Barack Obama or John McCain

[Craig Lamson]

And now it seems there is a question about who actually wrote "his" book Dreams of my Father" It's said it just might have been written on William Ayers dining room table.

This is one of the online dirty tricks that the Republicans have been using. What they will not tell you is that the Republican Party approached Dr Peter Millican, a professor at Oxford University. Millican has devised a computer software program that can detect when books and articles are by the same author. He was offered $10,000 to assess alleged similarities between Obama's Dreams from My Father, and Fugitive Days, a memoir by William Ayers. Millican insisted that the results of the test had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved. The McCain camp refused and so Millican was not paid for the test. However, he decided to test it himself and found that the books were not written by the same man. The test results were then published and this has been reported in the British media. I suspect that Fox News has not carried the story.

You REALLY should start telling the TRUTH John. You habit of telling FALSEHOODS has totally destroyed what bit of character your had left.

Since John made his errors in replying to a misleading claim of yours there is no basis for your (presumablly) feigned outrage.

Excuse me? My claim was not misleading at all. It was completely factual. John on the othe hand got nearly EVERTHING wrong in his sysopsis of the events surrounding MIllican. Had it been an isolated incident it would have been a different matter but this a pattern for Simkin and he's getting called on it, with or without your approval.

Sure you used weasel words but I could say “It’s possible that Craig Lamson is child molestor” after all I only said it was "possible". You left out that there seeming is no basis for such claims and an expert said they were baseless.

Seeming? Is this your standard minimal level research talking, as is your standard, or have YOU actually studied the claim? Of course not, thats simply NOT how mrgoogle works.

What expert has done extensive testing and proclaimed the charges baseless. It was NOT Millican.

Yes “question have been raised” but by a person not really qualified to do so. I read Cashill's piece and it is weak to say the least he wrote:

You read Cashills piece WHEN? After getting your tit caught in the wringer? Before or after you FAILED to read the article on polls weighting by party id? Give us a break mrgoogle, you are all too tranparent. You attempt to raise questions all the time and you are not "really qualified to do so" Using your own logic lets dismiss mrgoogle. Oh wait that has alredly happened for a very good portion of this forum, and it seems for very good reason.

...preliminary QSUM analysis supports an Ayers-Obama link. Systems designer Ed Gold--with twenty years of high-level experience in image and signal processing, pattern recognition, and classifier design and implementation--volunteered to run a QSUM scan on multiple excerpts from both memoirs. “I have completed the analysis,” he wrote me, “and I think you will be pleased with the findings.” In assessing the signature of sample passages from Dreams, he found “a very strong match to all of the Ayers samples that I processed.”

But the value of QSUM or Cusum analysis seems questionable. According to John Olsson, author of Forensic Linguistics, a 269 page college/graduate textbook, it was developed by a biblical scholar rather than a linguist who “had no idea why [it] works”. It looks at among other things the frequency of “two- and three- lettered words…[and] vowel initialed words”. Olsson wrote:

However the key question is this: just what constitutes a discrepancy? How do we judge when we have a good fit? Clearly interpretation of such results will be subjective. Schils and de Haan (1995) expressed other concerns about Cusum, namely that there is ‘considerable intra-author variation’, which would preclude a reliable basis for inter-authorship discrimination, while Sanford et al (1994) found that the Cusum technique was ‘based on assumptions which at best are of limited reliability and are most likely completely false’. Canter and Chester (1997) conducted a detailed evaluation of a revised Cusum technique and found that ‘the weighted Cusum technique does not reliably discriminate between single- and multiple- authored texts’.

He concluded that Cusum was one of several techniques that “blatantly run counter to linguistic knowledge [and] should be treated with skepticism.”

Pages 15 – 7

http://books.google.com/books?id=i3399LFSz...result#PPA16,M1

Wow, you found someone who disagrees. Imagine that. Is your source correct? We don't know because just like Cashill he offers only an opinion, and as we see with mrgoogle, opinions are like a--holes, most everyone has one. And yours, given here

"Yes “question have been raised” but by a person not really qualified to do so."

is just more conjecture.

