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At this moment, of the 202 Amazon customer reviews of Sarah Palin’s new book, 192 gave it either five stars (102) or one star (90).
All hail Seth Masket for this catch.
White House
Sarah Palin
A) The name of the bad guy in the original Muppet Movie
B) The actor who plays Giles the librarian in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
C) A new assistant professor in my department
D) The President of Europe
Click here , here and of course here for the answer.
White House
Van Jones
Yesterday the final qualification matches for next summer’s World Cup were played. Today the politicians are getting involved. France squeaked by Ireland thanks to an obviously illegal overtime goal that the referees wrongly allowed. Today, Irish parliament debated the issue, the Irish ...
World
Egypt
Algeria
France
Ireland
Brian Cowen
As a quick follow up to my previous post on Tony Blair , it is now official that Blair is out of the running for the post of EU President . Any thoughts from Monkey Cage readers on the consequences of this decision? Will this “reduce the union’s ‘opportunity to have a clear ...
Other
themonkeycage.org - 2 days ago
—
themonkeycage.org —
A new PPP poll finds that 49% of
McCain voters think that ACORN stole the election for
Obama. 20% of McCain voters are not sure. Only 31% think that he legitimately won the election. By comparison, 93% of Obama voters believe that he legitimately won ...
(more)
Did ACORN Steal the Election?
Comments
vote down
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
found this 2 days agofound this
[self-promotion]My first book is out from Cambridge (and has been for a few weeks). Entitled The Political Economy of Trust: Interests, Institutions and Inter-Firm Cooperation in Italy and Germany , it sets out a rational choice account of how institutions affect the ways in which people do ...
World
Italy
Germany
Nate, Daniel, and I write :
Lawmakers’ support for or opposition to reform generally has less to do with the views of their constituents and more to do with the issue of presidential popularity. . . .
For instance, Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat who has been a less-than-strong ...
Congress
Health care
Blanche Lincoln
themonkeycage.org - 3 days ago
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themonkeycage.org —
Jon Bernstein wants new polling data on the
filibuster. The new CNN poll has one question about
this: As you may know, the filibuster is a Senate procedure which has been used to prevent the Senate from passing controversial legislation or ...
(more)
A Majority of the Public Supports the Filibuster
A new CNN poll asked:
Now thinking specifically about the health insurance plans available to most Americans, would you favor or oppose creating a public health insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private health insurance ...
Other
CNN
Health care
This study examines the media diet of Richard Nixon, whose exposure to the news consisted almost entirely of a White House-produced daily news summary. Nixon staffers repeatedly asserted that the summary was the most effective way to give the president a comprehensive, objective account ...
White House
Richard Nixon
So as I was listening last week to a BBC podcast about Gordon Brown’s latest PR nightmare - spelling the name of a fallen soldier incorrectly when writing a condolence letter to the soldier’s mother , I had a thought. What if Brown stepped down, and Tony Blair came back as ...
Congress
Sherrod Brown
In response to my note on the limited ideological constraints faced by legislators running for reelection, Alan Abramowitz writes:
I [Abramowitz] agree—although they probably have less leeway now than in the past due to growing pressure toward ideological conformity within parties, ...
Other
Republican National Committee
My colleague Pat Egan sends along the following observation about parallels between the 1982 midterm elections and the coming 2010 midterm elections:
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the economy — or at least the parts of the economy that matter with regard to elections ...
White House
Barack Obama
In response to the Chen and Rodden paper , Michael McDonald writes:
I [McDonald] cover the issue of the application of redistricting criteria in the Midwest Mapping Project report available here .
I [McDonald] would quibble with the claim that compact and contiguous districts will ...
Other
Jonathan Rodden and Jowei Chen sent me this article :
When one of the major parties in the United States wins a substantially larger share of the seats than its vote share would seem to warrant, the conventional explanation lies in manipulation of maps by the party that controls the ...
World
The y-axis on this graph is turnout by district in Russia’s October 11th local elections; the x-axis is the vote for the ruling United Russia party. Note how once turnout passes 30%, the proportion of votes for United Russia begins to increase in almost a linear fashion.
[Hat tip ...
World
Russia
From a news article by Michael Schmidt:
The 43-year-old man, who had apparently been hired as a security guard for a party at the bar, was shooting into the crowd, according the police official . . . [The shooter] had been arrested 28 times, including five for firearms-related offenses, the ...
Other
If not, see Ezra Klein’s interview with guest-blogger Greg Koger. One tidbit:
Q: How many Republicans would need to be on the floor during a filibuster?
A: One.
Q: And Democrats?
A: If that Republican says I note the absence of quorum, you need 50.
Jon Bernstein adds more .
