AdamSmith

The lollipop pictured would be the giveaway. Also, myself in media res:

I will collaborate with Ben/LA, our resident quant, to graph the function you so aptly describe.

Mea culpa. "It takes two to tango, but only one to squirm." -- S.J. Perelman ...I did get one rejoinder, though, from an escort who thankfully was not offended. He offered: Not your typical escort -- I'm actually good at it!

Unquestionably in turn. And one who (in Obama's commendable spirit of appointing prodigies and geniuses) can likewise go on to a successful ambassadorial career. Meanwhile, for the near term, I will take your cue and boost my spirits by hopping aboard The Good Ship Lollipop. That is to say, just scheduled an overnight with Andre in a couple of days! http://andrehasablog.blogspot.com/

Oof! Almost too much sunshine to bear. Maybe a middle way can be found in my agèd Mama's treasured library of the timeless wisdom of Helen Steiner Rice.

Dilbert could not have said it better... Yahoo co-founder Yang stepping down as CEO Search is on for successor; company’s stock has fallen in 17-month tenure SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang is stepping down as chief executive, ending a rocky reign marked by his refusal to sell the Internet company to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion — more than triple Yahoo's current market value. The change in command announced Monday won't be completed until Yahoo finds his replacement. The Sunnyvale-based company said it is interviewing candidates inside and outside Yahoo in a search led by its chairman, Roy Bostock, and the executive recruitment firm Heidrick & Struggles. "Jerry and the board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level," Bostock said... (Emphasis courtesy AdamSmith) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27775703 ...ROFL. For "next level" read "basement." Creative destruction, anyone?

I hang hope on the possibility that Obama is acutely aware of that. Thus Rahm Emanuel, for starters. Some saw that as signaling hyper-partisanship from the get-go. But others, even unto Lindsey Graham and Peggy Noonan, noted Emanuel's proven ability to moderate the Democratic party's own excesses, for example nominating House candidates who might actually have a shot at getting elected in their district, even if they did not pass every last party-platform litmus test. Thus those commentators and others observed that Emanuel's appt suggests BO laying plans to prevent his own party scuppering his chances for success in the long run.

Illuminative disquisition on the pluperfect subjective (subjunctive): http://www.jstor.org/pss/3083451

Precisely why I found their pessimism so striking. Indeed. I anticipated many pleasures great and small from Obama's victory, but not this schadenfreude over The Economist's comeuppance.

The Economist does not seem too hopeful of any imminent return to sense by the Republican party at large... Ship of fools Political parties die from the head down JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the “stupid party†now belongs to the Tories’ transatlantic cousins, the Republicans. There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat on November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000—many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases—by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South. The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantánamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution. The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart†rather than his “headâ€. He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job†Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’ favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics. Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda. This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year, up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69% call themselves “professionalsâ€. McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the number of jobs requiring “tacit†intellectual skills has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The Republican Party’s current “redneck strategy†will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate. Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour. Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research. Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americansâ€, with their “volkish†wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “gâ€s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by Beltway journalists from the Weekly Standard and the National Review who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then noisily championed her cause. Time for reflection How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses? There are glimmers of hope. Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash prideâ€. Anonymous McCain aides complain that Mrs Palin was a campaign-destroying “whack jobâ€. One of the most encouraging signs is the support for giving the chairmanship of the Republican Party to John Sununu, a sensible and clever man who has the added advantage of coming from the north-east (he lost his New Hampshire Senate seat on November 4th). But the odds in favour of an imminent renaissance look long. Many conservatives continue to think they lost because they were not conservative or populist enough—Mr McCain, after all, was an amnesty-loving green who refused to make an issue out of Mr Obama’s associations with Jeremiah Wright. Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled “Ideas have Consequencesâ€; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too. http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstate...ory_id=12599247

HWP = Height/Weight Proportional. In theory: If 6'0"' in height, then perhaps 165 lb. But often, in reality, Mrs. Six by Six. As Julia Child so eloquently put it.

