Lifted from Robert Waldmann‘s Stochastic Thoughts. Dan here. NDD’s post on voter turnout for older voters being an economic question in general about interest rates and cola rates, Robert points to less “rational” economic behavior. Of course there is quixotic voting such as the lady in Kentucky who was for the KY health exchange and […]

(Dan here. NDD takes a shot at one reason for the loss of Democratic candidates in this election.) – by New Deal democrat It’s (also) the interest rates, stupid! You know the old saw, “it’s the economy, stupid!”  Both Robert Reich and Atrios have boiled last week’s election results down to that maxim. Atrios said, […]

This is a 7 minute video that looks at the way money has reduced the voter population that counts down to a handful.  Sure, we all get to vote, but it’s the things that happen before the final vote that makes the real decision.  How often do we hear that there is no one to […]

Guest Post by Mark Jamison, retired Postmaster Webster, N.C. It’s been said that “life imitates art” but the idea of government spying on its citizens didn’t originate with George Orwell and his version of “Big Brother”. The United States has a long history of spying on its citizens. The revelations of the U.S. Senate Select […]

Amateur Socialist at Angry Bear asked me about how much was being spent per vote in 2014, and did the due diligence of finding me a spreadsheet showing how many ballots were cast per state. Ask and ye shall receive. Based on that data, here’s a rough-and-ready calc of how much was spent on each […]

If you’re like me, you’re often frustrated trying to find total (like, total) campaign spending by Democrats vs. Republicans. Outfits like the Sunlight Foundation do yeoman’s duty tallying spending, but you tend to get articles like this that (for fairly good reasons) don’t give you totals, rather breaking it down into campaign/party-committee spending vs SuperPAcs vs 501-whatever “social welfare organizations.” What’s […]

… here.  It’s nonsense.  Obvious, absolute nonsense. Why are so many pundits buying into this line?  Maybe because they’ve heard it over and over and over, from other pundits? Sorta like other things they’ve heard over and over and over, that maybe they should stop buying?  Yeah, probably.

This was published yesterday morning, but I just saw it now.  I agree with almost everything it says.  The one exception concerns Bruce Braley, who despite the silly controversies about chickens and Iowa Farmer Grassley, is someone I hope remains involved in Dem politics. The spot-on-ist part of this really spot-on analysis?  The last two paragraphs: […]

So who won the 2014 midterm elections? The easy answer is the Republican Party. On election night, the party managed to seize control of the Senate by picking up at least seven seats previously held by Democrats, a goal that has eluded Republicans since 2006. The GOP also captured at least 14 House races, expanding […]

Dan here…Jan points us to a response to ‘hiatus’ of climate change. by Jan Galkowski (reposted from Hypergeometric) A conclusion that “the hiatus” in global land surface warming is natural variability Lovejoy provides conclusive statistical evidence, free of use of climate models, that the so-called “hiatus” in global land surface warming is due to natural variability […]