I won’t go over all of Cashill’s strained analysis so let’s just look at what he thinks is his strongest evidence

If there is any one paragraph in Dreams that has convinced me of Ayers' involvement it is this one, in which Obama describes the Black Nationalist message:

"A steady attack on the white race... served as the ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despair."

As a writer, especially in the pre-Google era of Dreams, I would never have used a metaphor as specific as "ballast" unless I knew exactly what I was talking about. Seaman Ayers most surely did.”

My god! Ivy League educated Obama who grew up in Hawaii used the word 'ballast' metaphorically, naah it couldn’t have been him, it must have been someone sea going experience!

Ivy league educated, yet he was offered a book contract with no published material( unless you want to count his "poems") in his record, and he FAILED TO DELIVER on that first contract, because he was unable to write. His next public document was porrly written and totally out of the style of "dreams". And in an amazing turn of events zerobama meets Ayers and THEN finally publishes DREAMS, written in a style notable for NOT being like Obamas published record and similar to the style of Ayers. Having a ghostwriter is not a crime, but an honest person would own up to it. Is Obama honest? What is even MORE amazing is that zerobama's new friend is know for helping writers. All in all quite an amazing tale for zeorbama, but one must not ask questions about the ONE, shall we, lest we be visited by mrgoogle, the self appointed arbiter of who is and is not "qualified" to ask questions.

Google books turned up 682 books of or about poetry in which the word appears, of course the number of authors is lower because most get multiple hits but are we to assume all had maritime experience? On the 2nd page of hits I saw a familiar name, folk-rock singer Ani DeFranco. According to her Wikipedia bio which makes no reference to any nautical experience, she was born in, grew up in and moved back to Buffalo a city whose industrial waterfront has only recently been transformed into a recreational area. She also lived in NYC where boating except why working class residents in unfashionable districts of the “outer boroughs” is rare. Perhaps that poem was written by Ayers too, let’s count how many 2 – 3 letter words are in it!

http://books.google.com/books?as_q=ballast...y=&as_isbn=

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ani_DiFranco

mrgoogle in action once again and yet with all of this google prowess he can't find a single selection that shows weighting by party id happens in polls. Given this failure can we take ANYTHING he posts as truth? I suggest not. But lets look at his latest diatribe. He want to tell us that its "recreational boating" that might give one a background in things nautical. Never mind that commercial shipping was HUGE part of Buffalo for decades. Heaven forbid someone might pick up nautical phrases by living in a city with a huge commercial maritime presence. Lets call mrgoolge's "analysis" what it actually is...trash.

I never said or implied that “expert has done

extensive

testing and proclaimed the charges baseless” just as John never or implied that Millican tested the entire text of “Dreams”, Those are your strawmen Millican wrote :

Well then it will be superficial testing for mrgooogle, which btw is an apt discriptor of his own body of work. As for John his exact words:

"However, he decided to test it himself and found that the books were not written by the same man. The test results were then published"

Of course thats not what happened at all as Mr. Millicans own words attest. The facts are quite clear. John was less than honest in his post. And mrgoogle is less than honest in his defence of Simkin's dishonesty.

Some preliminary tests, using various data measures and a range of powerful statistical facilities that were recently added to Signature, indicated nothing that would give Obama any cause for concern. So I felt that any analysis I did would be far more likely to put an end to the story than to substantiate it, by providing objective data against what looked like partisan allegations.

[…]

Maybe one day I’ll go back and do the analysis in detail, but I doubt it. I would rather spend my time on serious research questions than on improbable theories proposed with negligible support.

I imagine you will quibble about the differences between describing a theory as “baseless” and “improbable…with negligible support” contradicted by “preliminary tests”. I also imagine insults will follow as well, you are too predictable and on the issue of Obama very much like Fetzer.

I'm guessing there were those in the day that thought that the theory of a round earth was baseless and improbable and was contradicted by "preliminary tests". mrgoogle is drunk on zerobama koolaid...and sorry but the predictable one is YOU!