lookin, you make me almost too self-conscious ever to write another hiring email! LOL! The helium-argon escort -- totally unreactive. One has had a few of those. My read: it shows he has wisely elected not to waste time on that part of the listing form, which seldom correlates to reality in any event. A few addenda... Handsome: Plain, but my ego compensates. Model looks: So self-absorbed, you’ll pay me to leave. Not your typical escort: Your typical escort. Open-minded: Willing to listen to your requests before I tell you all the things I won’t do. Very open-minded: Either (1) PNP and/or bareback, or (2) still weirded out by having to touch strangers.

Notes toward a glossary for escort ads. Feel free to embrace and extend! Can host: I share a 1-bedroom apartment with 2 other guys. Discrete: Discreet. Discreet: I will write about you on my blog. New to the business: My 4th stage name in as many months. Prefers email contact: I may respond to your inquiry in a month or two. Seeking generous gentlemen: Prepare to be upsold. Selective: Usually meaningless. Occasionally means: I will see you if you send a face pic and I like your looks, or if the rent is due. 29yo: 37yo. Versatile top: I will top you, or I will lie there while you get yourself off, whichever you prefer. Versatile bottom: See Versatile top. The occasional exception – Boyfriend material! Versatile: Marriage material! Disclaimer: The rude & disrespectful entries above in no wise reflect my real feelings toward escorts, most of whom I would marry if they would have me. Still needed: A glossary for client responses...

He: Do you smoke after sex? She: Don't know; I never looked.

On the other hand, one can imagine that craiglist's suit against its minority owner eBay may be consuming whatever energies it feels like throwing into the legal arena at present. (Assuming this is still ongoing; I've seen no news that it has yet been resolved.) And with craigslist revenues estimated at $80 million or so (a pittance of what it could have if it decided to be just a tad more venal), the eBay thing could well be soaking up some considerable chunk of what management sees as available litigation monies.

...not that one necessarily has a problem with this, at least to a point...

Indeed it is. When you next compose a post or a reply, note the link "Show All" at the top of the box that contains the icons. Click that link, and bounty! There appears a panel with (for whatever reason) many more icon choices than you get by clicking the "Next" link at the bottom of the box containing the icons. ...One that I'm still seeking occasion to use:

Promise? La Dole's defenestration was, for me too, the cherry on last night's cake.

Stu's synopsis, actually (tho I would be glad to take credit for most of his posts). My view is not quite as dire as Krugman's or, I take it, Stu's. I look forward to some fairly immediate arguments within the GOP in which moderate voices are raised rather louder than in recent times. Perhaps even to some productive schisms that prefigure real power shifts within the party, and reconceptions of the "base." (All too apt a word, it strikes me!) Ah -- you reminded me of something I left out. I have a dedicated Yahoo email account that I created specifically to use in registering for sites such as these. I glance at it now and then (and indeed, as reported, have not seen NYT-identifiable junk in it). But I don't really have to care whether it gets spammed or not, as it is not one of my primary email addresses, and I did not enter any of my real bio-info when I created it.

Just possibly, this was the lesson learned from '00 and '04? Together with: Ignore Ralph Nader.

Just a footnote on accessing the New York Times online: Both Stu's first link above and my own are accessible via free registration on nytimes.com. No paid sub required. And I have not noticed any deluge of spam due to having registered there.

To be sure, my hopefulness may be naught but naivete. Although one does recall that, before W. and H.W., there was Prescott, and today there are, as noted before, the tiny handful of Lugars, Hagels, et al. to perhaps give some glimmer. Of course it may not really be hope, but just a wish, given that their soon-to-be banishment cannot last forever. That, certainly. But more, too: the Faustian, even Lear-like dimensions of the beast. The relentless drive; after the deepest humiliations, the return to the arena again and again; the daring & boldness of the diplomatic openings; etc., etc., etc. And then destroyed by his own hand, felled by the same energies that had raised him up or, at least, impelled him. Part of it is simply nostalgia for political villains and scoundrels who nevertheless -- starkly unlike current-day neocons and other cons -- had a sharp grasp of realpolitik.

