And you are here why?

From Roger Stone - Trump's advisor, comes this gem on teh twitters Mr. Khan more than an aggrieved father of a Muslim son- he's Muslim Brotherhood agent helping Hillary https://t.co/mJuUYw60nK — Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) August 1, 2016 Note that while Stone left the Trump campaign last year, he is still deeply connected to Trump , and his business-partner of 30 years (Paul Manafort) is now Trump's campaign manager. At this stage, most political handbooks would say "Distance yourself from Stone", "Disavow his words", etc., but this is  Trump we are talking about.  As Ben Mathis-Lilly puts it maybe Trump  won't  try to distance himself from Stone. Maybe this is the response to Khizr Khan that Trump has decided to go with. At this point, would that really be all that surprising? (tweet, screen-capped below for posterity, in case it vanishes)

"Where are you from?" "Chicago" "No, where are you really from?" <pause, while I explore my options> "Chicago. Really. " <-- What I really believe. I mean, I've lived in Chicago longer than anywhere else in my life. Also, when I think "Home", I think "Chicago" "Chicago dumbass"  <-- What I'd like to say, but won't "Chicago, but I lived in New York before I moved to Austin" <-- Its true, but kinda elides the point. "Where are we all really from when you get down to it..."  <-- If I'm just cheesed off, and want to avoid this whole conversation <decision made.  Go with -1-> "Chicago. Really ". <at this point one of a couple of things happens> "Oh."  <-- Increasingly common these days.  Which is good.  Unless I'm talking to a RealAmerican™, in which case, in some very very rare circumstances,  "...

Fascinated by the papal election? Interested in the minutiae of the curia? Or maybe you're just wondering who gets to ride around next in the popemobile? Never fear, DataParadigms has the Pope Probability Tracker set up for you, all nice and shiny , with code on github and all.  As they put it Last week, I set up a scrapper to update the odds hourly from a prominent bookmaker. Given that I had a weeks worth of data, it was time to fire up   iPython   and see the action . The betting lines seem to have stabilized over the last few days. As we get closer and closer to   papal conclave   and the members of the remaining   Cardinal electors   arrive in Rome, the lines should show some movement. . The result is below ( go to the original for the up-to-date info ). And yes, I read " Angelo Scola " as " Anthony Scalia ", and it scared the pants off of me too...

From Wonkette Romney won because he was less stupid than Perry and Bachmann and more superstitious than Huntsman. Romney became the nominee the same way Ramen noodles become dinner: There’s nothing else around, and you have to pick something. And the Hot Pockets believe in evolution. Stroke of genius....

Dave Troy has a couple of fascinating charts showing voting patterns vs population density  from this election - and the results should be pretty alarming for Republicans. First, the election results (click to embiggen. A lot) Note that below 800 people per square mile, people vote Republican, but above it, people vote Democratic. (Ignore the x-axis scale changing at 190 - otherwise the chart would get huge ). Or, to put this slightly differently, any densely populated area will vote Democratic .  But, we pretty much knew this, i.e., your default election results tend to show that the sparsely populated states are all Red, and the highly populated states are all blue (with the rest somewhere in between) Looking at this a wee bit deeper though makes things a whole lot more interesting. I'll let Dave explain this himself Studying this graph, two important facts are revealed.   First, there are very few cities in red states. Second, the few dense cities th...