


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f17fWth3 ... ure=relmfu
Moderator: Andrew
Rick wrote::lol:![]()
Make sure there are no kids in the room.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f17fWth3 ... ure=relmfu
conversationpc wrote:Rick wrote::lol:![]()
Make sure there are no kids in the room.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f17fWth3 ... ure=relmfu
Yeah, I saw that...Besides being in poor taste, it's not even really that funny.
Americans Still Give Obama Better Odds to Win Election
54% of Americans think Obama will win; 34% predict Romney
by Andrew Dugan and Frank Newport
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A majority of Americans continue to believe that Democratic President Barack Obama will win re-election Tuesday over Republican challenger Mitt Romney, by 54% to 34%. These views are roughly similar to where they were in May and August, although slightly more Americans now do not have an opinion either way.
These results are based on interviews conducted from Oct. 27-28 as part of the Gallup Daily election tracking survey, conducted before Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast. It is unknown what effect the storm will have on Americans' voting preferences or the impact of the storm on Americans' perceptions of who is most likely to win the election.
The majority of Americans continue to project an Obama win on Nov. 6. This is the case even though the general perception is the race is highly competitive and the outcome still very much in doubt. National polls generally show a tight race with many, including Gallup, giving Romney an edge. State-level polls suggest Obama doing slightly better in key battleground states that will decide the Electoral College winner.
Behshad wrote:conversationpc wrote:Rick wrote::lol:![]()
Make sure there are no kids in the room.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f17fWth3 ... ure=relmfu
Yeah, I saw that...Besides being in poor taste, it's not even really that funny.
You're right. Let's watch your Glen Beck video !
Fact Finder wrote:Fine, show me Portmans op-ed on this subject, be glad to read it.
Fact Finder wrote:LENO: 'Don't ask, don't tell is back ... Obama's new policy for questions about Libya'...![]()
NEWT: ARE THERE MORE BENGHAZI E-MAILS?...
FACEBOOK Censors Navy SEALS to Protect Obama on Benghazi...
'The mysterious media Benghazi bugout'...
Hannity on WH Audio Tapes: 'I've Heard They Are Damning'...
WASHPOST: 'LINGERING QUESTIONS'...
slucero wrote:Fact Finder wrote:Fine, show me Portmans op-ed on this subject, be glad to read it.
I never said there was an OP ed...
video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 2zk06GzjyU
I apologies for my remarks.. but I stand by my point.
This continuous push of partisan politics is the "divide" part of the conquer methodology of both of these parasitic Republican and Democratic parties, BOTH of who would sacrifice shared American unity for their own respective political gain.
If anyone thinks these parties represent true, individual sovereign American values, they're delusional... as I said in an earlier post... it's sad that in a nation where we pride ourselves on doing our very best... we have allowed our election process to become a choice between the "least worst"...
.. and instead of trying to resolve that, and restore some real integrity to our society, we instead ignore the obvious and return to arguing about the two, more similar than dis-similar polished turds these parties present as our "choices"...
The Nate Silver backlash
Posted by Ezra Klein on October 30, 2012 at 3:14 pm
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It seems to happen every few weeks. The race tightens or widens or simply continues on exactly as it’s been, and some pundit or reporter declares it a staggering humiliation for the burgeoning world of election quants.
Niall Ferguson took his turn at bat in early September. “The economy is in the doldrums,” he wrote. “Yet the incumbent is ahead in the polls. According to a huge body of research by political scientists, this is not supposed to happen.”
Actually, according to a huge body of research by political scientists, that was exactly what was supposed to happen.
After the first debate, David Frum stepped up to the plate. “Political science proclaims, ‘debates don’t matter,’ ” he wrote. “After this election, we may need to retire a lot of political science.”
Actually, “political science” never declared debates don’t matter. A political scientist — George Washington University’s John Sides — had reviewed the evidence and written that “when it comes to shifting enough votes to decide the outcome of the election, presidential debates have rarely, if ever, mattered.”
That was true then. It’s true now. It will be true if Mitt Romney wins the election (saying something has “rarely, if ever, happened” does not mean it cannot happen, as a look at the rather unusual weather outside your window will prove). And it will be true if President Obama, as continues to look slightly likelier than not, wins the election.
Which brings me to the backlash against Nate Silver.
Before we get too deep in the weeds here, it’s worth being clear about exactly what Silver’s model — and that’s all it is, a model — is showing. As of this writing, Silver thinks Obama has a 75 percent chance of winning the election. That might seem a bit high, but note that the BetFair markets give him a 67.8 percent chance, the InTrade markets give him a 61.7 percent chance and the Iowa Electronic Markets give him a 61.8 percent chance. And we know from past research that political betting markets are biased toward believing elections are more volatile in their final weeks than they actually are. So Silver’s estimate doesn’t sound so off.
