Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Everybody loves the BCS

By Brendan Loy

Well, everybody who matters, anyway.

Heh.

By Brendan Loy

Hmm... now, does this "humanize" Hillary, or make her an effete, out-of-touch elitist? We embed, you decide!

(In fairness, I have trouble with those things sometimes too.)

P.S. She's also never heard of Red Bull, and she hasn't pumped her own gas in years. Elitist!! ;)

On a more serious note, after the jump are the clips of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Hillary this morning in South Bend. Notre Dame fans should at least watch the first minute of the first clip -- there's a Fighting Irish reference!

Also, Buffalo-area readers may want to skip ahead to around 5:45 in the second clip, where he (briefly) takes her to task for not improving the Western New York economy. w00t!

Professors giving students bad grades: out. Professors suing students: in.

By Brendan Loy

I've seen not one, but two stories today about professors suing their students. The first one involves a writing instructor at Dartmouth who appears intent on sabotaging her own academic career on the basis of, apparently, personal pique. (More here, here, here, here and here.) Bizarre... absolutely bizarre. The second, perhaps slightly more serious case involves a Little Rock law professor who is suing for defamation arising out of a racially charged controversy at UALR. Fun.

Lesbians sue lesbians in battle over Lesbos

By Brendan Loy

Hot Lesbian (legal) action!

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women.

Three islanders from Lesbos—home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women—have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou. "Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos," he said.

Tee hee. (Hat tip: Mark Steyn, who says "lawyers in Gay, Michigan will be watching the case with interest." Heh. Just wait until Dildo, Newfoundland and Intercourse, Pennsylvania get in on the action!)

P.S. Maybe Angela Keathley and Renee Thomas can file amicus briefs?

(Hat tip: A&A.)

Tennessee Chief Justice retires

By Brendan Loy

William M. Barker, the Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court*, is retiring.

*or is the proper title "Chief Justice of the State of Tennessee"? I'm not sure.

Trustee donates $15 million to NDLS

By Brendan Loy

More good news from Notre Dame Law School:

Robert F. Biolchini, a member of the University of Notre Dame Board of Trustees and partner in the Tulsa, Okla., law firm Stuart, Biolchini & Turner, and his wife, Frances, have made a $15 million gift to the University to help underwrite the renovation of the current Notre Dame Law School building. ...

After a comprehensive renovation of the existing law school building, which will be renamed Biolchini Hall, it will house an expanded Kresge Law Library. The renovation in Biolchini Hall also will include two 50-seat classrooms, new space for Notre Dame Law Review, and new offices and work space for admissions and career services. The exterior of the building, including masonry, windows and roofing, will be restored where necessary.

A covered archway will link Biolchini Hall to the adjacent Eck Hall of Law, a three-story, 85,000-square-foot building that is under construction on the site of the former campus post office. Eck Hall will be composed primarily of a new moot courtroom, classrooms and faculty offices. When it is completed in January 2009, law school operations will be moved out of the existing building and renovation work will begin.

“The combination of Biolchini and Eck Halls will give Notre Dame one of the outstanding law school facilities in the country,” said Patricia A. O’Hara, Joseph A. Matson Dean of Notre Dame Law School. “On behalf of all law school faculty, students and alumni, I want to offer my deepest thanks to Bob, Fran and their family.”

Hmm... Biolchini Hall and Eck Hall, connected by a covered archway. Hey, how much does it cost to build a covered archway? We should put together a blog fundraising campaign, and get it named the "Irish Trojan Archway." ;)

Obama rejects, denounces & disowns Wright

By Brendan Loy

I think the term "Sister Souljah Moment" may need to be renamed as "Jeremiah Wright Moment":

Obama basically said exactly what Andrew Sullivan said yesterday that he needed to say, so it's no surprise that Sullivan called Obama's remarks "a very impressive, clear and constructive re-framing of the core message of his candidacy. ... [T]oday, we found that he can fight back, and take a stand, without calculation and in what is clearly a great amount of personal difficulty and political pain. It's what anyone should want in a president." More reactions here, including this from Jonathan Chait:

His denunciation of Rev. Wright today seems to be pretty much a bullseye. Why did he let the story hang out there so long without a response? I don't know, but I do see a pattern here: Throughout the campaign, Obama has made very good tactical moves, but he's made them slowly. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has made a lot of mistakes, but she does grasp the 24-hour news cycle and she acts very quickly.

That's my impression, too.

Glenn Reynolds, however, is unimpressed. I expect that most on the Right will react similarly. But I'm not sure what else they want Obama to say. They can say, as Glenn does, that he should have said it sooner. Fine. But that's a weak criticism. "Better late than never" is a common expression for a reason. And, look, can we take a big-picture view of this, please? Even if you have a completely cynical opinion on Obama's transformation vis a vis Wright -- even if you don't believe him for a second when he claims he didn't realize until now that Wright was so radical and disgusting -- let's take a look at where we are now, as opposed to where we were a month ago or three months ago or 20 years ago.

Right now, at this very moment, we have an African-American candidate for president who commands overwhelming support within the black community, who has just explicitly and firmly denounced the radical and hateful nonsense that is all too often accepted and repeated without question within that selfsame black community. That's a very good thing. Wright will undoubtedly dismiss Obama's comments as, in Al Sharpton's words, "grandstanding in front of white people," but the truth is that Obama is speaking to black people, too -- he's speaking to everyone -- and he is sending a very clear message: enough with the bulls**t. Haven't conservatives been waiting for a black leader to do that for, like, forever?

This is the promise of the Obama candidacy, encapsulated and made real. Obama is urging blacks to leave behind, once and for all, the politics of conspiratorial victimhood -- the politics of Jeremiah Wright and, although Obama can't afford politically to say so explicitly, of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton -- and embrace the politics of unity and hope and, ultimately, self-empowerment.

