Is there a mirror-opposite of the Turing test for humans? I have several old friends who I would swear are human beings (having known them since high school days, some 35 years ago), but get them talking about politics and they become indistinguishable from any GOP robot. There is no way that they would pass the Turing test.

(BTW, regarding Elbot's chat, I'm sure that, like Pat Buchanan's speeches, it sounds better in the original German.)

Has anyone else noticed the parallel between white men in the US and Sunni men in Iraq? For generations, they controlled the country, and took for granted that their parochial concerns were the concerns of the nation. Belatedly it turns out that they are, in fact, a minority, but they refuse to believe it; the despised and maligned "minorities" (who turn out to be a majority) must have cheated; it was all a nefarious foreign plot.

That's Iraq; meanwhile, in the US: The GOP is preemptively attacking Acorn and raising trumped-up charges of "voter fraud." Why? To position themselves for the inevitable claim that they would have won if it weren't for fraud and the interference of shadowy outsiders. Shades of that Sunni sense of entitlement.

Thanks to Powell for calling out the current leaders of the GOP for their vicious anti-Muslim bigotry in the best and most moving part of his endorsement. Now that nobody is a racist -- in fact, in the revised standard version of US history, no one ever was a racist -- and now that even gay-bashing is becoming passe for all but the most extremist of culture crusaders, anti-Muslim bigotry is the only remaining "safe" intolerance. For the past 40 years, the GOP has run as the party of bigotry and intolerance. Take away their "Islamofascist" fearmongering, and they got nothin left.

(PS, for the irony impaired, "nobody is a racist" refers to the officially sanctioned dialogue, not reality.)

...except after c. So how should we spell "reciept"?

-Your resident grammarian

In my county in Michigan we have been using optical scan ballots ever since they (finally) got rid of the old voting contraption machines about 8 years ago.

Otical scan ballots are very easy to understand (completely intuitive); quick to vote with (a fraction of the time that the clunky old machines took); and close enough to foolproof (the scanning machine can't detect unintentional undervotes, but an overvote will cause it to reject your ballot so you get a second chance to do it right). And in case of recounts, they have the actual paper ballots where the voters recorded their preferences in ink with their own hand.

Why hasn't this technology been made the standard everywhere in the US?

Thanks for posting that clip of O'Reilly's "Talking Points." Now I know what Colbert's "The Word" is parodying -- and it is exactly what I had imagined. But really, O'Reilly needs to add a laugh track.

Cute article, but seriously... the Redskins?

Begin rant.

The "Redskins"?? Are you effing kidding me? I mean, it's been a good three decades since the rest of the entertainment media finally dumped the blackface and got rid of the minstrel acts. What is the problem with sports in this country? Will you guys ever grow up? There is literally no other realm of culture in the US where this kind of blatant racism would even remotely be tolerated on such a scale.

End of rant.

Thanks for the link to "Rufus Jones for President." What a flick! The "mini-me" version of Sammy Davis Jr. is priceless.

But what really caught my attention was the sign at the dream Rufus Jones campaign headquarters: "Two pork chops every time you vote."

There is a direct line from that straightforwardly racist view of Black politics to the anti-ACORN fearmongering of the right in the 2008 election. "Voter fraud," indeed.

Whatever "risk aversion" currently exists in the marketplace is likely to do the global recession...

or

Whatever "risk aversion" currently exists in the marketplace is likely due to the global recession...

-Your friendly amateur proofreader

The first president whose mother was an anthropologist (PhD, University of Hawaii, 1992).

Just wanted to say that.

Thanx for the comix!

The "78% for Obama" result from the 2008 exit poll is probably ballpark-worthy, but given the small portion of the Jewish vote (2%) out of the total sample, there has got to be a huge margin of error. I'm sure some savvy statistics person could tell us how large. The 2008 exit poll sampled 18,000 voters across the country. Good enough to make estimates on the big categories (men, women, age groups, etc.) but 2% of 18,000 equals a grand total of 360 Jewish voters. That's an awfully small sample on which to hang any grand interpretations of the direction of "the Jewish vote."

Before you conclude that I'm bashing the general point of Madden's post, note that a high margin of error means that the actual Jewish vote could easily have been even more pro-Obama than 78%. But statistically, it is a bit misleading and/or naive to take the exit polls at face value and assume that the Democratic Jewish vote actually grew from 74% in 2004 to 78% in 2008; that 4% difference is probably less than the margin of error.

The only conclusion you can draw is the general one that the predicted stampede of Jewish voters away from the "scary," "Muslim" "terrorist pal" candidate never took place.

The reference to "the President who gained 63 million votes" inspired me to waste the past four hours (thanks a lot, Andrew) going through every available state election board web page so that I could update the Wikipedia election results page,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008#Results_by_state.

The latest totals:

Obama, 67,197,338

McCain, 58,637,677

All others, 1,720,998

These results are bound to go up slightly as results continue to trickle in. (It will take at least one more month, until Dec. 15, to certify all the votes; possibly even longer if there is a recount in Missouri). The final total will be in the range of 68 million for Obama, 59 million for McCain.