Thin blue line back above thin red line

Just barely.

Health care and the finance system

Is it just me, or is the Bush administration's (and, I guess, the Republican Party's) stance on our finance system highly similar to its stance on our health care system? In both arenas, it favors a hands-off, free market approach, assuming that the invisible hand will take care of any problems that arise. When crises do arise (in the form of major bank failures or emergent illnesses), then it's okay for the feds to jump in. That is, federal intervention in the marketplace is only justified at the point when it's at its most expensive. Never mind that some modest regulations or federally-subsidized health insurance could help prevent some of those crises. It's far better to just let things go to hell and then have the government clean up the mess. After all, you can always bail out AIG or go to the emergency room.

Takes one to know one?

Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent backer of Hillary Clinton during the primaries, has announced that she is now supporting John McCain. Why?

“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

Okay. Wait, who is Lynn Forester de Rothschild?

Forester is the CEO of EL Rothschild, a holding company with businesses around the world. She is married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.

I see. But Obama's the elitist. Got it.

(h/t LGM)

Help us, IMF!

Did you know that the United States is getting a stability assessment from the International Monetary Fund? I heard this on NPR yesterday, and I'm surprised it's not getting more play. Some of the sources for the story say that it's not a big deal, that many wealthy nations have gone through this. But this strikes me as fodder for a political advertisement.

Seriously, the United States, home to the world's leading business schools and more economists than you can shake a stick at, has such a crappy financial system that we need guidance from the IMF to keep us from tanking.

Still Hardrock Palin

Yes, that's my new name, thanks to the Palin Baby Name Generator.

Gender gap: no VP effect

In anointing Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain was gambling that women voters will be more likely to vote Republican with the prospect of seeing a woman in the vice president's office. Does history bear this out?

Of course, we only have one case to look at: 1984's election, with Geraldine Ferraro as the Democrats' vice presidential nominee. Still, we can ask, was the gender gap wider in 1984? Did women cross party lines to support Ferraro? It doesn't look like it. The graph below shows the percent of men and women who voted Republican in each presidential election between 1948 and 2000:As the graph shows, the gender gap is a surprisingly recent phenomenon. It's only been occurring consistently and with any real strength since 1980. As for Ferraro, it doesn't look like she had much of an effect here. The gender gap in 1984 (7.6%) was exactly the same as it was in 1980, and was considerably smaller than it has been in recent elections.

Does this mean that Palin won't have such an effect? Hard to say with only one data point. And maybe things are different in a close election. But history still doesn't testify to much of a VP effect.

Palin and Clinton

Good stuff.