You want something undisputed? McCain was described as a "songbird" by AP (or perhaps it was Time or UPI) when he was a POW for his cooperation with the North Vietnamese propaganda effort. I'm not saying I would not have done the same but it puts a bit of a din on his claimed status of "war hero". Funny how the press which you complain is so tilted against him doesn't report this

Does not report it? What world are you livng in? Oh yes I forgot, you live in fantasyland. Hell McCain freely admits it!...and has done so on national televison Who is hiding what again?

Mrgoogle gets stuffed once again.

Very few of his media bios mention his "confession" none mention his being dubbed a "songbird". What percentage of the electorate would you guestimate is aware of this?

Really? So when he stood before the world at the GOP convention and announced to world that he was broken by the NV and confessed, no one heard him? No one in the news media reported this? No stories were written? Sheesh mrgoogle, your collective brain, www.google.com lists over 95,000 hits onthe search "John McCain songbird" , 790,000 hits to the search "John McCain confesses", and over 1.800,000 hits for the search "John McCain breaks under torture". In other words mrgoogle, once again we can see you are simply full of xxxxe.

Edited November 4, 2008 by Craig Lamson

[John Simkin]

Every dirty trick in the 'book' was used in 200o and 2004 and seem to be playing out in this election, as well. Democrats were sent a letter in one area being told that due to the unprecedented large vote expected, Republicans should vote on Tuesdaya and Democrats on Wednesday [the day after and too late to vote!]. In another area [NY] people were told that anyone with outstanding parking tickets [many, many people, but predominantly less-well-off and thus Democrat] would be arrested if they showed-up to vote. Add these to the long list of more standard fraud in the film and you have the world's most powerful 'banana republic' - sans bananas.

Watching the BBC news today I was shocked to see long lines of people waiting to vote. The reporter said that in some areas they are having to wait over an hour to vote. This is unacceptable in a democracy. In the UK we have so many voting stations that you never have to wait. Surely, this is not so difficult to organize.

[Pamela Brown]

I voted at about 11a.m. in our Minneapolis suburb and the scene was unremarkable.

[Len Colby]

Excuse me? My claim was not misleading at all. It was completely factual. John on the othe hand got nearly EVERTHING wrong in his sysopsis of the events surrounding MIllican. Had it been an isolated incident it would have been a different matter but this a pattern for Simkin and he's getting called on it, with or without your approval.

Sure you used weasel words but I could say “It’s possible that Craig Lamson is child molestor” after all I only said it was "possible". You left out that there seeming is no basis for such claims and an expert said they were baseless.

Seeming? Is this your standard minimal level research talking, as is your standard, or have YOU actually studied the claim? Of course not, thats simply NOT how mrgoogle works.

What expert has done extensive testing and proclaimed the charges baseless. It was NOT Millican.

Yes “question have been raised” but by a person not really qualified to do so. I read Cashill's piece and it is weak to say the least he wrote:

You read Cashills piece WHEN? After getting your tit caught in the wringer? Before or after you FAILED to read the article on polls weighting by party id? Give us a break mrgoogle, you are all too tranparent. You attempt to raise questions all the time and you are not "really qualified to do so" Using your own logic lets dismiss mrgoogle..

No, I don’t have any qualifications in linguistics but cited two people who do. Cahill doesn’t have qualifications but wasn’t able to cite any linguists who backed his theory.

...preliminary QSUM analysis supports an Ayers-Obama link. Systems designer Ed Gold--with twenty years of high-level experience in image and signal processing, pattern recognition, and classifier design and implementation--volunteered to run a QSUM scan on multiple excerpts from both memoirs. “I have completed the analysis,” he wrote me, “and I think you will be pleased with the findings.” In assessing the signature of sample passages from Dreams, he found “a very strong match to all of the Ayers samples that I processed.”