I just logged in to post this same link. Krugman dashes cold water on hopeful speculation by TampaYankee, me and others that the past 8 years are culminating in some version of the Republican party's hitting rock bottom, so that its more centrist elements will be in position to wrest power from the radical right. Discouraging. Even such a yellow-dog Democrat as AdamSmith would breathe more easily if the Republican party were a safer, saner partner in governance. I think of Nixon (as reported by that ghastliness Monica Crowley) watching on TV in 1992 as the Bush I renominating convention opened with Pat Buchanan's bashing of gays and much else. "He's so extreme; he's over there with the nuts," fumed Nixon, complaining this undid what he praised as his own past efforts to drag the party away from the "Goldwater crazies." ...Crowley's memoirs of Nixon, as I've noted before, are riveting. This review by Chris Buckley captures it all (including some Beltway insiders' conviction that Monica knew Dick biblically, at least after Pat Nixon kicked the bucket): Final Judgments By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY Published: August 25, 1996 Nixon Off the Record By Monica Crowley. 231 pp. New York: Random House. $23. He's baaack! For the last five years of his life, Richard Nixon sipped tonic water and spilled the beans to a young assistant he hired right out of college after she wrote him a flattering letter about his book ''1999.'' Monica Crowley was a steel-trap amanuensis, taking down every word with apparently astonishing precision -- she implies that she didn't use a tape recorder, but then perhaps Nixon's post-White House staff avoided tape recorders the way Count Dracula's assistants might avoid crucifixes. After Nixon died in 1994, she says, William Safire, a former Nixon scribe, gave Ms. Crowley the ethical go-ahead to publish, telling her, ''Nixon knew that when he spoke to you, he was speaking to history.'' The result is her first and Nixon's final book, a portrait of the most compelling, infuriating and fascinating American political figure of our half of the 20th century. Here he is in all his five-o'clock-shadowed glory, spinning not in the grave but from it: seething over the incompetence of the Bush re-election campaign, scheming to ingratiate himself with the Clintons -- not a pretty picture -- handicapping the current election and agonizing over his place in history, all the while serving up scathing assessments of all the players. Richard Nixon hasn't been this interesting since the Oval Office bugging system was taking the dictation. In life we knew him as Tricky Dick. Now, in death, he gives us Dishy Dick. A lot of the players will be going around airily pretending they haven't had time to read the book, then locking the doors to the den to look themselves up fretfully in the index to find out what he really thought about them. For George Bush, James A. Baker 3d, David Gergen, Robert A. Mosbacher, Nicholas Brady, Richard Darman, Jack Kemp and Pat Buchanan, reading this book will not be a pleasant experience -- a bit like attending the reading of a will in which they are left not the house, estate and trust funds but the deceased's diabetic cat, with contemptuous instructions for its care. ''Withering'' is not quite strong enough a word to describe Mr. Nixon's feelings toward many of the above. And those are the Republicans. President and Mrs. Clinton would do well to search elsewhere for diverting reading on their vacation, as would his Cabinet. ''Well! Look at that Cabinet. Aren't they an awful-looking group? My God! Shalala and Reno? They are so far to the left that I don't know what they are. And Hillary! She's so steely. She even claps in a controlled way.'' Secretary of State Warren Christopher is hereby advised to assume the fetal position if anyone within a hundred-yard radius brings up the book. Who comes off well? It's a short but surprising list: Bob Dole, Mario Cuomo, H. R. Haldeman, Al Gore, Dan Quayle and Elliot Richardson. There's a fun dinner party for you. The aggrieved will be able to take some comfort from the book's rather massive Achilles' heel, assuming it is that. Either Ms. Crowley, who occasionally gets a bit breathless about all