Stickybuffalo.com

(the “result” numbers here are based on MSNBC’s map.)

on the overall result, i’m astonished to see that i out-pessimisted ben on this one, posting the most conservative and — to my great delight — least accurate electoral prediction of the panel. gray’s cockeyed optimism, meanwhile, turned out to be scary-accurate: he nailed the EV count, assuming these numbers are stable. if we should happen to see NC shift to mccain in the final count, charlie would take over the title of Supreme Handicapper, with mark a close second in either case.

for individual states, the entire panel called PA, VA, CO, NM, GA, AZ & IA correctly. charlie was all alone in picking indiana for obama, as was gray with north carolina. charlie & gray also both nailed ohio, which the rest of us were afraid to believe was winnable (i’m still a little shocked). ben was the only one who ventured a guess on nebraska’s 2nd district, which was correct, though counting continues with a mccain lead of less than 600 votes at last check.

though we all accurately predicted the winner in pennsylvania, we significantly underestimated obama’s margin, and as a group we tended to lowball colorado and new mexico. the spread in nevada was also a big surprise — for me especially; i was way off.

  

Josh's prediction

 

 

Battlegrounds:

Pennsylvania - McCain can’t win without it, so if PA goes blue it will likely mean an early night. OTOH, despite a commanding lead in the polls it’s not entirely in the bag for Barack (viz. This American Life’s slightly ominous report from the weekend before last). Obama by 3-5.

Ohio - Polls show Obama ahead, but with this state’s history of voting irregularities & out-and-out widespread disenfranchisement, I just can’t count on Ohio. McCain by 1-2.

Virginia - Should be among the first results posted, and if paired with good news out of Pennsylvania will mean it’s time to pour the champagne. Don’t know why, but I feel like Obama will squeak by with a one or two point spread.

Florida - Ditto Ohio, though there are signs of improvements to the voting system like Crist’s laudable decision to extend voting hours. Between that and Obama’s well-publicized army of lawyers and apparently kickass ground game, I feel like he could win, but not by more than a few points.

Colorado - Decisive for Obama, to the tune of 4-5 points.

New Mexico - Forget everything I said a couple of weeks ago. Obama by 5+.

Nevada - It can’t all be good news, so I’ll randomly give this one to McCain, by a negligible margin.

Shouldn’t-be-close-but-could-flip-anyway:

North Carolina - Polling ridiculously close, but feels too good to be true. If they do go for Obama, though, it will mean all bets are off in Georgia. McCain by microns.

Georgia - Holy shit. As I’ve mentioned, the idea — however far-fetched — of Georgia being in play for the Democrat gives me a boner. I don’t think it will happen, but I’ll have a change of pants handy tomorrow night just in case.

Montana - Why not? Like elsewhere in the interior west, MT has been subtly trending blue, and seems like the kind of wild-card state that could deliver an upset. What the hell — Obama by one.

Indiana - Meh. Recession or no, those crackers will never back a Democrat. Polling is tight, but I just don’t see it.

North Dakota - Like Montana, their 3 electoral votes aren’t likely to make or break either candidate. Best-case scenario is MT & ND cancel each other out.

Missouri - Who knows? Obama could definitely win it. He’s campaigning there today, but my sense overall is that MO has not been one of the top-tier priorities for the O camp, and since it’s an overwhelmingly red state by default, McCain gets the edge.

Arizona - It would add a nice bit of insult to McCain’s many injuries, but it’s probably asking too much. Anyway, we’ll likely have a winner before their results are even in, so it’ll be mostly symbolic whichever way it goes.

Okay, your turn!

DSCN0087.JPG

Originally uploaded by AyBeeDee

has joe the plumber ever had to dodge barrels flung by a rampaging ape? fuck that guy.

Western Gateway Park in downtown Des Moines on a stunningly beautiful Halloween morning

Photos from 10/31/2008 Obama rally in Des Moines, Iowa.

i arrived way too late to be anywhere near the podium, but had a pretty good spot within the spillover crowd, which extended a little over a block past the park itself. fortunately the sound system was excellent.

that white speck in the middle is barack. this is actually a much better look at him than i got with my own eyes -- give it up for zoom!

it's hard to get a good sense of the size of the crowd from these pictures, but it was quite a scene. iowa loves obama!

Bear with me on this one. It’s a long post, but trust me, you’ll be glad you waded through it.

