Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Signing off

By Brendan Loy

G'nite, all. See you on the other side.

The end

By Brendan Loy

Guestblogging is turned off, and I'll be shutting down comments in a few minutes, and redirecting this URL to the new blog shortly thereafter.

Thanks for the memories, everybody.

Oh, and don't be deceived by the title of this post. Much like The Return of the King, this blog will have more than one ending. :) One final "signing off" post will follow...

P.S. Since I'll be signing off as the "Irish Trojan," I should probably link one last time to the post that started it all, in regard to that name.

Apropos of nothing

By Brendan Loy

Somehow, I've had this blog for over six years without ever posting this clip. Well, time to fix that omission while there's still time:

Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials

By David K.

So, the far-right group American Family Association is one of apparently many right-wing groups that use auto-correct to replace potentially offensive (to them at least) words in articles posted to their news streams.  I don't even know if it's legal to take an AP article and auto-replace words like that.

Well, the AFA has a problem with the word "gay" and so they auto-replace it with the word "homosexual".  (Any of you following the Olympic trials can see where this is going.)  Trouble is that "gay" isn't always used to mean homosexual.  Not only can it mean happy, it also happens to be a not uncommon last name.  Such is the case with Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay.  Which of course leads us to the utterly hilarious headline that is the title of this post.

You can read more about this utterly pointless and unintentionally hillarious pseudo-censorship here.

McCain predicts Bradley Effect?

By Brendan Loy

Hmm... this is interesting:

The presumptive GOP nominee tells voters in an afternoon Pickersville, Pennsylvania town hall that the state will pick the winner in November — and he will be behind until right before the polls close.

McCain's point seems to be simply that he's the underdog, which is undoubtedly true. But, if the election is close, it's quite possible that he'll be literally right; indeed, he might seem to be behind even after some polls close... until the combined impact of the Bradley-Wilder Effect and the Exit-Poll Liberal Selection Bias Effect (see: the Seven-Hour Presidency of John Kerry) is revealed, when actual vote totals -- as opposed to final opinion polls and leaked exit polls -- reveal a narrow McCain victory.

I'm not predicting it. I'm just saying it's a possibility.

"Period. Full stop."

By Brendan Loy

Just a thought: it would be nice to see John McCain clarify his non-answer about Barack Obama's patriotism in the same sort of straightforward, no-nonsense, not-open-to-interpretation way that Obama responded today to Wesley Clark's comments questioning the value of McCain's military service.

The John McCain of 2000 and 2004 would have done it. Will the John McCain of 2008?

P.S. Incidentally, Obama also criticized MoveOn.org -- specifically its "General Betray Us" ad -- in the same speech.

UPDATE: It seems Obama's answer on the Clark front isn't good enough for the McCain campaign, which appears to be implicitly adopting the position that a candidate can be faulted for anything his supporters say, even after the candidate clearly and explicitly disavows it. I trust the McCain folks won't mind when this same standard is applied to them.

McCain's only hope in this election is to make the case that he is the true candidate of change, reform, "straight talk," etc. In short, he needs the "McCain brand" to both survive the collapse of the "Republican brand" and to trump the shininess of the "Obama brand." It's a tough task, but Obama has recently opened the door for McCain with his reversals on several issues, particularly campaign financing. (For that matter, the MoveOn.org thing is something of a flip-flop; Obama pointedly did not vote on the resolution to condemn the ad, back when it was primary season and a "Yes" vote might have hurt him with the base.) McCain is obviously trying to take advantage of the opportunity he's been handed. But, in this still-undecided voter's view, he's doing so in precisely the wrong way.

McCain needs to kill Obama with kindness, honesty and straightforwardness, not heavy-handedly twist and contort his words in a blatant political game that ultimately holds Obama's statements and actions to a standard that McCain himself cannot possibly meet. The latter course might be enough to fool some low-information voters, but those folks aren't paying attention yet anyway, and in the mean time, opinion leaders in the media and blogosphere -- who are crucial to the survival of the McCain brand -- are going to see right through McCain. You can't become perceived as the candidate of the "high road" by taking a short cut on the low road. It just won't work.

I suggest that McCain read Mark Halperin's advice from last week, particularly:

14. Recognize that gimmicks ... are seen as just that — gimmicks. ...

17. Avoid personalizing your disdain for Obama. ...

22. Protect the McCain Brand at all costs – it is the only thing that gives you a chance to win!!

More on the big blog move

By Brendan Loy

In anticipation of the imminent end of this blog -- and redirection of its traffic to a new, weekly blog -- I figured I should give y'all a little more detail on what's happening.

Although I've focused on the weekly blog in discussing this issue, I'm actually replacing "Irish Trojan in Tennessee" with three separate blogs:

• a weekly blog, named "Hopefully Considered";
• a photoblog, named "Light and High Beauty";
• and a moblog, named "Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost."

Yes, the latter two titles are both Lord of the Rings references. :) As for "Hopefully Considered," it is, as I explained before, a reference to my Papa Loy's old newspaper column. I appreciated all of your suggestions, some of which were quite good, but I ultimately decided that I liked my original idea best. (The subtitle is "Brendan Loy's Weekly Musings," adapted from David K.'s suggestion. I decided to drop the "Irish Trojan" moniker altogether, though it's still referenced, at least for now, in the new blogs' sidebars.)

All three new blogs are powered by Blogger and hosted on Blogspot's servers, but with domain redirection to make them look like they're on my server. Thus, the URLs -- which are already active, though the blogs are still works-in-progress -- are weekly.brendanloy.com, photo.brendanloy.com, and moblog.brendanloy.com. (Regular readers may want to bookmark those.)

The major change tonight, aside from some final tweaks to make the blogs ready for prime time, will be that www.brendanloy.com, blog.brendanloy.com, and www.irishtrojan.com -- all of which currently point here -- will instead redirect to weekly.brendanloy.com.

You may be wondering why on earth I'm replacing one blog with three blogs (or four, if you count the Linklog, which is a "companion" to the weekly blog; or five, if you count my Pajamas Media hurricane blogging), when the whole purpose of this switch is to cut back on the time I spend blogging. I know it's a bit counterintuitive. But I actually think it'll work well, when you consider my twin goals of: 1) spending less time blogging, while 2) continuing to have outlets for the types of blogging that I can do without eating up all my free time.

Somebody get this guy a latte

By Brendan Loy

Remember Tom Buffenbarger, the machinists' union blowhard who unleashed a hilariously unhinged anti-Obama rant on Hillary Clinton's behalf during her post-Wisconsin-primary rally back in February? I'll refresh your memory:

[During his speech introducing Clinton,] Buffenbarger derisively dismissed Obama as a mere "wunderkind," a "man in love with the microphone," and "a poet, not a fighter." He repeatedly and pointedly called him "the junior senator from Illinois" (as if Hillary isn't the junior senator from New York?). He compared Obama to "Janus, the two-faced Roman god of ancient times." And then he really got going:

"The Barack Show is playing to rave reviews, sold out on college campus after college campus, standing-room-only crowds to hear his silver-tongued oration. Hope! Change! Yes, we can! Give me a break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine!"

... Buffenbarger [also made the] blatantly anti-intellectual argument -- repeated twice -- that Obama can't "fight" for the working class because he was "the editor of the Harvard Law Review." I guess Hillary's stint as an editor of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action establishes her credentials as a real union stiff?

Buffenbarger blustered so buffoonishly that I proposed a new verb to describe his actions: "to buffenbarger," meaning "to engage in an inappropriately vitriolic attack on a member of one's own political party." (TPM Cafe contributor David Schlitt had a similar idea.)

Well, it turns out ol' Tom is still buffenbargering after all these months:

Now is not the right time for the [International Association of Machinists] to endorse Senator Barack Obama... Our members feel the economy squeezing their family finances for every last dime, every single week ... But those meat and potato issues have not found a place in the message frame developed by Senator Obama's campaign. To us, hope and change are not antidotes to the economic pressures blue-collar families face... In the Machinists Union, a predominately blue-collar union, the impression continues to grow that Senator Barack Obama could care less about folks like us.

McCain-Buffenbarger '08! ;)

Thank you, Brendan...

By Joe Loy

...for all your hyperactively-excellent :} work on This incarnation of the ongoing Brendanblog; and in its Next Generation may you compile a tomorrow worthy of all the yesterdays (but less time-consuming :).

Thank you too, for the honor of having been Included on your suspicious auspiscious roster of usual suspects distinguished Guestbloggers ;]. The opportunity to Ventilate my odd opinions (and in my Own peculiar diction, unpasteurized! :) has been Important to me. Seriously, it has.

You're a Good one, old Kiddoe. / And now (as Nana Loy would say:) ~ Onward & Upward!

Love,
~ Dad

A last guest blogging

By dcl

Brendan said that if you needed to post something best do it now, before it's too late...

So I think, as guest blogs, we all need to make sure we get any and all picking on Brendan take care of and wrapped up before he shuts us all down for good. Like recalling the guy that for months kept calling him Brenda... Or the fact that he still, yes still, wears Velcro shoes (well, last I knew anyway, please Becky, tell me you've fixed this?)... I imagine his daughter will be lacing up her own shoes properly long before Brendan... (Update: In comments, Brendan tells us he is now wearing proper lace up trainers, so I suppose we can't tease him about that anymore.) Anyway, it appears it is last call, so I say we get on with it for a nice good showing these last 20 ish hours.

Really, I'm thinking a good and proper roast for a nice send off...

Update: Or just, you know, say fair thee well and thank you, if that's more your fancy. (Just remember, odd sentence constructions are encouraged.)

One day more

By Brendan Loy

I've been working hard this weekend on the back-end tasks necessary to make the big blog switch happen Monday night, and I think I'll be able to do it on schedule. So, sometime after 7:30 PM EDT, this blog will disappear, and will be replaced with my weekly blog (and my photoblog... and a linklog... and a new "moblog"...).

I'll save the details of the new blog(s) for later, but I wanted to mention this now so you're all aware. Guestbloggers, if you have anything you've been itching to say, today would be the day. :) And readers, if things are a little screwy in this space Monday night, you know why. Hopefully everything will be humming along smoothly by Tuesday morning, albeit in a brave new world wherein I'm no longer a hyperactive blogger.

P.S. Incidentally, I've decided, upon reflection, to drop the "Irish Trojan" moniker from both the titles and subtitles of the new blogs. The sidebar of the weekly blog will still mention my USC and Notre Dame affiliations, and that I used to blog as the "Irish Trojan," but officially speaking, these are my final 24 hours blogging as the "Irish Trojan."

They like WALL·E, they really like WALL·E!

By Brendan Loy

I haven't really been paying any attention to the hype for WALL·E, the Disney/Pixar film that opened Friday, but it's getting absolutely rave reviews from critics -- a 96% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes! -- to the point where, for example, it made the Wall Street Journal's critic sound veritably Obamaesque in his gushing:

The first half hour of "WALL-E" is essentially wordless, and left me speechless. This magnificent animated feature from Pixar starts on such a high plane of aspiration, and achievement, that you wonder whether the wonder can be sustained. But yes, it can. ...

[T]he film stands as a stunning tour de force. The director has described it as his love letter to the golden era of sci-fi films that enchanted him as a kid in the 1970s. It is certainly that, in hearts and spades. Beyond that, though, it's a love letter to the possibilities of the movie medium, and a dazzling demonstration of how computers can create a photorealistic world -- in this case a ruined world of mysterious majesty -- that leaves literal reality in the dust. ... I must drop my inhibitions about dropping the M word -- especially since I've already used magnificent -- and call "WALL-E" the masterpiece that it is.

