Irish Trojan in Tennessee

MacHEADS: The Movie

By Jay Johnson

Trailer for an upcoming film about the Mac community. Looks like fun.

Macheads - the movie (trailer)
Uploaded by brunogarattoni

A hypothetical election question...

By David K.

This one is geared mostly towards Republicans, but anyone can answer.

So assume either Hillary or Obama is the Democratic presidential nominee, under what circumstances (if any) would you vote for one or the other so you could later say you voted for the first "insert female/black" President? Would it take a landslide showing in the national polls? The fact that your state always votes one way or the other? Something else? Nothing else? Would it be easier if it were Hillary? Easier if it were Obama? Easier if it Al Sharpton? Easier if it were Weird Al?

McCain trounces Rudy, Mitt in CT poll

By Brendan Loy

According to a Hartford Courant poll, Arizona's John McCain is supported by 39% of likely GOP voters in Connecticut, well ahead of his rivals from bordering states, New York's Rudy Giuliani (16%) and Massachusetts's Matt Romney (11%).

Connecticut's 27 pledged GOP delegates are all awarded to the winner of the February 5 primary. The state has been considered prime "Rudy Country" -- along with neighboring New York (87 delegates) and New Jersey (52), both of which are also winner-take-all -- so this is definitely bad news for Rudy. (The latest New Jersey poll shows him 2 points behind McCain in the Garden State, and the latest New York poll shows the rivals in a dead heat in Giuliani's home state.)

On the Democratic side, it's Clinton 41%, Obama 27% and Edwards 9%. Per national party rules, Connecticut's Democratic delegates are awarded proportionally.

Why should blacks "unite" behind Obama?

By Brendan Loy

An article in Der Spiegel about the purported "end of the Obama revolution" contains a revealing bit of analysis that echoes a disturbing trend I've noticed in various folks' commentaries on the Democratic race: the assumption that we ought to expect black voters to be monolithically united behind Barack Obama, simply because he's a black man. Here's the snippet in question.

[Obama] hasn't managed to attract a strong following among older people and blue-collar workers. The majority of women find him interesting, but they support Hillary Clinton. The overwhelming majority of Hispanics are opposed to Obama, partly because he is black. Even African-Americans are not united in their support for Obama.

What's telling is the way the author, Gabor Steingart, chooses to characterize the various statistical realities that he's discussing. Women, he says, "support Hillary Clinton." Well, according to a CNN poll released on Saturday, Clinton is preferred by 54% of white women and 38% of black women. CNN doesn't give a combined total for all women, but presumably it's just barely above 50%. That's a "majority," true enough. Obama, meanwhile, has the support of 59% of blacks. That's a significantly larger majority than Clinton has among women. But the Steingart doesn't say that. Instead, he imposes on Obama some sort of "interest-group supermajority" rule, whereby getting almost three-fifths of the group in question is somehow a failure. This same rule is not applied to Clinton, however. Steingart doesn't say that "even women are not united in their support for Clinton."

Why not? Because there's no particular reason why they should be -- just as there's no particular reason blacks should be united behind Obama. Voters should choose whoever they believe is the best candidate, not necessarily the candidate who happens to share their skin tone or genitalia. Yet for some reason, there's an expectation that black Democrats ought to be 100% behind Obama, or nearly so, whereas no similar expectation exists for female Democrats and Clinton.

I understand that identity politics exists, and it isn't going away. And I'm not demanding that pollsters or the media ignore it. But there's no need to overemphasize it, or to twist and tweak the data to conform with a preconceived notion that everything is about race. We ought not automatically expect voters to make identity politics their #1 criterion, and act like something is necessarily amiss if they don't. ("Black voters aren't totally united behind Obama! He must be doing something wrong!") Particularly for those whose expectations have the power to help shape reality, i.e. the media, such potentially self-fulfilling assumptions are deeply corrosive to our political discourse.

UPDATE: Condor comments that the German-to-English translation may be to blame for some of the offending phraseology.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Actor Heath Ledger has been found dead in a Manhattan apartment, New York police tell CNN.

And the nominees are...

By Victoria Lopez

Academy Award nominations were announced early this morning.  Since I will obviously be losing Brendan's annual Academy Awards pool (a little history on the curse here), this information is pretty useless to me, but some of you might be interested. ;)

Best Motion Picture:

Atonement (2007)  

Juno (2007) 

Michael Clayton (2007) 

No Country for Old Men (2007) 

There Will Be Blood (2007) 

Best Actress/Actor nominations after the jump.

Fred, we hardly knew ye

By Brendan Loy

The Associated Press is reporting that Thompson is out.

UPDATE: You can read Fred's statement here.

"That's it?" writes NRO's David Freddoso.

NDLS launches new & improved website

By Brendan Loy

Notre Dame Law School has a new, completely revamped website. "It's amazing," writes Derek, who tipped me off to the redesign. I haven't had the chance yet to look around very much, but I thought I'd pass the news along.

111,111 miles

By Brendan Loy

Another milestone for the Camry!

I figured I'd better capture this one, because somehow I don't think it'll make it to 222,222. :)

Jericho episodes leaked

By Brendan Loy

The first three episodes of Season 2 of Jericho have been leaked onto the Interwebs.

Jericho, you may recall, was cancelled after Season 1, then resurrected thanks to a nutty Internet fan campaign.

The seven-episode second season, which has two possible endings -- one for if CBS renews it again, one for it they don't -- officially debuts on February 12 at 10:00 PM on CBS.

Naptime for Bill Clinton

By Rebecca Loy

This'll help Hillary get the black vote in South Carolina:

Poor Bill. I can totally relate to sleep deprivation. :)

(Hat tip: Perez Hilton.)

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

The Fed, confronted with recession fears, cut a key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point today.

Memphis, Tennessee climb the polls

By Brendan Loy

When Tennessee plays Memphis on February 23, will it be a #1 vs. #2 matchup between in-state rivals (and Jay's alma maters)? Could be, if both teams keep winning, and if Kansas loses between now and then. The Tigers and Vols are #1 and #3 in the new AP poll.

Speaking of #1 and #3, the top-ranked UConn women beat #3 UNC yesterday. w00t! Go Huskies! (#2, of course, is Tennessee.)

Boldly going where no teaser has gone before...

By Victoria Lopez

I'm sure a lot of you have had a look at the Star Trek XI teaser that is running before Cloverfield, but as it's now available online in HD (and because the movie's release is marked in Brendan's Upcoming Events), I thought I'd post a link to it here.  Enjoy!

What do you think about the new look Enterprise? Are you excited about JJ Abram's re-imagining of the franchise?  Sylar as Spock?!? You must have thoughts, so share 'em! :) 

And, if you want to talk about Cloverfield, please feel free to do so here, since it's all part of one big happy Bad Robot family.

*If you want to check out the first of what I'm sure will be many viral sites for Star Trek XI, go to NCC-1701.