Nuclear Crisis #2 is 1 Minute From Midnight

Iran hails UN nuclear 'victory':

A top Iranian official has claimed a "great victory" over the US after the UN said it would not punish Iran's nuclear activities with sanctions.
Hassan Rohani said Iran would never give up its right to nuclear power.

He stressed its freeze in uranium enrichment was only temporary during talks with European countries.

The UN atomic agency IAEA has welcomed Iran's offer to freeze enrichment in a statement on Monday that did not mention any threat of future sanctions.

We need to begin bombing tomorrow, and fast-track any plan to depose the government.

These people will not stop until they have nuclear weapons, and when they do, it will be nuclear midnight.

If Iran has nuclear weapons, Hezbollah can get nuclear bombs, Syria can get nuclear bombs, and soon everyone who wants them will have them.

Then the nuclear apocalypse will begin.

CLINCH!!

11th kyu.

Palestinian Coffin Swarm!

Martin Peretz does the right thing.

I've been waiting for this for a long time.

Shalom motherfucker!

Daily Dose of Humor

A funny fisking of an arrogant former CBS "journalist."

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Maybe putting journalist in quotes was unfair to Mr. Engberg.

Too bad.

Media Agenda Watch

I have looked at the exit poll survey questions, and I have begun more and more to wonder if the insertion of moral values, but separation of Iraq and terrorism in the most important issues section, was not an accident, but a deliberate attempt to get a desired result to let the media give a predetermined spin. If Kerry won, it would have been that 18% of voters said Iraq was the most important issue for them, and they overwhelmingly opposed Bush on it. If Kerry won...well, we're already seeing that spin.

So I did some research into who is responsible for the exit polls. It is Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. One thing we know is that Mitofsky International did the work for old VNS exit polling, it was founded by someone who worked for CBS in the 60s, and that both firms were chosen by the media.

And then I found this. As is said earlier in the FAQ, the six members are ABC News, the AP, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News. That is who wrote the questions, so could the survey have been written to fit the media agenda? Absolutely. They don't even need intermediaries, they can bias the survey themselves.

So did they bias the survey to get the data to match their spin? I don't know, and I wold guess that the only people who know are those who wrote the questions. When the survey results are all combined, rather than using partial results, and are weighted according to election turnout to balance the sampling, the exit polls have turned out to be fairly accurate in giving the victory percentages. However, the important issues question smacks of being a poorly designed survey question, so if another "Thornburgh Commision" is needed for the exit polls, that is what it should examine for journalistic malfeasance.

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This is funny, given that the crash of their computer system is what kept the media from getting the full exit poll results on November 2nd, thus the bad projections.

Dogwatch

"Goodbye, Homer: Can you ever give away a dog you love?" by Jon Katz

This story made me bleary-eyed. It is a must-read for any pet owner.

More Writing About the Continuing Marketing Failure of Liberalism

From This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology & Economics:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Update:

Part 4
Part 5

Carnival Of The Cats #33 is up at Mind of Mog.

Ex-cellent

"All bow before the Tsarina Mitzi!"

My grandmother's cat again. She has extremely smooth fur, which is ironic, because she easily becomes feisty when pat. Sometimes I think she is a few cards short of a full deck, if cats had decks. I say this as someone who once saw her on the lawn with a tenth of a foot-long garden snake in her mouth and the other nine-tenths wrapped around her neck. This was a few hours after she had stalked a hop-toad, but about four hours before she caught a baby rabbit and came walking over the lawn with the thing still alive hanging from her jaws.

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That is by far my favorite Mitzi anecdote.

From KerrySpot, Now With New And Improved Permalinks

"Assessing Tuesday"

Mitzi doesn't like being photographed.

I suppose this is my first Friday cat-blogging. The cat is my grandmother's Russian Blue, which is an almost pure-breed except for a notched ear and a lip deformity that makes her appear to be constantly sneering. Which she might be. She absolutely loathes my former cat, JD.

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There will be more Mitzi photos to come.

Preliminary Election Post-Mortem

Ellisblog on "Why Kerry Lost" and Paul Freedman disproves the media groupthink that gay marriage and evangelicals cost Kerry the election.

Update: David Brooks, one of my favorite conservative columnists, adds his two cents.

Final Update: John Hood debunks the same insta-myth on Reason Online.

Battle of the Headlines

This is why one of the few magazines I ever read is Newsweek.

"Newsview: Presidential Race Polls Accurate" (Newsday)

"Predictions burn pollsters, pundits — again" (USA Today)

Update: And National Geographic.

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Previous headline battles:
MSNBC v. Newsweek

A Mercy Upon the Earth?

Please let this be true. Please, please, please...

