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Don’t miss a word of it, folks.

Ron Paul’s official website for the 2008 campaign

Ron Paul’s page at the US House of Representatives

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Anecdotal Note: At the 39th minute in the video, a “libertarian” Googler mentions the InTrade price of the Ron Paul event derivative.

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Ron Paul to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008

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Static chart:

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In my view, it’s wrong that NewsFutures excludes Ron Paul from listing him as a candidate for the Republican nomination. This is a shame, Emile Servan-Schreiber.

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Caveat Bettor liked the section of Emile Servan-Schreiber’s blog post about the NewsFutures prediction markets plebisciting French Republican presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, whereas the spin doctors and journalos’s sentiment was 50/50 or favoring his Socialist opponent (the woman).

It’s true. The TV debate was on Wednesday. And on Friday morning, the first post-debate polls were given to the journalos. I listened to some French radios that Friday morning. It was like the sky was falling onto those leftist journalos’ heads. They were stunned to see that, post-debate, it was a 55/45 race —in spite of all their efforts to cheer up the Socialist candidate after the debate.

UPDATE: Mike Giberson has a comment below and on his blog, Knowledge Problem.

The two-sentence excerpt run by NBC News (Brian Williams – Thursday, May 17, 2007):

They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.

And then Alan Greenspan’s spouse cut Ron Paul abruptly to give air time to Rudy Giuliani, who caricatured Ron Paul’s views and crashed him like he was aiding and abetting a Mid-East terrorist or something.

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What Ron Paul really said:

They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East [for years]. I think (Ronald) Reagan was right. We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. Right now, we’re building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting.

Ron Paul:

I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there. I mean, what would we think if we were – if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

I am happy to see that both Donald Luskin (“in all seriousness”) and Pat Buchanan (who views him as a “serious” contender) like Ron Paul’s ideas. See the “Ron Paul 2008″ site for their reaction.

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- Ron Paul on CNN responding to Rudy Giuliani

- Ron Paul on Blowback

- Please, give me the name of the Republican presidential candidate for 2008.

- Plesase, give me the name of the next President of the United States of America.

Just the names. Not your reasoning. Just the names. I need that to go speculating on betting exchanges. Be elliptic. Just the names. That’s all I need.

http://the-ts-maven.blogspot.com/ – The TradeSports Political Maven

Psstt… And I told you ten times: Don’t talk about your activity in your brand name; Choose a brand name that has nothing to do with what you do.

The commonly observed drop-off in predictiveness when prediction market odds are above 90 or below 10 could be partly due in part to the participants’ lack of incentive to push the odds further towards the end points. The fact that we mostly use percentage odds may also contribute: with whole number percentages, you can’t express odds more extreme than 99:1, with tenths, you can express up to 999:1. BetFair’s use of odds rather than percents may actually be an advantage here. (I usually complain that I find betting odds opaque; the increased resolution at the ends of the spectrum may be worth the confusion.)

With all due respect to Chris Hibbert, I disagree. BetFair uses digital odds —I don’t get what Chris Hibbert calls “tenths”. There’s a perfect equivalent between percentage odds and digital odds: you take “1″, you divide it by the BetFair digital odds (be sure to catch the “last price”, which you will find deep inside by clicking on the individual prediction market link), and you get your percentage odds.

Last price matched for Hillary Clinton being the Democratic Presidential Candidate: 2.10 — 1 / 2.10 = 47.6%

Last price matched for John McCain being the Republican Presidential Candidate: 2.36 — 1 / 2.36 = 42.4%

If percentage odds and digital odds are perfectly equivalent, I don’t see why one format would be qualitatively superior to the other format. But maybe I didn’t get something in Chris Hibbert’s argument —did I?