Akkam’s Razor

I’ve long wondered how our country’s recent obsession with gambling and card games would affect our society, politics, and business. With my cursory understanding of the games, I suppose it may have taught players a little about ‘reading’ non-verbal tells, deducing whether someone was bluffing, and maybe a cursory lesson in statistics regarding probability and game theory. Indeed, when looking at recent political discussion, the phrase “double-down” has been seen over and over.

[Doubling Down] is a bet that can be placed if the player thinks that with only one more card drawn he will be able to beat the dealer. After the Double Down bet is taken the player is allowed one more card only, and then has to stand.

McCain has a history of gambling, and for the most part, those gambles have paid off.

He appears to have doubled-down yet again, holding nothing more than 3 POW cards and 2 Queens.

I really haven’t had the chance to synthesize my thoughts on the Palin pick, but the prevailing wisdom across the pundit class is that “she’s not ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency”, that the McCain campaign appears to not have properly vetted her on a variety of issues, aside from ideological purity and wishful thinking in regards to peeling off both the horny-white-male vote, the soccer-mom-milf vote, the disgruntled-PUMA vote, evangelicals, partisan Astroturf activists, wingnut bloggers, creationists, and talk radio big mouths, with the political pundits, policy experts, and career government types going unsatisfied or scratching their heads.

It may be a mavericky veep choice by a maverick candidate, but she has run afoul of a great many of traditional allies such as the Alaskan GOP machine, unimpressed the press and pundits - even reliable conservatives, and is a literal unknown to a great many Republicans.

If anything, this reflects more poorly on McCain rather than her lack of bonafides.  He chose to double-down on instead of making a serious and sober choice (as Biden was) to gamble on his maverick image and to once again select a beauty queen, hoping to steal some attention solely on the grounds of identity politics.  Even today, the McCain team is trekking off to Alaska to ‘investigate’ Troopergate - the intimation being that they had not properly vetted Palin.  It is noteworthy to mention that McCain only (maybe) met her once - I wonder which of his lobbyists advanced her name?

I simply cannot see her being the nominee by the end of the convention.