You may remember that I said I was working on something for fans of Laurence Simon. Well, it's posted on his front page right now.

One Last Note

If George Bush maintains his lead in the popular vote of 51%, which seems likely, he will become the first presidential candidate to receive a majority of all votes cast since Bush Sr. v. Dukakis in 1988. That is a whole 16 years since a candidate received a majority of the vote cast in a presidential election. It will undoubtedly be a record for the U.S. in votes cast for one candidate.

Also, my estimate of 3%-5% lead in the popular vote for Bush has been proven correct by the results of 51% Bush/48% Kerry/1% Nader, which falls in the very lower margin of what I predicted. It is also remarkably close to what was predicted by the IEM vote-share market, with two-part vote being 51.5% to 48.5%.

Goodnight. really.

Repent Sycophants!


...The end is here!

I'm liveblogging the elction night. Watch this space.

9:42 PM: Current tally on CBS (I'm forced to watch it.) 170[Bush]-112[Nader. Just kidding, Kerry:)]. They had some stupid showing of some idiot political hacks yelling in Las Vegas. CBS election coverage sucks. Go read National Review weblogs.

10:01 PM: Different TV, now watching NBC, which just called Utah for Bush.

10:07 PM: NBC just called Arkansas for Bush. 182-112, Bush leads.

10:25 PM: The station is being changed. I will keep you informed on what it ends up on.

10:30 PM: Some stupid show on ESPN. It is changed again to CNN. Nope, it is on the move, stay with me.

10:35 PM: TV Land on political commentary on sitcoms. It is changing again. I will move soon in search of political commentary. Must feed...

10:46 PM: Different TV, now watching CNN, and no Carville! Woot!

11:00 PM: Updates: Pennsylvania and California called for Kerry. Saw Carville and Tucker. Arghhh... Bright spot: Tucker Carlson and James Carville agreed that the exit polls are crap.

"Oh my god, it's Larry King!"

I think there is massive voter fraud padding the margin in Pennsylvania.

11:04 PM: 197-188, Bush still leads.

11:06 PM: Weirdness: Arlen Specter is losing by a slim margin in PA.

11:22 PM: Ralph Nader is looking very grim on CNN, and only his right eye is blinking. Overheard: "Maybe he is having a stroke on national television." He was asked if he was disappointed by his poor performance. He said that he is furious at the Democratic "dirty tricks." Still 197-188.

11:31 PM: My battery is at 21%, so I won't be here much longer. CNN brought up the maverickness of Maine. Yay Maine!

11:57 PM: James Carville: "The Democrats are feeling pessimistic about Florida." Now Novak is trying to pick a rhetorical fight with Carville. Fantastic. This is better than real comedy. CBS predicts Florida for Bush. Novak is pissing off the studio audience. Tucker Carlson "thought that [Kerry] was the best candidate." Got power plugged in. Hawaii polls should close soon.

1:30 PM: CNN has called Florida for Kerry. The election appears to hinge on Ohio. I have not posted since midnight because I have an epic post up on the Dead Pool blog.

This is NF, your post-modern present-day wit, signing off.

Bin-Laden on Robert Fisk

Al-Jazeera post the full transcript of the bin-Laden tape. In it we find this gem about Robert Fisk:

[He] is one of your compatriots and co-religionists and I consider him to be neutral.

Dear fucking god. Keep in mind, this isn't Al Gore or John Kerry saying they consider Robert Fisk neutral, this is a man responsible for the murder of over 3,000 people. One of the most evil men alive regards Robert Fisk as neutral. Allah, please help us.

Jeff Goldstein Makes a Courageous Prediction

"Bush 270 plus; screw John Kerry."

I predict that George Bush will win the popular vote by 3%-5%. I Base this prediction on the vote-share market at the IEM, combined with the performance of the Bush-less-than-52% contract spinoff in the Winner-Takes-All market. It is currently has a greater price per share than any other contract, and the Bush-greater-than-52% is third after leading until a couple weeks ago. I believe the Bush-L52 contract picked up much of the real value of that contract, as they are now roughly where they were on the 7th of October, except reversed. I think this indicate that there is a still a significant chance that Bush could win by more than a 4% margin in the major-party vote, which is almost the same thing as the full popular vote long as third-party candidates do not take more than 3% of the popular vote. I think that the reason few of the major polls have shown this sort of lead for Bush is a sampling error due to how they determine likely voters and weight samples without being able to take into account the huge political shift since 2000.

I also think that this effect is magnified in electoral-battleground states where Bush has focused his campaign, and thus I predict that he will win more swing states than expected and win some of them by margins much larger than predicted. I think the EV result will be a Bush win by a margin large enough that no single swing state could have changed the outcome if it had gone for Kerry.