Moreover, Silver’s model is currently estimating that Obama will win 295 electoral votes. That’s eight fewer than predicted by Sam Wang’s state polling meta-analysis and 37 fewer than Drew Linzer’s Votamatic.
So before we deal with anything Silver has specifically said, it’s worth taking in the surrounding landscape: Every major political betting market and every major forecasting tool is predicting an Obama victory right now, and for the same reason: Obama remains ahead in enough states that, unless the polls are systematically wrong, or they undergo a change unlike any we’ve yet seen in the race, Obama will win the election.
There’s no doubt about that. Real Clear Politics, which leans right, shows Romney up by 0.8 percent nationally, but shows Obama up in Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Romney is up in Florida and North Carolina, but note that his lead in Florida is smaller than Obama’s lead in Ohio. And RCP shows Colorado and Virginia tied. Pollster.com, meanwhile, shows Obama leading by a point in Colorado and Virginia and the race tied in Florida.
It’s important to be clear about this: If Silver’s model is hugely wrong — if all the models are hugely wrong, and the betting markets are hugely wrong — it’s because the polls are wrong. Silver’s model is, at this point, little more than a sophisticated form of poll aggregation.
But it’s just as important to be clear about this: If Mitt Romney wins on election day, it doesn’t mean Silver’s model was wrong. After all, the model has been fluctuating between giving Romney a 25 percent and 40 percent chance of winning the election. That’s a pretty good chance! If you told me I had a 35 percent chance of winning a million dollars tomorrow, I’d be excited. And if I won the money, I wouldn’t turn around and tell you your information was wrong. I’d still have no evidence I’d ever had anything more than a 35 percent chance.
There are good criticisms to make of Silver’s model, not the least of which is that, while Silver is almost tediously detailed about what’s going on in the model, he won’t give out the code, and without the code, we can’t say with certainty how the model works. But the model is, at this point, Silver’s livelihood, and so it’s somewhat absurd to assume he’d hand it out to anyone who asks. For better or worse, those aren’t rules we apply in other markets, or even in journalism, where off-the-record conversations inform much that journalists say.
Another criticism is that Silver’s model is so based on polls by the end that it barely actually counts as a model, and Silver is simply doing a savvy job repackaging and commercializing polling data that is out there already. This criticism, of course, says nothing about his accuracy.
Then there’s the argument that Silver adds unnecessary factors, though note that models without those factors, like Wang’s, are showing an even more lopsided win for the president.
But the good arguments over Silver’s model are being overwhelmed by very bad ones.
First, there are the conservatives who don’t like Silver’s model because, well, they don’t like it. Obama’s continued strong showing is prima facie evidence of bias. Or, to put it slightly differently, the model must be skewed.
The answer to this is simple enough: If Silver’s model is systematically biased, there’s a market opportunity for anyone who wants to build a better model. That person would stand to gain hugely if they outpredicted punditry’s reigning forecaster (not to mention all the betting markets and all the other forecasters). The math behind what Silver is doing isn’t that complicated and the polls are easily available. But so far, the most popular conservative take on the polls was UnskewedPolls.com, to which … LOL. If Silver’s model is so easy to best, then what’s the market failure keeping a less-biased source from besting it?
Then there’s the backlash from more traditional media figures. Some of the arguments here have been downright weird, as when Politico’s Josh Gerstein wrote, “Isn’t the basic problem with the Nate Silver prediction in question, and the critique, that it puts a percentage on a one-off event?” Or when Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote, “Avert your gaze, liberals: Nate Silver admits he’s simply averaging public polls and there is no secret sauce.” Or when Politico’s Dylan Byers wrote, “So should Mitt Romney win on Nov. 6, it’s difficult to see how people can continue to put faith in the predictions of someone who has never given that candidate anything higher than a 41 percent chance of winning.”
Come to think of it, a lot of the odder critiques of Silver have been coming out of Politico. But that makes a kind of sense. Silver’s work poses a threat to more traditional — and, in particular, to more excitable — forms of political punditry and horse-race journalism.
If you had to distill the work of a political pundit down to a single question, you’d have to pick the perennial “who will win the election?” During election years, that’s the question at the base of most careers in punditry, almost all cable news appearances, and most A1 news articles. Traditionally, we’ve answered that question by drawing on some combination of experience, intuition, reporting and polls. Now Silver — and Silver’s imitators and political scientists — are taking that question away from us. It would be shocking if the profession didn’t try and defend itself.
