"Can't vote for the brother?" "No, gotta vote for the sister!"

Much has been made about the fact that the late poll numbers -- both the independent polls and those conducted by the campaigns themselves -- were way off the mark on the Democratic side of yesterday's New Hampshire primary. The answer, it seems, is really quite simple.

It was not the Bradley effect. It was not a case of primary voters walking into the voting booth, closing that curtain and saying to themselves, "Here in the booth, alone with my thoughts, I cannot pull the lever/mark the box/whatever for the black man." [note: This is in contrast to the more public forum of the Iowa caucuses.]

So it was not a case of "can't vote for the brother." What it was, on the other hand, was a case of women going into the booth and thinking: "Gotta vote for the sister!!!" Simple as that.

I'll admit it: I've become an Obama supporter. Not a hugely strong one, but that's the button I would push were the Texas primary to be held today. I like his resume (community organizer, president of Harvard Law Review). I like the break with the past.

Realistically though, from a policy perspective, the differences are not huge. And, given the history, I can certainly understand the late Hillary vote. [It's not anything like voting for "one of your own" who's clearly a member of the "other side" -- the prospective "Condi effect" as it were.]

It's early -- and the beat goes on. As John Edwards said: "Two states down, forty-eight to go!"

Clearance Time!!!

For some strange reason, I get all the "offer" emails that NewsMax sends out. [I suspect at some point I signed up for one of their somewhat interesting financial newsletters -- from the "Gold bug" subsidiary].

They're having a big clearance on various items; it's an end of year thing.

The most startling thing I saw, however, was the "George W. Bush Mug" -- a list price of $14.95...and a clearance price of....wait for it... $.99!!!

Hmmm. Tells ya something...

Odd Synchronicity

I've always been fascinated by combinations of events that are totally unrelated, yet share a bit of a common theme. Today I had just such an experience.

Around noon time, I was sitting in my living room with CSPAN-2 on the television and my nearly ten month old doing his Robo-baby act on the floor. Two unrelated events, right? Nope.

The CSPAN-2 piece (it's Saturday, so it's BookTV) was a rather predictable Cato author with the rather predictable complaint about dastardly federal regulation of business. As is usually the case these days, the regulation that was drawing the ire of the author and his syncophants was Sarbanes-Oxley.

While all this was going on, Robo-baby was busy trying to stuff a little board book into the microwave of the little toy kitchen in the corner of the room -- with limited success. Finally, with virtually no fanfare, he gave up and moved on to the next little bit of discovery.

So there you have it: A baby boy trying to cook the books, failing and moving on and an august group of principled businessmen complaining that regulations were not allowing them to do the same thing.

Gotta wonder...