You can parse his words and question his timing, and you'll find plenty to criticize. But ultimately -- again, big picture, people -- he's doing the right thing, and it's a very important "right thing." Either his heart's in the right place, or, if you want to be all cynical about it, he's pretending that it is, and his overall message demands that he continue to do so, which is almost as good. Either way, the Barack Obama who spoke today is the natural ally of anyone who has ever despaired over the blame-whitey victimhood culture within the black community. No, he's not quite channeling Bill Cosby. He wouldn't be in this position if he were. No, he didn't throw Jeremiah Wright under the bus last fall. It's a delicate and difficult tightrope he's walking. He's not perfect. But no one is, and Obama is trying harder than anyone else has, on this stage, ever before. Be reasonable! 

I'm not saying how we got here is entirely unimportant, but I think recognizing where we are now is vastly more important. And I think it would be a shame if Obama is now effectively crucified by both sides: the political right (and its newfound ally, Hillary Clinton), for not saying this sooner; and radical elements of the liberal-black community, for saying it at all. Rightly or wrongly, the takeaway lesson, if such a two-front assault destroys him, would be that a black politician cannot succeed on the national stage, at least until the baby boomers die off. Conservatives ought not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (That's liberals' job!) Obama is doing the right thing here, and if he's a little late to the party, slap him on the wrist and then defend him against the coming Wright/Sharpton/etc. onslaught. And then beat him in November on security issues or whatever. But he's on the right side of this issue, and if he loses because of it, it will be a shame for everyone -- principled conservatives included.

P.S. My dad writes: "It's now expected that Wright ... will come back and further Diss the apostate. / This will be Good. Instead of Hillary & McCain running for President against Jeremiah Wright, Wright will be perceived as running against Obama. Excellent."

My dad, incidentally, says Wright is "evidently jealous" of Obama, but I think Cornhuskers may have hit closer to the mark when he said that Wright's ramblings confirmed a longstanding fear that the old-guard "civil rights leaders would fear that they are going to lose that 'white man behind the curtain keeping black people down' trump card" and would consequently go after Obama, knowing that "it's hard to preach this when the person sitting in the big chair at 1600 Penn is a black man." Further support for this theory: now Al Sharpton is coming after Obama, too.

This is good, as my dad said. If Obama is running against Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright, he'll win in a landslide.

Indiana is everything

By Brendan Loy

Thesis: between Jeremiah Wright's latest ramblings, Hillary Clinton's continued domination of the media spin game, the high-profile AP/Ipsos poll showing Hillary doing significantly better than Obama in November, the numerical fudge factor provided by the Michigan and Florida wild cards, and the incredibly unfavorable geography of the upcoming calendar for Obama (West Virginia and Kentucky will, in consecutive weeks, provide Hillary with her biggest non-Arkansas margins of victory in the entire campaign, and Puerto Rico may not be much better), events are now conspiring against Barack Obama such that Hillary may actually have a chance -- and Obama's only real opportunity to reliably stop her from seizing that chance is to win in Indiana on Tuesday. If he loses, then heaven help us, she might just be the nominee.

Discuss.

I'm not sure whether I believe this "thesis," but I am worried about the possibility that it might be right. And I'm apparently not alone, judging by Hillary's Intrade surge.

One key aspect of my thesis is a recognition of the fact that the media refuses to contextualize the primary calendar in any meaningful way. Hillary got waaaaaay too much credit for winning Pennsylvania, which was almost a can't-lose state for her, just as Obama got waaaaaay too much credit for most of his post-Super Tuesday victories in February, which were generally in "gimme" states for him. So, given this history, I assume that Hillary will again get waaaaaay too much credit for her inevitable blowout wins in West Virginia and Kentucky. (It's especially devastating for Obama that West Virginia has a whole week all to itself! And I suspect Kentucky will totally overshadow Oregon the following week, especially given what I assume will be her much larger margin there.)

Of course, Hillary knows all this, which is why I doubt she'll drop out even after an Indiana loss. But at least an Obama victory in Indiana -- coupled with a North Carolina win, of course -- would stop the bleeding and reset the storyline heading into WV and KY. In addition, it might cause her fundraising to dry up. But if Hillary earns a "split" on May 6, the money will continue flowing, and the media storyline will continue to be completely in her favor... and Obama will have no opportunity for a "firewall" victory until, well, ever. (I don't think anybody is going to care about Montana and South Dakota.) And then we're all left scratching our heads and wondering if the superdelegates will buy the HRC/MSM line on electability, popular vote, working-class whites, etc., or if they'll see through the smoke & mirrors and realize that, despite it all, Obama is still clearly the better choice for the party, all things considered.

I still think Obama wins, in the end, if only because of the superdelegates' fear of repercussions in the black community if they deny him the nomination that he will be perceived (at least among blacks) as having earned. Hillary's electability case would have to be completely overwhelming, to the point of being undeniably right, to overcome this hurdle, I think. As long as the electability question is debatable, I don't see her wrenching this thing away from him. But making assumptions about the psychology of superdelegates is a risky business, and I can increasingly see a path to her at least having a plausible road to a floor fight at the convention over Michigan and Florida. Which would just about guarantee a McCain win in November.

Bottom line: Obama really, really, really needs to win Indiana.

P.S. When I say "the HRC/MSM line," I don't mean to imply that the media wants Hillary to win. On the contrary. However, for a whole constellation of reasons that I don't feel like getting into right now, the media environment is incredibly friendly to Hillary at the moment, despite most journalists' general preference for Obama, and the environment is unlikely to change without an Obama win in Indiana.

UPDATE: In comments, eagleye writes, "I don't think the superdelegates will let this go to a floor fight at the convention. There is going to be a lot of pressure on them to act sooner than later." Ah, but this is a misunderstanding of the process. The superdelegates do not have the power to prevent a floor fight! They have the power to get Obama to the "magic number" before the convention, yes. But that doesn't necessarily prevent a floor fight. Only you can prevent forest fires, and only Hillary Clinton can prevent a floor fight.

If she doesn't drop out, then the fight keeps going. The mere fact of Obama reaching the "magic number" in the media's delegate counts in June (which I assume he will, because I assume most of the superdelegates will heed Howard Dean's call to announce their intentions) doesn't necessarily mean that Hillary won't keep fighting all the way to the convention.