See also TNR's Christopher Orr:

For over a dozen years now, the best name in American film has been Pixar. No movie star, no director, no writer, producer, or studio approaches its level of consistent excellence. Even Pixar's weaker offerings (A Bug's Life, Cars, and--in my moderately heretical view--Finding Nemo) have exceptional depth and texture, moral as well as visual. And its best efforts (Toy Story, The Incredibles) are simply transcendent, rivaling the finest live-action films in sophistication and sentiment.

Pixar's newest movie, WALL·E, is firmly in the latter tier, and quite possibly at the top of it. It is, in a word, a marvel, a film that recalls in equal measure Hollywood's most evocative future visions--Blade Runner and Brazil, E.T. and 2001--and the silent intimacies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. It is a story about love and loneliness, perseverance and triumph, the possibilities and pitfalls of human existence. That this story is told by way of the exploits of a tiny, faceless robot only makes it more extraordinary.

Wow. I guess I'll have to go see it.

Incidentally, speaking of movies, I finally saw Charlie Wilson's War; Becky and I watched it Friday night on DVD, having rented it from Blockbuster. It's really good, mostly because Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman freakin' rock. Watching their witty banter -- fueled also by great screenwriting, by the way -- was just an absolute joy. It's amazing how much you can accomplish in a movie, with apparent effortlessness, when you've got great actors playing the key roles. For a film that didn't exactly have an elaborate or involved plot, it never seemed to drag at all. It was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. (Becky, who hates Julia Roberts, thought she was poorly cast and outclassed by her co-stars, and that she brought the movie down a notch. I agree that she was the weakest link, but I don't think she particularly hurt the movie.) If you haven't seen it, you should; it's a great film.

Uga is dead, long live Uga

By Brendan Loy

Uga VI, the mascot of the Georgia Bulldogs since 1999, has died.

He will be buried alongside his predecessors, Uga I through V, in a vault inside the football stadium. And he will of course be replaced by Uga VII.

I'm not a Georgia fan, obviously, but Uga (pronounced "uh-guh") is pretty freakin' cool. Not as cool as Traveler, of course, but cool nonetheless. R.I.P., Uga VI.

N.C. says no to WTF

By Brendan Loy

If you're a North Carolina resident, and you're offended by your own license plate because it begins with the letters "WTF," you can get it replaced for free.

It seems that DMV officials "learned last year the common acronym stands for a vulgar phrase in e-mail and cell phone text messages." Heh. No word on whether the initial discovery of this fact was met with an expression of incredulous disbelief -- for instance, "STFU!"

Coming soon: the N.C. DMV discovers the hidden meaning of "POS" and various other three-letter combinations, and decides to stop making such a BFD out of this sort of BS.

Ugh, powder blue

By Brendan Loy

Clinton and Obama wore (nearly) matching outfits at their Unity event this afternoon: her pantsuit and his tie were both, according to Politico's color-spectrum analysis, powder blue.

Powder blue, of course, used to be a UCLA school color, back when I was at USC. But the Bruins switched in 2003 to a different shade of blue, so I guess I can forgive the Dems for their use of what I've always considered a rather distasteful shade of an otherwise fine color. Still... for future reference, I'd recommend either Notre Dame blue or Newington blue. :)

Anyway, here are some more photos from the Obama-Clinton rally in Unity.

Clinton, Obama join together in Unity

By Brendan Loy

Literally.

Around midday today, the former Democratic rivals will make their first joint public appearance since she dropped out of the race -- and the event will be held in Unity, a tiny town in western New Hampshire where Obama and Clinton each received exactly 107 votes* in the January 8 primary.

Here's a quick primer on Unity, from Wikipedia:

Unity is a town in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,530 at the 2000 census and an estimated 1,715 six years later. The town includes the villages of East Unity, Quaker City, and West Unity. ... The racial makeup of the town was 99.35% White, 0.07% African American, 0.13% Asian, and 0.46% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.72% of the population.

The percentages from the 2000 census indicate that Unity had literally one black person, two Asians, seven mixed-race individuals, and eleven Latinos. Oh, and 1,509 non-Hispanic whites. Heh.

Anyway, here's an AP article about how Unity is gearing up for today's big event. It opens with the obligatory quote from a local old lady: "I don't remember having any presidential candidates here in my time," says 84-year-old Roberta Callum. And then there's this, regarding the expected crowd of 2,500: "Locals say the last time there was a crowd that big was for a 1970s performance by folk singer Arlo Guthrie." Heh.

The Concord Monitor is unimpressed with the meta-pun that today's event represents:

[N]o one would have mistaken these two policy wonks for the jokesters of the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Nonetheless, nearly six months after the local vote, Obama and Clinton return today, going to extreme lengths for a corny gag.

They're coming to Unity, N.H. - get it? Unity? It's a place where they split the local Democratic vote, 107-107. It's a place so far out in the boondocks that voters and reporters will require shuttle buses from Sunapee, for Pete's sake.

Ah yes, the bustling metropolis of Sunapee -- population 3,055! And it's only 31 minutes away! Heh.

Individual right to bear arms vindicated; still no right to arm bears

By Brendan Loy

The Supreme Court is expected to rule very shortly on, essentially, what the Second Amendment means, in the Washington, D.C. handgun ban case, D.C. vs. Heller.

SCOTUSblog is liveblogging.

UPDATE: By a 5-4 vote, with no plurality or concurrences -- i.e., the five justices in the majority all agreed on the same rationale -- the "Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm." (That quote is from SCOTUSblog, not from the opinion.)

UPDATE 2: Here's the opinion and the dissents (PDF). Scalia wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by the other four conservative justices. There were two separate dissents, one by Stevens and one by Breyer; each dissent was joined by the other three liberal justices. So, like I said, a clear 5-4 split, with no muddying of the waters by multiple plurality opinions and such.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, some relevant quotes from the majority opinion can be found here. And here's an initial analysis from SCOTUSblog's Lyle Denniston -- although, as the Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr says, "the details of the opinion are critical; it will take a bit of time to read the decision to get a sense of what it means."

Help me name my new blog!

By Brendan Loy

All right, I know I've been dragging my feet on this, but I have indeed decided -- as I alluded last Friday -- to try out the weekly blog format. My intention is to make the switch on Tuesday. (I figure July 1, the halfway point of the calendar year, is a good arbitrary date to make such a change.)

However, the timing of the switch may change, depending on how much free time I have this weekend. There's a lot of back-end stuff that I need to do, both to close down this blog and to set up the new blog. If I don't make the switch on Tuesday, it probably won't happen until July 14 or thereabouts, because Becky and I will be traveling over July 4 weekend, so I won't have much free time again until the weekend of the 12th-13th.

Anyway, I need help from y'all on something. In switching from this "hyperactive" blog to a new, weekly blog, I want to make a clear, clean break by giving the blog a new name. I figure the subtitle could include the phrase "Irish Trojan," in order to maintain some semblance of "brand" continuity, but I want the title of the blog to be something different -- and a more drastic difference than my switch last year from "The Irish Trojan's Blog" to "Irish Trojan in Tennessee." I want a real new name.

Ideally, the new name would in some way emphasize the blog's weekly/occasional nature. But at the same time, I don't want it to be something totally pedestrian, like "Brendan's Weekly Blog" or whatever. The problem is, I'm terrible at coming up with good, non-pedestrian ideas for things like blog names (as the "Ably Nerd On" fiasco demonstrated). So, I need your help. I need some suggestions for what I should call the new blog!

So far, the only decent idea I've had is to call it "Hopefully Considered," which was the name of my Papa Loy's old weekly newspaper column. (The subtitle, I think, would be "The Irish Trojan's Weekly Blog." So, in toto, the title and subtitle would read "Hopefully Considered: The Irish Trojan's Weekly Blog.") But although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I'm not sure I like the idea of simply copying exactly the name of Papa's column. Something that alludes to "Hopefully Considered," without being precisely the same name, would be great... but I can't think of anything good.

Don't limit yourself to spin-offs of "Hopefully Considered," though. That's just one idea. Any and all other ideas are welcome! Please, submit 'em in comments, and please feel free to comment on other people's ideas as well. This isn't a democracy, exactly, but at the same time, I'm definitely curious to know what my "regulars" think. 

Politics as usual?

By Brendan Loy

Earlier today, I read this article by Bob Beckel making the strategic case for an Obama-Clinton ticket, and I found myself almost beginning to doubt the ferocity of my oft-stated belief that such a choice would be "wolf-face crazy." Then I read the little biographical blurb at the bottom:

Bob Beckel managed Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign.

LOL! And Obama should take this guy's advice on political strategy, why exactly? ;)

Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Dan Balz argues that, so far, McCain vs. Obama is politics as usual:

Whatever substance they may contain has been buried in negative counterattacks from the opposing camp, designed to turn ideas into stereotypes and candidates into caricatures. In the hands of Obama's advisers, McCain is nothing more than the third coming of President Bush. To McCain's staff, Obama is merely a liberal, naive, arrogant extension of what Democrats have been offering for years.

Gone in the early stages of this campaign is any sense of the uniqueness of the two nominees. McCain is certainly no garden-variety Republican and the historic possibilities of Obama's candidacy cannot be overstated. But those realities have been submerged beneath a tactical shouting match that feeds the cable culture of contemporary politics.

Don't blame the media for this. The campaigns have deliberately adopted postures of hyper-aggressiveness to set the early tone. The testosterone levels appear extremely high. No charge however small or incidental can go unanswered. No proposal, no matter how innocuous or provocative, can be discussed calmly or intelligently.

That led a McCain surrogate to respond to Obama's comments on the rights of terrorist detainees, a topic on which reasonable people can differ, as "delusional." It led to an Obama surrogate to describe as "stupid" the positions McCain has taken on the Iraq war, though it is clearly arguable that the surge strategy has helped to reduce violence and U.S. casualties. ...

Of all the candidates who sought the presidency this year, McCain and Obama seemed the least likely to fall so quickly into old habits. The question is whether the opening weeks are a true reflection of their characters and the kind of campaigns they intended to run or a temporary departure.

(Hat tip: Halperin.)

A Dodd scandal, and a Courant catastrophe

By Brendan Loy

The Waterbury Republican-American evidently does not believe in God and Senator Dodd. Well, maybe the former, but certainly not the latter. :) In an editorial Monday, the Rep-Am's editorial board calls Dodd "Tammany Hall's senior senator" and scolds the national media -- as well as, in a subsequent editorial, the Hartford Courant -- for failing to more vigorously cover "the sweetheart mortgages he got from Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Nozilo." (Countrywide is described as "the Enron of subprime mortgages.") "This scandal has legs," the editors assert.

I haven't followed this at all, so I have no idea whether it's a big deal; I just saw the link on InstaPundit, and since it involves Connecticut's, er, other senator, I figured it deserved a post.

Meanwhile, in other Connecticut news -- and speaking of the Courant -- the Nutmeg State's paper of record is eliminating 60 newsroom staffers and reducing the number of news pages in the paper per week from 273 to 206. Here's the memo to staff. (Hat tip: my dad.)

It's times like these I'm really happy I went into law instead of journalism.

On the surge

By Brendan Loy

Ross Douthat has a good post about Iraq and the surge.

Poll shows Obama way ahead nationally; Barr, Nader hurt McCain

By Brendan Loy

The L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll finds the following national breakdown in a four-way race: Obama 48%, McCain 33%, Nader 4%, Barr 3%, Undecided 10%. Even if we assume that most of those 10% will eventually vote for McCain, in accordance with the Bradley Effect, Obama's still clearly winning.

