Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Lisa Velte wins Oscar Pool

By Brendan Loy

Notre Dame Law School Class of 2007 graduate Lisa Velte won the 4th annual Irish Trojan Oscar Pool tonight, becoming the third consecutive NDLS student or alum to win the pool.

She follows on the heels of 2006 winner Chris McLemore, a fellow member of the Class of '07, and 2007 winner Kristin West, a current 3L. (The 2005 pool went to New Hampshire resident Jackie Domaingue.)

Velte got every major category right, and 16 of the 24 awards overall. Although she erred on eight of the 14 categories worth only one point apiece, her correct picks in the acting, directing, screenplay and musical categories, along with Best Picture, allowed her to rack up 72 out of a possible 80 points, tying McLemore for the highest score in Oscar Pool history.

In addition, Velte is the first contestant ever to clinch victory before the Best Picture winner was even announced. She was guaranteed first place as soon as Joel Coen and Ethan Coen won Best Director, largely because almost all of her competitors also correctly predicted No Country for Old Men's Best Picture win, and thus none of them had any shot to catch her in the standings, no matter who own that award.

Roger Snyder, a.k.a. USC Roger, finished second with 68 points. West, the defending champion, came in third with 62 points. Victoria Wagner was fourth with 60 points, and I, Brendan Loy, tied with Kevin Curran, a.k.a. kcatnd, for fifth place with 58.

Brandin Hay, Joe Swiderski and Victoria Lopez -- who, perhaps mercifully, didn't almost win this year -- tied for seventh place with 57. Rounding out the Top 10, in a three-way tie for tenth with 56 points apiece, were Barbara Cross, Nate Djordjevic and Steve Copenhaver.

Complete final standings are here.

Oscar thread & Oscar Pool standings

By Brendan Loy

ABC's telecast of the Academy Awards is underway. This thread will remain on top of my homepage throughout the show.

After the jump are the latest standings in the 4th annual Irish Trojan Oscar Pool, as well as any liveblogging I may do about the show itself. Updates are in reverse chronological order, so the latest update will always be posted on top (immediately after the jump). You may want to simply go to the permalink and reload it throughout the evening.

You may also want to check out Nikki Finke's liveblog.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Cuba's National Assembly has named Raul Castro, Fidel Castro's younger brother, as the country's president.

Huckabee on SNL

By Brendan Loy

Heh.

Ralph Nader: he's baaaaack

By Brendan Loy

Ralph Nader is running for president again.

Says Obama: "I think anybody has the right to run for president if they file sufficient papers. And I think the job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference."

He also says, in response to Nader's criticism that Obama lacks substance: "My sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don't listen and adopt all of his policies, thinks you're not substantive. He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work." Obama added that, "historically," Nader is a "singular" and "heroic figure" for his consumer advocacy, but "I do think there is a sense now that if somebody is not hewing to the Ralph Nader agenda, then you must be lacking in some way."

P.S. If Nader's percentage of the vote keeps declining at the rate it did between 2000 (2.73%) and 2004 (0.38%), he'll get 0.05% this year. Or, if you prefer subtraction to division and multiplication, he'll get negative 1.97%. :)

Oscar Pool: last chance!

By Brendan Loy

Just a reminder that the deadline to enter my Oscar Pool is 7:00 PM EST tonight! And of course, I'll be posting live results during the show, beginning at 8:00 PM, so stay tuned for that.

(This post will remain on top of the homepage until the deadline has passed. New posts will appear below.)

The forgotten election calendar

By Brendan Loy

Politico's Ben Smith has a post up about "chaos" at a Nevada county convention, an event that he says "was supposed to be something like a formality, ratifying the choices of caucusgoers last month."

Hmm... well, as a practical matter, that might be true. But procedurally speaking, it's not correct. Let's go to The Green Papers for an explanation of the actual process.

Back on January 19, when Nevada held its public caucuses, voters in each precinct chose not presidential candidates, nor national-convention delegates "pledged" to a particular candidate. Instead, they chose delegates to the very county conventions that were held yesterday. It's a bit like how, on "Election Day" in November, we're actually voting for presidential electors, not the candidates they're pledged to. Except in this case, the system is even more convoluted, and nobody's "pledged" to anybody. "While a non-binding Presidential Preference Poll is conducted during the caucuses, delegates at the Precinct Caucus level are not bound to their declared Presidential preference."

Next in the process are the county conventions, which choose the county's delegates to the Nevada State Democratic Convention. Again, "while a non-binding Presidential Preference Poll is conducted during the Conventions, delegates at the Precinct Caucus level are not bound to their declared Presidential preference."

Finally, the delegates selected by the county conventions meet at the state convention from April 18 to 20, and only then are the national convention delegates actually allocated and chosen.

Nevada is hardly unique in this regard. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming will all be allocating national-convention delegates at little-noticed, low-profile events over the next few months. These events will be treated as rubber-stamp formalities by the media -- if they're even discussed at all -- but in a race this close, where every delegate counts, they could potentially be very important.

For instance, if you thought you knew the pledged-delegate count in Iowa (supposedly Obama 16, Clinton 15, Edwards 14), you may be in for a surprise when the county conventions convene on March 15. Will Edwards's county delegates stick with Johnny Boy, or will they vote for one of the other two candidates? Will any of Hillary's county delegates have changed their minds as Obama-mania has taken hold over the last month-and-a-half? Or, conversely, will any Obama supporters have switched to Hillary? As The Green Papers notes, there's nothing to stop them from doing so. And a switcheroo here or there could alter the delegate balance.

Iowa is particularly likely to see changes from the expected tally because of the Edwards effect, but the other states bear watching, too. The Obama and Clinton camps may have pledged not to "poach" national convention delegates once they're allocated, but that isn't the case yet in these states. And even without "poaching," we could see delegates individually changing their minds. So I think it's worth a closer look at this bit of potentially important procedural minutiae.