Voting has begun in today’s Florida primaries, the last to be held before Super Tuesday apart from Republican caucuses in Maine on Saturday. For refusing to play by the rules of the parties’ national committees, Florida has been stripped of the 210 delegates it would normally send to the Democratic national convention, along with half of its 114 Republican delegates. All 57 of the Republican delegates will be pledged to the winning candidate, whereas the Democratic primary amounts to nothing more than an opinion poll. Polls show John McCain and Mitt Romney neck-and-neck in the Republican race, with Rudy Giuliani looking very unlikely to pull off his Florida-first strategy.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Florida primaries thread
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1,099 Comments
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William ,
Centre is the pain in the arse for falsely alleging my maths are wrong
They are correct
He is trying to cover his ego
I’ll give you $50 right now if you think mathematically my 832 blog demonstrating Centre’s bookie flaw is wrong
If you do not want me to blog on this site…say so
#900
William
Irrespective of who is right or wrong, I would suggest that Ron is at least is more on topic.
Centre 2 895 – Haven’t been watching Sportingbet or CentreBet – I’ve been using Betfair.
It’s interesting that Sportingbet and CBet have Obama around 2/1 while people on Betfair are still prepared to lay 7/2, while Clinton and McCain are similar odds on both (Clinton better on Betfair).
The difference of course being that CBet and Sportingbet set their own market, whereas Betfair is an open clearing house for individuals to bet with each other. This to me is the advantage of Betfair, because overs are often available from mugs with an idiosyncratic assessment.
It seems to me that Obama is a better value bet than Clinton because if he wins the Dem nomination he has a better chance against McCain than she does on the polls.
Meanwhile the gap diminishes between Clinton and Obama. Plenty of support coming out for him – is Edwards next to come out ?
A couple articles from the SMH today for those who missed them (sorry if they were referred to earlier):
http://news.smh.com.au/obama-chases-clinton-as-super-tuesday-looms/20080203-1pto.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/us-election/the-jfk-of-a-new-generation/2008/02/02/1201801100263.html
My bookmaking explanations and examples are NOT flawed on any of my comments.
Not one comment can be pointed out that is flawed.
#868 – KR – The Chinese have not learned or still learning about global marketing and branding. Just like the Japanese had to go through in the 60s and 70s and the Koreans in the 80s and 90s.
Who have heard of Samsung, LG, Hyundai etc previously? Now they are household brands. As sure as night follows day, the Chinese will learn and move up the value chain. In particular how to be really good at managing and utilising the captial and a smart capitalist. Don’t forget only 20 years ago the word capital or capitalist was still a dirty word in the Chinese vocabulary.
BTW, the Chinese are now the largest patent applicants in the World.
clearly my #832 damages your reputation such as it is
waiting for anyone including william to check the maths in it
guess one is a pain im the arse if their maths are correct
No more on this from either party. If Centre wants to do whatever it is he wants to do, he can. If anyone wants to stay out of it because they don’t like the way he’s doing it, that too is up to them.
Correction #899 KR not #868
On the subject of the Dot Com Bubble
Following on from KR’s post a couple of pages back – a couple of things are circulating in my mind. One is hypothetical US meltdown is suggested to be an order of magnitude bigger then the Dot Com issue (see KR posts on the subject). On the other hand I’m watching the posts from Centre justifying the bookmaker rationale. I’m just wondering to myself to what extent a US recession has the capacity to move people from markets to short term gambling, and if this is simply an expression of an underlying insecurity?
JV I think the odds on Obama have eased on Sportingbet. I think they are presently Hillary 2.05, McCain 2.65 and Obama 4.00.
I agree with you on Betfair. It’s a revolution and the TABs are going to be in real trouble to compete.
Oh, funky!
Suggested track for you blogging tragics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHEO_fG3mm4
..Yes! We can!
905
The Finnigans
Yeah, they are going to move up the food chain all right, and the start of that is using some of their massive savings to biuld their own infrastructure and divert capital to providing for local consumption. All of these things are starting to happen, but when they get up a head of steam, it’s going to be a different world.
#911
OK – honestly – did you post that to lock in with 911 or was that a coincidence?
William #907
believe that was what you should have said earlier as your comment then
was inappropriate
913
davidoff
Ha! I just noticed that too!
Kind of ironic, really. And I liked the way they pitched the song to Obama’s voice and did all those nice cut aways.
