Nate Silver Says The Health Care 'Reform' Bill Will Pass

Mr. fivethirtyeight.com knows a balk from a beanball,so I guess it will. If I understand the politics of the thing, I hope it will.

Overall, the safe and sensible assumption is that the bill is in the 80-90 percent likelihood range for moving to the President's desk and becoming law.

Nate Silver Makes Me Feel Better about a 'Compromised' Health Care Bill

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Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill

Could he be right? He invites critique in his "comments," so I'll keep an eye on that. If gravity can bend light, certainly my hatred for Joe Lieberman can distort my understanding of so complicated an endeavor as health care reform. We are a self-declared right-of-center country.

The kids may change it, but today we have to live with it.

Life is Not Smooth. It is Filled with Kinks, Which Makes It a Marvelous Spectator Sport

Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight political numbers guru, who some of us were previously acquainted with because of his esoteric work with baseball statistics, explains today that he became interested in politics only a couple of years ago. Turns out he was supplementing his baseball numbers-crunching biz by playing poker online for money.

This online gaming came to the attention of Congressional bluenoses. They concocted a bill to stop it, which they velcroed to the bottom off an unrelated bill.

(F)ollowing the debate over the (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 ) was one of the primary motivators that got me into politics. It took a "dirty trick" -- attaching it to an unrelated conference report that couldn't possibly be voted down -- to get (it) to become law, although then again, this was undertaken partly in response to another "dirty trick", which was the process of anonymous holds that was preventing the bill from coming to a floor vote in the Senate (where it would probably have passed on its own merits). I found the whole process of watching the sausage getting made alarming -- but also utterly fascinating. Without poker -- and without that bill -- there probably wouldn't have been any FiveThirtyEight.

What did Hamlet say? By indirections we find directions out? If I hadn't taken an education class my junior year of college that involved observing an eighth grade classroom once a week and if I hadn't been afraid of eighth graders as a result, I would never have applied to grad school, which I did not to pursue a career but to avoid having to begin one for as long as I could.

And if E. hadn't missed supper that same year and asked me to drive to the Outpost Cafe to pick up a little something for her to eat -- and thus tipped the balance between hesitation and yearning with which I regarded her -- I might never have *claimed my reward* for fetching that meal (the reward being a date to go to the movies).

I'm not saying everything in life is contingent, just more than we think. I don't believe in destiny, you see, that soporific compounded of vanity and excuse.

I don't believe in luck either, but I know it when I see it.

Little O Meets Big O: I'd Like Some of That Sugar, Also

From Baseball Prospectus, where Nate Silver once roamed.

The White Sox learned this past week that it's good to have fans in high places, as they received a private tour of the White House this past Monday during an offday between road series with the Rays and Orioles. President Barack Obama, of course, is a big White Sox fan.

White Sox reliever Octavio Dotel seemed to have the best time of all while meeting Obama, and he even asked for and received a hug from the President. "This is a guy I've been following," Dotel said. "It's exciting to see him. He's such a powerful man. I never met him before, and it's really, really neat to be around him. Just to be that close to him and have that chance, I saw the opportunity to ask for a hug. He said, 'of course.' That was really nice of him."

The White Sox brought Obama plenty of gifts, including a black White Sox jersey with his name and the number "1" on the back, a dozen autographed baseballs, t-shirts, and caps. The White Sox also were allowed to see some parts of the White House that aren't shown on public tours. "We got to see everything," Dotel said. "All we needed to see is where he lives. I'm telling you, it was great. He knows a lot about us. He's a big fan. I can tell he really enjoyed [the visit]."

The Brilliance That is Nate Silver

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If Texas exercised its right to break up into five states -- which right, unlike secession, it actually has -- this is what Silver says it might look like, and this is how such a split might affect national politics.

Don't Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the ... Already Perfect

I've read this and heard this already, but Nate Silver is the one I'll quote. He said that yesterday he was distressed because Obama's speech was not more "joyous and celebratory." though he feels better today. All I can respond is that a somber, thoughtful and by any measure *eloquent* speech was appropriate in the moment.

My wife and I and, I wager, a strong majority of Americans were already joyous and celebratory. The fact of Obama's election is something from which one almost fears one might wake up. I think of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes:

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

My friends, I thought the election of a man with such a name and such a pedigree in such a country at such a moment in our history was impossible. Who was optimist enough to put it in the category of "improbable"?

Hope and joy were a given yesterday morning. Obama had the wisdom not to wallow in our ecstasy. Had he gone in for poetry he might have permanently damaged my health, to wit:

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.