But the value of QSUM or Cusum analysis seems questionable. According to John Olsson, author of Forensic Linguistics, a 269 page college/graduate textbook, it was developed by a biblical scholar rather than a linguist who “had no idea why [it] works”. It looks at among other things the frequency of “two- and three- lettered words…[and] vowel initialed words”. Olsson wrote:

However the key question is this: just what constitutes a discrepancy? How do we judge when we have a good fit? Clearly interpretation of such results will be subjective. Schils and de Haan (1995) expressed other concerns about Cusum, namely that there is ‘considerable intra-author variation’, which would preclude a reliable basis for inter-authorship discrimination, while Sanford et al (1994) found that the Cusum technique was ‘based on assumptions which at best are of limited reliability and are most likely completely false’. Canter and Chester (1997) conducted a detailed evaluation of a revised Cusum technique and found that ‘the weighted Cusum technique does not reliably discriminate between single- and multiple- authored texts’.

He concluded that Cusum was one of several techniques that “blatantly run counter to linguistic knowledge [and] should be treated with skepticism.”

Pages 15 – 7

http://books.google.com/books?id=i3399LFSz...result#PPA16,M1

Wow, you found someone who disagrees. Imagine that. Is your source correct? We don't know because just like Cashill he offers only an opinion, and as we see with mrgoogle, opinions are like a--holes, most everyone has one. And yours, given here

"Yes “question have been raised” but by a person not really qualified to do so."

is just more conjecture.

The difference between Olsson and Cashill is that the former has demonstrable qualifications in the subject and the later doesn’t. Olssen teaches forensic science graduate level at a university in Nebraska, has two master’s degrees in linguistics and literally ‘wrote the book’ Forensic Linguistics Additionally he cited three papers, two of which were published the peer reviewed journal Forensic Linguistics, by a total of 8 linguists who said using Cusum to establish authorship is unreliable at best. Are Olsson and those he cites correct? Until you can similarly or more qualified experts defending Qusum we’ll have to assume they are.

I won’t go over all of Cashill’s strained analysis so let’s just look at what he thinks is his strongest evidence

If there is any one paragraph in Dreams that has convinced me of Ayers' involvement it is this one, in which Obama describes the Black Nationalist message:

"A steady attack on the white race... served as the ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despair."

As a writer, especially in the pre-Google era of Dreams, I would never have used a metaphor as specific as "ballast" unless I knew exactly what I was talking about. Seaman Ayers most surely did.”

My god! Ivy League educated Obama who grew up in Hawaii used the word 'ballast' metaphorically, naah it couldn’t have been him, it must have been someone sea going experience!

Ivy league educated, yet he was offered a book contract with no published material( unless you want to count his "poems") in his record, and he FAILED TO DELIVER on that first contract, because he was unable to write. His next public document was porrly written and totally out of the style of "dreams". And in an amazing turn of events zerobama meets Ayers and THEN finally publishes DREAMS, written in a style notable for NOT being like Obamas published record and similar to the style of Ayers. Having a ghostwriter is not a crime, but an honest person would own up to it. Is Obama honest? What is even MORE amazing is that zerobama's new friend is know for helping writers. All in all quite an amazing tale for zeorbama, but one must not ask questions about the ONE, shall we, lest we be visited by mrgoogle, the self appointed arbiter of who is and is not "qualified" to ask questions.

The point was that Obama is likely to have been familiar with the word ‘balast’, I imagine every native speaker of English reading this thread is familiar with it. If Cashill’s best evidence is that he used it he has no case.

