CalvinBall wrote:What stuff? What shit ton of evidence?

Bucky wrote:While I'm waiting for the ATM to dispense my dead presidents, I get an ad imploring me to vote on 11/6.

We all know that ATMs generate custom ads/messages based on the customer.

I wonder if Wells Fargo has logic that computes a quick demographic score and determines I'd be a likely Romney voter and then puts that message up, and the message would not appear if I was a financially weak customer in a minority neighborhood.

"I'm ready for a change. I want to see the economy go in a different direction," said the woman who plans to vote for Romney.

Bucky wrote:Thought I should emphasize that this is a candidate-agnostic musing. It's all about the banks thinking their future will be better (i.e. more profits) if an R wins. Maybe I should've put it in random thoughts.

Bucky wrote:While I'm waiting for the ATM to dispense my dead presidents, I get an ad imploring me to vote on 11/6.

We all know that ATMs generate custom ads/messages based on the customer.

I wonder if Wells Fargo has logic that computes a quick demographic score and determines I'd be a likely Romney voter and then puts that message up, and the message would not appear if I was a financially weak customer in a minority neighborhood.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda propagandist killed by a U.S. drone a year ago. But the child was killed in a separate strike some two weeks after his father was killed. Gibbs wasn't entirely familiar with the situation, and didn't know that al-Awlaki's son was killed two weeks after his father was killed, a person familiar with his thinking at the time he was interviewed told HuffPost. We Are Change bills itself as a non-partisan media organization "working to expose corruption."

"I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business," Gibbs, the former White House press secretary, told the interviewer from We Are Change, when asked to justify "an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial -- and, he's underage, he's a minor."

Gibbs had initially attempted to wave off a question about the boy. "I'm not going to get into Anwar al-Awlaki's son. I know that Anwar al-Awlaki renounced his citizenship, did great harm to people in this country." Anwar Al-Awlaki, born and educated in the U.S., was a senior al Qaeda recruiter and propagandist, American authorities have said.

JFLNYC wrote:This election is starting to like an NBA game: The trailing team makes an inevitable run to close a big deficit, but ultimately runs out of steam.

dajafi wrote:I hit a nadir of pessimism about the election Monday night (and couldn't sleep as a result). Since then I've been feeling a bit better, and then I saw this and am, if not exactly confident, certainly off the ledge.

I visited Obama and Romney field offices in three swing states -- Ohio, Colorado and Virginia -- dropping in unannounced at random times to see what I could see. There were some consistent, and telling, differences.

Obama's office suite in Sterling was in an office park next to a dentist's office. The front window was plastered with Obama-Biden signs, the door was propped open, and the stink bugs that plague Virginia in the fall crawled over stacks of literature -- fliers for Senate candidate Tim Kaine, Obama bumper stickers -- piled on a table near the front reception desk. In rooms in front and back, volunteers made calls on cell phones, while in the interior, field staffers hunched over computers. One wall was covered with a sheet of paper where people had scrawled responses to the prompt, "I Support the President Because...", while another wall held a precinct-by-precinct list of neighborhood team leaders' email addresses.

Only about a mile down the road was the Republican office, a cavernous, unfinished space on the back side of a strip mall next to a Sleepy's mattress outlet. On one side of the room, under a Gadsden flag ("Don't tread on me") and a poster of Sarah Palin on a horse, two long tables of land-line telephones were arrayed. Most of the signs, literature, and buttons on display were for the local Republican congressman, Frank Wolf. A volunteer in a Wolf for Congress T-shirt was directing traffic, sort of -- no one really seemed to be in charge and there were no paid staff present, though there were several elderly volunteers wandering in and out. The man in the T-shirt allowed me to survey the room but not walk around, and was unable to refer me to anyone from the Romney campaign or coordinated party effort.

These basic characteristics were repeated in all the offices I visited: The Obama offices were devoted almost entirely to the president's reelection; the Republican offices were devoted almost entirely to local candidates, with little presence for Romney.

Grotewold wrote:Do they call cell phones

dajafi wrote:James Fallowes is calling this argument "the pros versus the quants." It does kind of resemble a scouts-vs.-statheads dynamic: some pundits and many Republicans arguing that Romney has the Big Mo and fire in the belly and the Good Face, while Silver, and not a few other guys running simulations, are still pretty sure Obama will win owing to structural factors.

Both arguments strike me as having some merit. But I'm starting to think that if the election had been held this week, that momentum might have been decisive; as it is, I think the extra time will facilitate the fundamentals, which probably help the president, reasserting themselves.

It is all about who votes. The larger the electorate, the better Obama's chances. The thru-line of all the polls and interviews is a dispute over who will turn out.

dajafi wrote:James Fallowes is calling this argument "the pros versus the quants." It does kind of resemble a scouts-vs.-statheads dynamic: some pundits and many Republicans arguing that Romney has the Big Mo and fire in the belly and the Good Face, while Silver, and not a few other guys running simulations, are still pretty sure Obama will win owing to structural factors.

Both arguments strike me as having some merit. But I'm starting to think that if the election had been held this week, that momentum might have been decisive; as it is, I think the extra time will facilitate the fundamentals, which probably help the president, reasserting themselves.

It is all about who votes. The larger the electorate, the better Obama's chances. The thru-line of all the polls and interviews is a dispute over who will turn out.

jerseyhoya wrote:

dajafi wrote:James Fallowes is calling this argument "the pros versus the quants." It does kind of resemble a scouts-vs.-statheads dynamic: some pundits and many Republicans arguing that Romney has the Big Mo and fire in the belly and the Good Face, while Silver, and not a few other guys running simulations, are still pretty sure Obama will win owing to structural factors.

Both arguments strike me as having some merit. But I'm starting to think that if the election had been held this week, that momentum might have been decisive; as it is, I think the extra time will facilitate the fundamentals, which probably help the president, reasserting themselves.

It is all about who votes. The larger the electorate, the better Obama's chances. The thru-line of all the polls and interviews is a dispute over who will turn out.

But it's more than the pros vs. the quants. RCP has Romney up 0.7 in their national average. Pollster.com at Huffington Post has Romney up 0.2 in their national average. TalkingPointsMemo has Obama up 0.9 in their average.

RCP is run by Republicans and the other two are run by Dems so the difference in polls they include explains most of the difference in the poll averages. But all three are short of where Silver has the race at - Obama +1.4%. Nate is relying more on state polls to build out that lead and also has underlying economic stuff thrown in (though at a decreasing amount of the model). His model is anywhere from 0.5-2.3% more positive for Obama nationally than the three biggest national polling aggregator sites.