Intrade manipulation confirmed

Tim Jarret noticed this story before I did: the manipulation of the Intrade market to improve John McCain's standing has been confirmed. Tim has a couple of interesting insights about the situation, and I'll pop out a few bullet points of my own:

• Intrade has institutional investors? Bwa? That term must have a different meaning in this context, but I have no idea what it would be.
• A bunch of bloggers crowed about Obama's leap up on Intrade a few days ago, but what I saw was different: the Intrade market was simply allowed to catch up with the others.
• And therefore, the lack of McCainflation created a little bubble of baseless extra confidence and perhaps contributed to the Obama camp's anxiety that its supporters are growing complacent.
• But if that's true, why are Republican hacks so eager to make the case that McCain isn't so far behind after all?