effective, perhaps not efficient

Cost per vote:
Obama: $11.21
McCain: $5.52
Based on $750M in campaign donations for Obama (66.9M votes) and $238 (donations) +$84 (public funds) getting 58.3M votes for McCain.
As for the $30M surplus that Obama’s campaign generated, I say let him keep it.  I mean personally, not rolling it into the next campaign or anything — if you can [...]

interesting thought as 100,000 (and Oprah) gather to hear Obama speak…

“The darkest moments in world history have occurred during the confluence of a bad economy and a charismatic leader.”  Tim Slagle
not that I’m expecting the worst, but then nobody expects the worst at moments like this — they’re too wrapped up in the Audacity of Hope and Change they can Believe In.
they’re calling it Obama-palooza.  [...]

game changer?

I know the night is early and there are a lot of votes out in California, but I’m looking at Obama 13,786,707 — McCain 13,533, 528 as the popular vote stands right now.
That’s Obama’s 49.9% to McCain’s 49.2%.
Sure, the electoral college is 174 (Obama) to 69 (McCain), but where is the big landslide?  Where is [...]

voting zen

it’s a kind of eeiry, peaceful feeling, knowing that you’re voting for the loser.  no need to go home and fire up CNN + Politico and breathlessly wait out the evening.  knowing that you didn’t just choose between the lesser of two evils, and that no matter whether it’s a blue landslide or an upset [...]

the politics of dancing

if you love our democracy, you must watch this video.  [sorry, can't embed.]
http://view.break.com/592648 – Watch more free videos
[headline reference; watching that, I don't blame the Russians for wanting to bomb us back to the stone age back in the 80's.]

“invest in college affordability”

this was something Obama said in the debates tonight, but I have no idea what it might possibly mean.
how do you invest in college “affordability”?  invest in technology that makes delivery of higher educational ’services’ more affordable?  or are they just talking about cutting the cost of college through some subsidies/loan-programs?
college has never been so [...]

what moves markets and voters

forgive me for another outdated post, but this was a screen capture I did a few weeks ago – back when a 300 point drop was huge, before the 777 point one-day drop:

I know it’s all just a coincidence, but you know that this stock market free-fall is going to play to Obama’s favor.  seemed [...]

my problem with super-delegates

I don’t have a problem with the existence of super-delegates. there are no guarantees that party nominations need to be representationally democratic — despite the rising rhetoric.
here’s the thing I don’t get — what are these super-delegates waiting for? I can not believe that they are holding out for more information about the [...]

pictures say thousands of words

the graphs are the price of futures contracts for each candidate for their respective party nomination.  the basics of these futures is that they pay out $100 if the candidate wins and $0 if they lose.  so it would have been sweet to buy on Obama’s dip (below $25) back in October ‘07 and have [...]