More recently, we in the media — and particularly we in the media at Politico — have tried to grab an edge in the race for Web traffic by hyping our election stories far beyond their actual importance. The latest gaffe is always a possible turning point, the momentum is always swinging wildly, the race is endlessly up in the air. It thus presents a bit of a problem for us if our readers then turn to sites like Silver’s and find that none of this actually appears to be true and a clear-eyed look at the data shows a fairly stable race over long periods of time.
My guess is Silver and his successors will win this one, if only because, for all the very real shortcomings of models, election forecasters have better incentives than homepage editors. For instance, note that all these attacks on Silver take, as their starting point, Silver’s continuously updated prediction for the presidential election, which includes point estimates for the popular vote and electoral college, and his predictions for the Senate races. Those predictions let readers check Silver’s track record and they force Silver, if he wants to keep his readers’ trust, to make his model as accurate as he can. That’s a good incentive structure — certainly a better one than much of the rest of the media has — and my guess is his results, over time, will prove it.
Fact Finder wrote:Here Behshad:
From Pew, the #1 Rated Poll tied with Ras...
http://www.people-press.org/2012/10/31/ ... advantage/In Deadlocked Race, Neither Side Has Ground Game Advantage
Early Voting Also Tied
Overview
Just as the presidential race is deadlocked in the campaign’s final days, the candidates are also running about even when it comes to the ground game. Voters nationally, as well those in the closely contested battleground states, report being contacted at about the same rates by each of the campaigns. And with a fifth of likely voters reporting already having cast their ballots, neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney has a clear advantage among early voters. This is in sharp contrast to early voting at this point four years ago, which favored Obama by a wide margin.
-snip-
The Pew Research Center survey found that the race is even among all likely voters nationwide (47% Obama, 47% Romney). Unlike the last campaign, the race also is close among voters who say they have already voted.
In the poll, conducted Oct. 24-28, 19% of likely voters say they have already voted; that is unchanged from the same week in the 2008 campaign (Oct. 23-26, 2008). Currently, Romney holds a seven-point edge among early voters (50% to 43%); because of the small sample, this lead is not statistically significant. At this point four years ago, Obama led John McCain by 19 points (53% to 34%) among early voters.
brandonx76 wrote:Chris Christie - man, cuts the bull shit quick...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr1jJhe04ug
Nate Silver to Joe Scarborough: Wanna Bet?
Political polling guru Nate Silver is so confident in his statistical models that he just offered to bet MSNBC's Joe Scarborough $1,000 that Barack Obama will win re-election. Scarborough, you may recall, criticized Silver's math earlier this week, saying that "Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue ... they're jokes." He was specifically talking about Silver's FiveThirtyEight website, which shows Mitt Romney with just a 1-in-4 chance of becoming president
Silver has spent the week firing back, criticizing political pundits for not understanding how odds and probability work and aggressively defending his method against critics. As the week has progressed, his model has only shown Obama's chances of winning increasing, which has not coincidentally increased Silver's confidence in the outcome. (As of this morning, Five Thirty Eight gives Obama a 79 percent chance of winning, with a final Electoral College total over 300.)
The back-and-forth swipes all came to head today with this tweet, with Silver offering a friendly $1,000 wager on Tuesday's result, with the winnings going to charity.
.@joenbc: If you think it's a toss-up, let's bet. If Obama wins, you donate $1,000 to the American Red Cross. If Romney wins, I do. Deal?
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 1, 2012
After that Politico story claiming Silver was putting his reputation on the line with this election, he's making it clear that he's willing to put more on the line than that. And he's also clearly fed up with pundits who aren't willing to put anything on the line to back up their numerous predictions.
Scarborough was not on the set of his MSNBC show this morning and has yet to respond, but he already has one wager riding on Tuesday's vote. Just yesterday, he agreed to a bet with Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod over their facial hair. (Axelrod will shave his mustache if Obama loses Michigan, Minnesota, or Pennsylvania. Scarborough will grow one if Romney loses Florida or North Carolina.) Will Joe put his money where his mouth—and mustache—is?
Americans Still Give Obama Better Odds to Win Election
54% of Americans think Obama will win; 34% predict Romney
by Andrew Dugan and Frank Newport
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A majority of Americans continue to believe that Democratic President Barack Obama will win re-election Tuesday over Republican challenger Mitt Romney, by 54% to 34%. These views are roughly similar to where they were in May and August, although slightly more Americans now do not have an opinion either way.
