taxpayers would jump in to save publisher Scott Campbell’s skin in the midst of an historic economic collapse is outrageous on the face of it.

If the city is actually serious, they should wait a year or two and see how much the property is worth, ’cause there’s likely to be a lot of space up for lease in downtown Vancouver. As I’ve noted before, most commercial activity downtown other than the growth industry of criminal justice seems to center around development and related fields, like banking, insurance and engineering. Plus some restaurants who feed the developers on weekdays.

Maybe the new Columbian building would make a nice judicial annex for our fellow prisoners.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down another 679 points today, closing at 8,579, it’s lowest point in over five years.  With a return of negative 19%, President Bush has now surpassed Richard Nixon for the honor claiming the worst performing market this side of Herbert Hoover.

By comparison, the Dow first broke the 8,500 mark way back in June of 1998, under President Bill Clinton.