akota

Kristol on Presidential Qualities

William Kristol writes in the NYT about the qualities of Democrats:

• preening self-regard = Bill Clinton
• patronizing elitism = Al Gore
• haughtiness = John Kerry

President Bush seems to have escaped his attention. Obviously he has none of those characteristics.

Renditions

Washington Post:

[D]espite repeated denials by both governments that clandestine CIA flights had ever used British airspace or territory.
. . .
Britain learned last week that two flights, each carrying a single terror suspect, had landed at Diego Garcia, a British atoll in the Indian Ocean that British and U.S. forces use for military operations.

The British view:

• Foreign Secretary Miliband: "[T]he mistakes made in these two cases are not acceptable."
• MP Menzies Campbell: "a gross embarrassment"
• MP Andrew Tyrie: "will leave the British public unwilling to trust other assurances we have received from the U.S."

That is a costly "administrative error."

Pedro Did It With Mangoes

Pedro Martinez discusses steroids:

I dominated that era and I did it clean. . . . I have a small frame and when I hurt all I could do was take a couple of Aleve or Advil, a cup of coffee and a little mango and an egg - and let it go!

Susan Estrich Confuses Media Reports and Science

Prof. Susan Estrich writes about the Bradley effect:

If you paid attention to the gushers in the press and punditry in the days leading up to Super Tuesday, Hillary was on her way to the morgue, murdered by her crazy husband’s loose talk, abandoned by young voters and women and anti-war Democrats, and anyone else they could think of.

. . .

That was, according to the pollsters, the problem: about 10 percent of the electorate claimed that they were going to vote for him, and in many cases even told pollsters that they did, but they lied. . . . Racism in America. . . . If this is happening even among us good Democrats, what does that say about Obama’s strength in a general election?

Nothing. This has nothing to do with Senator Obama. Stop listening to the gushers in the press and punditry. Outlier polls get more publicity. Who wants to hype the poll that shows not much has changed? If you look at all of the data, instead of cherry-picking, you see a much clearer picture. The Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies says:

The polls appear to have been off by just one delegate in AZ, MO, NJ, TN and UT, by two delegates in AL, CT and DE, and by 3 delegates in MA, NY, and OK. [T]he poll-based estimates were off by 6 delegates [in California].

In other words, +/- 3%. Just like the pollsters said.