Google books turned up 682 books of or about poetry in which the word appears, of course the number of authors is lower because most get multiple hits but are we to assume all had maritime experience? On the 2nd page of hits I saw a familiar name, folk-rock singer Ani DeFranco. According to her Wikipedia bio which makes no reference to any nautical experience, she was born in, grew up in and moved back to Buffalo a city whose industrial waterfront has only recently been transformed into a recreational area. She also lived in NYC where boating except why working class residents in unfashionable districts of the “outer boroughs” is rare. Perhaps that poem was written by Ayers too, let’s count how many 2 – 3 letter words are in it!

http://books.google.com/books?as_q=ballast...y=&as_isbn=

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ani_DiFranco

mrgoogle in action once again and yet with all of this google prowess he can't find a single selection that shows weighting by party id happens in polls. Given this failure can we take ANYTHING he posts as truth? I suggest not. But lets look at his latest diatribe. He want to tell us that its "recreational boating" that might give one a background in things nautical. Never mind that commercial shipping was HUGE part of Buffalo for decades. Heaven forbid someone might pick up nautical phrases by living in a city with a huge commercial maritime presence. Lets call mrgoolge's "analysis" what it actually is...trash.

Buffalo was a major port because it was the terminus for the Eire Canal system which became obsolete when the St Lawrence Seaway was inaugurated in 1959, DiFanco was born in 1970. According to her Wiki bio and articles linked to it her mother and father were MIT graduates an architect and an engineer respectively. I doubt she spent much time hanging around the city’s then decrepit docks. Should could have picked the word up from a seafaring uncle or family friend but it’s more likely she simply learnt in school or through reading like everybody else. It’s not an obscure word.

I never said or implied that “expert has done

extensive

testing and proclaimed the charges baseless” just as John never or implied that Millican tested the entire text of “Dreams”, Those are your strawmen Millican wrote :

Well then it will be superficial testing for mrgooogle, which btw is an apt discriptor of his own body of work. .

It’s preliminary testing from a presumably neutral recognized expert versus extensive dabbling from an amateur with an ax to grid. I put more faith in the former

As for John his exact words:

"However, he decided to test it himself and found that the books were not written by the same man. The test results were then published"

Of course thats not what happened at all as Mr. Millicans own words attest. The facts are quite clear. John was less than honest in his post. And mrgoogle is less than honest in his defence of Simkin's dishonesty.

The other possibility is that he was simply mistaken. You’re only pointed out errors in my previous post in your imagination

Some preliminary tests, using various data measures and a range of powerful statistical facilities that were recently added to Signature, indicated nothing that would give Obama any cause for concern. So I felt that any analysis I did would be far more likely to put an end to the story than to substantiate it, by providing objective data against what looked like partisan allegations.

[…]

Maybe one day I’ll go back and do the analysis in detail, but I doubt it. I would rather spend my time on serious research questions than on improbable theories proposed with negligible support.

I imagine you will quibble about the differences between describing a theory as “baseless” and “improbable…with negligible support” contradicted by “preliminary tests”. I also imagine insults will follow as well, you are too predictable and on the issue of Obama very much like Fetzer.

I'm guessing there were those in the day that thought that the theory of a round earth was baseless and improbable and was contradicted by "preliminary tests". mrgoogle is drunk on zerobama koolaid...and sorry but the predictable one is YOU!

Truthers use similar arguments. The truth is that men of science suspected long before Columbus that the world was spherical. Cashill is an amateur, Millican’s an expert and found his “theory” lacking. Sure Cashill has PhD in an unrelated field so do Fetzer, Griffin, Jones and Butz.

You want something undisputed? McCain was described as a "songbird" by AP (or perhaps it was Time or UPI) when he was a POW for his cooperation with the North Vietnamese propaganda effort. I'm not saying I would not have done the same but it puts a bit of a din on his claimed status of "war hero". Funny how the press which you complain is so tilted against him doesn't report this

Does not report it? What world are you livng in? Oh yes I forgot, you live in fantasyland. Hell McCain freely admits it!...and has done so on national televison Who is hiding what again?

Mrgoogle gets stuffed once again.

Very few of his media bios mention his "confession" none mention his being dubbed a "songbird". What percentage of the electorate would you guestimate is aware of this?

Really? So when he stood before the world at the GOP convention and announced to world that he was broken by the NV and confessed, no one heard him? No one in the news media reported this? No stories were written? Sheesh mrgoogle, your collective brain, www.google.com lists over 95,000 hits onthe search "John McCain songbird" , 790,000 hits to the search "John McCain confesses", and over 1.800,000 hits for the search "John McCain breaks under torture". In other words mrgoogle, once again we can see you are simply full of xxxxe.