I explain why after the jump, and then I attempt to clarify my race-related comment above.

Obama loses the Duke vote

By Brendan Loy

Barack Obama shot some hoops with the North Carolina Tar Heels yesterday. "You guys are leaving the next president of the United States wide open," Roy Williams jokingly yelled at his players at one point.

No word on whether Williams was wearing a Hillary sticker at the time. ;)

Alan Keyes loses, again

By Brendan Loy

Eternally entertaining wingnut Alan Keyes, who finished ninth in the Republican presidential race -- behind McCain, Huckabee, Romney, Paul, Giuliani, Thompson, Hunter and Uncommitted (but ahead of Tancredo!) -- left the GOP earlier this month and decided to seek the Constitution Party nomination for president instead. Well, over the weekend, Keyes lost the CP nomination to anti-war radio host Chuck Baldwin. Reason's Jesse Walker calls it "a small but satisfying victory for two noble though possibly lost causes: the movement to end the occupation of Iraq and the transideological coalition to get Alan Keyes to shut up." Heh. (Hat tip: Sully.)

Um... open thread?

By Brendan Loy

Sorry for the lack of blog posts today. Becky says my readers are going to be worried that I'm dead. :) Don't worry, I'm alive. I've just been busy. But I haven't been reading too many news articles, or blogs, today. So I guess I'll just open the floor for discussion of whatever y'all want. The Voter ID case? Jeremiah Wright? Miley Cyrus? Whatever. Go nuts.

P.S. On Reverend Wright, quoth Andrew Sullivan:

Wright's cooptation of Obama for his own agenda - his assertion that Obama's distancing from him is insincere - requires, in fact demands a response from Obama.

Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright's views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against: the boomer, Vietnam era's obsession with its red-blue, white-black, pro and anti-America fixations. That is not what this election needs to be about; and Wright's massive, racially divisive and, yes, bitter provocation requires a proportionate response.

We need a speech or statement from Obama in which he utterly repudiates this poison, however personally difficult that may be, however damaging the impact will be. The statement today will not do it. This is no longer about cynics trying to associate one man's politics with another. It is now about Wright attempting to associate himself and some of his noxious, stupid, rancid views with the likely Democratic nominee. Wright has given Obama no choice - and he has also given him another opportunity. [Obama] needs to seize it.

Good news from Comcast

By Brendan Loy

In light of the revelation that they were, essentially, stealing our cable, Comcast has agreed to refund our April cable bill. So that's good. They've now done right by me, as far as my particular situation is concerned, so I'm pleased about that. My broader concerns expressed in the previous post remain in force.

See the nice fishies

By Brendan Loy

We went to the Aquarium of the Smokies in Gaitlinburg this afternoon. It was suprisingly awesome, and Loyette was totally fascinated by the fishies, including this jellyfish.

Congo capital gripped by penis panic

By Brendan Loy

Posted without comment:

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. ...

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure. ...

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. ...

Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters..., "When you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'?"

(Hat tip: Becky.)

Comcast was stealing our cable!

By Brendan Loy

Well, the good news is, our high-speed Internet woes are -- apparently -- finally over. The fourth time was the charm, as Thursday's visit from Comcast techs fixed the problem. We have a newly installed coaxial line running from the cable source to our apartment, and as a result, our downstream speed is now faster than ever, our upstream speed is back to normal, and we've had no more intermittent connectivity outages.

The bad news is, we finally know what was causing our issue in the first place -- and the explanation is pretty outrageous.

As it turns out, our previous cable line, which is supposed to run from the "lockbox" (where we have our own individual cable outlet, labeled with our apartment number) directly into our apartment, was instead being run through two separate splitters in the attic above our building, with each splitter taking a portion of our cable signal -- that we pay for -- and feeding it into someone else's apartment!! Thus, the signal that actually reached our apartment was severely diluted, and the resulting decreased signal strength (roughly an 8 dB dropoff) was apparently the culprit in all of our Internet woes.

Mind you, this wasn't the result of our neighbors stealing our cable. They don't have access to the locked attic. According to the Comcast techs who explained it to me, this was the result of Comcast splitting off our cable line to feed a signal into these other apartments!! The cable company was stealing our cable!!

More details after the jump.

Marching for babies

By Brendan Loy

Loyette, Becky, Casey (visiting for the weekend from Rochester) and I went on the March for Babies this morning on UT's campus. It was fun!

That's Becky pushing Loyette's stroller above, and Casey next to her. Here's a photo of Loyette and me, relaxing after the walk:

My t-shirt, if you're wondering, says, "Fatherhood: the toughest job you'll ever love."

Anyway, thanks again to everybody who sponsored us! We ended up exceeding our goal, with $620 in donations!

If you didn't sponsor us, but would still like to donate to the March of Dimes, why not sponsor the Neudorffs? They'll be marching next weekend in Rochester.

After the jump, some more photos of today's march here in Knoxville.

UPDATE: Welcome, No Silence Here readers! If you didn't know, "Loyette" is our baby's blog nickname, not her actual name. :)

Ah, the tabloids

By Brendan Loy

Well, at least it's equal opportunity scandal-mongering. And hey, maybe ABC can have another debate and ask the candidates about these crucial issues. :)

Thanks!!

By Brendan Loy

A big thank you to everyone who has donated to our March of Dimes "March for Babies" fund! As you can see at right, we've reached our goal of $500. A blog reader's donation of $65 this evening put us over the top. Woohoo! All that money will go toward research to help sick babies. Good work, everybody!

The march is tomorrow. I'll try to get a cute picture or two for the blog. :)

And a Trojan shall lead them

By Brendan Loy

Fellow "Irish Trojan" Katherine Kirkpatrick, who, like me, attended USC for undergrad (she's even a Daily Trojan alum), and who is now a rising 3L at Notre Dame, was elected NDLS's new SBA president in a runoff election last week. She will be inaugurated on Sunday.

