The White House briefing room can be a surprisingly jolly place. Like any workplace, there are running jokes, nicknames, petty rivalries and a whole host of other topics that regularly prompt genial laughter from the cheap seats. Under Press Secretary Tony Snow, however, it's a regular Ha-Ha Hole. Since Snow came into the job last May, he's been interrupted by laughter over 250 times. This compared to Scott McClellan, whose entire tenure (2003-2006) saw just over 700 titters. Snow entertains with style, too, a showman who banters as well as cracks wise. These are some of his greatest hits.

June 17, 2006

Q A comment on the President's use of a word that some people might consider to be an expletive?

MR. SNOW: Not unless you've never used it.

Q Damn.

July 5, 2006

Q Would this -- let me just follow up. Would this to become a constitutional amendment, what legally then happens to those 8,000-plus same-sex couples? Are their marriages annulled?

MR. SNOW: That would have to require keener legal expertise than mine. I don't want to try to --

Q So the President doesn't know what would happen to them?

MR. SNOW: No, the press secretary doesn't know.

[...]

Q Second, The New York Times has just reported, "This White House, like all White Houses, is obsessed with the press." My question, will you admit to this alleged obsession, or is this just one more New York Times exaggeration?

MR. SNOW: It's more a love affair than an obsession.

June 17, 2006

Q Has any member of the administration spoken to you about the CIA leak case?

MR. SNOW: Yes.

Q Who?

MR. SNOW: I'm not going to tell you.

August 15, 2006

Q Tony, former President Clinton told ABC News in an interview there this morning that, "While I don't think the foiling of that London bomb plot has any bearing on our Iraq policy, they seem anxious to tie to al Qaeda. If that's true, how come we've got seven times as many troops in Iraq as in Afghanistan? Why is the administration and congressional leadership consistently opposed to adequate checks on cargo containers in ports and airports? I think Republicans should be very careful in trying to play politics on the airport thing --

MR. SNOW: Can you hand me that quote when you're done, because I think this one needs some parsing. So you hand that to me, and we will deconstruct, all right? (Laughter.) You have it marked up for me?

Q The bottom of the first --

MR. SNOW: Okay, "I don't think the foiling of the London bomb plot has any bearing on our Iraq policy." Fair enough. "They seem to be anxious to tie it to al Qaeda." I think Bill Plante will tell you that's not true.

Q Well, I don't know that it's not true. I only know what you told me. (Laughter.)

MR. SNOW: Well, I'm telling you the truth. But the fact is, as a public matter, we haven't done it, which leads to a series, therefore, of non sequiturs that are tied to a fallacious premise. The fact is that --

Q Oooh --

MR. SNOW: Well, it is. I'm sorry, but go take a logic class.

Q We're in it. (Laughter.)

MR. SNOW: Exactly.

June 23, 2006

Q Tony, notwithstanding all of that, there is a perception in some quarters --

MR. SNOW: Like here. (Laughter.)

Q -- that when you combine the revelations about the NSA programs, when you combine this with that, and --

MR. SNOW: Okay, well, let me --

Q Well, let me just finish. One other perception that many have, many do have, which is that they cannot count on their privacy rights from the government, it's government intrusion.

MR. SNOW: The perception seems to be more limited to -- with all due respect -- to members of the press corps.

October 20, 2006

Q Webster's has "tactics" as: the way you implement strategy.

MR. SNOW: Well, Webster's and I agree on this one, Jim. (Laughter.)

Q Okay. And I'm sure that comes as great comfort to Webster's.

MR. SNOW: Old Daniel has been gone a while, but I'm sure his heirs and assigns are happy.

Q Here's the question -- under these definitions, is --

Q It's Noah.

MR. SNOW: Oh, that's right, Noah, thank you.

Q Noah Webster.

MR. SNOW: Noah, thank you. I'm glad I'm here. You guys keep me honest. I'm sorry, Jim.

Q I should have gone with Funk and Wagnall's. (Laughter.)

July 3, 2006

Q I'm talking about the debate on the Hill, and so forth, where you accuse everybody of cutting and running if they want to pull out of the --

MR. SNOW: Wait a minute. I don't believe that phrase has ever been used from this podium. People have -- no, I mean --

THE PRESS: Hmmm.