You only get those numbers of hits when you search without quotes most aren’t about his confession, few if any that were, were MSM. Please provide a link to a mainstream source reporting that he made his confession on North Vietnamese radio

[J. Raymond Carroll]

"Magoo can't win WITHOUT Pennsylvania"

conventional wisdom says, so it's not yet 9 p.m on election day and Magoo looks like a BIG loser....

surprising, considering that Palin has such great legs.

Barack Obama has won Pennsylvania, FOX News projects,

delivering a crushing defeat to John McCain

in a state that was key to his presidential electoral strategy.

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/11/04/wr...ied-day-voting/

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Fox News just called OHIO for OBAMA.

Looks tough for Magoo, says their expert, Karl Rove, unless Magoo wins Hawaii

Not looking good for Magoo in Florida, either, as if that is going to matter.

[Craig Lamson]

Fox News just called OHIO for OBAMA.

Looks tough for Magoo, says their expert, Karl Rove, unless Magoo wins Hawaii

Not looking good for Magoo in Florida, either, as if that is going to matter.

End of the line for me Ray, congrats and god help the USA now....

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Fox News calls California for Obama.

In the immortal words of James Cagney, Top of the world Ma!

[J. Raymond Carroll]

End of the line for me Ray,

I don't believe that for one second.

congrats

That's the spirt, Craig.

and God help the USA now..

.

But she always has, hasn' she?

[Steve Mcdonagh]

and God help the USA now

I believe he/she just has.

Steve

[John Simkin]

Fox News just called OHIO for OBAMA.

Looks tough for Magoo, says their expert, Karl Rove, unless Magoo wins Hawaii

Not looking good for Magoo in Florida, either, as if that is going to matter.

End of the line for me Ray, congrats and god help the USA now....

I was very impressed with McCain’s concession speech.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/...008/7710025.stm

Maybe, Craig can summon the same kind of graciousness.

[Craig Lamson]

Fox News just called OHIO for OBAMA.

Looks tough for Magoo, says their expert, Karl Rove, unless Magoo wins Hawaii

Not looking good for Magoo in Florida, either, as if that is going to matter.

End of the line for me Ray, congrats and god help the USA now....

I was very impressed with McCain’s concession speech.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/...008/7710025.stm

Maybe, Craig can summon the same kind of graciousness.

Why should I be gracious? The US has just elected the slimest person ever to the White House, who promises to enact policies I find deplorable. We will rue this day for many years to come. America has spoken, and now we must live with the choice, however poor that choice may be. America youth don't know it yet but tonight they sold their future down the river.

I hope they enjoy the party for the next few weeks, cause it ain't gonna last.

[John Simkin]

Why should I be gracious? The US has just elected the slimest person ever to the White House, who promises to enact policies I find deplorable. We will rue this day for many years to come. America has spoken, and now we must live with the choice, however poor that choice may be. America youth don't know it yet but tonight they sold their future down the river.

I hope they enjoy the party for the next few weeks, cause it ain't gonna last.

Maybe you should try to explain in detail of how he is going to destroy the United States or otherwise people will dismiss your views as the rants of a right-wing bigot.

It is ironic that the Republican Party is now only really strong in the Deep South. LBJ was right in the short-term about how the passing of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s would hurt the Democratic Party. However, in the long-term, it hurt the Republican Party.

In 1968 Robert Kennedy said the US would have a “Negro president” in 40 years. That was quite a forecast.

[Len Colby]

So Craig how do you prefer your crow? I suggest you have yours stewed? Or perhaps it’s better you stuff it.

The RCP average of Obama by 7.6% was very close, according to ABC, CBS and CNN with 95% of the votes counted Obama lead by 5% but crunching the numbers the results were 52.45% to 46.55% or a 5.9% lead for Obama. Out of 51 “states” (including DC) they only erred in NC the one they projected to be closest, predicting McCain by 0.4% but he ended up losing there. Though the averages were a bit high for Obama compared to the final count nationally they were a bit low in several states. If we look at the 13 closest states we see that RCP’s projections were quite close, generally they underestimated the victor’s margin. (see chart below).