A Trojan at the helm of the Notre Dame Law School student body: I love it!! Finally, Operation: Trojan Horse can proceed as planned! ;) Just kidding. Seriously, congratulations, Katherine!

In addition, an anonymous tipster informed me that A.J. Bellia and Lloyd Mayer -- the latter being my former Election Law professor and adviser for my Electoral College paper, the former being one half of the school's recent professorial retention coup -- finished tied in the initial balloting for NDLS Professor of the Year. That led to a run-off, which Professor Bellia narrowly won. Congrats to him, and to Professor Mayer for his close second-place finish; they're both great professors, and well deserving of the recognition.

A question for Tennessee radio listeners

By Brendan Loy

I'm traveling to Denver from May 4-6, and will be landing at the Nashville Airport (Southwest doesn't fly into Knoxville) at 8:25 PM on Tuesday the 6th. By that time, of course, results from the Indiana and North Carolina primaries will be coming in; indeed, winners may well have been declared before I land. Alas, I didn't think about this when I scheduled the trip.

Anyway, during my drive back to Knoxville, I'd like to listen to live coverage of election-related news on the radio. Hence, my question for Tennessee radio listeners: Are there any radio stations (presumably AM) in the Nashville area that would have this? What about in the no man's land between Nashville and Knoxville? And for that matter, what about in the Knoxville area? I almost never listen to the radio for this kind of thing, so I don't know.

So which team are you going to root for now, Brendan??

By David K.

The Connecticut legislature reached a compromise with UConn that will allow the university's football team to schedule a six-year series against Notre Dame, even though none of the games will be played in Connecticut. The Irish balked at playing at the Huskies' 40,000-seat home stadium, Rentschler Field in East Hartford, insisting instead that UConn's "home" games played in larger stadiums elsewhere, most likely in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and/or New York. However, Connecticut lawmakers were unimpressed with the idea of UConn outsourcing its home games to other states. In the words of State Rep. Michael Christ, D-East Hartford, who proposed an earlier bill that would have required UConn to play all its home games at Rentschler, "Many of us felt we already had a beautiful facility in Connecticut and it was built for UConn."

The newly announced deal requires UConn to play six home games at Rentschler Field each year, "as long as the NCAA rules permit a 12-game season and permits a team to use one Football Championship Subdivision win per season as a bowl-eligible win." It also reduces the length of the series between UConn and Notre Dame from ten years to six. "I believe we have crafted a reasonable solution," said Christ, who added that he hopes UConn can persuade the Irish to play at Rentschler Field in the future. (Ha! Fat chance.)

The series will start in the 2011 season and go through 2017.  The three home games for the Irish will, of course, be played at Notre Dame Stadium.  The deal still needs to be approved by Notre Dame and venue officials.  Connecticut and Notre Dame already have a separate deal to play next season in South Bend.

UPDATE BY BRENDAN:  Rep. Christ wrote a scathing op-ed about this topic last week in the Hartford Courant. My dad suggested the headline, "Christ to Notre Dame: Screw you." Heh.

Anyway, here's an excerpt:

Loyal Husky fans flock with family and friends to Rentschler for every home game, rain or shine, in support of their beloved team. There are hundreds of stadium workers who depend on a game day payday from parking cars, working concessions and post-game clean-up. Many local school bands and clubs as well as charities also use games to bolster fundraising. Should all those benefits move to Massachusetts? I say no!

If Rentschler Field is too confining for the Leprechaun army the Fighting Irish deploy each week, how come the similar capacity stadium of the Boston College Eagles (formerly of the Big East) is not too small? That series alternates between South Bend and Chestnut Hill, Mass. ...

There is no question Notre Dame will remain the "Wal-Mart" of college football as long as it is able to keep its national television network deal. However, UConn officials can come out of this looking like heroes both here in Connecticut and nationally by saying "no thanks." They could brag that no one, not even the legendary Notre Dame, can tell Connecticut where to play its home games. Even if the Fighting Leprechauns, after a few more years of two-win seasons, do eventually find their television revenue dried up and are forced to finally join a conference, it is very possible that the Irish will abandon their pseudo Big East affiliation and join the Big 10 anyway.

Ahem. It was a three-win season, thank you very much.

Incidentally, to answer the question posed by the title, I will, of course, root for Notre Dame, my alma mater. But as I said in comments, "if I had to pick one game (other than USC) for ND to lose, it would be the UConn game. Imagine what a huge win that would be for the Huskies program."

That said: Gooooo Irish! Beeeeeat Huskies! :)

A rueful I-told-you-so post

By Brendan Loy

TNR's Michael Crowley makes two excellent points. First:

With about 95 percent counted around midnight [Tuesday] night, Hillary was leading by 10 points. But now, with 99.44 percent counted, the Pennsylvania Secretary of State shows her winning 54.6 to 45.4. That's only 9.2 points--less than her 10.3 margin in Ohio, and less than the 10.5 bar that all-powerful CW-arbiter Mark Halperin had set for her.   

Yet no one cares. The storyline is clearly that Hillary had a decisive victory which keeps her campaign alive.

Why isn't the reality of single digits a bigger problem for her? One reason is that the final margin often matters less than the presumed margin when people like Russert go to bed.

That's absolutely true, and is something that I anticipated on Monday: "I maintain that a double-digit win is necessary for Clinton to really claim an unalloyed 'victory' ... Though, the state of the race at around 10:00 or 11:00 PM Eastern time probably matters at least as much as the actual final numbers, since the media usually decides its transitory 'winners' and 'losers' before bedtime on the East Coast."

And, speaking of things that make me say I told you so:

Another reason--one an Obama aide was just grumbling to me about--is the weird havoc exit polls play with the media's primary-night storylines. Yesterday's early exit polls had suggested a nail-biter that suggested Hillary might be finished. Yet, much like Super Tuesday, Hillary made a "comeback" over the course of the night, as her vote margin gradually widened. Why, it was almost as though Obama had Hillary on the ropes and she fought him off with pure grit and determination. Impressive! She's back!

