Found a source that says it allows people to buy into Part B as well.

Are you sure it's only Part A? Why is he talking about it paying for itself (through premiums) if it would only be Part A, which isn't funded by premiums?

You can't just pick numbers that add up to the 3-day averages and declare them solved.  There are so many possibilities.  Especially when you factor in that Gallup is rounding their numbers.

I've been working on a program to figure out the widest possible range each day's number could be, limited by the 3 and 7 day moving averages.  The results are starting to look useful.  But it also proves that all these guesses you see littered around the net are wildly, wildly off the mark in one way or another.

Jerome, my conclusion to this comment is that your "1 RCB vote changed everything" spin is pretty ridiculous.  You don't think that it was ridiculous for 14 people to be arguing that Obama should have been awarded zero support in Michigan?  Why not look at the actual facts behind the artful "way of looking at it"?

At any rate, there's on more point here.  Say Michigan had been awarded at 73-0, 100% power, with 55 uncommitted.  Obama already had somewhere between 31 and 35 of those 55 uncommitted pledged to him through the district conventions.  And the remaining 19 statewide had yet to be elected.  There's no way Clinton was going to get 65% of those delegates.  So her percentage was going to be going up again.

Any way you look at it, the 65% number is a non-starter.

Do you even read this stuff?

I was tracking the exact stats that Jerome mentions.  65% is right on.  But for some perspective, on 5/24, she needed 60% of the remaining delegates.  It was going up about 1 percentage point per day.  Basically, she was needing that percentage of each day's delegates, and she kept on undershooting the mark.  Obama was consistently getting more superdelegates than her each of those days, and it's been that way for weeks now.  Even today, she got 69% of the day's delegates, which would have been just more than enough to keep her steady (Obama had a 2-0 superdelegate day since then).  And that percentage would have climbed more after Montana and South Dakota.  I really doubt that Hillary would have gotten 65% - 70% of the superdelegates to go with her, not if they weren't already after West Virginia and Kentucky.

no, no.  That's not true.  It's been documented over and over again that if the Florida-court-mandated statewide recount had been completed, Bush would have won.

Other statewide recount with more liberal ballot-counting standards (better standards) would have led to Gore winning.  But not the standards that the Florida court was asking for.

but... the nytimes isn't lying.  In fact, bradblog is being more disingenuous than the nytimes in this case.

The fact is that if the recount that the supreme court stopped had been allowed to proceed, bush would have won.  Or if the recount had proceeded as Gore's team requested, bush would have won.  Both of those standards led to bush winning.

What led to Gore winning was other (more sane) recount standards, recounts that never would have happened given the state and county standards and laws.

That just isn't disputable.

We can argue that the standards were wrong should have been different, and we're right there.  We can argue that a fuller recount should have happened, and we're right there.  But we can't delude ourselves into thinking that reality was different.

What really lost the election was vote suppression, bad ballot design, and Lieberman caving on the military ballots.

Somewhere between 31 and 35 of those 55 uncommitted MI delegates are already Obama delegates.

You're double-counting some of Clinton's support to argue that such a high percentage of those 55 should be for Clinton.

and... if he really were an inherently political creature, why wouldn't he be arguing in favor of the gas tax holiday?  Wouldn't the more political approach be for all three candidates to argue in favor of it so it ceases to be a political issue?  I mean, you probably agree with Jerome's front page take on the issue, right?

Or is it that you see Obama as an inherently political creature with really bad political judgment?  That seems pretty convenient, you could basically paint anything he does with that brush, in terms of having it both ways.

I am just curious.  It is like you have two choices on how to view Senator Obama.

1) Someone who is apt to think the best of people, overlook some flaws to see the good in them or at least to attempt to bridge some divides and find common ground, who initially tried to do just that with Wright until Wright denied Obama's entire approach, after which he denounced him

or

2) Someone who apparently must believe as Wright does (since he isn't stupid and would have walked out otherwise), who has no moral or value-driven anger at Wright but is only angry at Wright for endangering his political life, and who has no values other than gaining power.

You obviously have chosen #2, but my question is, why?  Why do you believe this of Senator Obama in particular?

hmm... it's not a conundrum if he doesn't endorse.

Obama appears to be making up a lot of the gap.

Time for Richardson to drop out...

would absolutely love to see a three-person debate.

(I just wish Biden were still in - I think he would have done better than Richardson in NH... but maybe he couldn't afford it.)

not true, right?  1988?  Dole Bush Gephardt Dukakis?  (Cribbing from talkingpointsmemo)

If that's true, that would really suck.  Because an Obama/Romney matchup is much better for us that Clinton/McCain I think.

I don't say that from anti-Clinton bias.  I just don't think Clinton matches up well against McCain.  His unfavorables are too low and the whole campaign would be about glossing over his record and beliefs.  

Romney's also slippery, but much easier to expose.  Plus I just think that campaign would be a lot of fun.