The 'Obama' Tag Archive

Below you'll find all my writing tagged with the word Obama. The posts are listed in chronological order. Click the post title to read more.

November 13th, 2008

Paging Dr Freud To The Lincoln Bedroom

Obama will be given a set of panic buttons: One for his pocket, one on his desk and one beside his bed. They are credit card-shaped and simply have to be squeezed to summon a posse of agents.

At one time, the President and Vice-President were given three-inch-high models of the Washington Monument to put beside their beds. They had simply to knock them over to summon the guards.

But the models were abandoned after Vice-President Dan Quayle – noted for being clumsy – knocked his over late one night while making love to his wife.

In seconds, the door burst open, the lights went on and Mrs Quayle was thrown out of bed to the floor as bodyguards flocked around her husband to ensure his safety.

From The Mirror UK

BOB HERBERT: You guys have seen the ad a number of times, I am sure, and you have it here in-house.  First thing you see are a couple of images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, right?  And we see an image of Barack Obama right after that, comes quickly right at the beginning of the, you remember that, right?  Do you remember any other startling images right there at the beginning?

Silence on the set.

HERBERT: Alright. There is an image right there in that very beginning of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and there is an image of the Washington Monument. Look at the beginning of that ad again.  And you tell me why those two phallic symbols are placed there [snaps fingers]—pow!—right at the very beginning of that ad.

Over the course of the segment, the rest of the gang tried to gently talk Herbert down from his bad trip, calmly explaining that what he was seeing were in fact images of the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in Berlin, where Obama chose to give his speech.  But by the end, Herbert was still speaking of seeing “two phallic symbols.”

From NewsBusters

November 2nd, 2008

Chortle. Gag. Spit take.

Sam Adams Hefeweizen is so bad it should be a felony. If Obama does usher in the NEW WORLD ORDER, first on the chopping block are these jackasses for their crimes against the reinheitsgebot. Christ, this is ten pounds of suck in a sixteen ounce bottle. Thank God I have three UFO’s left. This Sam Adams is borderline flat, has no body, a bland to nonexistent aftertaste, and almost a fake sweet quality like it fell into a vat of shitty honey brown. If this was the last beer I was to drink before my impending execution, I would just ask them to give me a piss-jar of Corona or shoot me without having a beer.

This Sam Adams crap was the hefeweizen equivalent of having sex while wearing eight condoms. If someone offers you one, give them the finger.

Balloon Juice via Dethroner

October 20th, 2008

On the meaning of the US futures market

In the last few weeks, Intrade.com, which is based in Dublin, had consistently given John McCain as much as a 10 percentage point edge in his chances to be elected president compared with other large online overseas betting sites. These include the British-based Betfair.com, as well as the Iowa Electronic Markets, a research project at the University of Iowa that allows bets of $500 on election results.

The political explanation — that someone was trying to game the system to give Mr. McCain some momentum — has the advantage of at least appearing rational to economists. Increasing a candidate’s perceived standing would be something of value to offset the irrational decision to waste money buying a share in Mr. McCain for more than the absolute minimum price.

On Thursday, the chief executive of Intrade, John Delaney, responded to allegations that there had been market manipulation — in essence, that somehow Mr. McCain was being favored by artificial means.

Mr. Delaney conceded there had been erratic behavior — including spikes in the direction of Mr. McCain and away from Barack Obama “by up to 10 points.” And he said “trading that caused the unusual price movements and discrepancies was principally due to a single ‘institutional’ member on Intrade.”

“The surprising thing is not that there was some manipulation, it is that it was sustained,” said Forrest Nelson, who teaches at the University of Iowa and has followed Intrade as well.

These developments, he said, go against his instinct that a large market like Intrade with millions of dollars in bets — as opposed to the total $250,000 wagered at the Iowa markets — would be less likely to be an outlier in its odds for candidates.

David Rothschild, a Ph.D. candidate in business and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has tracked these markets. He said of the institutional trader on Intrade: “If their job was to hedge bets, they were not doing a very good job at gaining these positions at a minimal cost. They are overpaying for these positions. I don’t know if they are doing it to manipulate the market, but they are not doing a very good job at minimizing their costs.”

The political explanation — that someone was trying to game the system to give Mr. McCain some momentum — has the advantage of at least appearing rational to economists. Increasing a candidate’s perceived standing would be something of value to offset the irrational decision to waste money buying a share in Mr. McCain for more than the absolute minimum price.

Continue Reading: NY Times

We drink Jim Beam. RSS Feed.