If I were a Machiavellian Obama operative, next time I might consider leaking some phony exits showing misleading strength for Hillary.

As I said repeatedly before this completely predictable occurrence happened, there's absolutely no excuse for the media to be fooled by that exit poll nonsense anymore, because Obama always does better in the leaked exit polls than he does in the final results. ALWAYS!! It's happened over and over and over again: New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, Texas & Ohio, and now Pennsylvania. Will these idiots never learn?

Karl Rove reads Barack Obama's mind!

By Brendan Loy

It turns out Karl Rove isn't just an evil strategic genius. He's an evil telepathic strategic genius, as he demonstrates in an Obama-bashing WSJ column today:

Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their to-ing and fro-ing.

He knows how to deceive the electorate, debase public discourse, win elections, and read minds. Is there anything Karl Rove can't do?

P.S. If you're looking for a less mendacious take on the Clinton-Obama race, Time's Joe Klein has a comprehensive -- and depressing -- look at what Pennsylvania hath wrought.

Reality check

By Brendan Loy

Josh Marshall:

I think I've said this a hundred times, as have many others.  But this article in Thursday's Times is a good moment to revisit the point. As Patrick Healy explains, it is simply a fallacy to claim that winning a state's Democratic primary means you're more likely to win that state in the general election or that your opponent can't win it. ...

That's not to say there isn't a difference between the two as general election candidates -- at least in their current incarnations. There is. It's just not this big state nonsense.

Indeed.

Megan Fox named world's sexiest woman

By Brendan Loy

FHM has named Megan Fox the sexiest woman in the world. (Hat tip: Jen Featherston.)

In other news, I'm stopping at Borders after work and buying the new issue of FHM. :)

Comcast, me, and the long arm of Jeff Jarvis

By Brendan Loy

I figure I owe y'all an update on my Comcast Internet saga (previous posts here, here, here and here). What? You don't care? Well, I owe it to posterity, then. Or something.

Thanks to the intervention of Comcast corporate in Philadelphia, it appears our long national apartmental nightmare may soon be over. (Knock on wood!) A team of cable techs is scheduled to come over at around 3:00 PM today to replace the entire series of tubes wires that runs from the cable "tap," over to the "lockbox," up to the attic, and down into our apartment, nothin' but net. (Er, scratch that last part. There's been very little "net" to speak of in recent weeks!)

There are no guarantees, but the hope is that this re-wiring will fix our long-standing, worsening, intermittent connectivity problems (about which, details after the jump). And, crucially, they're doing it free of charge -- contrary to the company's ridiculous standard policy of holding apartment dwellers financially responsible for necessary repairs to the wiring outside the four walls of their apartments. (More on that, too, after the jump.)

I mentioned the "corporate intervention" angle, and that's probably the most interesting aspect of this saga. It all started with my offhanded expression of bloggy frustration on April 3, after the cable guy never showed up for an appointment that I'd left work early for. (The phone rep had written down my area code wrong, so the tech couldn't reach me by phone to confirm that I was home, so he never came.) That post triggered an e-mail from Frank Eliason in Philly (Comcast's corporate home base), who filed a "corporate complaint" on my behalf. (Frank also commented on a later blog post.) Frank's complaint, in turn, spurred a full-court press by the local Knoxville office to get my problem fixed, which culminated in today's appointment.

What's interesting is, Frank's intervention isn't an isolated incident. It's part of a broad Comcast initiative, of which Frank is the point man, to improve the company's image by reaching out to bloggers, Twitterers, and others who use their online platforms to say nasty things about Comcast. The Philadelphia Inquirer had a front-page story about this effort in Saturday's paper, which revealed:

Under siege for customer-service woes detailed on Comcastmustdie.com and other blogs, the Philadelphia cable giant has gone on the offensive, trawling the Internet for Comcast chatter. Eliason's assignment is very specific: If someone has a Comcast problem and is talking about it online, he contacts that person and offers help.

If Eliason thinks it's an emergency that could spiral into unpleasantness, like an expletive-loaded blog bomb, he gets on the phone and cuts through the corporate red tape. ...

Eliason's blog spotting is part public relations and part acknowledgment that the Internet is playing a broader role in defining company brands. Technology companies woke up to this fact after "Dell Hell" postings by blogger Jeff Jarvis in 2005.

Ha! The arm of Sauron Jeff Jarvis is long!

Of course, it goes without saying that one shouldn't have to pose a P.R. threat in order to get good help from a company that one pays upwards of $100/month to. Nevertheless, this is a smart thing Comcast is doing.

Moreover, I give credit where credit is due: in contrast to my dismal experiences* with Comcast's customer service last spring, almost everyone I've dealt with this time around -- not just the corporate people, but the techs and phone reps, too -- has been professional, courteous, and competent (wrong-area-code lady being an obvious exception). That, too, is apparently symptomatic of a broader effort by Comcast to, well, stop sucking at life, basically.

More on that effort -- and on my issue -- after the jump.

*The linked post, incidentally, was Instalanched, but triggered no response whatsoever from Comcast corporate. That was last June. So they're clearly getting better at the rapid-blog-response thing.

Phoenix UFOs were elaborate prank

By Brendan Loy

Heh:

A Phoenix man says he caused the red light display that mystified thousands of people as it floated across the north Phoenix sky Monday night.

The man, who did not want to be identified, said he used fishing line to attach road flares to helium-filled balloons, then lit the flares and launched them a minute apart from his back yard. He said he believed turbulence created by a passing jet caused the balloons to move around.

Best! Prank! Ever!

P.S. But what about the Florida UFOs? Was this a coordinated, two-state prank?

UPDATE: Apparently the Florida lights were caused by sky lanterns released from an Asian wedding.

Or, you know, aliens. One or the other.

Obama: the next Samuel Tilden?

By Brendan Loy

A crazy thought occurred to me this evening. And what are blogs for, if not for airing crazy thoughts?