What's particularly intriguing is that, although Nader does slightly better than Barr, their combined effect hurts McCain far more than Obama. When only two candidates are mentioned, it's Obama 49%, McCain 37%. Another 4% volunteer their intention to vote for "someone else," while 10% remain undecided. The poll write-up explains:

Eighty-seven percent of McCain’s voters would stay with him [in a four-way race featuring Nader and Barr], but 11% would vote for another candidate, with 2% undecided.  Almost all of Obama’s voters (95%) would still stay with him even when the race opened up to include more candidates.

More specifically, when the two-way race becomes a four-way race, 5% of McCain voters switch to Barr, and 6% switch to Nader, while 2% say they "don't know" how they'd vote. By contrast, just 2% of Obama supporters switch to Nader, 0% switch to Barr, 2% "don't know," and -- just to prove that you can always find a tiny segment of poll respondents who'll say things that don't make any sense whatsoever -- 1% switch to McCain! (Remember, he's an option in both scenarios; why anyone would vote for Obama in a two-way race, but McCain in a four-way race, is beyond me.)

Other interesting findings:

• "More than 80% of Obama voters said they were enthusiastic about their candidate, including 47% who are very enthusiastic.  It’s another matter for McCain.  Just under half (45%) of McCain voters said they were enthusiastic about voting for him, but 51% were not enthused about the prospect."

• "While almost a fifth of moderate Republicans would support Obama, just 7% of moderate Democrats would support the Republican candidate.  Overall, almost four out of five liberals support Obama, just 58% of conservatives support McCain."

• "[M]en are somewhat divided -- 40% for Obama to 37% for McCain -- but women give the Democratic candidate a 25 point lead (54% to 29%)."

• Among whites, it's McCain 39%, Obama 39%, Nader 5%, Barr 4%, someone else 2%, undecided 11%. (If Bradley/Wilder holds, McCain will get the bulk of those undecideds in the end.) Among blacks, Obama gets "nine out of 10" or thereabouts, while McCain gets just 2%, and 2% are undecided. Obama wins 61-23 among "other ethnic groups."

State-by-state polls, it should be noted, have been trending in the same direction. Five Thirty Eight, which was projecting an extremely close race as recently as a few weeks ago, now has Obama winning 344 to 194 in the Electoral College, with a map that roughly resembles Clinton's win over Dole in 1996.

Caveat: It's still very early, and polls at this point can be extremely misleading, arguably to the point of meaninglessness. It's clear that Obama is doing very well right now; it's not at all clear what, if anything, that means for November.

P.S. It should also be noted that, although some pre-election polls in 2000 showed him in the high single digits, Nader ultimately got just 2.73% that year, and in 2004 he managed a paltry 0.38%. It seems highly unlikely, then, that in a high-stakes election offering such a stark issue-based contrast as Obama vs. McCain, he'll ultimately get anywhere near 4% of the vote. In fact, given that Obama is practically a liberal's dream candidate (at least as plausible Democratic nominees go), I find it hard to believe that Nader will do better than the 0.38% he got in '04, when he was running against the far less dreamy John Kerry. (On the other hand, I suppose Nader's numbers could be boosted by the "racist liberal" vote -- folks who won't vote for McCain because he's a Republican, but won't vote for Obama because he's black.)

The only way I can see Nader breaking 1% is if he truly does pick up a whole bunch of erstwhile McCain voters -- and that itself seems highly unlikely, given how anathema his views are to anyone who is remotely conservative or libertarian-ish. My guess is that those 6% of McCain voters who currently gravitate to Nader in a four-way race are simply disaffected with their candidate, and are casting a "protest vote" for the third-party candidate whose name they recognize, namely Nader. But once they start paying more attention, I'd imagine that most of 'em will realize Nader is really not their kind of guy. Nader is a liberal candidate; it's hard to believe he can build a sizable support base that's based fundamentally on anything other than liberal voters.

In the end, most of the disaffected conservatives/Republicans will either stay home, vote for Barr, or hold their noses and vote for McCain. The "conservatives for Nader" movement is about as plausible as the "elderly Jews for Buchanan" movement in Palm Beach County eight years ago. ;)

What about Zimbabwe?

By Brendan Loy

TNR's James Kirchick asks an intriguing question: "Will the Candidates Recognize Morgan Tsvangirai as President of Zimbabwe?"

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, is the legitimately elected president of Zimbabwe. Or at least he should be. He won that country's presidential election (and his party won its parliamentary election) on March 29th, a victory that has been denied to him and his colleagues over the past three months as Robert Mugabe has murdered nearly 100 opposition supporters, tortured many more, and driven thousands from their homes. A week after the election, the Zimbabwean junta announced that Tsvangirai did not win an outright majority, thus forcing a runoff scheduled for this Friday. On Sunday, however, Tsvangirai announced that he was dropping out of the election, stating that "we cannot stand there and watch people being killed for the sake of power."

So here's a question for Senators Obama and McCain. Back in April, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer declared Tsvangirai the winner of the March 29th election, and certified that he won over 50% of the vote. Recognition of him as the duly elected president of Zimbabwe -- with all of the diplomatic measures that would imply, specifically spelled out today in a New York Sun editorial -- should have been forthcoming, yet the State Department has been reluctant to go that far. With Tsvangirai hiding in the Dutch Embassy for fear of his life, will either of you call upon the United States to recognize him as the elected president of Zimbabwe?

Sounds good to me. But wouldn't that constitute "regime change"?

Mismanaging the world

By Brendan Loy

"John McCain and the Republicans will lose if this campaign is about issues. They only mismanaged the economy and mismanaged the hurricane and mismanaged the budget and mismanaged the war and mismanaged the hunt for Osama bin Laden and mismanaged the world." --John Brummett, Arkansas News Bureau. (Hat tip: Ben Smith.)

P.S. Meanwhile, on an unrelated note, the Obama campaign takes some MSM heat for its less than entirely progressive attitude toward the American Muslim community. Money quote from Congressman Keith Ellison (he's the guy who was actually photographed being sworn in with his hand on the Koran), regarding Obama's aggressive denials of those pesky "smears" alleging that he's a Muslim: "A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way." More here and here.

Fortune's Favour

By Brendan Loy

The new Great Big Sea album is available on iTunes. Woohoo!

UPDATE: So far, so good; I've listened to tracks 1-4 and 7. "Banks of Newfoundland" is, as I thought it might be, quite dissimilar from (and probably more authentic than!) the Irish Rovers' version; the lyrics are roughly the same, but they're set to a completely different tune. It doesn't have the same hairy-chested, belt-it-out feel as the Rovers' version (or, for that matter, as some other GBS songs like "General Taylor," "Captain Kidd," "The Old Black Rum," etc.), but I still like it, I think. I'll have to listen to it a bunch more times to decide for sure. :)

One song I definitely like is track #3, "England," which contains the lyric that gave rise to the album's title, "Fortune's Favour." It's a very neat little ditty about the first English settlers who came to Newfoundland (or "the New Found Land," as the island was originally known, and as the song initially describes it). "England" has good lyrics, beautiful harmonies, and some nice little nuanced touches in the way the song evolves and the way the boys sing it.

P.S. Appropriately enough -- and, come to think of it, this is probably intentional on Great Big Sea's part -- today is the anniversary of the date in 1497 when John Cabot landed in Newfoundland*, becoming the first European to since the Vikings to reach North America's shores. (Hat tip: My Adversaria.)

*Probably. Various other locations, including Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, claim he landed there rather than in Newfoundland. But it was most likely in Newfoundland, at Cape Bonavista.

Big Brother bans hats in Yorkshire pubs

By Brendan Loy

You can take our lives, but you can never take our silly British hats!!!

Vice President Biden?

By Brendan Loy

Joe Biden: hell yeah, I'd be Obama's veep!

As I've said before, I think Biden is a great choice in theory -- an experienced hand, sensible on foreign affairs, forceful on the war on terror, etc. In practice, he's a bit trickier: he's as slippery and slimy a Washington insider as they come, which doesn't exactly jive with Obama's message of change, and he has a bad habit of putting his foot in his mouth. (See: "articulate and clean," Indians at 7-Eleven, etc.)

Still, since I ultimately rank national security and foreign policy as my #1 voting priority, I'd be reassured by Obama picking Biden. I kind of doubt it will happen, though, especially now that he seems almost to be campaigning for it.

Holy stone and sand

By Brendan Loy

Great Big Sea's new album, Fortune's Favour, debuts tomorrow -- and I just noticed that Track 7 is "Banks of Newfoundland," which happens to be the first Newfoundland song that I ever learned! The chorus, as it's sung by the Irish Rovers (iTunes link here), goes like this:

We'll rub her 'round and scrub her 'round
With holy stone and sand,
And we'll say farewell to the Virgin Rocks
On the Banks of Newfoundland!

My father had (and presumably still has) a vinyl record of the 1969 Irish Rovers album The Life of the Rover, which had "Banks of Newfoundland" on it, and he would play it frequently on our old record player when I was a little kid. It was one of my favorites; I used to love singing that chorus when I was, oh, maybe 5 years old. :) I was also a big fan of the end of the final verse -- "And to the docks, they come in flocks / The pretty girls will stand / Sayin' it's snugger with me than it is at sea / On the banks of Newfoundland!" -- though of course I had no idea what those lyrics meant. ;) In the words of Grandpa Loomer, albeit referring to a different bawdy Irish tune that I famously sung at an even earlier age: "What kind of song is that for a three-year-old?" Heh.

Anyway, as is typical for traditional Irish/Maritime music, there are various different versions of the lyrics floating around, and probably different tunes, too. The snippet of an early Great Big Sea demo of "Banks of Newfoundland" that's played in Canada.com Webisode 11, Part 1, from 5:32 to 6:20, certainly sounds very different from the version I know. (Hat tip: Between The Rock And A Hard Place.) So I really don't know what Track 7 of Fortune's Favour will sound like. But I can't wait to find out! The prospect of hearing my favorite band belt out the hearty chorus of a song that I've known for almost my entire life, a childhood favorite, makes me even more excited than I already was for tomorrow's big debut.

I'll definitely be using a portion of one of my Father's Day presents from Becky -- an iTunes gift certificate -- to buy the album tomorrow. Great Big Sea rocks!

P.S. After the jump, I've posted the lyrics of the Irish Rovers' version of "Banks of Newfoundland," since I couldn't find that particular lyrical rendition online anywhere.

George Carlin dies at age 71

By David K.

Comedian George Carlin, whose off-color comedy caused him to run afoul of the FCC and led to a landmark Supreme Court case on decency and broadcasting, passed away from heart failure on Sunday in Los Angeles.

AP: Panic!!!

By Brendan Loy

The Associated Press says everything seemingly is spinning out of control.

I blame George Bush the media global warming Al Gore the Clintons illegal immigrants Barack Hussein Obama teh gays the Jews Karl Rove Halliburton Canada.

R.I.P., Robbie

By Brendan Loy

I'm afraid I have some very sad news to report. A few days ago, while we were out west visiting Arizona and Colorado, our beloved greyhound, Robbie, died unexpectedly and suddenly of bloat. He was two months shy of seven years old.

It happened overnight last Sunday night at the kennel where he was staying. It wasn't the kennel's fault; bloat strikes rapidly and without warning, and there was no indication anything was wrong until too late. I got a call early Monday morning giving me the news. I didn't mention it here on the blog until now because I wanted to wait till I had had time to put together a proper photographic tribute. I've now done so; you can view 186 pictures and 12 videos of Robbie, from 2004 through 2008, on Flickr. (Slideshow here.)

