Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.

When the Senate Dems. all started patting Lieberman on the back last month the common line was - things were said in the heat of the campaign, now we need to move on.

So everybody picked sides, dug-in, and generally acted like assholes to one another. Hey, that's politics, but now we're going to let bygones be bygones and all be friends again.

So why is Lieberman still writing Op-Eds with John McCain and Lindsey Graham? I understand the debacle in Iraq is still in full-swing, but it seems like mixed messages are being sent with that. As I've mentioned before, it's my opinion that politicians should pick their friends carefully as they will be judged by the actions of the whole caucus.

If this is not a case of keeping your friends close but keeping your enemies closer, I'd recommend the Dems tread carefully with this alliance.


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p.s. - for some good lulz, check out the first line of the article

it is clear that what was once unthinkable there is now taking place: A stable, safe and free Iraq is emerging.

I'm pretty sure none of those three ever admitted that the prospect of a "stable, safe and free Iraq" was unlikely, let alone unthinkable.

Stats don't lie

Data can be misinterpreted, but it never lies. Quality interpretation usually leads to plenty of "I told you so's" while poor interpretation be it intentionally, ignorantly, or just through bias, either gets ignored, qualified (there was no way to foresee that happening), or posthumously changed.

Faux News usually provides great examples of poor performance. Remember all the calls from them that McCain was "closing the gap" from 7 points behind Obama in the days preceding the election? The final results left Obama 53%-46%, dead on the 7 points predicted by most reputable sources.

On the other side, two of my favorite sources through the election were Electoral-Vote.com and FiveThirtyEight.com, both of which only missed Indiana and the Omaha district of Nebraska (FiveThirtyEight did not make a prediction for Missouri) in their pre-election predictions.

Maps from Electoral-Vote.com and FiveThirtyEight.com (respectively):


And the final map (from CNN.com):



Regardless of what the naysayers conclude about the illegitimacy of polls, a quality interpretation of the data will yield a correct result, as demonstrated by E-V.com and 538.com.