The only thing that jars with me is that with two small boys, every time I “yes we can”, I can hear Bob the Builder asking “Can we fix it?”!
Every bloody time! Funny.
Can anyone confirm if Edwards will be on the super-duper-tuesday ticket or not? His announcement was a campaign suspension – not a withdrawal. I’m guessing that there are some operational implications in the words he used. If anyone can provide an authoritative answer – I would be really interested to hear it.
Diogenes – I’d love to know more of the specifics of your background – I.e degree and major and that sort of thing – Neuro was one of the most interesting subjects I’ve had so far, although it was hard as hell. *Curses side effects of epileptic drugs -why must you be so hard to remember!*
The SF Chronicle’s phone poll has Obama closing fast, but the sample is pretty small:
The poll was based on a telephone survey of 511 likely voters in the Democratic primary and 481 likely voters in the Republican primary and was conducted between Jan. 25 and Feb. 1. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points among Democrats, plus or minus 4.6 percentage points among Republicans and plus or minus 4.2 percentage points among general election voters.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/MNF7UR6FE.DTL&tsp=1
…it has Obama just half the margin of error behind, and really does have the “big Mo”
It looks like this very large state still has a lot of undecideds and will be very hard to call.
917
Erytnicam
I told you that you could hurt yourself with that stuff! LOL
hey Mac, how’d you go in your exam?
Hmmm, the Hollywood ‘love in’ is over before it even started:
Hillary Clinton Saturday likened her Democratic White House rival Barack Obama to President George W. Bush, arguing he was an untested neophyte who would be a “leap of faith” for voters.
…so now Obama is another GWBush!
Sheeesh, she sure knows how to kick low! LOL
919 – Alright I think – I couldn’t remember the benefits of NaSSA antidepressants over SSRI, Structure Activity relationship of phenothiazines and various fiddly stuff relating to insomnia, but on a hundred mark exam there should be enough stuff that I made it up on. Favourite part – a BS rambling answer on theories of addiction that went for 3/4 of a page without actually saying anything.
Declaring another bet with Betfair – $45 on Obama @ $4.50 (Same pledged % for William if it wins). Am I the only one so far? Come on punters!
KR – Hope the surge to Obama is real and present. Hopefully it will at least be enough to keep him in it after Tuesday, even if he is a bit behind.
Any word on whether Edwards is going to endorse anyone?
916
davidoff Says:
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Can anyone confirm if Edwards will be on the super-duper-tuesday ticket or not?
David the US Primarys system as you know allows postal votiing
US news report that postal votes already sent for both Rudy & Edwards are ‘useless’ which suggests Edwards will not be on the ticket
Here’s a rough idea of what happened in Maine:
Mitt Romney coasted to a win in presidential preference voting by Maine Republicans on Saturday, claiming his third victory in a caucus state and fourth overall.
The former Massachusetts governor had 52 percent of the vote with 68 percent of the towns holding caucuses reporting. John McCain trailed with 21 percent, Ron Paul was third with 19 percent, and Mike Huckabee had 6 percent. Undecided votes accounted for 2 percent.
…so McCain just squeaked past Ron Paul for second place!
There’s 18 delegates up for grabs, so maybe McCain just didn’t think it was worth campaigning in.
By the way, for what it’s worth, Ron Paul is quite well cashed up and looks like he can keep gnawing away at them!
God, he’s an amazing character. Calls a spade a spade, and won’t get drawn into semantic arguments about ‘timetables’ when he sees the whole Iraq thing as an unmitigated disaster and colossal waste for no benefit of any kind.
It’s so funny watching him just say al this stuff, and they sit there looking stunned, and then just proceed to ignore anything he says! It cracks me up!
(Colbert’s take on Paul was classic: they did ‘flashbacks’ with Ron Paul predicting various things like the Hindenberg disaster, and then that the earth revolves around the sun….you get the idea!)
922
jaundiced view
He’s pulling closer by the looks of things, and it’s obviously not going to be a Tsunami Tuesday knockout as quite a few were predicting. Obama will be trailing, but he won’t be out of the race by the look of it.
Warming up!
(Unlike Giuliani, the creepy little creature is now hanging on McCain for more photo-ops and limelight snorting. Uuurgh! He gives me the shivers! And looks like the Floridians weren’t overly impressed either).
OMG! I just ‘verbally brutalised’ Rudy! Oh….oh dear, what have I done! AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaargh!