The photo gallery traces not just Robbie's life, but our lives over the last four-plus years: getting our graduate degrees at ASU and Notre Dame, moving in and out of various apartments, and criss-crossing the country by car, from Mesa to South Bend, then to Glendale and back to South Bend, and finally to Knoxville. In each place, we've found new places for Robbie to play, from Mesa's Quail Run dog park, to the tennis court and lawn at South Bend's Clover Ridge apartments, to Jay & Ashley's back yard in Loudon, among others.

And of course, geographic changes haven't been the half of it. Since adopting Robbie from the Arizona Greyhound Rescue in March of '04, Becky and I have gotten engaged, married, and had a baby. We've both earned graduate degrees, and have gone from being 21- and 22-year-old kids to 26-year-old adults. Oh yeah, and I briefly became a national media sensation -- to the point where Robbie himself made the New York Times. :)

Through all these changes, we've had our gentle giant -- our very own "40 mile-an-hour couch potato" -- as a constant presence in our lives. Needless to say, he will be sorely missed.

Much more after the jump.

Mars probe discovers ice

By Brendan Loy

It's official: there's ice on Mars.

The end of all things -- or not

By Brendan Loy

Two weeks ago, I announced that I intend to close down this blog on July 20 -- one month from today. But, like Frodo standing at the edge of Sammath Naur, looking down into the fires of Mount Doom, I find myself wavering and wondering whether I should "choose to do what I came to do," if you will.

In my June 6 post, I mentioned that Becky had initially suggested an alternative solution to my bloggy dilemma: I could simply "cut back drastically... by maintaining the current blog but committing to do just one post per week." But I explained that I had rejected this idea on the grounds that it "wouldn't work" (because I'd cheat) and that ultimately, "it wouldn't be desirable" (because "the Irish Trojan community would die a slow and painful death," waning due to bloggy inactivity rather than "go[ing] out while I'm on top").

In comments on the post, however, several readers endorsed the weekly-blog idea. Bea, for instance, wrote, "I like Becky's idea of a weekly column of sorts. So what if you spend a little time every week thinking about the topic and a little time on research? I think it's doable, a great outlet and, hey, the WIFE is ok with this!" Christine also made a compelling case:

Life is about limits and prioritizing and relaxing (oh and a few other things). But if you enjoy having a blog (which I get the feeling you do, as well as your mentioned past blog-like antics), then you really should keep going. Just tweek it. ... I LOVE the idea of a weekly column of sorts. Gives you something to ponder (nothing wrong with that) all week AND an outlet! And your loyal fans have something to look forward to! If something is particularly intriguing to you, you can blog more on that topic, but I would hope it would allow you to not feel like a slave to brendanloy.com but still give you the freedom to write and get your ideas out there.

If you have a problem with setting limits, then set some (I personally hate limits) but it's kinda like you're throwing the baby out with the bath water ... Life (or blogs) don't have to be all or nothing.

The more I've thought about it, the more I've come around to the idea that a weekly blog might work, provided that I structure it in such a way as to reduce the temptation to "cheat." The goal would be to create basically the same situation that I described with regard to the photoblog: making the new blog so obviously different from the old that I won't "be overly tempted to co-opt it" for the old-style "hyperactive" blogging, because doing so "would be so foreign to the nature of the blog itself."

If I can manage that -- and if I can prevent my blogging "schedule" from feeling like an obligation or assignment -- then I think a weekly blog would be worth doing, and preferable to the alternative of quitting cold turkey. In other words, I am increasingly tempted to declare: "I will not do this deed. The Blog is mine!" :) But for me, unlike for Frodo, I think this actually might be the correct decision. (And hopefully I won't lose a finger over it!)

For one thing, blogging weekly would be a new challenge, as it would effectively force me to hone a very different writing style: the lengthy, essay-ish, often multi-topic blog post (a la Lileks's "Bleat"), as opposed to the clipped immediacy of hyperactive blogging, usually about one topic at a time (but many per day). To keep things flowing, interesting, and adequately focused in such a format can be difficult, and trying to become as good at writing in that style as I've become in the current format would be a worthwhile endeavor unto itself, methinks.

Furthermore, although my audience would undoubtedly shrink markedly, many of the die-hards would presumably stick around, and that'd be nice; I'd hate to lose touch with the Nadines and kcatnds of the world. :) Also, maintaining a textual blogospheric presence would mean that I won't have to improvise something -- like temporarily co-opting the photoblog -- in the event I'm caught up in breaking news, or otherwise have a burning desire to share my thoughts on a particular topic with, say, InstaPundit's readers. I'd still have a public blog for such things; I'd just use it less often.

But perhaps most importantly, I'd be following the sage advice of the fourth one:

Make sure that, in addition to dedicating yourself to family, career, and community, you have at least one important outlet that belongs just to YOU, and that speaks to you in a way that nothing else does. In my own life, I have found that kind of independence and release to be vital, not only for my own personal well-being, but for energizing me in a way that allows me to give even more to the people I love.

Or, as Alasdair put it, "be careful that you don't make a void in your Life without having something useful and positive with which to fill said void."

The reality, as I said in my June 6 is post, is that "I'll still need some way of expressing myself, of publishing my thoughts to the world, of letting loose the occasional rant; I've always had, and needed, such an outlet, at least since seventh grade." My original thought was to satisfy this need by way of the photoblog and Flickr, my Pajamas Media hurricane-blogging, and perhaps the occasional Facebook post. But if I'm going to post bloggy rants on Facebook anyway, why not channel that aspect of my creative energy in a more productive direction by still maintaining a public blog, just on a weekly basis? With the right amount of structure and discipline, I think the latter solution is better than the former.

Crucially, the calendar gives me time to do a "trial run" of this weekly blog idea, before the impending changes in our lives. If it works, I can keep doing it; if it fails -- whether because I can't resist the temptation to "cheat," or because the scheduled nature of it (most likely, I would try to blog every Sunday) makes blogging feel less fun and more obligatory, or for some other reason -- then I can go back to the original, cold-turkey plan.

I haven't yet finally decided what to do; I'm going to sleep on it this weekend. But if I do decide to switch (on a trial basis) to a weekly blog format, I will actually move up the date of this blog's retirement -- most likely to June 30 -- and start up my weekly blog (which would be a new blog, separate and distinct from this one) in early July. That would give me time to test out the concept and see how it works.

I will, of course, keep y'all informed about what I decide to do. In the mean time, your feedback is much appreciated. One big question for my regulars: do you anticipate that you would continue to regularly read my blog if it were updated only once a week, provided of course that those weekly updates are interesting and worth reading? Also, in terms of keeping the discussion going and the community alive, would it make a difference if I disabled purely anonymous commenting, such that you'd at least need an OpenID account, or perhaps a WordPress.com account, in order to comment?

[Bumped from 12:07 PM to 5:00 PM. -ed.]

A dead heat in Georgia?!

By Brendan Loy

Ladies and gentlemen, we have statistical evidence of the Bob Barr effect! A new poll in the blood-red state of Georgia, where the Libertarian nominee is from, shows a dead heat: McCain 44%, Obama 43%, Barr 6%. Wow!

Now, a major grain of salt is called for here. It's very early, and I seriously, seriously doubt these numbers will ultimately hold up. But this sort of polling data (see also: close races in Alaska, North Carolina) can't make the McCain people happy. Indeed, I bet they're getting some serious heartburn from the combination of: 1) the recent state polling numbers generally, which show a definite Obama bounce in red, blue and purple states alike, and 2) the noises Obama is making (backed with action) about competing in states like Texas and Indiana.

With regard to Georgia and point #2, the real issue is that, in light of Obama's decision to change his mind and reject public financing -- a tactical no-brainer, notwithstanding its dubiousness in principle -- he can afford to put his (abundant) money where his mouth is, and at least force McCain to waste precious resources in these states.

P.S. His mom's white! He's from America! Heh.

Colorado and Arizona

By Brendan Loy

Over on my photoblog, I've posted pictures from my trip to Phoenix and Denver.

We're back safe & sound in Knoxville, by the way. Loyette was once again a champion flyer -- though I think we'll be paying for the disruptions to her schedule in the form of weekend fussiness.

How to be a bandwagon fan

By Brendan Loy

SportsPickle's DJ Gallo writes a handy guide to being a bandwagon fan for ESPN's Page 2. Money quote: "don't let [people] anywhere near your car. They might get the wrong impression when they see that your bumper is covered in Red Sox, Yankees, Lakers, Celtics, Cowboys, Patriots, USC football and Duke basketball stickers. As though it's your fault that you have deep, childhood ties to all those teams!" Heh.

Speaking of which, hey, how 'bout those Cubs? ;)

Black hawk downtown

By Brendan Loy

I mentioned yesterday that I noticed a bunch of military helicopters flying over downtown Denver on Monday night, and wondered what the heck was going on. Turns out I wasn't alone. The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News report that the city police department received numerous calls from members of the public concerned about the aerial activity. Not to worry, folks were told: this was simply "routine" training related to the war on terror, not a response to, or preparation for, any particular threat or crisis.

Here's some video of the choppers doing their thing:

More detail from the Rocky Mountain News:

The exercise by special ops troops, supported by Denver police SWAT teams and firefighters, is intended to prepare for any terrorism threat in a "realistic urban environment," said Lt. Steve Ruh, a spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. ...

"It's all in preparation for anything that could possibly happen with the global war on terrorism," said Ruh, whose command coordinates all the military branches' crack commando units - from Army Rangers to Navy SEALS.

The Special Operations Command calls itself the "Tip of the Spear" against the nation's gravest threats.

Ruh noted that the exercises are conducted in major cities in the U.S., usually at the invitation of the cities, but that doesn't mean those cities are necessarily possible targets for terrorism.

There was apparently conflicting information at first about whether the location of the training is related to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August, but the official line appears to be that it is not. Meanwhile, there was some controversy about whether the proper notifications were made:

"The federal agencies sponsoring the ongoing multi-agency training in Denver agreed to make the proper notifications regarding the exercises to prevent surprise and inconvenience to Denver residents," [Mayor John] Hickenlooper wrote. "There seems to have been a misunderstanding about the reach and scope of these notifications, and they did not occur in the manner expected by the City.

"Although these exercises are in no way connected to the upcoming Democratic National Convention, Denver officials were well aware that there would be heightened sensitivity to an exercise such as this because of its proximity to the Convention," the mayor continued. "Denver recognizes that these are our federal partners, and we are fortunate that they have chosen Denver for their training exercises. Should there ever be an emergency here that would require federal assistance, they will be familiar with our City and how best to navigate it." ...

"Advance notice was given to the (Denver) civil authorities. We were here as guests," Ruh said. "It would be up to (local authorities) to send it out."

[Denver police Lt. Ron] Saunier said that Defense Department officials asked police to "respond to inquiry only." So he provided a "very generic statement" Monday to police dispatchers in case the public called.

But the official statements were not enough to satisfy some commenters on the Rocky Mountain News website, where the phrase "martial law" appears repeatedly. For example:

This is done to make citizens accustomed to military hardware, and martial law easier to accept. Don't accept it, Posse Commititus puts citizen protection under police authority. Blending police and military is what tin pot dictators do to control their population. ...

just wait until the convention starts, the military, and the local police will be trying out all kinds of toys on the protestors. personally, I cant wait to watch it all unfold on CNN. ...

The military is for wars, domestic protection is up to the police. Bringing the military onto our soil to do the cops' job is martial law, AKA lost liberty ...