Obama Ahead in 10-Point Favorability Measure, 62% to 55%
Trends suggest this is not a perfect predictor of victory in the election
by Lydia Saad
PRINCETON, NJ -- Majorities of Americans hold generally favorable views of President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, using Gallup's historical 10-point "scalometer" question. In the poll, conducted Oct. 27-28 -- before Hurricane Sandy struck the Eastern seaboard -- 62% of national adults rated Obama positively and 55% rated Romney that way. Among registered voters, it was slightly closer: 60% for Obama and 56% for Romney
The Sushi Hunter wrote:I think what we have here in regards to the Libya situation is Obama leadership and much of the administration that is dysfunctional, disconnected, unorganized, etc. and what happened in Libya is precisely the results of that. I don’t believe for a minute that Obama and much of his administration intentionally fucked up. The clock was ticking from the moment they got word that shit was hitting the fan in Libya but because of this administration's lack of effectiveness among many other skills that go along with being the President and part of that administration, they weren't able to pull their heads out of their assholes quick enough and in time to prevent the outcome of the attack. They were shooting each other emails and getting on the horn with one another, but they didn't seem to have the slightest idea how to go about handling this issue while under the gun. The clock ran out and four American's were killed. Washington needs a good house cleaning. Field day starting this November.
That’s my take on Libya.
Right-wing hysteria over Benghazi feeds upon itself
Fox New anchors, right-wing websites and talk-radio hosts around the country are ginning up a wave of mass hysteria about the decision by the Obama administration not to attempt a military rescue of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya. (Glenn Beck is even telling listeners that the treason is more widespread, and that Stevens was acting as a gunrunner for al Qaida in Libya and Syria. I kid you not.)
Obama’s crime is said to be so heinous that mere impeachment for refusing to intervene would be insufficient. If you Google the words “Benghazi” and “traitor,” you get some 518,000 hits, almost all of which cast President Obama as that traitor. The criticism extends as well to the mainstream media, which as my email informs me, is being accused of covering up a scandal of such dimensions that it would supposedly dwarf Watergate.
But I have a question.
According to NBC News, Mitt Romney hasn’t mentioned Libya in his campaign appearances around the country since Oct. 12, which is more than two weeks ago. Now why do you think that is?
Option one: Mitt has joined the mainstream media as part of the pro-Obama conspiracy of silence to protect the president.
Option two. Romney’s military and foreign affairs advisers have told him that not even a minimally responsible case can be made that Obama should have intervened militarily at Benghazi, and that Romney would deeply embarrass himself by suggesting such a step.
Let’s be clear: There is no indication — none — that U.S military officials advised the president or anyone in the administration that a rescue operation was possible, and that the administration ignored that offer. The evidence is entirely to the contrary.
As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta explained, “(The) basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place. And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”
That would be Gen. Carter Ham, the head of U.S. Africa Command, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They are men of training and experience; they know where our military assets are located; they know their capabilities, and they know the difficulties involved in inserting and extracting an armed force into an uncertain situation in another country.
It is of course frustrating and heartbreaking to learn that CIA officers stationed near the Benghazi consulate had asked three times for military assistance and that those requests had been denied. But that is real life. This is not a Hollywood movie.
The most provocative piece of that report is the claim that a Special Forces team stationed at an air base in Signonella, Italy, two hours from Benghazi, was ready to intervene but orders were never given. But here’s how such mass hysteria gets fed by partial information, in both senses of the word “partial”. As it turned out, the Special Forces team in question was not based in Sigonella but had to be assembled and transported there from elsewhere in Europe.
“U.S. officials say (the team) did not arrive in Sicily until after the attack was over,” CBS reports. “Even if the team had been ready in time, confusion about what was happening on the ground in Benghazi — and State Department concerns about violating Libyan sovereignty — made a military rescue mission impractical, the officials say.”
Arguing against mass and willful hysteria using facts, logic and expert professional opinion is a losing battle, of course. It doesn’t matter that our top military people believed a rescue effort would be impractical and would probably end in the loss of even more American lives. What matters is that talk-show hosts and others can stir up millions of Americans raised on Rambo movies to believe that their leaders could have helped to rescue a well-respected U.S. diplomat and his team, but simply decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Because the president is a traitor.
That makes no sense. It is such a ridiculous notion that in most eras it would never even be broached in public debate. But this is an era in which many are predisposed to believe the most ridiculous things if it justifies their hatred of Obama, and a time in which when emotions are heightened by a hard-fought presidential campaign. So nonsense reigns.
Behshad wrote:Sushi, when all your " facts" are from the MEDIA, it's not the admin that is misleading you, it's the media !
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