In November, Barack Obama will most likely spur unprecedented turnout in urban areas like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, due to his appeal to African-American voters. The result of this high turnout will be to build larger-than-usual popular-vote edges for the Dems in several "blue" states -- totally meaningless for Electoral College purposes. Obama also seems likely to reduce, but not overcome, the GOP's advantage in a number of southern and western "red" states. Again, this is electorally meaningless, but it will reduce the GOP's popular-vote cushion.

At the same time, it appears that Obama may be vulnerable to possible narrow defeats at the hands of John McCain in key swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. While I don't want to lend credence to Hillary Clinton's mostly bogus "big states" argument, there is some legitimate reason to worry about Obama's ability to carry these states.

Put it all together, and Obama starts to sound like a prime candidate for another inversion between the electoral and popular votes, like in 2000. But that's not the crazy thought. The crazy thought is this: is it possible Obama could lose an electoral-vote squeaker to McCain despite winning the popular vote by a meaningful margin -- like, 2 or 3 percent, as opposed to Al Gore's half-percent -- and become the first candidate since Samuel Tilden in 1876 to lose the presidency despite winning a majority of the popular vote?

P.S. From the Irish Trojan Assignment Desk: somebody look at the 2004 state-by-state margins, adjust them as needed, and construct a plausible scenario where this occurs. :)

Procedure is destiny

By Brendan Loy

Washington Monthly's Josiah Lee Auspitz provides a detailed (and entertaining) look at the degree to which both parties' nomination contests have been fundamentally shaped by the arcana of party delegate-selection rules. I love it.

A mini-backlash?

By Brendan Loy

Hey, maybe there was a backlash, after all! John Judis writes:

Clinton seriously damaged her own cause by going negative on Obama during the April 16 debate--and probably, too, by her subsequent ads. ABC moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson had already done sufficient damage without Clinton piling on. According to the exit polls, 68 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats thought Clinton attacked Obama unfairly, and they backed Obama by 55 to 45 percent. It's hard to know for sure, but these tactics probably cost her among white college-educated voters who don't like to think of elections as prize fights.

Maybe if Hillary hadn't gone so negative, she actually would have won by double digits, instead of a mere 9.2 percent. :)

P.S. Let the record show that I'm actually rather skeptical of Judis's conclusion. Given the final numbers, I doubt there was much of a meaningful, measurable backlash. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like Clinton's negative ads hurt Obama very much, given that her margin was actually smaller than in Ohio, and she lost ground with key demographics. Bottom line, I don't think the negativity had much effect at all, in either direction (or whatever effects it had cancelled each other out).

I for one welcome our Hoosier overlords

By Brendan Loy

For the next two weeks, Indiana is officially the center of the political universe: "With a demographic landscape that's well-suited to both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, Indiana is shaping up as the most consequential battleground of the remaining states."

Argh. Why couldn't this have happened last year, when I was living there?? [Um, because they don't have presidential elections in odd years? -ed. Shh.]

Hillary Clinton proves her contempt for democracy once and for all

By Brendan Loy

Or, if you prefer a lengthier, more complete headline: "Clinton falsely claims popular vote lead, disenfranchising all voters in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, Washington, and all Michigan voters who preferred her opponent."

This "spin" is, of course, entirely predictable -- indeed, they've made a related argument before -- but it's still absolutely infuriating. Hillary claims:

After last night's decisive victory in Pennsylvania, more people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate, including Sen. Obama.

Estimates vary slightly, but according to Real Clear Politics, Hillary has received 15,095,663 votes to Sen. Obama's 14,973,720, a margin of more than 120,000 votes. ... This count includes certified vote totals in Florida and Michigan.

Kos responds:

[T]he Clinton campaign ... [has] taken the roughly 215,000 net votes Clinton gained in Pennsylvania, and added them to the popular vote count that includes the unsanctioned contests in Michigan and Florida, and excludes caucuses in four states [Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, whose caucuses do not report popular-vote totals, and Clinton is choosing not to estimate them]. How's that for inclusiveness?

It gets worse. That Michigan vote [tally]? Obama wasn't on the ballot. If you count the "uncommitted" votes for Obama -- all of them anti-Hillary votes, remember -- that would add 237,762 votes to Obama's total.

Which means that in Clinton and Jerome [Armstrong]'s world, Clinton is ahead in the popular vote only IF you exclude four caucus states, IF you include two unsanctioned states, and IF you "disenfranchise" every voter in Michigan who voted against Hillary Clinton.

That takes a new and particularly audacious level of chutzpah.

(Hat tip: yea.)

Kos is missing an additional aspect of the audaciousness, though. As I pointed out previously, "after signing a pledge to the voters of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada not to campaign in Florida and Michigan, she is now arguing that Iowa and Nevada don't matter, while Florida and Michigan do."

Say what you will about the more arcane procedural debates, re: what is the proper metric for "victory," what should happen with Michigan & Florida, what is the intended role of superdelegates, what it means to be a "pledged" delegate, etc. I firmly believe Hillary is wrong on those issues, too, but I concede that, at least to some extent, they are debatable.

However, there is no debate about this. There is no possible counterargument. It is completely and utterly indefensible for Hillary Clinton to make a blanket claim that "more people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate" while literally ignoring duly held elections in four whole states!! And, similarly, it is totally dishonest for her to advance a "popular vote" legitimacy argument that depends on her Soviet-style "victory" of 328,309 to zero in Michigan.

Food hoarding? Oh, good.

By Brendan Loy

Although I'm stereotypically the news junkie of our household, Becky has sometimes been getting out ahead of me recently in recognizing developing major news stories, in part because her playlist of things to listen to on her iPod while feeding Loyette includes some good newsy podcasts. Anyway, she's been talking about food hoarding for some time. Now that story has appeared on my radar screen, via Drudge:

Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.

Their pleas did not find a sympathetic audience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where regulators said high prices are mostly the result of soaring world demand for grains combined with high fuel prices and drought-induced shortages in many countries.