This is just great...we now accept the military in our cities...the more we accept this the easier it will be for our government to imprison anyone it deems a "terrorist." We need to fight back NOW ...

[T]he Constitution deems a standing military a threat to freedom...what we need in this country is a militia and for everyone to own a gun...I dont need protection from the big bad terrorists and I don't need blackhawk helicopters flying over our cities...let everyone in this country own a gun with absolutely no restrictions and then we don't need any protection from anybody ...

[T]he first Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed in September 2001 declaring the War on Terror as a war on American soil, the PATRIOT ACT, The Military Authorizations Act, all written to erode our Bill of Rights. These all pave the road to Martial law and suspension of our government. We stand today one national emergency from this possibility. Why do we accept this? ...

The oath of the military is to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. I just hope impending martial law triggers memory of this oath among the current servicemen. I love my country and our constitution, loyal to that document and the people, I work to better it by denouncing the current direction we are headed. ...

Are you ready for martial law? ... We are opening a Pandora's box here. It's fun to play with the hardware...but actually using it domestically is another thing...

We are prepping you for MARTIAL LAW. What are you doing reading anyways, you should be watching the sports games like all the other mindless sheeple who have given up their liberty and freedom for a FALSE Security and who revel in being lied to. Franklin said that YOU deserve neither. So go and vote, doesnt matter to us in the CFR and bildaberg group who OWN both political parties! None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Go back to sleep sheeple and dont google CFR or Bildaberg group, its better not to know who controls/owns you! If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be!

Et cetera, et cetera.

(Hat tip: Marty.)

The clock tower and the Moon

By Brendan Loy

Sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of days. I haven't moved up the date of my blog retirement, I promise. :) I've just been super-busy in Denver. And speaking of Denver, here's a cool photo of the D&F clock tower and the Moon last night:

During a previous trip to Denver, it became something of a running joke among Becky, the SHA girls and myself that I was constantly taking pictures of the clock tower. But I think that one's actually pretty neat!

The Moon and clouds weren't the only things in the sky over Denver last night. All evening long, a pair of military helicopters was circling over downtown. They were making a lot of noise, but at some points their lights appeared to be off, as if they were operating in some sort of (admittedly rather ineffective) stealth mode. I have no idea what that was all about ("we're being invaded by Utah," I hypothesized at one point), but it was a little creepy.

Oh, and speaking of, uh, security and stuff: I'm now at the airport waiting for my flight back to Phoenix. This will be my third of four flights in less than a week (Nashville to Phoenix, Phoenix to Denver, Denver to Phoenix, Phoenix to Nashville). So I've been spending a lot of time in airports, and I have a question. It's now been almost two years since the implementation of the "new" security measures involving liquids and gels. Yet all the signs and announcements still talk about these as temporary steps, due to "increased" security. At what point will we end this charade, and acknowledge that these measures are here to stay permanently, or at least indefinitely?

Well don't you feel safer now?

By David K.

So it turns out, despite what the Bush administration and their supporters would have you believe, that many of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay had little or no ties to terrorism.  In fact, some were working FOR the U.S.  Certainly makes me feel safer knowing the government is locking up our allies for years without a chance to defend themselves.

Headline of the day

By Brendan Loy

From ESPN.com:

Heh.

Spectacular bird

By Brendan Loy

Today at the U.S. Open, Tiger Woods needed a birdie on the 18th hole to force a playoff tomorrow with Rocco Mediate. So, what happened? Well, what do you think happened? This is Tiger Woods we're talking about. Of course he made it. Here's the video:

Sweet.

UPDATE: Tiger did it again, and won.

Hope for Iraq

By Brendan Loy

Optimism about Iraq: it's not just for neocons anymore! From this week's issue of The Economist:

After all the blood and blunders, people are right to be sceptical when good news is announced from Iraq. Yet it is now plain that over the past several months, while Americans have been distracted by their presidential primaries, many things in Iraq have at long last started to go right.

This improvement goes beyond the fall in killing that followed General David Petraeus's “surge”. Iraq's government has gained in stature and confidence. Thanks to soaring oil prices it is flush with money. It is standing up to Iraq's assorted militias and asserting its independence from both America and Iran. The overlapping wars—Sunni against American, Sunni against Shia and Shia against Shia—that harrowed Iraq after the invasion of 2003 have abated. The country no longer looks in imminent danger of flying apart or falling into everlasting anarchy. In September 2007 this newspaper supported the surge not because we had faith in Iraq but only in the desperate hope that the surge might stop what was already a bloodbath from becoming even worse (see article). The situation now is different: Iraq is still a mess, but something approaching a normal future for its people is beginning to look achievable.

The article proceeds to explain the improvements in greater detail, and then concludes:

In highlighting the improved conditions in Iraq we do not mean to justify The Economist's support of the invasion of 2003 (see article). Too many lives have been shattered for that. History will still record that the invasion and occupation have been a debacle. Iraqis even now live under daily threat of violent death: hundreds are killed each month. They remain woefully short of the necessities of life, such as jobs, clean water and electricity. Iraq's government is gaining confidence faster than competence. It is still fractious, and in many places corrupt.

Nor does it follow that a turn for the better necessarily validates John McCain's insistence on America staying indefinitely. A safer Iraq might make Barack Obama's plan to pull out most American troops within 16 months more feasible, though at the moment a precipitate withdrawal looks foolish. But to guard the fragile improvements, the key for America must be flexibility. Both candidates have to keep their options open. If America's next president gets Iraq wrong because he has boxed himself in during the campaign, all the recent gains may be squandered and Iraq will slide swiftly back into misery and despair. That would be to fail twice over.

More from The Economist here and here. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

Happy Birthday, Becky!

By Brendan Loy

Another great lightning show

By Brendan Loy

We're safe and sound in Phoenix, having flown in from Tennessee yesterday with no Friday the 13th complications. :) Loyette was amazing; she didn't cry or fuss at all during takeoff, and she literally slept through landing. At one point in the middle of the flight, she woke up and cried for about 10 seconds -- but that was it. Otherwise she was completely calm for the entire flight. She's an amazing baby. :)

Also amazing: the view out the left-hand side of the plane, where we were sitting, looking south directly into a thunderstorm over west Texas. Neither the photos nor the video that I took remotely do the sight justice, but just for a taste, here's a photo:

It was really, really cool to see -- the second time in a week that I've been treated to a great lightning show. This time, of course, we were watching it from 36,000 feet, so it was a very different sort of view. There was lightning every couple of seconds, flashing across the sky and lighting up the clouds in all sorts of awesome patterns. Absolutely incredible.

Here's an archived radar image of what I believe is the line of storms that we were looking into:

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Tim Russert of NBC News has died at the age of 58, the network says.

Eire to EU: No, nay, never

By Joe Loy

Again with the Uprising, begob:

At the major ballot-counting center in Dublin, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan struggled to speak to reporters as anti-treaty activists jubilantly drowned him out with songs and chants of "No!" He eventually gave up and walked out, as one activist waved a sign reading "No to foreign rule" over his head.

Just rebel to the core, is all :}. OK here's the deal ~ or rather, the No-deal (emphases added; and, Hat tip: sister-in-law Paddy Patty Ash :) ~~

Ireland's voters have rejected the European Union reform treaty, a blueprint for modernizing the 27-nation bloc that cannot become law without Irish approval, electoral officials said Friday.

In a major blow to the EU, 53.4 percent of Irish voters said no to the treaty. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen now will join other EU leaders at a summit next week to try to negotiate a new way forward.

Anti-treaty groups from the far left and right mobilized "no" voters by claiming that the treaty would empower EU chiefs in Brussels, Belgium, to force Ireland to change core policies — including its low business tax rates, its military neutrality and its ban on abortion.

Among such "far left" groups was (naturally :) Sinn Féin (whose name is translatable to English as, appropriately enough, "Ourselves Alone" :). The treaty rejection is not only a blow to the EU's grand plan :> but also a shillelagh upside the heads of the Republic's mainstream political parties, all of which advocated a Yes vote ~ and perhaps especially a whack across the kneecaps of Fianna Fáil's Brian Cowen, who has replaced the formerly unsinkable (and Always incomparable :) Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach.

More after the break.

How am I not on this list?

By Brendan Loy

Hehe.

Friday the 13th

By Brendan Loy

We've got a big weekend coming up, in terms of the calendar: tomorrow is Flag Day (and the 233rd anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army), which of course means it's also Becky's birthday. And then Sunday is Father's Day -- my first as a dad -- and thus the final day of the U.S. Open, which will be kind of a big deal since we'll be visiting the golf-loving Zaks.

But before any of those special occasions can arrive, we have to get through today, which is... [cue horror-movie music]... Friday the 13th!! AAAAAHH!!! ;)

So, has anyone had any bouts of bad luck yet?

Personally, I don't suffer from Paraskavedekatriaphobia -- and a good thing, too, because tonight Becky, Loyette and I are flying to Phoenix! The drive to the Nashville Airport will be Loyette's longest car ride to date, followed by her first-ever plane trip. Wish us, um, luck!

UPDATE: A Friday the 13th fire and power outage in Washington, D.C.!

Commuters should expect major delays on Metro's Red Line this morning after a fire on the tracks near the Dupont Circle station, officials said. At the same time, a power outage in downtown Washington is affecting thousands of homes and offices, as well as traffic signals and Metro elevators and lighting.

It sounds like the fire and power outage were unrelated and coincidental. LOL! Friday the 13th is off to a rip-roarin' start. (Hat tip: ChrisN.)

A house divided

By Brendan Loy

You know those "House Divided" license plates -- they're really popular here in the South -- for families in which the spouses root for rival schools? Well, the governor and first lady of California have something similar going on, except it relates to politics rather than sports, and it's on their house instead of their car:

Heh.

Of course, while the Schwarzenegger-Shriver split gets front page treatment in the New York Times, the same thing happens every day in the Carville-Matalin household. :)

(As for those license plates, I need a customized USC/Notre Dame version that says "A Man Divided." Heh. Okay, not really, but it'd look cool, anyway...)

The judge and his porn

By Brendan Loy

If you haven't been following the Kozinski kerfuffle, here's a helpful roundup of links.

InstaPundit's tongue-in-cheek take: "Since it's generally thought that men are disproportionate consumers of porn because of their gender, and because, hormonally, they're driven to favor visual stimuli, then obviously punishing porn consumption constitutes sex discrimination, and is probably unconstitutional. Plus, research establishes that porn is good for America. You don't hate America, do you?" Heh.

Hurricane season preview

By Brendan Loy

My preview of the hurricane season is up on Pajamas Media. Perhaps the most interesting point is this:

There...seems to be a new focus among the [seasonal] forecasters on explaining the uncertainties inherent in their task. NOAA, for instance, now includes percentage probabilities along with its predictions of storm activity, somewhat like the margin of error in a public opinion poll. And the margin is quite high: “an above-normal season is most likely (65% chance), [but] there is a significant 25% chance of a near-normal season and a 10% chance of a below-normal season.” (Definitions here.) “This outlook is probabilistic, not deterministic,” NOAA’s introduction states. It is “based on predictions of large-scale climate factors known to be strong indicators of upcoming seasonal Atlantic hurricane activity,” but there are “uncertainties inherent in such climate outlooks,” which the percentage probabilities are designed to take into account. ...

Still, despite these acknowledged uncertainties, and despite the recent failures, forecasters have soldiered on and tried their best to accurately predict the 2008 season. In fact, the Klotzbach/Gray team has based its forecast on a newly tweaked model, designed to correct some of the errors of previous years. Cynics might compare this to college football’s BCS, which has repeatedly changed its formula to compensate for previous years’ problems — the sports equivalent of “hindcasting” — only to see brand new problems develop in subsequent seasons.