September 13, 2006

Q How about an emotional or factual response to the Rhode Island primary yesterday?

MR. SNOW: The Republican incumbent won. Woo-hoo.

August 2, 2006

Q Is that what they teach you in spin school?

MR. SNOW: No, no. Unfortunately I missed spin school. I pay a price for that from time to time, but --

Q Now he's just a professor.

MR. SNOW: That's right. (Laughter.) I'm self-taught.

By David Weigel

Tomorrow most of Washington will be proven completely, hilariously wrong, unless they had the sense to say nothing. A selected few will have guessed correctly, but most of the pundits who modeled and wargamed the elections across the media will have their predictions blown to bits by actual voters. When the polls close, they'll be exposed for the hacks they are.

And on Wednesday? They'll go back to work.

Political experts don't suffer a bit when they make a prediction that goes wildly wrong. Think James Carville calling Democratic victories in 2002 and 2004 and being retained by CNN. Think Fred Beltway Boys Barnes, forseeing the incredible Rick Santorum comeback behind his crossed arms. Even pollsters can brush off their bad calls; John Zogby called the 2004 elections for Kerry on election day, and was punished with a lucrative contract polling for the Wall Street Journal.

Since the pundit class doesn't stand to lose anything from the elections, online election pools -- organizations like InTrade and the Iowa Electronic Markets -- are coming back into focus as a reliable way -- maybe the most reliable way -- of judging who's going to win. Unlike pundits, traders (around 50,000 of them on InTrade and its TradeSports site alone) have to pony up when they've got an election hunch. Unlike pundits, traders suffer for their mistakes.

There's not much to the election trading sites. InTrade, launched in 2000, offers contracts on a 100-point (and $100) scale; the higher a bid (and price), the more likely bettors say that candidate's going to win the election. Take the example of a race that was wrapped up months ago. Hillary Clinton's chances of retaining her Senate seat are a 99 bid. Former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer (the New York GOP's in great shape, isn't it?) is given practically no chance of upsetting her -- he has a 0.4 bid. It's less evocative than the ways Dan Rather used to handicap elections, but it's a rock-solid call for a race no one is following.

That's why election bettors are taken seriously, even as they fly under the radar this cycle. In 2004, the conservatives at National Review watched the numbers on TradeSports to cut through the murk of October polls showing John Kerry regaining momentum in the presidential race. On the afternoon of October 15, NR economics contributor Donald Luskin let out a Janet Leigh shriek when Bush futures plummeted from 54 bid to 10. Luskin saw the gnarled hand of George Soros at work; InTrade only admitted that a prank-prone bettor had decided to sell off a record amount of futures.

But the online bettors got the rest of the 2004 campaign spot-on. When Bush and Kerry met for their first debate, pundits didn't immediately agree that the president lost. On Tradesports, bettors were dropping Bush like an arsenic ice cream cone. It soon came out that Karl Rove had known Kerry won the debate; the Bush campaign spinners were actively lying, and half the pundits were lapping it up. Advantage: Guys on the Internet.

Of course, election betting predates InTrade by more than a century. Bookies in New York's Curb Exchange (before they moved to Wall Street) were taking bids on the Benjamin Harrison-Grover Cleveland deathmatch back in 1888. The 1916 Wilson-Hughes election (the narrowest re-election of an incumbent president until Bush-Kerry) set a record for election betting that won't be matched this year: $158 million, adjusted for inflation. InTrade saw $15 million change hands in 2004, and a bit less is going to be spent this year. But the traders of 2006, in addition to being smarter than our pundits, might be the smartest class of election predictors in the sport's long history.

The current group of traders have the best information of any bettors in the history of the game; they're geographically spread out, they have access to reams of data, and they can see the media campaigns of candidates working their magic (or falling completely flat) when they flip on their TVs. They go online and see poll aggregators like Electoral-Vote.com and Election Projection, which put up each new survey from House and Senate races. And because there are so many traders betting on each race, one or two hardcore partisans can't move the numbers very far -- 2004's Sorosgate was the exception that proves the rule.