The regulatory clash came amid evidence that a rash of headlines in recent weeks about food riots around the world has prompted some in the United States to stock up on staples.

Costco and other grocery stores in California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on how many sacks of rice each customer can buy. Filipinos in Canada are scooping up all the rice they can find and shipping it to relatives in the Philippines, which is suffering a severe shortage that is leaving many people hungry.

My expert analysis is that, uh, this isn't a good thing.

Incidentally, I've created a separated blog category called "The Economy & Finance." With all the bad news about those topics lately, it was time.

Odds and ends

By Brendan Loy

Correction: Hillary Clinton may not have won by double digits, after all. Her actual margin rounds to either 8%, 9%,or 10%, depending on whom you believe. (Mark Halperin and Josh Marshall have more.)

Meanwhile, TNR's Jonathan Cohn argues that the general-election polling indicates there is "no reason to panic." He also speculates that 45% may be McCain's "ceiling."

Also at TNR, Josh Patashnik rebuts the idea that "Obama's likely nomination is somehow illegitimate unless he wins over Hillary's demographic groups--even if his coalition is a narrow majority" with a basketball analogy (my apologies in advance to Jay):

If a basketball team has held a lead of, say, six or seven points for the entire second half, the fact that the lead isn't getting any bigger as the clock ticks below a minute left doesn't mean that the team is any less likely to win. On the contrary, it makes the "frontrunner's" small lead nearly insurmountable, absent some dreadful foul shooting. Then again, those urging Hillary to drop out might want to ask John Calipari what he thinks of the idea.

Heh.

Elsewhere on the Internets, the Huffington Post's Sam Stein points out that Obama actually did cut into Hillary's demographics -- just not enough. Of course, that's according to the exit polls, and I think Mickey Kaus has a point when he writes, "If the exit polls are this unreliable for press' result-predicting purposes, why aren't they also unreliable for all the scholarly purposes they are supposedly put to? Garbage is garbage, no?" I suppose the answer is that they're retroactively "weighted" once the real results are known, but that has to be a somewhat imprecise process. I'm skeptical.

Kevin Drum says Hillary "seems to have won by roughly the same margin she would have won by even if she and Barack Obama hadn't just spent $40 million there. In other words, the campaign was not only pointless, but pointless and wildly expensive.  On to North Carolina!"

Mark Ambinder notes that Clinton winning the pledged delegate count is now "more than next to impossible." It's well and truly impossible. Dick Morris says that means last night's victory is "too little, too late" for Hillary: "The Democratic superdelegates aren't about to risk a massive and sanguinary civil war by taking the nomination away from the candidate who won more elected delegates. If they ever tried it, we'd see a repeat of the demonstrations that smashed the 1968 Chicago convention and ruined Hubert Humphrey's chances of victory."

John Cole says "Hillary's vanity campaign will continue on, trailing in delegates, trailing in the popular vote, trailing in enthusiasm and money, but not lacking in the firm resolve that only Hillary can save us all from our selves." (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)

Speaking of Sullivan, he writes:

It's worth recalling what this primary came to be about, because of a self-conscious decision by the Clintons to adopt the tactics and politics of the people who persecuted and hounded them in the 1990s. It was indeed in the end about smearing and labeling Obama as a far-left, atheist, elite, pansy Godless snob fraud. That was almost all it came to be about. It was the Clintons' core message and core belief. And if anywhere would have proved its salience, it would surely have been beleaguered and depressed central and western Pennsylvania; and it would surely have worked with white ethnic voters over 50.

It did work, it seems to me. It will work, to some extent. It's valid in the sense that Rove is not stupid. But it works less and less the younger the vote is; and it is obviously losing some of its divisive salience even among the older generation. It is fading as a tool. Used by Democrats, legitimized by Democrats, embraced by Democrats, the Rove-Atwater gambits have been paid the highest compliment by the Clintons these past few weeks. But a single digit win against a young black man in a polarized race suggests that this compliment was past its sell-by date. It was an act of desperation, and one last grab back to the past. It didn't quite do what it was supposed to do. Nearly, but not quite.

And the New York Times, which endorsed Clinton back in the day, echoes Sully by lambasting her for taking the "low road to victory" in Pennsylvania: "It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

Last but not least, Ron Paul lives! Say it with me, Paultards: "WE'RE #2! WE'RE #2!" ;)

Change? We don't need no stinkin' change

By Brendan Loy

So, Hillary won by about 10 points. Yawn.

Josh Marshall:

Lots of spin coming from both campaigns tonight. I'd say the real story is that this leaves us basically where we were. It was a decisive win for Hillary but that was the expectation. ... There's a lot of crowing from Hillary's campaign tonight about a shift in momentum and doubts about Obama. Tomorrow there will be a lot of chatter from Obama's campaign that none of that really matters because of the reality of the delegate numbers which won't change much.

Like I said, I think that means we're basically right where we were.

I'm not sure how following up a 10-point win in Ohio with a 10-point win in Pennsylvania demonstrates "momentum" for Hillary. If Wrightgate, Bittergate, Debategate, etc., had damaged Obama among Democratic voters, you'd think Hillary would have been able to build on her Ohio margin. But she didn't. On the other hand, if there was going to be a significant backlash against Hillary's kitchen-sink strategy, you'd think Obama would have been able to cut her lead to single digits. But he didn't. He did "rally" from his initial 20-point deficit in PA opinion polls, but I'm not sure that means anything. So we're basically stuck on the status quo, like Marshall says. Nothing has changed. And that includes the fact that the Obama Effect struck again with the exit polls.

In fact, it's not clear that much of anything has changed since Super Tuesday, or even earlier. For all the talk of shifting momentum, I think this contest will ultimately be viewed by historians almost purely through the prism of regional and demographic trends. You don't need to look at the calendar to understand how things have unfolded. Geography and demography alone (and caucuses vs. primaries) explain the results. Obama's February "winning streak" was a coincidence of friendly states stacked up one after another on the calendar; same with Clinton's recent trifecta of Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. She hasn't really "halted" his "momentum," so much as the calendar has simply shifted in her favor, geographically and demographically speaking. And likewise, when he wins North Carolina, he won't be "halting" her "momentum." He'll just be winning another Obama-friendly state, just like she's winning the Clinton-friendly states. For all its moving parts, this race is really quite static. It's more helpfully viewed on a map rather than on a timeline.