PS Where’s Glen? How will we know for sure who the next loser will be? LOL
KR , yer they ignore Ron Paul and on the CNN debate even Woof ignored him most of the time
his Poll numbers are poor but as yu say he just keeps plugging away
926
Ron
If anyone can highlight the utter absurdities of their “cut taxes” and “expand the military” and “spend ourselves out of recession” he can, but they’d rather pander to the tired old (false) memories of Reaganism.
Talk about a bloody time-warp! The Republicans are heading into utter irrelevance, and the one time Count Dracula of the Whitehouse, Karl Rove has it completely arse-about:
Democrats have a similar philosophical storehouse in the ideas of FDR and LBJ. Both expanded the size and scope of the federal government and saw it in almost an entirely positive light: as an agent of economic redistribution from the rich to the less affluent, as a provider to the poor and the disabled and as an enforcer of equal rights and equal justice. The Democratic Party has two challenges. One is that the modern economy has led voters to prefer markets, decentralization and consumer choice far more than centralized control by government and the substitution of “expert” decisions for those of the individual.
…well Karl, how is it that the current administration is now sh!tting bricks, printing money, and throwing it out of helicopters if their wonderfully well informed ‘free market’ works so perfectly?
I think the voters are going to see that they’ve shafted by unregulated markets and the only ‘efficiency’ being the way their standard of living is syphoned up the income scales to ultimately benefit the top 5%. Welcome to the social justice of the ‘free market’: free to bugger the economy and let the poor saps pay for it.
ah, end rant!
its Reaganism but the economic circumstances are now different
they’ve got a budget deficit of a 40o hundred BILLION , a trade decicit debt to China alone of 1.4 trillion , inflation breaking out and they want to reduce tax’s which will fuel all 3 ?
917 erytnicam- I have a checkered career. Maths and physics were my main loves (unrequited) but I have an MB BS (Hons) and then a PhD in neurophysiology (in the human enteric nervous system ie the gut’s nervous system). Then I did surgery and became a plastic surgeon. Somewhere in there was a further year on the cell and molecular biology of craniosynostosis (where the skull doesn’t grow).
I’ve always been interested in psychiatry (that’s why I did medicine, then I met the patients which put me off) and neurosurgery (those patients REALLY put me off, not to mention the neurosurgeons!). It’s much better this way coz I can indulge my philosophy/psychiatry/psychology/sociology hobbies now.
There was a serious point to my question about dementia though. I’ve got to do a little research and then I’ll ask another question.
Diogenes I’ve generally found psych patients infinitely more interesting, and often much less disturbed, than their shrinks!
#929 – Are we supposed to be impressed or feel sorry for you?
MayoFeral- I was going to add that my experience of psych patients was heavily skewed by only seeing inpatients (who were often chronic, severely disturbed people) and when I met the outpatient psych patients, I realised that they did very well on the whole and that you could help many. And yes, many were very interesting (I remember one who had a restraining order on him going near stobie poles because he loved blacking out whole suburbs, having worked for ETSA!). Many shrinks are mentally unwell for many reasons. I’m sure you are aware of a prominent suicide last year which very sadly confirmed this.
But so are many politicians. In this study, 49% of US presidents were found to have a mental illness, most commonly depression.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618741/posts
931- There’s nothing to be impressed about in that little lot. And frankly, when I look at it I find it a bit pathetic. What the hell have I done with my life!!
Dio @ 932,
An interesting one about the Presidents’ depression.
I heard a guy on the radio a few months ago who maintained that the reason why very intelligent, high achieving people go into politics (with all the sh*t and the relatively mediocre monetary rewards), is that many politicians have issues with their families and the like. They go into politics to feel wanted.
It’s just a theory, but an interesting one.
Diogenes – this point from the article is a little surprising to me:
“The researchers wrote that the 49 percent rate mirrored national mental illness statistics”
Given the standard assessing criteria of the DSM IV were used, this is a high figure for the general population is it not?
It means every child born has close to a 50/50 chance of a diagnosible mental illness (as defined in the Statistical Matrix) at some stage in their lives.
Crikey.
Although that is in the States of course. Surely our rate here is lower!
For example, w don’te have very many Mormons and Scientologists for a start, and they would have to be in the 49% straight off!
936 typo – “we don’t”
Diogenes, you are a plastic surgeon? You didn’t give Julie B here Stepford stare did you?
Was the blackout guy a big bloke with initials of CR, or possibly calling himself a hyphenated ’surname’, one word of which is something you have with tea?
