Wednesday Open Thread

Filed in National by on November 17, 2010

Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. It’s Wednesday but also humpday. I expect you to celebrate accordingly.

On Monday Jon Stewart did a brilliant takedown on John McCain’s ever-evolving positions on DADT repeal.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
It Gets Worse PSA
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Yes, John McCain is a huge, flaming hypocrite. I don’t think “flip flop” is a good enough word to describe what he’s doing. I prefer “Calvinball.” Do you remember the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes? In the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes play a game called “Calvinball” where there are no rules and the rules keep changing. That’s McCain to a T. Also, he sure made his wife look like a fool.

A study found little correlation between the number of Facebook “likes” and the outcome of an election.

Olson is referring to a slew of reports showing how having more Facebook fans or Likes was a good indication of a candidate’s success come election. Indeed, Facebook’s political team said the social network helped predict between 74% to 81% of 2010 races. However, according to Trilogy’s results, the consultancy found only a slight correlation between social media popularity and success in the Senate. That correlation “effectively disappeared” in House and gubernatorial races.

Trilogy says the Facebook margin of victory only explained about 13% of voting results. For gubernatorial races, that correlation is even lower, with the strength of a candidate’s Facebook presence only explaining about 0.8% of the vote margin. And for House races, there was actually a slight negative correlation, meaning a stronger Facebook popularity was associated with a smaller margin of victory.

For the graphically challenged, if Facebook likes predicted outcome, the blue dots would lie along the red line.

Christine O’Donnell had plenty of Facebook and Twitter fans, but many of them were from out-of-state. O’Donnell spam tweeters made #NetDE almost unusable. The only popularity contest that counts is the actual number of votes.

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Opinionated chemist, troublemaker, blogger on national and Delaware politics.

Comments (7)

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  1. Joanne Christian says:

    It’s official Tom Kovach is in!!!!!!

  2. heragain says:

    Just reconsidered my purchase of real estate in Hawaii and booked eldest on a cross-country train trip.

    I’m not flying until the TSA rejoins a civil society.

  3. anonone says:

    “George Soros Tells Progressive Donors Obama Might Not Be The Best Investment”

    “We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line,” he said, according to several Democratic sources. “And if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”

    Exactly.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/george-soros-obama_n_785022.html

  4. heragain says:

    I had an entertaining 1/2 an hour or so tracing all those kids back to their facebook posts.

    No one teaches them to be careful.

  5. anon says:

    Did anyone see Keith Olberman last night? He had the former head of Israel security at ElAl on. The guy said, “these machines are worth nothing”. And they don’t even use them in Israel. Why is Chertoff making billions on these machines? Chertoff, Michel Hayden and some other CIA Black Art Devils formed their own security company and then oila….the guy with the non-bomb in his pants starts the fearmongering all over again. But, it got Chertoff the contract he and his rightwing fearmongers wanted. But worse is the fact that some blue dog demorats voted to spend billions more on 1000 more of these radiation filled monsters. Columbia and John Hopkins say the machines put out 20times more radiation than an exray in your doctors office? Are these bluedogs only intersted in their winning elections or doing whats right for the american people. Soros said what needed to be said, stand up and fight or get the hell out.

  6. anon, Greyhound is right for you