OPINION UPGRADES, LITTLE VIALS AND TRITE COMMENTS ON AVERAGES

Be still, my heart.  Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama this morning.  It changes how I feel about him.

Oh, by "him" I do not mean Barack Obama.  I mean Colin Powell.

Let me be clear.  I think Colin Powell is a craven lone wolf with few real core values beyond "whatever makes me look good."  Locked in my mind forever will be the picture of that little white vial in his hand with the CIA director perched over his shoulder, prattling on about conduit being evidence of WMD's.  The moral corruption and intellectual dishonesty  in that is as real to me today as it was that day.  By recognizing that the President did hard things in hard times, he goes from a two on my personal ten scale to maybe a 2.5.

On another topic, you probably already know that RealClearPolitics is running the averages of all the polls in the Presidential Election.  There are so many things wrong with this approach, a skilled stathead could write a long book on just this topic.  The only new thing to be said in that regard is that as we introduce tracking polls, they are already, by their nature, averages.  Thus RCP is now giving us averages of averages.

Polling average is a crude tool.  I compare it to OPS in baseball.  Nothing more than a good first look.

Yes, any discussion of average polling data is........trite.  I'll go breathe into a brown paper bag now