Privilege meme -- answers

In a goose/gander way...

This is based on the original paper (NB: MS Word .DOC format), by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Indiana State University. So the questions are slightly different from what's been floating on LJ.

Note that this was originally a college class exercise, where if one of the questions below applied to you, you were to take a step forward, while being able to see your classmates.

Bold are ones that apply to me. Italics are ones that don't. Regular is my commentary.

( Cut for length and eccentric formatting... )

Obama's acceptance speech in Iowa

Hits just about all the right notes, from my point of view. "We are not a collection of red states and blue states, we are the United States of America, and in this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again."

My only quibble: I wish he'd left the misuse of "enormity" out.

*^*^*

Josh Marshall strikes again

His thoughts on the Republican side of Iowa:

"The truth is that the Republican party tonight is in complete disarray. The best financed candidate just fell on his face. Their big winner of the evening is opposed by almost the entire establishment of his party. The frontrunner of recent months is lost down in Florida shakily repeating '9/11' under his breath like a hobo who needs a stiff drink."

Market ironies

Thing I just noticed:

Having been known to have small-l libertarian sympathies, I look in sometimes at the Iowa Electronic Markets, especially their presidential nomination market. Because markets can be accurate, sometimes, and even when they're not, it's a giggle.

Here's the irony:

This is the graph for the Republican nomination. Ron Paul isn't tracked on his own, because he's never been viable enough. To invest in a Paul nomination, you have to put your coin on "RROF_NOM", which is the symbol for the Republican Rest Of Field.

As you can see in the graph, Rest Of Field currently places fifth.

So the free market has spoken: Ron Paul, go home.