You guys know about Pamela Gellar, right? She’s one of the more colorful and unstable right-wing bloggers. At her blog Atlas Shrugs (no, I refuse to link to it), Ms. Gellar can be found spinning bizarre conspiracy theories, sputtering furiously about various slights against conservatives (some real, but mostly imagined), crusading for the obliteration of Islam (and all who profess its faith), and generally reveling in her own lack of tact. In the pantheon of crazy wingnut luminaries, she’s usually lumped in with Ann Coulter (because they both have ladyparts, they both perform what right-wing extremists apparently perceive to be sexiness, and that’s pretty much it. Well, that and their shared affinity for tastelessness), but she’s really more at home with crackpots like Pastor Grant Swank, Confederate Yankee, and Michael Savage. Y’know, monstrously stupid people with a penchant for fantasy. Gellar adds a heapin’ helpin’ of Michelle Malkin-style spite and sheer, spittle-flying hatred, just for good measure.

Pam’s rise to prominence can probably be attributed mostly to her aforementioned ladyparts (there’s nothing a right-blog dweller likes more than a woman they can imagine both discussing politics and having sex with), but also to the wonderful way she spins clusters of right-wing fantasy into intricate, yet wildly implausible conspiracy theories that, though they bear almost no resemblance to anything found in the realm of the possible, satisfy as many wingnut yearnings as possible. These baroque, almost inspired webs of Grimm Brothers-esque fiction usually follow the same trajectory: Gellar posts an extremely long, poorly sourced, increasingly preposterous story on her blog, claiming definitive proof of the awfulness of some liberal or group of liberals. Her commenting readership immediately posts adulatory paeans to her genius (no doubt typing one-handed), and shortly, her creation ripples throughout the right-wing blogosphere (which seems preternaturally predisposed to turning the spread of every story into a particularly erratic game of telephone). Inevitably, one left-wing blog or another (usually the incomparable Sadly, No!) starts mocking her story, leading her and her acolytes to ratchet up their certainty. A thorough debunking usually follows, though Gellar and her circle only rarely admit their errors, preferring instead to pretend the whole thing never happened (or, increasingly, drop the subject immediately, only to resurrect it later as common knowledge beyond the necessity of argument). A few days or weeks pass, and the cycle begins anew.

All of this is just background to explain why I’m so excited about her latest theory, which blows all the others out of the water. In the span of almost 12,500 words (all in a single post, mind you), she lays out her Grand Wingnut Theory of Barack Obama, which includes most of the conspiracy theories already surrounding the candidate, and accounts for many controversial (and not so controversial) figures lately linked (often only by rumor) to Obama, before introducing a whole new group of right-wing boogeymen supposedly now connected to Obama and his sinister plot to turn America into an Islamic Socialist Republic. You wanna know what the core of this grand theory is?

(more…)

In case you missed it…

I have a lot of semi-free time on my hands these days, due to my main client’s inability to furnish me with a full 4 days of work per week. This time — only partly free, because I do need to be avilable to do work at a moment’s notice — is generally spent in front of my iMac perusing the latest news on Obama, polls, the MSI Wind netbook, and Apple-related stuff. I figure it’s high time to gaze into my crystal ball a bit.

First off, new offerings from Apple due tomorrow. The MacBook in my household is the property of my wife and spends most of its time on campus, which is why I’m tethered to my iMac. I’d love something portable so I could get out of the house a bit more (hence my OSX-on-Wind obsession). Rumors abound regarding tomorrow’s annoucement. While I’d love to see an inexpensive, netbook-like offering (I think an 11″ screen with a traditional HD and SD card reader would be perfect), I don’t see Apple going into the netbook realm — the iPhone is sophisticated enough a portable computing device that Apple will stay away from the netbook segment for a while.

I also don’t think we’ll see anything cheaper than $899, or that we’ll see a tablet laptop. Mac OS X isn’t designed for a tablet-style UI and Steve would never release a product where software and hardware weren’t in harmony. However, I think we will see an $899 MacBook. Trackpads will be bigger and support multitouch gestures, and cases will all be so very metal. MacBook Pro specs will get bumped up. Blu-ray seems like a possibility for the Pros and maybe upper-end MacBooks, but no way they offer it at the low end. I also expect some news related to AppleTV and the Mini. I’m not sure what it will be, but I don’t expect it to draw too much attention away from all the new laptops.