On the other hand, this is how the science evolves, and Klotzbach and Gray are forthright in admitting that it is a work in progress. In any event, “hindcasts” based on the new model come much closer to the mark than the real-time forecasts did in all of the last four years, which is significant, since 2004 and 2005 were both well above average (and were under-forecasted), while 2006 and 2007 were below average (and were over-forecasted). “The new hindcast model improves upon our real-time forecasts by approximately 60%…over the period from 2004-2007,” Klotzbach and Gray write.

Read the whole thing.

P.S. Naturally, the comments are all about... you guessed it... global warming. *sigh*

Big Google is watching you me

By Brendan Loy

Google Street View has come to Knoxville.

For instance, here's the place I just came back from -- the Knoxville Visitor Center on Gay Street, where the WDVX Blue Plate Special takes place every weekday:

View Larger Map

And here's a look at the Gay Street Bridge, seen from across the river in South Knoxville, with several downtown buildings, the Sunsphere, and the Henley Street Bridge in the distance:

View Larger Map

(Hat tip: Michael Silence.) More after the jump.

Nature's fireworks

By Brendan Loy

As I mentioned earlier, a severe thunderstorm pounded North Knoxville this afternoon. I had a bird's eye view of the storm from the parking garage downtown where I park for work, and I was able to capture several still frames of cloud-to-ground lightning from the videos I took with my digital camera. Here's the best one:

Here's what the storm looked like on radar at that very moment:

A wider, animated radar view can be found here. There are more lightning pics -- and other storm photos -- in my Flickr gallery, and several of those photos are highlighted on my photoblog.

UPDATE: One of my lightning videos is now on Flickr as well. You can see several lightning strikes, including the one pictured above.

P.S. The thunderstorm gave way to a beautiful sunset several hours later. Here are a couple photos of that:

Again, visit my Flickr gallery and my photoblog for more.

In welcome (& lucky) bit of comic relief, CT bomb squad detonates IED hidden in poultry

By Joe Loy

In the tony Hartford outer suburb of Simsbury, law enforcement authorities (alerted by a vigilant citizen) recently thwarted a Terror plot whose perpetrator(s) had deployed a Chicken with an unusually sinister Stuffing:

...A motorist on Powder Forest Drive Friday morning noticed what looked like a whole chicken — the kind bought at grocery stores for roasting — with a pipe bomb stuffed inside, police said Monday.

When they arrived on the scene around 9 a.m. officers found the roaster had an improvised explosive device where the fowl's innards should have been.

They closed the road for part of the morning as the Hartford Police Department's bomb squad was called to detonate the device, police said.

In its recent history, Simsbury and local residents have had their problems with hungry black bears, roaming coyotes and escaped emus. Now town folks can add store-bought chicken, stuffed with a bomb, to the list of odd animal incidents.

With the chicken and bomb taken care of, police are left to investigate who's responsible for the strange incident.

Police Capt. Matthew Catania would not describe the bomb Monday, but said it was "capable of causing harm to a person."...

Which, thank God it didn't occur, would definitionally have been Worse than the Irreparable harm already inflicted upon the Chicken :>.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Now ~ not to abruptly Pivot to the Negative or anything like that ;> ~ of course the reason Connecticut in general, and our Capital region of Hartford in particular, may Welcome this (only-by-the-grace-of-God) bit of Comic relief ~ is, that over the past week or so we have been quite-understandably Pounded all to Pieces, on the Cablenewsies & the Internets, about the astonishingly-tepid Videotaped response of his Lower Park Street neighbors to the depravedly-indifferent hit-&-run Rundown of Angel Arce Torres, age 78, who (it now develops) will spend whatever remains of his life on a ventilator in the hospital.

Following closely on the heels of various other recent Hartford horrors, including the brutal mugging/beating of 71-year-old former Deputy Mayor Nick Carbone ~ who has probably done more to help All the people of Hartford than any other living person ~ all this has set off some considerable sociological soul-searching in & around the city of my birth, and my son's. / Also, on a purely Practical level, the Staties are coming in ~ Again ~ to give the Local constabulary a hand. Hey ~ it's a Start.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

So. You can perhaps see why we kind of Like the Simsbury Chickenbomb story. At least it has a happy Ending. (Well. Apart from the Chicken. / Fire in the Hole, indeed. :)

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Four people were killed when a tornado struck a Boy Scout camp in western Iowa, a state safety official says.

No Shuttle for me

By Brendan Loy

Tried to watch the Shuttle & ISS fly overhead, but the sky was too bright and hazy (even the Moon is somewhat dimmed by wispy clouds, so the spacecrafts didn't stand a chance). Anyone have better luck elsewhere?

Boom! Crash!

By Brendan Loy

Big thunderstorm over North Knoxville. Lots of lightning.

Beautiful Knoxville scenery

By Brendan Loy

Don't you love it when Glenn Reynolds gets a little pervy with his photography? I sure do! But what does Dr. Helen think? ;)

(I kid, Glenn, I kid!)

Victory in sight?

By Brendan Loy

Kimberly Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War, and Frederick Kagan, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, claim in the WSJ:

America is very close to succeeding in Iraq. The "near-strategic defeat" of al Qaeda in Iraq described by CIA Director Michael Hayden last month in the Washington Post has been followed by the victory of the Iraqi government's security forces over illegal Shiite militias, including Iranian-backed Special Groups. The enemies of Iraq and America now cling desperately to their last bastions, while the political process builds momentum.

These tremendous gains remain fragile and could be lost to skillful enemy action, or errors in Baghdad or Washington. But where the U.S. was unequivocally losing in Iraq at the end of 2006, we are just as unequivocally winning today.

(Hat tip: Youngblai.) I have no idea whether the Kagans are correct, but in general, the problem with claims like theirs is one of credibility: back in 2006, most folks on the Right did not contemporaneously admit that we were "unequivocally losing in Iraq," so it's hard to know how much credence to lend to their claims now. (Honest query: I'd be curious if somebody can find an example of the Kagans bucking this trend back in '06, and forthrightly admitting then that we were losing. Maybe they did; I have no idea. But many conservatives -- and administration officials -- didn't.)

Listening to a hawkish conservative who always claimed we were winning say, "we were losing then, but we're winning now," is sort of like listening to a far-left liberal who opposed the war in Afghanistan say, "we should have stayed out of Iraq and focused on Afghanistan." Maybe they're right, but they have no credibility saying it!

Actually, though, the former example is arguably worse than the latter one, because whereas a lefty who rallies 'round a war he opposed is making a self-contradicting statement of opinion, a hawk who rewrites the war's history is making a self-contradicting statement of fact. And, as the saying goes, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but nobody's entitled to their own facts.

That's what makes this Iraq debate so frustrating for someone like me -- someone who is by no means an expert on what's happening in Iraq, but who wants to support the right course of action based on sound
reasoning and properly understood facts. Both sides are so committed to their ideological preconceptions that it's seemingly impossible for them to agree on what the facts are. The Left will claim we're losing, or are inevitably bound to lose, and must therefore get out, whether that's factually true or not; and the Right will claim that we're winning, and can succeed if only we keep at it for a little longer, and must therefore stay the course, whether that's factually true or not.

For many on both sides, I think, it's past the point of being dishonest: they're so committed to their argument that they convince themselves to honestly believe their version of reality. One of the reasons I'm undecided between Obama and McCain is because I feel like I'm choosing between these two camps, both of which have ideological blinders on, which is not exactly an appealing choice -- and meanwhile, I don't have the requisite information to decide whose preconceptions are closer to the truth, largely because I don't trust either side to present that information accurately! Nor do I trust the liberal media, or the conservative media, or the right-blogosphere, or the left-blogosphere. On this issue, it seems like everybody has an agenda.

What are the actual facts? Are we winning or losing? Is there a reasonable hope of genuine success in building a reasonably stable and at least somewhat democratic Iraq, or are we just wasting our time on a quixotic and unsustainable effort to do so, and suffering needless losses in the process? If we leave, will things get better or worse -- and if worse, how much worse? The "facts on the ground" that would help answer these questions are absolutely essential pieces of information for any rational decision-maker, yet they get lost in the fog of war -- and, perhaps more pertinently, of politics. Argh.

The key to a happy marriage? Sex!

By Brendan Loy

Okay, that's a vast oversimplification, but even so, this seems fairly obvious: "There's a strong relationship between rating your marriage as happy and frequency of intercourse." You don't say!

And/but: "We don't know whether people who are happy in their marriage have sex more, or whether people who have sex more become happy in their marriages, or a combination of those two." My money's on Choice #3.

(Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

Shuttle & ISS Wednesday night

By Brendan Loy

Assuming the Space Shuttle Discovery undocks as scheduled from the International Space Station at 7:33 AM EDT tomorrow (i.e., Wednesday) morning, there will be an opportunity tomorrow night for folks in parts of the southeastern U.S. to see the Shuttle and ISS flying overhead side-by-side.

Here in Knoxville, the 9:04 PM EDT flyover is just 11 minutes after sunset, so I'm not sure how visible the spacecrafts -- particularly the dimmer Shuttle -- will be. Certainly, there won't be much to see if you're west of Knoxville; the sky will be too bright. But the further east you go, the darker the sky will be at the requisite time. Thus, both the Shuttle and ISS should be easily visible in places that are east of Knoxville and reasonably close to the black line below:

Along the Carolina and Georgia coasts, all across the Florida peninsula, and in the Bahamas, the view should be stunning, weather permitting. As I've said before: "Trust me: even if you're not into dorky stuff like Iridium flares, this is well worth a trip outside at the proper time, if the sky is clear." The sight of "two distinct, bright dots, moving briskly across the evening sky in tandem -- two unmistakable beacons of the human presence in space" is "a really neat thing to see."

You can use Heavens-Above to check the specific viewing conditions for your location. If you're in the U.S., just click here and enter the name of your city or town, then select it from the resulting list of locales. On the screen that follows, click on "10 day predictions for: ISS" and look for an evening flyover on June 11 (or for that matter, June 12 or 13). If you're outside the U.S., select your country here and then follow the same steps.

It's a shame the flyover is so close to sunset here in Knoxville, because from this location, the spacecrafts' path takes them right past Mars, Saturn and the Moon:

Bush vs. Carter?

By Brendan Loy

Back in the long-ago dark ages of late 2007, when it appeared that Hillary Clinton was the inevitable Democratic nominee, there was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over the notion that the 2008 election -- and a potential Clinton Administration -- was going to turn into a re-hash of the 1990s.

Now, with Barack Obama the nominee, it appears we're going to re-hash the 1970s instead:

“Senator Obama says that I’m running for Bush’s third term," McCain said.  “Seems to me he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.”

Zing, indeed. Well, I guess it's better than re-hashing the election of 1896.

TPM's Greg Sargent says we can "expect more evocations of Carter. Lots more." Politico's Jonathan Martin seems to agree, writing that Carter is one of the few "convenient and resonant Democratic bogeymen" available.

P.S. On an unrelated note, John McCain wants to veto beer!

Heh.

Steve Jobs is a genius

By Brendan Loy

Thinking about yesterday's debut of the 3G iPhone, it occurred to me that Steve Jobs is a freakin' genius. Not even a year ago, Apple released the original iPhone with a price tag of $599 for the 8 GB model. Barely two months later, the price was slashed to $399. Now, Apple has unveiled a new & improved iPhone -- with a price tag of $199 for the 8 GB model. That's half the most recent price (as Apple's ads are happily trumpeting), and one-third of the original price.