Since the two parties have gotten better at spinning their campaigns (well, at least the Republicans have), the "hivemind" effect of the trading pits has been the best guide of which breaking news and scandals actually have an effect, and which are hot air. Before the Mark Foley scandal broke, traders took stock of increased Republican optimism around the country and decent polls for most GOP candidates and priced the "Republican Party 2006 Mid Term Election Control" futures up over 80 (for Senate) and around 58 (for House). When the scandal leaked, Republicans and conservative pundits (and bloggers) did their best to explain it away, even pushing a conspiracy theory that had the notoriously fiendish, well-organized Democrats coordinating the scandal and hoping their slime wouldn't be exposed. But the news sent traders scrambling, driving futures for the House under 40 bid. After Speaker Dennis Hastert's inspiring, Saint Crispin's Day-like statements on the scandal, some pundits pronounced the scandal over. TradeSports introduced a new pool: "Democratic Pickups in the House of Representatives." Listen to talk radio today and you'll be informed that Republicans are mounting a comeback. But traders, unlike radio hosts, haven't been personally spun by the White House. And they're not changing their bets.

Online election pools aren't infallible. On Election Day 2004, when leaked network exit polling hinted at a big Kerry victory, traders rushed online to short Bush futures. But it made sense for bettors to soak up data like that -- it wasn't campaign spin or favorable polling, but surveys of people who'd just left the polling booths. The traders aren't only following the news that helps the Pelosi Party or the party of Bush. They just want to make some easy money. And that's why you can trust them.

David Weigel is an assistant editor of Reason magazine. He recently wrote about George Allen for Political Bite.

by Ana Marie Cox

Perhaps you've heard about John Kerry telling young people to get an education lest they "get stuck in Iraq." Classic elitist liberal stereotyping. (Public relations officials will assure you that the new "Army Strong" slogan is ironically ungrammatical. Like, uhm, the Star Trek intro.) Today, that comment was met today with an indignant response from the White House, saying, "Senator Kerry not only owes an apology to those who are serving, but also to the families of those who've given their lives in this." Kerry responded with this:

"This is the classic GOP playbook. I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did. I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium."

Well, that's both articulate and legitimate. A strong defense that turns the tables on the White House and redirects attention to their weaknesses.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE REAL JOHN KERRY?

John McCain, whose Marine son is likely to serve in Iraq, called for Kerry to apologize and explained that the

suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq, is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night.

Without them, we wouldn't live in a country where people securely possess all their God-given rights, including the right to express insensitive, ill-considered and uninformed remarks.

Thoughtful, measured, dispassionate... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE REAL JOHN MCCAIN?

Next you'll be telling us that McCain plays drinking games with Hillary Clinton or John Kerry thinks he can run for President again!

UPDATE: Well, this is less of a surprise and more like a genuine 2004 flashback: The President himself will be addressing the issue. Imagine how thrilled the White House is to be talking about John Kerry again! At this point, the administration is so desperate to talk about ANYTHING but Iraq proper, they're probably hoping someone gives Mark Foley a laptop.

A couple of more unusual things about this move. First, the White House sent out Bush's statement on Kerry prior to his giving, "as prepared for delivery," which is usually the kind of thing they do for MAJOR EVENT, not a campaign stop in Georgia. Second, they go through the trouble name John Kerry, which must be nice for him.

As for the Democrats, well, it's not like Kerry will lose any more supporters...

The remarks themselves:

I cannot tell you how proud I am to be the Commander-in-Chief of such incredibly brave men and women who have volunteered to wear the uniform of the United States. And even in the midst of a heated campaign season, there are still some things we should all be able to agree on -- and one of the most important is that every one of our troops deserves our gratitude -- and respect. Yesterday Democrat Senator John Kerry was speaking to a group of young people in California, and gave them this advice, quote: "You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't you get stuck in Iraq."

The Senator's suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and shameful. Our troops did not enlist because they did not study hard in school or do their homework. The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer Armed Forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots – and Senator Kerry owes them an apology.

Whatever party you belong to, whatever you think about the war in Iraq, we should all agree that our troops deserve our unwavering support. And when it comes to supporting our men and women in uniform, I don't have any doubt where Mac Collins is going to land. He is a strong supporter of the military. And he knows what I know: Any time you have American troops in harm's way, they have the right to expect the full support of the American government.

by Ana Marie Cox

How long is "an eternity in politics"? According to news coverage of these midterms, it's anywhere from "five weeks" to "overnight" with stops along the way at "thirty days," "thirteen days" and "a week." Most of these confident mismeasurements of time came from Republicans, eager to remind critics and reporters that however bleak their future looks now, they have some negative ads still left run and, to rack up another hoary cliche, "the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day." (I think Gallup does it.)

