PolyScy | a Political Science blog

Nate Silver explains why unemployment (probably) won’t get to 10%:
Yup, two links to FiveThirtyEight in a week seem a little much, but I thought this article was too good to resist. This is a ballsy prediction, when even the White House is saying unemployment will top out above 10%. That said, Mr. Silver has a great track record, and is as close to a prognosticator as we have today, and so I tend to at least pay very close attention to what he says. Nate is calling it at around a 2:1 against 10% unemployment occurring, Intrade at essentially 2:1 for 10% unemployment occurring. I’d probably bet on Nate.

Guest Blogger Andrew Foley Over at Mightygodking on the Health Care Debate:
Andrew Foley (among others) is blogging at Mightygodking, a blog of diverse topics, and I’m not sure how they select who writes what, but from that metaphorical hat Andrew must have drawn Health Care. Instead of a dry dissertation on why Obamacare will either save or destroy America, he elected to go with humor. For anyone who is too damn tired to read another screed on this (admittedly important) topic, the above link will be as a cool drink to a man in the desert.

Chris Matthews Breaks Down Gun-Toting Town Hall Protestor:

I’ll let the video speak for itself, but I believe a mark against Chris in this interview is when he goes on a 20 second tangent, asking the protestor if he believes if President Obama is an American citizen by birth. It seemed inconsequential to my eyes, but the rest of the interview is great. Bringing guns to town hall meetings, as it turns out, is wrong.

The Full Text of the House Health Care Bill:
Not especially sexy, but we should probably all know what we are talking about. Its a long read.

Christopher Hitchens is a buzz kill (kinda):
Hitchen’s is usually an entertaining and thought-provoking read, and at least on the latter, he delivers in this article on why the U.S., and especially the Obama administration, fouled up the business of retrieving the two hostages of North Korea (Laura Ling and Euna Lee). That said, I feel he ignores, either knowingly or not, the upside of the operation: Laura Ling and Euna Lee are back in America, and not in North Korea. Hitchens’ thesis is that they were always going to be released, and that we should not have given Kim Jong Il what he wanted, namely, any modicum of legitimacy. I suppose whether this was a success or not depends on whether the freedom of these two women, in the mind of the reader, outweighs any perceived uptick in respectability in Kim Jong Il or North Korea.