Why does that make Jobs a genius, you ask? Think about it: if the price had been $199 all along ($299 for the higher-end model), would anybody have considered that cheap? Reasonable, certainly; surprisingly low for such a cool phone, probably. But people wouldn't have been falling all over themselves saying, "WOW! What an amazingly great price!" to anywhere near the extent they're doing now. By jacking up the cost in the first place, Apple made its eventual price point seem incredible, rather than merely good. Heh. Steve Jobs has us eating out of his freakin' hands.

Speaking of Steve Jobs and eating, there is rampant talk on the Internets -- even unto Drudge! -- about Jobs's physical appearance at yesterday's WWDC keynote. Some have described Jobs as looking "sickly skinny" or even "dangerously thin." As one blog notes, many concerned Apple fans are "wondering if the pancreatic cancer has come back. Steve was diagnosed back in 2003 but that info was not released to the public until 2004 when he had surgery."

As I learned yesterday when I saw Drudge's headline and tried Googling around to figure out what he was talking about, this is not the first time a Jobs keynote has caused frenzied Internet speculation about his health. A similar phenomenon occurred in 2006, to the point where Apple had to release a statement assuring everyone that Jobs was a-okay.

Since the CEO's health seems to be of such concern to his adoring minions, perhaps somebody could use the new iPhone Software Development Kit to create an application that monitors and broadcasts his vital signs in real time. ;)

P.S. Meanwhile, at least one blogger is wondering whether Steve Jobs is Gimli.

More politics-as-sports

By Brendan Loy

Last week, I confessed that, although the rational side of my brain is undecided between Barack Obama and John McCain, the "portion of my brain that views politics as a sport can't help 'rooting' for Obama" because he is "the scrappy mid-major going up against the staid, boring, established program; he's Boise State against Oklahoma ('They said this day would never come: a WAC team in a BCS bowl! Yes, we can!'), he's Appalachian State against Michigan... or, as McCain might prefer to say, he's Hawaii against Georgia."

Now, Ben Smith uses a college-football metaphor, saying that Obama's 50-state, expand-the-map strategy is the political equivalent of the "spread offense."

If so, Obama's definitely going to win Michigan. :)

The ivory echo chamber

By Brendan Loy

Crispin Sartwell, a self-described anarchist and a professor of philosophy at a small liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania, speaks the truth about academia:

Within the academy, conservatives really are an oppressed minority. At the University of Colorado, for instance, one professor found that, of 800 or so on the faculty, only 32 are registered Republicans. This strikes me as high, and I assume they all teach business or physical education. ... [B]ecause there's a consensus, there is precious little self-examination; a slant that we all share becomes invisible.

Academic consensus is a particularly irritating variety of groupthink. First of all, the fact that everyone agrees and everyone has a doctorate leads to the occasionally explicit idea that all intelligent people think the same thing — that no one could disagree with, say, Obama-ism, without being an idiot.

That the American professoriate is near-unanimous for Barack Obama is a problem on many levels, but certainly pedagogically. Ideological uniformity does a disservice to students and makes a mockery of the pious commitment of these professors simply to convey knowledge. Professors are as herd-like in their opinions as other groups that demographers like to identify — "working-class white men," for example. Indeed, surely more so. ...

That this smog of consensus is incompatible with the supposedly high-minded educational mission of colleges and universities is obvious. But academics are massively self-deceived about this, which makes it all the more disgusting and effective.

(Hat tip: my dad.)

Apple WWDC Keynote Livestream

By David K.

For all the Mac users and now iPhone users out there, Steve Jobs's keynote from the World Wide Developers Conference is underway.  So far, iPhone 2.0 features have been discussed, including enterprise support and the SDK.  Later today, the next version of OS X will be discussed as well.  If you are interested in reading, MacRumors.com is liveblogging here:  http://www.macrumorslive.com/

UPDATE:  iPhone 3G Announced

• 3G wireless
• GPS
• Improved battery life
• thinner
• improved audio
• will be available in 70 countries

UPDATE BY BRENDAN: In light of a) the much faster connection speed, b) the new lower price (just $199 for the 8GB model, literally one-third of what the first iPhones cost last June), c) the various new cool features (particularly GPS), and d) the fact that my Sprint contract recently expired, I would like to offer the following graphical commentary, which roughly sums up my feelings:

P.S. But, I ask again: can you use it as a modem???

Bush lied!

By Brendan Loy

Or not.

My letter to Senator Joe

By Brendan Loy

Having shocked y'all Friday morning by announcing that I'm retiring the blog on July 20, I figure Monday morning is a good time for yet another shocker. Would a three-page manifesto to Irish Trojan favorite son Joe Lieberman, lambasting him for dishonest and unworthy campaign rhetoric, do the trick?

I sent the letter Friday afternoon to Joe's D.C. office, and now I'm reprinting it on the blog. I don't mean to grandstand about this, but having been so vocal in defense of Lieberman, I figure I owe y'all an update on where I stand now. (In point of fact, my sentiments shouldn't be too shocking; I alluded to my growing disillusionment with Lieberman last month.)

It's important to emphasize that I have no problem whatsoever with Lieberman endorsing McCain and arguing against Obama's candidacy; it's the way he's been opposing Obama that bothers me, not the mere fact that he's doing so at all. I object to such things as his role in spreading the Obama's-a-Marxist and Hamas-loves-Obama memes, his implication that Democrats are not "pro-American," and several other specific statements he's made recently. Anyway, here's the money quote:

What happened to your 2006 message, promising a less hyper-partisan brand of politics?  Based on your recent statements, it appears you have completely abandoned the premise that Democrats and Republicans have honest disagreements on the issues.  Instead of substantively engaging important topics of legitimate debate and disagreement, you have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to vilify and caricature the Democratic Party ...

I am deeply disappointed that you have sunk to these lows, and having been such a vocal advocate on your behalf, I must admit that I am somewhat embarrassed.  It is becoming more and more difficult to defend you against your critics in the blogosphere, who increasingly feel that they were “right all along” about you. 

On reflection, "completely abandoned the premise" is probably a bit much. But it gets the message across, anyway. Joe needs to tone down his rhetoric, or folks like me who once greatly admired him will increasingly come to view him as just another typical politician.

Read the whole thing after the jump.

Nyah, nyah

By Brendan Loy

Still under $4 here in Knoxville! Of course, it's pretty sad that $3.79 on regular unleaded is now considered a *good* price...

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

The AAA's national gas price average has reached $4 a gallon for the first time in history.

Belmont Stakes open thread

By Brendan Loy

Tonight at 6:17 PM EDT, Big Brown goes for the Triple Crown at the Belmont.

The horse who was expected to challenge him, Casino Drive, injured his hoof and won't be racing, so Big Brown would seem to have a pretty clear path to the first Triple Crown in 30 years.

I'm not sure if I'll be watching live or not; we're going with Barb to Dixie Stampede at 4:00, and may not be back in time. But I'll be TiVoing the race, and will try to enter a self-imposed news blackout (cell phone off, etc.) from 6:15 on, if I'm not in front of a TV yet. :)

Go Big Brown!!

UPDATE: Big Brown finished dead last after jockey Kent Desormeaux pulled him up during the stretch -- he was running third at the time, though losing ground to eventual winner Da' Tara -- because Desormeaux believed something was wrong with Big Brown. "I had no horse," Desormeaux said. "This horse is the best I've ever ridden. Something's wrong, and I took care of him."

Noted equine veterinarian Larry Bramlage appeared to disagree with the jockey's snap judgment that something was wrong with Big Brown. "He looked fine during the race," Dr. Bramlage said. "All I saw was when Desormeaux slowed him down. The veterinarian inspection team did not find anything wrong with him and he was not lame."

Big Brown entered the race with a cracked hoof, but it was patched yesterday and trainers had been convinced the "very minor" injury would not affect him.

In any event, Da' Tara, the longest shot in the field at 39-1, won by 5 1/2 lengths. Denis of Cork, my horse of choice in the Derby because of his Irish name and his Notre Dame connection, came in second. Anak Nakal and Ready's Echo finished in a dead heat for third place.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Hillary Clinton suspends campaign, endorses Barack Obama for president

Quittin' time

By Brendan Loy

Hillary Clinton will formally withdraw/suspend and endorse Obama shortly at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. If you aren't near a TV, you can watch the event streamed live on CNN, MSNBC and C-SPAN.

Also, The Caucus, Daily Kos and TPM will be liveblogging.

UPDATE: A fine speech so far by Hillary; I have no complaints about it. But I have to quote the funny comment by Barb, who we're watching it with (she's visiting for the weekend from Buffalo). Barb finished one of Hillary's sentences for her:

Hillary: "The Democratic Party is a family..."

Barb: "...and I'm the kooky aunt who nobody likes, but you have to invite over for Christmas anyway."

Heh.

Quote of the day #3

By Brendan Loy

"So Drudge is starting his thing, that he does every summer, where he's like, 'It's HOT! Global warming is REAL!' And then in the winter, he says, 'It's COLD! Global warming is NOT real!" --Becky

Quote of the day #2

By Brendan Loy

Peggy Noonan, on why the "unity ticket" is a bad idea:  "[Clinton] undercuts the cleanness of Obama's message. She doesn't turn the page, she is the page." Heh.

More after the jump.

Quote of the day

By Brendan Loy

"Is [Obama] 'elitist,' too condescending and glib and remote and full of himself? I don't find him so—but then again, I myself am an elitist who can seem condescending and glib and remote and full of himself, so who am I to judge?" --Kurt Andersen, in a piece for New York Magazine brilliantly titled "I'm Not Totally Sure We Can."

(I also like Andersen's take on what each candidate must to do pass the, er, commander-in-chief test, if you will: "I'm far more convinced that President Obama would summon up the requisite steel and shrewdness than I am that President McCain would become sufficiently nuanced and diplomatic." Heh.)

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Dow's 400-point plunge at market's close is year's biggest loss after weak jobs data and oil-price surge.

Don't let John McCain feed your baby

By Brendan Loy

If you do, your baby may get burned by bottled hot water:

Tee hee.

Iconography

By Brendan Loy

Has anyone else noticed Google's new favicon?

(More information here and here.)

Personally, I don't like it.

UPDATE: In other giant-Internet-company news, Amazon is down! (Hat tip: Insty.)

Obama's Gary Hart moment?

By Brendan Loy

Be careful what you wish for: "If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it."

Presumably by "do it," he means "produce it," as in, produce the evidence. Hmm. This would seem to run somewhat counter to his previous statement that his wife is off-limits.

Now, I agree with Obama on the substance of the point he's making -- about how frustrating it is when totally unsubstantiated rumors get lifted out of the undernews into mainstream discussion, and thus in some sense legitimized, simply by somebody in the MSM asking the question -- but still, does he really want to essentially dare the media, and his political opponents, to dig up dirt on him and his wife? We all know what happened the last time a presidential candidate did that!

I love the law

By Brendan Loy

Particularly when, in the course of doing legal research, I stumble across a citation like this:

Validity, construction, and effect of restrictive covenants as to trees and shrubbery, 13 A.L.R.4th 1346

Bring me a shrubbery!

(See also.)