the mentoring -- Michael Kinsley's line kept coming to me: He threw her over the desk and mentored her until dawn -- didn't catch the glaring fallacy in her argument, or something even more interesting is going on here. At the outset of Part 1, she writes: ''Above all for Nixon, leadership demanded a person secure in his abilities and in himself and who was, therefore, willing and able to take those risks. Of the many criticisms leveled at him, the one he found most egregious was that he was insecure. Politics, by its very nature, attracts the supremely secure.'' As they say in the Valley, Hello? There's enough in that there asseveration to keep every pundit, political scientist and psychologist in America arguing for a month. Her book is a prosecutor's brief for the antithesis, at least in Nixon's case. Almost every page contains DNA evidence, supplied by her mentor himself, that for all his undeniable guts, his ability, again and again, to take a kicking and go on ticking, Richard Nixon was the most transparently insecure human being ever to reach the White House. ''Why the hell isn't he showing some leadership?'' he fumes about George Bush's lack of vision. ''I'll tell you something. When the (expletive deleted) and his gang come to me for advice, I am not going to provide it unless they are willing to thank me publicly. Neither Reagan nor Bush did that after all these years of my advice, and frankly I have had it. They'll find me when they need me, but I may not be available.'' You can hear the stamping of slippered feet on the study floor. Twenty pages later he's bristling about the Bush campaign -- ''All tactics and no vision. Nothing.'' In his histrionic, tautological way, he tells her: ''I reiterate to you once again: I will not give them any advice unless they ask and unless they are willing to thank me publicly. I'm tired of being taken for granted. They all come to me on the sly when they are in big trouble -- well, no more. No more going in the back door of the White House -- middle of the night -- under the cloak of darkness. . . .'' Wonderful image, that: Nixon being bundled into the side entrance under a raincoat. Desperate to be a player again, he submits to the humiliation of a visit from the Presidential aspirant Ross Perot, calculating that the specter of his becoming a Perot shadow adviser might prompt Mr. Bush or Mr. Clinton into bringing him in out of the cold. Mr. Perot makes the former President wait two hours, pleading New York City traffic. (To paraphrase Dana Carvey's Perot, ''Isn't that just sad?'') In one of the book's more amusing moments Nixon, convinced that his phones have been tapped, resolves to flush out the tappers with a prearranged call to Ms. Crowley, telling her that he's planning to come out publicly for Mr. Perot. First time as tragedy, second time as opera bouffe. ''I hope to God they don't ask me to speak at the (1992 Republican) convention,'' he says later. ''I won't do it. It's a loser all around.'' He doth protest a bit too much here. Richard Nixon would have bicycled to Houston to speak at that convention in a New York minute, if asked. And too bad he wasn't. His take on Pat Buchanan's fateful speech at that convention: ''He's so extreme; he's over there with the nuts. . . . Attacking the gays was wrong, wrong, wrong. Besides, they vote too.'' Again and again he tells Ms. Crowley, in terms that would scorch paint off the walls, of his contempt for Bill Clinton. Then when Mr. Clinton wins, he sets out to cozy up to -- another less attractive phrase comes to mind -- the new President with such zeal that you find yourself mumbling, ''Say it ain't so.'' After Nixon had read her a copy of a letter to Mr. Clinton, she reports, ''He said to me 'I know it goes a bit overboard, particularly on the character stuff, but the guy's got a big ego, and you've got to flatter the hell out of him if you are going to get anywhere.' '' And there you have it in one excruciating sentence: Nixon so yearned to be a contender again that he was willing to bear any burden, pay any price, to get back in the ring. ''I used the word 'character' not in the moral sense,'' he elaborates to a no doubt dumbstruck Ms. Crowley, ''because he has no morals -- but in the