Motley Moose – Archive

The world of financial and McCain meltdown moves fast. Thanks to GRO for the Daily Show segment which asks?

“Is there anything left for the Republicans to screw up?”

Earlier, while waxing rhapsodic about Brit’s fantastic Flame War Article, Spacemanspiff and I had a brief exchange about what some of us kooky bloggers might look like in a graphic novel or comic book.  The idea took hold, and I used my Google-Fu to track down this Hero Generator.  What would some of the Moose Heroes look like?  What about some of our Arch-rivals?

Jeebus, did I have some fun!  Here’s my vision of a few of the brave souls who fight the good fight by way of Motley Moose:

HEROES:

If you’re in need of an alter-ego, Calvin and Hobbes is a fine place to look.

I’ve been really out of it these last few days as my first round of exams begin.  I spent nearly the entire day consumed with sampling distributions of the mean, the factors that influence power, and the central limit theorem.  Yes, psychology can be that boring.

Not much to say here- what are your thoughts? Was this a good move on McCain’s part? Is this the effective end of his campaign? Has the Sarah Palin farce come to a head?

New York Times:

Senator John McCain said Wednesday that he would temporarily suspend his presidential campaign on Thursday to return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis and the $700 billion bailout package now before Congress.

Mr. McCain said he told Senator Barack Obama that he was asking the Commission on Presidential Debates to postpone the debate scheduled for Friday night.

“I am calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself,” he said. “It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.”

‘McCain Suspends Campaign’ is a headline you don’t expect to see every day.  Looks like Obama has to tread lightly here; he can’t let his opponent gain the upper hand on statesmanship.  On the up side, the foreign policy debate is one that Obama can afford to hold off on for the time being.

I attended a foreign policy discussion this morning led by Richard Clarke (Former Counter-Terrorism Advisor to the National Security Council and Foreign Policy Advisor to Senator Obama) and retired Major General Gration at the Harry Sudakoff Conference Center, New College of Florida.

The message from the speakers was clear: Senator McCain has been making dangerous decisions for our country for the past eight years and cannot be allowed to take us down the road the current administration has set us on.

Halperin has new numbers from a number of battleground states.  You will note one consistent feature among all of these Marist polls: Barack Obama is ahead.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has an interesting post about why Intrade’s futures prices have barely reflected the major upswing in Obama’s polling over the last week.  After the GOP convention, when McCain passed Obama in the polls for the first time, bettors priced McCain as high as 54% midday on Sep 13, a really scary number.  But when the polls began to move back Obama’s way last week, prices were sluggish to respond, and still have only got Obama at 52, which given the electoral math, is almost certainly undervalued.  Most other betting sites currently price Obama above 60%, while 538 itself puts him above 70%.  For markets to be this far out of sync is bizarre:

This is the equivalent of the Giants being 3-point favorites at the Bellagio Sportsbook, and 7-point favorites at the Mirage down the block. Those things just don’t happen in efficient, sufficiently liquid markets, because they create arbitrage opportunities: you’d lay $10,000 on the Giants at the Bellagio and $10,000 on their opponents at the Mirage. Any time the Giants win by fewer than 3 points or more than 7 points, you lose nothing, since your two bets cancel out. But any time they win by fewer than 7 points but more than 3, you win both bets, and take home $20,000 (less the casino’s vigorish) for absolutely no risk. Pretty good deal, right? That’s exactly what’s happening with these futures contracts.

There more and more noise in the blogosphere and in the mainstream media about the Palin farce.  I wonder if it’s going to come to a head in some way or other.

Andrew Sullivan today has published on his blog 12 documented lies of Governor Palin:

– She has lied about the Bridge To Nowhere. She ran for office favoring it, wore a sweatshirt defending it, and only gave it up when the federal congress, Senator McCain in particular, went ballistic. She kept the money anyway and favors funding Don Young’s Way, at twice the cost of the original bridge.

– She has lied about her firing of the town librarian and police chief of Wasilla, Alaska.

– She has lied about pressure on Alaska’s public safety commissioner to fire her ex-brother-in-law.

– She has lied about her previous statements on climate change.

– She has lied about Alaska’s contribution to America’s oil and gas production.

– She has lied about when she asked her daughters for their permission for her to run for vice-president.

– She has lied about the actual progress in constructing a natural gas pipeline from Alaska.

– She has lied about Obama’s position on habeas corpus.

– She has lied about her alleged tolerance of homosexuality.

– She has lied about the use or non-use of a TelePrompter at the St Paul convention.

– She has lied about her alleged pay-cut as mayor of Wasilla.

– She has lied about what Alaska’s state scientists concluded about the health of the polar bear population in Alaska.

He concludes that we cannot trust anything she says.  

crossposted at MyDD

I think by now we all know about the revelation that Rick Davis, intrepid McCain campaign manager, was also (through his firm) quietly on the Freddie Mac payroll as recently as last month. I’ve also seen some allegations that this just won’t reach a lot of voters; that they won’t care, that it won’t make a difference.

My feeling is that this is a serious blow to McCain, and it’s a blow that’ll keep on hurting longer than some people think it will.

Why? Read on.