Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

• The Stupidest Tweet in the History of All Twitter Ever Comes from Jonathan Martin of Politico: @jmartNYT: "Avert your gaze, liberals: Nate Silver admits he's simply averaging public polls and there is no secret sauce" Dylan Byers; "Nate Silver could be a one-term celebrity". The mind boggles when one tries to figure out just what Jonathan Martin, Dylan Byers, and company thought that Nate Silver and Sam Wang and company were doing… Did they never read them? I want suggestions, in comments, for what Byers, Martin, and company thought that Nate Silver was doing--preferably involving wizardry, time machines, and entrails...

• Is Mike Allen Really This Ignorant? Assessing Polls Weblogging: "Yesterday, two of the most widely followed polling analysts drew opposite conclusions about who has Big Mo: Nate Silver.... 'What isn’t very likely … is for one candidate to lose ground in five of six polls if the race is still moving toward him....' ABC’s Gary Langer popped his analysis of the latest ABC-WP tracking poll.... '[T]he momentum on underlying issues and attributes is Romney’s. Romney’s gains are clear....'" So how did Mike Allen get this pig-ignorant? How does he stay this pig-ignorant?

• For the File: Dylan Byers Scared S#$&less by Nate Silver: Dylan Byers, taking on the role of a villain from Moneyball: "Nate Silver: One-term celebrity?... Prediction is the name of Silver's game, the basis for his celebrity. So should Mitt Romney win on Nov. 6, it's difficult to see how people can continue to put faith in the predictions of someone who has never given that candidate anything higher than a 41 percent chance of winning… [and now] gives him a one-in-four chance… as the polls have him almost neck-and-neck with the incumbent…. [T]his may shock the coffee-drinking NPR types of Seattle, San Francisco and Madison, Wis… [but] more than a few political pundits and reporters, including some of his own colleagues, believe Silver is highly overrated..."

• Neil Newhouse Tells Romney Supporters They Can Calm Down: It's in the Bag!: TPM: "Romney Pollster Neil Newhouse: 'Obama has a political enviroment problem. He’s got an intensity problem. And he’s got an image problem. Put those together and they all add up to a challenging Tuesday next week. They are more important than the nearly-irrelevant fact that an extra 2.5% of Ohio's likely electorate favors him...'"

• Zeke Miller: Romney Campaign Uses Photoshop to Exaggerate Size Of Nevada Event: http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/romney-campaign-appears-to-exaggerate-size-of-neva

• A Message for John "Colin Powell Is Only Voting for Barack Obama Because He Is Black" Sununu...: Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkw8ip43Vk&ab_channel=donnchac

• Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?: Brendan Nyhan Muses on Why So Many Reporters Just Don't Do Their Jobs: "Politico beat a retreat in the great momentum debate of 2012.... Glenn Thrush and Jennifer Epstein['s]... dramatic about-face from a story... three days earlier (not ten!)... which... contrasted “a surging Romney” with a president who “is currently on the ugly end of Big Mo.” The new Politico story is also more accurate. The presidential race has been essentially static in the second half of October…"

• Why Hasn't National Review Apologized to Nate Silver for Josh Jordan, and Withdrawn Jordan's Article Yet?: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331192/nate-silver-s-flawed-model-josh-jordan

• Ezra Klein: "the momentum narrative is essentially a conspiracy between the two campaigns, as the Romney campaign sees a margin in making their voters more confident and the Obama campaign sees a margin in making their voters more anxious": http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/25/where-the-2012-presidential-election-is-right-now/

• Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?: Why Can't Karen Tumulty Do Her Homework Weblogging: If Karen Tumulty did her homework, she would know that a split electoral vote-popular vote decision is not a 50% probability but a 10% probability, and she would know that neither William Galston nor Mark Mackinnon is a reliable authority on this issue--or, indeed, on much of anything. But she doesn't. So she doesn't...

• John Podhoretz Badly Needs Some Better Friends than Fred Barnes...: Watch Fred Barnes snooker John Podhoretz in real time--and then watch Podhoretz get angry at those of us who point out to him that Barnes has snookered him https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz

• Nobody Has Any Business Voting for These Republicans II: Josh Dorner: "Things moving fast in Indiana: Pence throws Mourdock under the bus and now Pence's opponent accusing Pence of flip-flop on rape exception..."

