I don't think it's an obsession for control as much as a red herring for normal folk who are prudish about sex. Basically waving porn around in one hand and reaching for their wallet with the other.

Posted at July 2, 2008 12:07 PM in response to Whoa! Hidden Message in Obama's Faith Based Initiatives Message.

I thought his original explanation several days ago was pretty clear and didn't require any hidden knowledge.

His assessment is that democrats extracted sufficient concessions from the repubs to make the bill a net positive. He'll continue to work to make the bill more positive during its run in the senate. You might disagree (I know I do) but it's a pretty simple and perfectly reasonable explanation.

Posted at June 27, 2008 4:07 PM in response to I Know More Than You Do

Her die-hard supporters are the ones that need to listen to her. I'm guessing they trust her a bit more than you or I do.

Posted at June 27, 2008 3:53 PM in response to Unity Event Designed To Achieve Unity About To Start In Unity

Man I hope McCain doesn't stumble upon your Hamlet spoiler, he's been wanting to see that ever since it came out.

Posted at June 25, 2008 4:24 PM in response to Re Fisa: Obama articulated his reasoning in a 2005 Kos Diary.

They can spend it on ads that benefit him, but they can't just hand it to him, or directly fund his campaign appearances and such. Also some of their money will go toward supporting seats in congress, which they're going to have to vigorously defend this year.

Posted at June 23, 2008 1:39 PM in response to RNC Retains $50 Million Cash Advantage Over DNC

It could easily be a random fluke. That's why polls have error bars.

Posted at June 23, 2008 10:12 AM in response to Election Central Morning Roundup

He hasn't voted on the bill, it was a House vote. He simply made a comment, just like he did during the AUMF.

Posted at June 22, 2008 10:01 AM in response to Election Central Saturday Roundup

Whites aren't traditionally held to prejudiced preconceptions. It's a question of starting positions.

Thought experiment:

Imagine I show you a video of a large man punching a small child.

Next I show you another video. A small child throwing a large man with Judo or somesuch.

Clearly the first you would cringe at, and the second you might cheer at or at least be willing to learn more context information. The perception of who already holds the power before a conflict alters your view of the conflict.

Posted at June 20, 2008 10:44 AM in response to Poll: Presidential Race A Dead Heat -- In Georgia

Didn't he just say Americans are smart?

IQ tests are (supposed to be) normalized around a score of 100 with a standard deviation of 10. For 300 million people to lean almost a full standard deviation higher than the global average is pretty darn smart. I'm not sure how much the median differs from the mean, however.

Of course, without more background on where it came from, that number is meaningless, but such is the way of quoting random statistics.

Reminds me of the great quote, "Half the population is dumber than average."

Posted at June 18, 2008 5:29 PM in response to Flashback: McCain Said That Rudy, His Chief National Security Surrogate, Had No National Security Experience

I had a couple of Javascript issues with certain sites in the Firefox 3 beta. They're gone in this full release. It's looking very nice and seems speedier (subjectively, anyway).

Posted at June 17, 2008 6:59 PM in response to Firefox 3.0 Now available for download.