Apropos of which, now we move on to a pair of election days that seem quite likely, based on these rather rigid geographic/demographic trends, to be split decisions: May 6 (Indiana for Clinton, North Carolina for Obama) and May 20 (Kentucky for Clinton, Oregon for Obama). Watch out, though, for the primary that's in between those two, West Virginia on May 13. It's all by itself on the calendar, and it's certain to be a Clinton blowout, given her consistent success in Appalachia, which came through for her again yesterday. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.) It'll be an accomplishment for Obama if he can hold his margin of defeat under 20% there. West Virginia could be her South Carolina. That could really get the talking heads' tongues wagging about Hillary's "momentum." Expect a full-throttle "expectations game" effort by Team Obama to try and convince the media they're writing off the Mountaineer State.

Anyway... on to Indiana and North Carolina! YAAAARRH!!!

P.S. Here's Hillary's speech, and here's Obama's speech.

P.P.S. On the geographic/demographic point: name one state that's been a true "upset" in retrospect, a contest that one candidate won where you'd have expected the other to prevail. Obama's win in Missouri? Maybe, but it borders Illinois, so maybe not. Obama's win in Connecticut? Superficially, perhaps, but I think if you know a little more about the Nutmeg State electorate -- and its maverick streak in primaries -- that was pretty predictable. Hillary's win in New Hampshire? Yes. And that, IMHO, is actually still the only true upset of this entire campaign. (And it only happened because the contest was still a three-way race at that point. if Edwards isn't in the race, Obama beats Hillary there, too, just as you'd expect.)

Pennsylvania open thread #2

By Brendan Loy

That's all from me, kiddies. I gotta go to work early tomorrow, so I'm turning off the TV, shutting down the computer, and getting ready for bed. Thanks for all the traffic, and by all means, feel free to keep commenting as the candidates make their speeches, and as the results -- and the spin -- continue to roll in.

The next question

By Brendan Loy

With the race now moving on to Indiana and North Carolina on May 6 -- and probably West Virginia (May 13) and Oregon and Kentucky (May 20) -- here's my question: will Clinton and/or Obama attend the Kentucky Derby? It's on May 3.

I posed this question to Becky yesterday, and she responded with an even better question: "Where would they sit?" Hmm... perhaps the "elitist" Obama would sit in the grandstand, sipping a mint julep (with Michelle wearing one of those giant hats), while Clinton would mingle with the bitter, clingy, drunken plebians on the infield! :)

And then there would be the question of which horse they would each pick. Whose favorite would do better? It would take the concept of the political "horse race" to a whole new level!

In similarly silly election-related commentary, don't miss the debate about puppies in the open thread.

On a more serious note -- well, sort of -- Josh Marshall writes, "I'm not sure I've ever heard a higher proportion of hypothetical spin on both sides in the absence of voting numbers. At the moment Tim Russert is going back and forth making each campaign's arguments based on various hypothetical vote spread." Heh.

Meanwhile, InstaPundit links to the drunkblogging Stephen Green, who notes, "If the Democrats ran a winner-take-all system like the Republicans and the Electoral College do, she’d have this thing clinched — and Obama would look like a regional candidate who can’t win much outside the South and his home state of Illinois." Well, yes, but no. If the Democrats ran a winner-take-all system, both candidates would have had vastly different strategies. Obama would have spent less time, energy and money in caucus states where he knew he could rack up big delegate margins, and focused more on the "big states." Among other things, it's entirely possible he would have won Texas (since he would have been paying zero attention to Ohio or Rhode Island under this scenario).

You can't divorce the results from the process. And anyway, the process is what it is. The Democrats don't have a winner-take-all system like the Republicans and the Electoral College do. They have a proportional system, because they decided to have a proportional system. You don't change the rules in the middle of the game -- or spin them into some alternate reality. They are what they are. And Obama's gonna win.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Sen. Hillary Clinton will win the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, CNN projects.

Fox, NBC call it for Hillary

By Brendan Loy

Per Talking Points Memo.

No call yet on CNN, which is what I'm watching. Can't get enough of Wolfie doin' a heckvua job. :)

As an aside, this may be my last chance to watch Wolf Blitzer "call" a race -- complete with his (as I've put it before) rambling run-on sentences, senseless repetition of people's names and other random words, redundant recitation of the same facts over and over again, odd choices of verbal emphasis, constant talk about everything being "important" and "historic," endless self-referential comments, unnecessary references to "right now," "standing by," etc., etc. -- until November, because Becky and I are thinking about canceling our cable due to a budget crunch and our Comcast problems (and the fact that, during the interregnum between college basketball and college football seasons, we really don't need it).

UPDATE: CNN calls it! Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, is the winner right now in the very important state of Pennsylvania right now, according to our exit polls, right now. Hillary Clinton will win, will win, Pennsylvania, right now. (Not a direct quote.)

Now: Spin! Spin!

UPDATE 2: Is this Rush Limbaugh's doing?

Bill Schneider: Hillary "leading"

By Brendan Loy

CNN analyst Bill Schneider just slipped when talked about Hillary Clinton's 60% support among seniors (which is less than her 72% support in Ohio), and basically admitted -- catching himself too late -- that she's "leading" overall (according to his interpretation of the exit polls) in what the network is officially calling a "competitive" race with Obama:

"She's not doing as well among seniors, but there are a lot more of them in Pennsylvania, and that's why she's still lead-- er, very competitive."

I'll finish the sentence for you, Bill: "That's why she's still leading."

Meanwhile, the earliest of early returns are trickling in, and so far, predictions of Obama jumping out to an early lead are not materializing.

The polls are closed

By Brendan Loy

But, unsurprisingly, no "call" yet from Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer. He says, "We