So your theory that polls favored the Democrats because they weighted by artificially high party ID for them has been shown to be false. I’ll tell you why your “proof” didn’t prove what you thought it did. I’m referring of course to the Mystery Pollster blog entries.

Yes I missed the ones where he said some polls do (or did) weigh by party ID, I was wrong about that, but whether that reflects worse on me for not having read them or on you for providing the wrong link I’ll let the others decide.

The first problem and no I didn’t notice this at first the entries were from 2004 and there is no guarantee such practices continued in 2008 unless you can cite other sources that indicate this is the case.

The second and perhaps more serious problem is that even in 2004 the polls didn’t weigh in the way you alleged. Several polls weighed by “rolling averages” taken over a few months, i.e. if the previous polls averaged 36% Democrat but the most recent found it to be 40%, respondents from that party would be weighed down by 10%. Zogby weighed by the previous presidential election (i.e. 2000), since party ID was tied in 2004 if Zogby had used the same approach this year the results would have artificially undercounted Democrats. Some polls combined the two approaches. The blogger made no mention of weight by artificially derived party ID.

The party ID numbers seem to have been accurate. McInturff (McCain’s pollster) said his candidate was running a few points ahead of party ID and most polls bore him out and this is what happened in most past presidential elections back at least to 1976. Obama won by 6% add 2 -3 points and you get 9%, the number polls average and the number whether you want to accept it or not that McInturff accepted in June

RCP averages vs. final results nationally and in the 13 closest states (a more legible version is attached)

State- RCP Split- Final result- Error

National- Obama + 7.6- Obama + 5.9 -Obama + 1.7

N. Carolina- McCain +0.4- Obama + 1-Obama – 1.5

Missouri- McCain +0.7- McCain +1- 0

Indiana- McCain +1.4- Obama + 1 -Obama – 0.5

Florida- Obama +1.8- Obama + 2- 0

Ohio- Obama +2.5 - Obama + 4-Obama – 1.5

Arizona- McCain +3.5 - McCain + 9-Obama + 5.5

Montana- McCain +3.8 - McCain + 5-Obama + 1

Georgia- McCain +4.0 - McCain + 7-Obama + 3

Virginia- Obama +4.4 - Obama + 5-Obama – 0.5

Colorado- Obama +5.5 - Obama + 7-Obama – 1.5

Nevada- Obama +6.8 - Obama + 12-Obama -0.5

Pennsylvania-Obama +7.3 - Obama + 11-Obama – 3.5

N. Mexico- Obama +7.3 - Obama + 15-Obama – 7.5

[Len Colby]

Fox News just called OHIO for OBAMA.

Looks tough for Magoo, says their expert, Karl Rove, unless Magoo wins Hawaii

Not looking good for Magoo in Florida, either, as if that is going to matter.

End of the line for me Ray, congrats and god help the USA now....

I was very impressed with McCain’s concession speech.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/...008/7710025.stm

Maybe, Craig can summon the same kind of graciousness.

Why should I be gracious? The US has just elected the slimest person ever to the White House, who promises to enact policies I find deplorable. We will rue this day for many years to come. America has spoken, and now we must live with the choice, however poor that choice may be. America youth don't know it yet but tonight they sold their future down the river.

I hope they enjoy the party for the next few weeks, cause it ain't gonna last.

Being gracious is of course not in Craigs nature.

So Craig do you care to tell what is so slimey about Obama? The worst you could pin on him is that MAYBE he had a ghost written bio. But the evidence for that is quite weak unless yu think any Ivy Eductaed lawyer who grew up in Hawaii wasn't familier with the word balast or put faith in an authorship detection method rejected by numerous linguists. Even if true that puts him on the same scale as JFK and well, well below Bush II and Nixon.