strength sense. Adversity builds character. . . . I have to work with the guy, so I might as well start with this.'' Mr. Clinton put him back in the (outer) loop with a few phone calls about foreign policy. Nixon tells Ms. Crowley that he told the President, ''Foreign policy is just more interesting.'' No surprise there, but how delicious to find a few pages later all our suspicions confirmed: ''Monica, history will not remember him (Mr. Clinton) for anything he does domestically. The economy will recover; it's all short-term and, let's face it, very boring.'' For a time, Nixon was thrilled and energized by Mr. Clinton's attentions. ''He invited me to the White House,'' he announces one day. ''The sentence hung there in the air before he continued, 'In 12 years, neither Reagan nor Bush ever put me on the White House schedule or put a picture out.' '' Just as it took Nixon to open China, so it took Mr. Clinton, whose own wife had served on the impeachment committee, to open the White House back up to Nixon. Amusingly, Nixon tried to keep Mr. Clinton from consulting with Henry Kissinger. But alas, the Rodney Dangerfield of Saddle River got no enduring respect from the Clintons. That realization came when they did not attend the funeral of Mrs. Nixon. It's a harrowing and poignant moment, Lear on the blasted heath, Monica Crowley in the role of Cordelia. ''Nixon, rocked with grief, exploded after the service. 'Vernon Jordan? The Clintons sent Vernon Jordan? He's a fine man, but come on. Hillary should have been there. That was inexcusable. He comes to me for advice . . . and he can't even send a Cabinet member to Mrs. Nixon's funeral?'' The disappointment and anger would turn out to be conclusive, yet when Mr. Clinton made his next State of the Union speech, promoting health care, he included a mention of Nixon's health care proposals. ''Did you know,'' he says to Crowley, ''that that was the first time a President ever mentioned me? Ford, Reagan and Bush never did.'' In life, Nixon was famed as a 20-20 political handicapper. In death, it remains to be seen. Bob Dole ''must really take over the party,'' he tells her. ''He's the only one; no one else can do it.'' Later: ''Dole is the only one who can lead. He is by far the smartest politician -- and Republican -- in the country.'' He advised his protege to wait until after 1994 and then ''kick the hell out of Perot'' (still waiting), to cultivate Colin Powell (done, to little avail), to avoid letting the religious right dictate the terms (yes and no), to be ''conservative'' on economic issues (done) but ''compassionate'' on welfare and health care (so-so), to ''stay young'' (he's trying) and -- the $64,000 question -- to ''attack Clinton's policies and not him personally.'' In fairness, Nixon said this in 1993; now the character issue may really be Mr. Dole's only available red meat. Mr. Dole, one of Nixon's most serious students, who eulogized him with the words, ''The second half of the 20th century will be known as the age of Nixon,'' would surely have invited him to speak at the '96 Republican convention. What a pity he didn't live long enough for that final dispensation. Whatever we thought of Nixon, he paid full fare for his sins. It's all here, the pain and humiliation of his 20-year exile from the arena. He made a fatal mistake not burning those tapes a quarter-century ago. It is inconceivable that he made a second fatal mistake letting it all hang out with Ms. Crowley. Mr. Safire was right: Nixon knew his soul-revealing musings would eventually see the light of day. ''Nixon Off the Record'' is a collaboration, not, as some suggest, a betrayal, and that makes the author's naive whoppers about her subject's confidence all the more charming, even endearing. Thank heavens Monica Crowley is a relative innocent. An older pro would have inserted 18-minute gaps and But that would be wrong's. Even so, it's doubtful Nixon expected her to perform such editorial services. He was many things, but naive he wasn't. This remarkable book is an act of catharsis, not hubris, Richard Nixon's final apologia. Tough as he was on everyone else, he was always toughest on himself. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...;pagewanted=all