• Good for McCain!: TPM: McCain Helps Push Romney’s Mourdock Headaches Into Day Two: http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/richard-mourdock-john-mccain.php

• Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? No, It Does Not Look Right Now as Though the Electoral College Is the Main Obstacle to a Romney Victory: Zeleny and Parker do not have access to any reliable sources of information than the rest of us do not. And the "election is 50-50 in the popular vote but the electoral college is likely to be an insurmountable obstacle for Romney" does not convey an accurate picture of the contest right now. Greg Sargent is grateful that they do not say "Romney has the momentum and is likely to win". Greg Sargent is grasping at straws--the soft bigotry of low expectations applied to New York Times reporters...

• Paul Krugman Watches Glenn Hubbard Deny the Macroeconomic Impact of the Financial Crisis Thrice: I share Paul's view: this is very bad indeed: Paul Krugman: "More Financial Crisis Denialism: I managed to avoid reading this Times profile of Glenn Hubbard until now. Wow…. Hubbard repeats what has now become the party line — that all deep recessions are the same, and that we should have had a V-shaped recovery from the crisis of 2008-2009, so that it’s all Obama’s fault.... Words fail me..."

• Sigh. Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?: Atlantic Monthly Edition: In the immortal words of the unforgettable Dan Quayle: How sad it is to lose your brain--or not to have a brain at all! How true this is! Adam Hanft's piece isn't as bad as their publishing Glassman and Hassett's "Dow 36000" and Easterbrook's bizarre claim that the U.S. experiences a catastrophic mega-meteorite impact every 1000 years. But this is bad...

• Tommy Thompson: "Who Better than Me to Do Away with Medicare and Medicaid?": TPM Editors say: "So Long, Tommy." The question is: are all these ex-moderate Republicans only now saying what they always wished they could say, or are they simply pandering to the Tea Party because theory are terrified of their party's base? In either case, Americans cannot afford to vote for even moderate Republican senators.

• Romney Surrogate Norm Coleman Assures Iowa Voters That Roe v. Wade Will Remain Law Of Land Under Romney: http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/norm-coleman-mitt-romney-roe-v-wade.php

• Mitt and Ann Romney: President Obama Is "Not a Grown-Up": I Don't Know About You, But Owning a Dancing Horse Speaks Loudly as Far as Arrested Childhood Is Concerned

• Mike Allen Looks at One Set of Polls and Says It "Could Be the Death of Mittmentum", But Refuses to Look at All Polls

• Dan Drezner: "Your humble blogger was innocently surfing the web yesterday when someone linked to Niall Ferguson's latest Newsweek column. Now even though I've warned everyone -- repeatedly -- not to go to there, I made the mistake of clicking": http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/31/has_the_time_come_for_op_ed_bracketology

And some chasers to fight the stupidity:

• Yes. Obama Won the Foreign Policy Debate. Why Do You Ask?: "I can't believe Romney went for that "1916" line. Doesn't he have any competent advisors at all?..."

• James Fallows: Obama Won the Last Debate Decisively: As a matter of performance... as one-sided a win for Obama.... As a matter of substance... on... no issue did Romney make an actual criticism, of any sort, of Obama's policy or record. Including topics where he used to disagree..."

• Steve Benen: The Death of Romney's Biggest Talking Point: "If I had a nickel for every time Mitt Romney has said the unemployment rate has been above 8% throughout the Obama presidency.... The unemployment rate... [is] 7.8%..."

• Martin Wolf: The Obama Administration Did a Good Job--and Stanford's John Taylor Is Doing a Bad One: "[W]e have no reason to regard the performance of the US economy under President Obama as poor, given the conditions he inherited.... The first question is whether Prof Taylor is comparing like with like. Against him is widespread agreement that the aftermaths of systemic financial crises are worse than those of more normal downturns.... The second question is whether speed of recovery is a good measure of success. The answer is: no..."

• It Look Like Mitt Romney Lied Under Oath on the Witness Stand About a Material Fact...: Perjury time, anybody? Callum Borchers: "Mitt Romney vouched for low price on Staples stock that traded 10 times higher a year later.... At the time the Stembergs split, Romney suggested, there was little indication that Staples’ value would soon skyrocket..."

• Fidel Castro: I Was Wrong to Tell Khrushchev to Obliterate the U.S.

• Suggested Mottos for Other Law Blogs: noncuratlex.com: "The Volokh Conspiracy: The Constitution May Not Endorse Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics, But We Do..."

• Jonathan Cohn: A Desperate, Deceptive Gambit for Romney in Ohio: Yes, Romney lies all the time. About everything. Why do you ask?

• Chris Blattman: "If you don’t become seriously anti-poverty when Jesus tells you, I’m not sure David Frum will make much of a difference": http://chrisblattman.com/2012/10/29/sentence-of-the-day-2/