As for the presidents, that job would affect the psyche of even the sanest. Heck, just the process of getting the job must do that!
I’m going to have to get the journal out tomorrow. The figures for mental illness in US and Oz are about 20% lifetime incidence of DSMIV disease. I think that bit was spurious. The bit that interests me is the incidence of mental disorder during presidency of 27%, which would have impaired job performance. This is the abstract.
http://www.jonmd.com/pt/re/jnmd/abstract.00005053-200601000-00009.htm;jsessionid=HllcfdqkNrHvhNGh3TRRTbGxtSVNlVVs2K7h8Fpmp5ZttlfHHTn1!-1108188142!181195628!8091!-1?index=1&database=ppvovft&results=1&count=10&searchid=2&nav=search
I have had a very unpleasant experience of a very senior surgeon who was demented and caused serious harm (not a plastic surgeon BTW) as it was not picked up etc etc, hence my interest in an impaired POTUS. Imagine what harm could occur with an unrecognised impaired POTUS. I think the whole topic merits further discussion. What safeguards are there? Not everyone is as decent and honest as Geoff Gallup.
In this study, 49% of US presidents were found to have a mental illness, most commonly depression. So its 50/50 Bush has depression cause Bill shouldn’t !
If so , how is it that President Bush gives us depression then ?
TW- I think Julie B has mild thyroid eye disease.
MF- This was almost 20 years ago while I was still a med student. I can remember wondering if he was around every time there was a blackout. And I never met him in person, only by legend.
It’s not a mad POTUS (and ya gotta say, we’ve already had some!), that’ll get us.
I’ve just come across this alarming little detail, (and remember how much the rightwing just loves ‘carbon sequestration’ as the answer to everything):
Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon dioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide — a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. “Beware of the scale,” he stressed
…so you can stick that sequestered carbon in ya pipe and smoke it! It ain’t even wildly within the bounds of reasonable.
Anyway, thought I’d just throw that in for amusement!
The latest Gallup Polls are here in abridged form:
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2008/02/02/D8UIC1EO1_poll_2008_national/index.html
Clinton is only just ahead of Obama and McCain is a shoo-in.
Ah, interesting times.
there is a US site mentioned by Chris earlier on the State by State primary poll numbers for anyone who missed it…electoral vote.com
It weights & averages the latest State Polls for the candidates
Of the 14 States Hillary leads 10 clearly , Obama 3 and one too close but these were conducted 31/1 pre debate & pre big Obama endorsements
cann’t pull that site up KR (blocked by Explorer)
do you have the details & is it National or by State
Diogenes, is that right? I take it all back then, I had always thought that her brow was scalpel induced.
Here’s the National summary:
THE NUMBERS – DEMOCRATS
Hillary Rodham Clinton, 48 percent
Barack Obama, 41 percent
———
THE NUMBERS – REPUBLICANS
John McCain, 44 percent
Mitt Romney, 24 percent
Mike Huckabee, 16 percent
Ron Paul, 5 percent
———
OF INTEREST:
This survey covers the three days since Democrat John Edwards and Republican Rudy Giuliani dropped out of their parties’ presidential races. McCain’s support has grown noticeably in recent days — he had backing from about a third of GOP voters when Florida held its Jan. 29 primary. Romney and Huckabee have seen their strength change little. Clinton led Obama by 15 points a week ago, but that has narrowed to single digits — a trend that started before Edwards’ exit.
———
This Gallup Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted from Jan. 30-Feb. 1, and is part of an ongoing tracking poll in which Gallup interviews 1,000 new adults every day. These results were based on interviews with 1,080 Republican and Republican-leaning voters, and 1,205 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters. The margin of sampling error for both groups is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Thanks KR
In todays Sunday HeraldSun it quoted a National Gallop Poll done 1/2/08
as Clinton 44% & Obama 41%…perhaps a Newspaper typo error
Looks like McCain is unbeatable & have to hope there’s narrowing for Obama eh
Diogenes – to what extent do you know your medication info as a specialist? I ask that seemingly strange question because many Drs I have met are stunningly ill informed about drugs, interactions, adverse effects etc, and I would imagine that at the specialist stage that changes.
Also, because if you know heaps about neuro drugs I can smack myself in the head for not leeching all the information out of you that I could while I was doing that subject
. For what it’s worth, what do you know about Endocrinology, Hematology, Toxicology, reproductive physiology or Oncology? (Next semester provided I pass the neuro exam)
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