The Most Accurate Election Forecast? Hardcore Gamblers Keith Thompson, Huffington Post Recently I was in Kentucky, reporting on horseracing for Garden & Gun. A "whale" (bettor of thousands of dollars per day) I interviewed, Mike Maloney, successfully traded securities, options and futures, but chose to go to the track every day instead because it offered him a greater challenge. "There are many, many, many more factors to consider in betting horseraces," he said. Maloney is a youthful fifty-two, with alert, light blue eyes and a cheerful demeanor. He doesn't chomp on a cigar. He's in no way a Damon Runyon character. I have reason to believe he's a sort of mathematical genius. I asked him: "Do you think handicappers can forecast the outcome of the presidential election better than polls?" He didn't hesitate. "Polls can be inaccurate. People may say what is politically correct, the questions may be leading, the pollsters may be biased. A pollster can still bill for an inaccurate poll. Bookmakers must make an accurate line or they lose -- period." For a second opinion I went to Ray Paulick, who was a protégé of notorious oddsmaker "Jimmy The Greek" before becoming a handicapper for the Daily Racing Form. Now he's editor of the thoroughbred industry insiders' must-read Paulick Report. "Gamblers have more experience with cheaters," he said. "They take voter fraud into their metrics. Polls don't. Nor do polls take into account how each state's secretary of state factors in, or systems within a state designed to eliminate voters; Jimmy the Greek called these 'the intangibles.'" The multi-billion dollar online gaming industry offers evidence that Maloney and Paulick are, as usual, on the money. Michael Robb, political expert for the British bookmaking site Betfair.com, lets the record speak for itself: Halfway through Election Day in 2004, when a CNN poll showed Kerry taking the lead, Betfair had Bush with a 91% chance to win. Of course that's just one election. Probably hundreds of fifth-grade social studies students correctly predicted Bush's margin of victory to a decimal place, right? Betfair also had all 50 states right in 2004. As did rival site Intrade. Koleman Strumpf, a University of Kansas economics professor who tracks betting trends, believes wagering is an incomparable barometer of an election. Among the reasons he gave me: Relative to the polls, the betting markets have to think hard about what they're saying since they are putting their money at stake. Also polls tend to reflect what people are thinking at a given moment, versus a forecast of what will happen on election day -- post-convention bounces, for instance. With University of Arizona economist Paul Rhode, Strumpf authored a study -- "Historical Presidential Betting Markets," published in Journal of Economic Perspectives -- that demonstrates that the betting market's forecasting superiority is nothing new. They begin with America's long history of wagering on political outcomes, which boomed in the 1880s when betting moved from poolrooms to the Curb Exchange, the predecessor to the American Stock Exchange. Betting on political outcomes often drew huge crowds to Wall Street and exceeded trading in stocks and bonds. "In presidential races such as 1896, 1900, 1904, 1916, and 1924, the New York Times, Sun, and World provided nearly daily [betting] quotes from early October until Election Day," write Rhode and Strumpf. The papers' sources were betting firms, which had men present at speeches made by the candidates in order to make "unbiased reports of the psychological reactions of the audiences." In the fifteen elections between 1884 and 1940, the betting firms were wrong just once, in 1916, when Wilson upset Hughes. And the gamblers might have had a perfect record had the Curb Market stayed open long enough to take into account late-breaking news from the West. The advent of polls marked the end of an era. "Prior to Gallup's introduction in 1936, newspapers had little else to report about the election horserace other than the betting markets," Strumpf said. "When scientific polls came along, newspapers had something to report other than markets they were oftentimes uncomfortable with." Responding to such discomfort, state laws increasingly limited organized election betting. Betting persisted, but in the shadows. Accordingly little data exists from 1940 through 1984, though it's enough that Strumpf concludes gamblers were more accurate than the pollsters in that period too. The advent of internet wagering offers a clearer picture: "Since 1988, the betting markets have definitely been more accurate," Strumpf said. It's still illegal for United States citizens to wager on the presidential election; Betfair and Intrade try to bar American bettors. Several newer off-shore sites are more lenient, however. Currently, Betfair lists Barack Obama as an overwhelming 1-7 favorite (paying $8 for a $7 winning bet). A John McCain win would pay $6.80 for every dollar bet. "On Election Night I'll look at the movement on the betting sites to see what's going on," Strumpf says. "I watch CNN too, out of the corner of an eye, but it's not necessary." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomso...o_b_140181.html