As for the election: It seems pretty clear to me that Obama’s finally hit his ceiling in the national polls. Unfortunately, that means that at the moment there’s nowhere to go but down, and down he will go. But I don’t expect that decline will be precipitous, and he may actually recover back to today’s numbers come November.

I definitely expect him to top 300 in the electoral college, though I’m not so optimistic to think Georgia, West Virginia or North Dakota are truly in play despite recent polls. I also actually think North Carolina’s unlikely to turn blue, even with Dean Smith endorsing Obama. Obama will take FL, NH, MN, OH and VA, but lose out on Nevada and Colorado, giving him a final total of 324 EV’s.

Of course, if Osama bin Laden endorses him or something else crazy happens these last few weeks, I reserve the right to amend that prognositication.

UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight.com just compiled today’s polls and things still look great for That One. But I still think McCain will mount a comeback and take what I outlined above (note that I’m putting Missouri in red, which I failed to mention).

i got just want i wanted for my birthday: john mccain strapping on his bib and tucking into a big ol’ bowl of shit. today’s q-poll shows huge leads for obama in OH, FL and PA. the rest of us were playing it cool last week, but it looks like gray’s instinct was dead-on.

debate-night pundit commentary notwithstanding, viewers saw obama as the winner by a wide margin, and this week’s polling bears that out, along with reflecting voters’ apparent disgust with mccain’s “suspension” stunt. (the letterman thing probably didn’t help either.) it’s hard to see how the biden-palin debate reverses that dynamic. and don’t forget, voters still have two more opportunities to see mccain, cranky and up past his bedtime, behave like a petulant child as obama debates circles around him.

34 days to go. tick-tock…

So, John McCain’s campaign has been in trouble for the last week or so, as Palin’s popularity has plummeted, his bestest buddy turns out to be (surprise, surprise) collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars for nothing other than assuring that investment banks will have inside access to a McCain White House, and he and pretty much everyone around him have been vomiting gaffes as if their common sense had been up all night shotgunning ipecac. The economic situation others here have been covering well (and I’ve been avoiding, out of sheer terror) is turning into McCain’s worst enemy.

And now, he’s suspending his campaign until some sort of bandaid is signed into law. Nobody appears to be fooled by this gambit.

So now, I ask, with all due sincerity, is there any way in the world for McCain to win this election?

So, this year, Obama’s been selling a lot of buttons, t-shirts, signs, and various other things imprinted with his logo. It’s a pretty nifty idea: run a store on your campaign website and file purchases as campaign donations. Your logo sees broader exposure, you get to report super-high donation totals each month, it’s easier for supporters who live in places without a campaign office or frequent campaign events to get campaign gear, people who would already have made donations get a little token for their trouble. Everybody wins.

But I wonder why it seems to take at least several weeks (and sometimes a few months) for orders to be shipped. I’m not complaining in a “where’s my stuff?!?” way, since Obama was gonna be getting my money even without a store on his website. I’m wondering why distributing campaign advertisements isn’t seen as more of a priority. It took my window sign almost 10 weeks to arrive, and I’ve lately been showered with apologetic emails telling me that my buttons, stickers, and t-shirts (ordered weeks ago) just might be shipping soon (though I’m not to expect them to arrive for a few weeks after they’ve shipped). That’s a lot of weeks that I could have been displaying Obama’s logo everywhere I went.

I suppose the cynical answer is that Obama doesn’t really care about people putting signs in their windows, handing out buttons to their friends, putting stickers on their cars, etc., and is really just after the money. That might be the case, though that would be a little surprising, given the amount of importance Obama’s campaign places on the ground game. The online store is supposed to generate revenue and increase campaign visibility, and I seriously doubt the Obama campaign would sacrifice one almost entirely in order to maximize the other.

Rather, it seems like they’re just being really cheap, which I can appreciate. I’m sure they want to maximize the “profit margin” of the Obama gear, and hiring cheaper, slower manufacturers and using cheaper, slower shipping options would certainly be part of that. But really, I’ll be surprised if my “first edition!!!!1!!1!!!” Obama/Biden stickers and buttons get here before election day, at which point their advertising potential will be moot, and the items themselves will either carry a neutral emotional impact or will be depressing reminders of a very bad day.