Summations Only

Not completely thrown away. Can you imagine the right for the next four years if Obama wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote? It won't be pretty. I mean, they're never pretty, but this would be worse. Every vote for Obama helps avert that.

In right-wing political discourse, "far left" is a term used to refer to anyone to the left of the Republican Party. This is partly because they don't do nuance, but mainly because they're shameless liars.

Well, as caffeine pointed out, that's not what's happening.What has happened is that the right has continuously shifted the goalposts to the extent that if I suggested that we should have the same top tax rate as we had under Nixon, I would be a Marxist Class Warrior, whereas back then I would have been a staunch conservative.Same with Obamacare. When Newt Gingrich advocated it, it was a conservative solution. When Mitt Romney implemented it, it was the sensible compromise of a moderate. By the time Obama got round to implementing it it was a socialist solution that involved "nationalizing our bodies" and Death Panels!!! and would Destroy America!!!The nation has hardly moved towards "Bread And Circuses", nor towards the left except socially (i.e. they now hate gay people less, hooray). However, conservatives have moved so far right that they are now condemning as "Bread And Circuses" (and the consequent destruction of the Republic) the same things that were once the planks of their own manifesto.Also, this is fucking stupid: If Heinlein thought that the Roman Empire was a democracy, he was an idiot. But if he knew that it wasn't, and still used this as his historical analogy --- then he was still an idiot.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You should check that. I notice that you've put Nevada as a red state when it's been blue this election and indeed the last. (Yay us, shame about our education system.)

This is what fivethirtyeight predicted. Look familiar?Meanwhile, anyone who wants a good giggle should read the blog of Dean Chambers of unskewedpolls.com, particularly any post where he mentions Nate Silver. I'm still awaiting his post-election post, but perhaps he's just shot himself.

It means that we'll be able to abolish the whole tedious and expensive business of elections and just ask Nate Silver to tell us who the winner is.

I wonder if it is always possible (in every hypothetical case, I mean) to do that without leaving any holes, preserving the borders between any two given states.My gut tells me the answer is probably yes, but my gut is only 60:40 on the issue. Besides, it's occasionally wrong. Does anyone have any information on this: a theorem or a counterexample?

Actually, two. Indiana and North Carolina. Unless my brain has suddenly become dumb and I can't remember facts any more.

OK, seriously now.If you read what conservatives were writing before the election, they had one consistent theme: "Anyone who believes that Obama can possibly win is living in a little bubble isolated from the facts and protected from reality by the MAINSTREAM MEDIA and especially by Nate Silver, who may have called the 2008 election correctly but this time around is a lying partisan hack 'cos we don't like the things he says. He has deceived the liberal sheeple with all his talk of math and science, but we are not deceived, we know better because of our telepathic connection with AMERICA!"Well, if they were sane, now would be a great time for them to revise their opinions about who is living inside a bubble. If they could think, now would be a great time for them to think about how Nate Silver called every single state correctly, whereas the pundits on Fox News were completely wrong about their prediction of a Romney electoral landslide. And they could think that Nate Silver was not partisan at all, and just did the math.I don't suppose this is going to happen, 'cos these people do not in fact think. But wouldn't it be great if they did?

The election results if only white males had the vote.

Well, yes. You noticed that. Well done.According to asshats like the guy you linked to, we are being robbed of our liberties. But which ones? Last time I checked, I still have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, all that good stuff. No-one has taken away any particular freedom that I formerly possessed. No, my freedom has been taken away in such a "broad and generalized manner" that there are no specific instances whatsoever of any particular liberty being taken away from me.Similarly, the loony thinks that we are living under "socialism". Well, I must have missed that. Could you point out to me where the federal government seized control of the means of production, distribution, or exchange? Any particular case? Of course you can't. It didn't actually happen. Nothing has been socialized. Nothing in particular has been socialized. But "in a broad and generalized manner" everything has.So yeah, you've correctly identified the problem in this article. No particular liberties have been taken away from us, and nothing in particular has been socialized. But "in a broad and generalized manner" our President is a black man with a funny name, so "in a broad and generalized manner" he must have robbed us of our liberties and made us all Marxists, even though if you read the fucking Constitution, which you obviously haven't, he couldn't do that even if he wanted to.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yeah, I've noticed that you think that. I don't. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.