There's one slice of that eternity that has a very specific length: "The 72 Hour Project." Perhaps you've heard of it. The GOP's finely-honed strategy for turning out its core constituency has become the favored talking point for party hacks and journalists alike, to the extent there is a difference. The Republicans talk it up in order to give some semblance of justification for the confidence displayed by party leaders. For the Democrats, it's a mantra to prevent excessively early drape purchases. The press, on the other hand, invokes it like a sports announcer begging an audience not to change the channel during a blow-out game.

The ostensible point of debate is whether the 72-hour strategy will work (fueled by rumors of low enthusiasm among conservatives) but the debate might turn into how much GOTV (as "get out the vote" is know in acronym-happy punditopolis) will really matter. This cycle has seen an unprecedented number of absentee ballots requested and cast, mostly due to states eliminating the requirement that voters have a reason to vote absentee. In Montana, where Democrat John Tester has been trying to eke out a Senate victory against incumbent Republican Conrad Burns, nearly one out of six voters have requested absentee ballots. Polls have shown Burns pulling closer to Tester, a phenomenon some explain by saying Burns has been performing better lately (or at least not screwing up as much), but half of those absentee ballots have been cast, presumably back when Burns was still talking about his "little Guatamalan man" and taxi-driving terrorists. The same trend holds true in other states: In Maryland, voter concerns about new polling procedures (procedures that wrecked havoc during the primary elections) have spurred a push for absentee ballots as well. More than 152,000 have been ordered, about ten thousand more than were cast in the 2004 presidential election. How much will Republican Senate candidate's Michael Steele's appearance on "Meet the Press" Sunday matter to the voters who just remember him as a Bush shill? Similar trends across the country (in Iowa, Democrat absentee ballots have come in at a rate of two-to-one) suggest that Republican fears about voters not going to the polls are accurate but misdirected: Clearly, a significant proportion of the base will not be showing up Nov. 8, but it's the Democratic base and it's only because they already voted.

Conservative pundits have not quite appropriated absentee ballots as a talking point, though John Fund may have given a preview of post-election spin with his Wall Street Journal column today. Without going into specifics about how absentee ballots tend to favor Democrats, he warns darkly about their dangers. "It's so easy to cheat you'd be surprised who's been caught at it," he says, and absentee voting "corrupts the secret ballot." As if that weren't bad enough, they fail to "[f]oster the communal aspect of citizens voting together." (Is that what's supposed to make up for the way that campaigning tears us apart?) Anyway, if it's true that in this election cycle, Republicans have been acting like Democrats, absentee ballots are the new Diebold.

And, obviously, they completely mess with how long an eternity is. But Republicans have been having some trouble with temporal relations for quite some time -- just look at how long we've been in Iraq, where, I'm sure, a week really does feel like an eternity.

A conservative blog is claiming that "Democrats" planted a "forged" RNC anti-Harold Ford ad specifically to gin up allegations of racism. What's the phrase again? "Interesting, if true"? (Not entirely SFW, btw...)

You have to hear the boom-changa-changa porn soundtrack to really appreciate it, but here's the transcript:

(begins 'Paid for by the Republican National Committee')

(interspersed with photos of white women with black men)

Senate candidate Harold Ford Junior
thinks he's suitable to represent the values of Tennessee.

But while he may act pure as driven snow
this boyish young hustler has dark passions
even attending a hard-core pornography party

where girls stripped practically naked
to be leered at by Harold Ford Junior
and his virile posse of bachelor thugs.

Is this an example for Tennessee's children?

It's so brilliantly hamfisted I can't believe Democrats are actually behind it. Perhaps a Rove-ian triple head-fake? (Planting evidence to make it look like your opponent is planting evidence?) Then again, it is pretty hamfisted...

UPDATE: I "guess" I did not "use" enough "scare" "quotes" to indicate that this ad is, indeed, the work of Democrats... Though it's not "exactly" "subterfuge."