The 2012 Presidential is so close just so close that not only do different polls show different results but different averages of polls do. OK it is clear that extremely fancy models such as the fivethirtyeight model which attempt to assign undecideds and use state data to estimate the national vote and vice versa are […]

Lifted from Robert Waldmann’s Stochastic thoughts: Brendan Nyhan autopsies the mittmentum narrative here. I comment. Thank you for this very good post.  I had been puzzled by the “bad narrative about momentum” narrative on progressive blogs (largely because I interact with the rest of humanity largely by reading progressive blogs).  You demonstrate that there was […]

Lifted from Angry Bear Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts, and Brad Delong and Naked Capitalism beat me to it…oh well: I have always assumed that Romney must be smart, because of the way in which he acquired great wealth.  Yes he was ruthless and dishonest (the real scandal is what is legal).  But there are lots of […]

Lifted from Robert Waldmann’s more private thoughts: I love this video. I agree that it is very odd for Romney to brag about balancing a budget with a 1.5 billion dollar federal bailout. But what exactly does it mean for a manager of a firm to balance a budget ? I’d say the very minimum […]

Lifted from Angry Bear Robert Waldmann’s Stochastic Thoughts: All aggregators are doing funny things by rounding first then subtracting.  This is a comment on Singiser, but it could be on any aggregator.  In the Gallup Tracker likely voter subsample, Romney is up 1.2% (this link points to numbers which will change)  If one must round […]

Lifted from Robert’s site: Ezra Klein defends an increased capital gains tax as necessary for distributionally neutral base broadening rate lowering tax reform..  I support a higher capital gains tax rate (did not have space for that in my comment).  My comment: But why do you want base-broadening, rate-lowering tax reform  ?  The inside the […]

I’m feeling lonely out on this limb, but I think I will defend Bernanke and criticize Woodford ((and admit I only read the concluding section and the first two sections on foreward guidance of his talk) *.pdf but no warning. Open it).  Medium and long term Treasury rates are extraordinarily low.  It seems to me that […]

Lifted from Robert’s: Mr Smith from Washington has a lot of trouble with the concept of consent. Maybe this is because when he says “no” he really means “yes”. “TOM SMITH (R-PA): Uh, having a baby out of wedlock. SCOLFORO: That’s similar to rape? SMITH: No, no, no, but… yes”http://t.co/KNxA3jPK

Not enough Vowels or Numbers is lifted from Robert’s blog:; Maureen Tcacik wrote In the years since the Bankruptcy Reform Act passed in 1978, the nominal price of college tuition has risen more than 900 percent. Over the same period the median male income – again, nominally – has risen 165 percent. And since the percentage […]

Matt Miller has an excellent column in The Washington Post in which he coins the phrase “Drawbridge Republicans.” Basically he accuses Romney and Ryan of being pro-rich class warriors who aim to eliminate equality of outcome and of opportunity. A very standard Rhetorical gesture is to concede in the second or third paragraph of an […]