36 hours in Knoxville

By Brendan Loy

New York Times travel writer Allison Glock spends 36 hours in Knoxville, which she calls "a place too unassuming to shout about but too comfortable to leave":

Knoxville, cheerfully ensconced in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains and banked against the Tennessee River, has an intrinsically lazy, soulful feel. The geography is soft, green and rolling. The climate is gentle, breezy and bright. Locals tend to be not just friendly — a given in most Southern towns — but chilled out, too. This is not the Old South of magnolias and seersucker so much as a modern Appalachia of roots music, locavore food, folk art and hillbilly pride. Or, as yet another city moniker aptly states, “Austin without the hype.”

WDVX's Blue Plate Special is prominently featured, as well it should be. Photo gallery here. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

McCain: Let's go to Mars

By Brendan Loy

In an obvious and blatant attempt to shore up the crucial Space-Obsessed Law Professors With Highly Trafficked Blogs voting bloc, John McCain said yesterday he would like to put a man on Mars.

Sounds good to me, but what I want to know is, will we do the other things?

P.S. In other John McCain-related news, he's apparently trying to fight off the "age issue" by making references that the youngsters of today will understand -- like, for instance, comparing Obama to William Jennings Bryan.

The year was eighteen ninety-six, and John McCain was just sixteen...

:)

P.P.S. And yet more McCain-related news: he's released his first general-election ad, in which he states: "Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war. ... I hate war. And I know how terrible its costs are."

TPM's Greg Sargent says "McCain is using his bio to achieve separation from George W. Bush," suggesting that "even if he's continuing Bush's war policies, he's different from Dubya in that he understands the costs in a way that Bush never did." The subtext, Sargent writes, is: "Even if that reckless chicken-hawk took us to war, someone who actually understands and has experienced the costs of war -- someone you can actually believe -- is here to tell you that we must continue it."

So, to review: John McCain hates war, yet he wants to send a man to Mars, a planet which is named after... war. :)

UPDATE: Glenn links here, and says of my above joke, "somehow the Obama backers manage to make everything about Iraq... Heh." Hey, now! What's this about "Obama backers"? I know it might be hard to believe, given my blog's recent focus, but I repeat:

I am undecided. In fact, if you put a gun to my head right now and made me choose, I think -- *think* -- I'd vote for McCain. But it's really entirely up in the air how I'll vote in November. I like and admire Obama, but that doesn't mean I think he'd make the best president. The best Democratic nominee, yes, but that's only because his opponent is such a lying, conniving, deceitful [bad word]. Against McCain, he doesn't have such an obvious "character" advantage (both candidates are, as best as I can tell, generally good, decent and honest, though of course not pure or perfect), and I'm not at all sure who I think is, on balance, better on policy.

If that confuses you, consider this: "The portion of my brain that views politics as a sport can't help 'rooting' for Obama (he's exciting! he's inspiring! he's shiny!), [but] the rational part of my brain, which governs my actual vote, is totally undecided between Obama and McCain." Obama is the scrappy mid-major going up against the staid, boring, established program; he's Boise State against Oklahoma ("They said this day would never come: a WAC team in a BCS bowl! Yes, we can!"), he's Appalachian State against Michigan, he's Davidson against Kansas. Or, as McCain might prefer to say, he's Hawaii against Georgia. :) The point is, he's fun to root for, and that fact bleeds over into my blog coverage. (Also, my blog coverage has just been generally Dem-dominated because that contest has been much more exciting since late January.) Moreover, it's fun to poke fun at John McCain because, you know, he's old. (In fairness, I've also poked fun at Obama for being messianic and cultish. Whee, humor is fun!) But none of that necessarily means that I support Obama, because in the end, politics isn't a sport, and voting isn't about "rooting" or making jokes, it's about deciding the future of the country. So yes, I'm undecided. Really.

P.P.P.S. Speaking of the Red Planet, Andrew Sullivan this morning posted a picture from 2005 of Sunset on Mars. He should have included it in his "The View From Your Window" series!

All good things...

By Brendan Loy

[NOTE: Before you begin reading this post, understand that I will be taking no action until mid-July. So there's no need to say your "goodbyes" just yet!]

Wednesday afternoon, as I was walking through the parking garage after work, I had a shocking, momentous, revelatory, revolutionary thought. It's the sort of thought you would never expect me to have all on my own, totally unbidden and unsuggested by anyone. Lost in thought during the walk to my car, I was pondering my future in the months ahead -- as my clerkship ends and I start actually practicing law -- and, like a bolt of lightning, the thought popped into my brain:

Maybe I should give up the blog.

Now, you might expect me to reject this notion out of hand. Just a silly thought flitting across my brain, not worthy of serious consideration. Give up the blog? That's crazy. I've been blogging -- "hyperactively," as the title bar says -- for more than six years. I practically get the shakes when I go 24 hours without blogging. I've built quite a little community here, and I greatly enjoy the give-and-take, the feedback, the creative outlet, and frankly, the ego boost that this blog gives me. In short, I love my blog. And it's not as if the blog is causing any major identifiable or tangible problems for me right now. In fact, things are going swimmingly, both in my life generally and on the blog specifically. I've been getting more serious, positive blogospheric attention in recent months than I have at any time since Katrina. With a hurricane season and a presidential election coming up, such attention only figures to increase. So why on earth would I want to give it all up -- to quit cold turkey?

But the answer, or rather answers, to that question popped into my head just as quickly as the original thought did. There are the privacy concerns, which will only increase as Loyette gets older; there is the potential for conflicts and problems related to my career; there is the needless emotional energy expended dealing with trolls and such; and so forth. But above all, blogging is a very time-consuming activity. The blog is a beast that must be fed, and as long as this site exists, it's awfully hard for me to resist the temptation to blog, blog, blog.

Now, as I said, my blog isn't particularly causing me problems right now. During this first year of my post-school life, I think I've been able to strike a pretty reasonable balance between family, work, and the blog. But striking that balance promises to get much harder as I begin practicing law, as the hours will certainly be longer and more intense. Moreover, if I want to be a civic-minded person who is involved in his community (and I do), it's going to become increasingly important for me to be involved in other activities during my free time. The same goes for establishing and maintaining a healthy social life as I begin my career in earnest. Also, just as increased work hours will squeeze my free time from one end, increased family obligations are likely to squeeze it from the other end as Loyette gets older, and even moreso if Becky and I eventually have more kids.

In other words, although the blog isn't really presenting problems now, it's very, very easy to see how it will begin to create problems in the near future. There is only so much time in the day, and every hour I spend blogging is an hour I'm not spending on being a good father, a good husband, a good lawyer, a good friend, or a good citizen of the real world (as opposed to the virtual one).

I could say that I'll "cut back" or "take a hiatus," but resolutions like that just don't tend to work well for me. I can't half-ass a project like this. I'm just so used to having a blog, and posting to it regularly, that if it's there to update, I'm inevitably going to update it. Besides, having painstakingly built up this audience, having made this platform what it is, I can't stand the thought of slowly frittering it away by posting infrequently and/or failing to cover topics of interest to my readers. The reality is, I have neither the desire nor the discipline to let an active blog sit idle for long periods of time. Either I blog or I don't blog.

What makes this tricky, and difficult, is that my blog has been, on balance, an overwhelmingly positive thing in my life. I've made friends through the blog. I've gotten a job, in part, because of the blog. I've earned respect and admiration -- from people in real life as well as online -- because of the blog. I've received, because of the blog, a type of exposure I never could have dreamed of otherwise: the New York Times, the Washington Post, Tucker Carlson, Spike Lee, and on and on. And not just the Katrina stuff; more recently, my thoughts on the 2008 election have been read by many thousands of people, thanks to links from places as diverse as the New Republic and Free Republic, The Economist and the National Review. More broadly, the blog has simply given me an outlet to share, well, lots of stuff that I've enjoyed sharing, from diatribes on sports and politics to photos of my baby and my pets. And it's kept me connected to friends and family who I might well have lost touch with otherwise, and has simultaneously connected me to all sorts of new people. All in all, the blog has been good to me.

But I feel now like it's reaching a point of diminishing returns. I've accomplished just about everything I can hope to accomplish as someone who keeps a multi-topic blog as a hobby. In fact, in a real sense, I need to start accomplishing less, for the reasons I've stated already. In order to keep up my current pace of bloggy accomplishments -- of earned attention and recognition, of bloggy community-building, and of new and different exploits of creativity -- I would necessarily have to start impinging on my career, my family life, or both. But of course, I can't do either of those things, which means the blog must necessarily suffer. So I feel as if maintaining the blog is almost like fighting a losing battle against the evolution of my life. In a very basic way, it's simply time to move on.

All of which is why, within 60 seconds of having that revolutionary thought -- "maybe I should give up the blog" -- it morphed from a passing fancy into a concrete plan. Yup. I will give up the blog.

Not yet, though! :) I'm looking at the middle of July as the time I'll most likely hang up my blogging shoes. Details after the jump.

Lieberman leads McCain's outreach to disaffected Hillary supporters

By Brendan Loy

Oy vey:

Sen. Joe Lieberman – who has taken on increasingly high-profile campaign roles on behalf of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain – announced Thursday that was launching and heading a new grassroots organization, "Citizens for McCain," with a direct appeal to Hillary Clinton’s disappointed supporters.

“The phones at the campaign headquarters have been ringing with disaffected Democrats calling to say they believe Senator McCain has the experience, judgment, and bipartisanship necessary to lead our country in these difficult times,” Lieberman wrote in a message sent to the Arizona senator’s supporters. “Many of these supporters are former supporters of Senator Clinton.”

(Hat tip: Youngblai.)

Wrong state

By Brendan Loy

WDVX just played a song called "Satan Lives In Arkansas." But that isn't right. She moved to New York! :)

Forgive and forget?

By Brendan Loy

Ross Douthat on Hillary's decision to concede:

"If only she'd done this weeks ago," Matt writes. I take his point: It would probably been better for the party if Hillary had conceded defeat somewhat earlier (though there would have been the potential embarrassment of having the presumptive-nominee lose primaries to a rival who'd dropped out), or at the very least campaigned less fiercely against Obama once his victory became a near-certainty, and certainly her non-concession speech on Tuesday night was bizarre and faintly pathological. But I think that once a few months have gone by, at least some of outrage that Hillary Clinton has generated among liberal pundits by campaigning to the bitter end in a race that she ended up losing by just over a hundred pledged delegates and roughly half a percent of the popular vote will seem, in hindsight, faintly hysterical.

Ban Johnson, a commenter on Douthat's post, responds:

I'd grant your point if I believed your characterization of most of the outrage as about Clinton merely "campaigning to the bitter end" were accurate.

Most of the outrage wasn't about her campaigning in itself. It was about the malignity of her campaign -- suggesting McCain was better equipped to be commander of chief, dishonestly ginning up Michigan and Florida resentments, characterizing her supporters as "hard working white people": basically trying to sabotage Obama, the overwhelmingly likely nominee of her party, whenever she could get away with it.

(Hat tip: Sully.) I think they're both right, in a way.

Announcing the announcement

By Brendan Loy

Hillary Clinton sent out an e-mail to her supporters early this morning (not quite at "3:00 AM," but close!) declaring her intention to announce Saturday that she'll endorse Obama. This is the old "announcing the announcement" trick, and it raises the question: If you tell everyone you're going to endorse somebody, doesn't that mean you've already endorsed him?

Hockeytown

By Brendan Loy

The Detroit Red Wings are Stanley Cup champions.

For your viewing pleasure, Megan Fox

By Brendan Loy

FHM Online has a bunch of new pictures of Megan Fox. Well, "new" is a relative term; the pictures are apparently from an old photoshoot, but many of them are newly published, both online and in the July issue of the U.K. edition of FHM. Here's the cover:

See also some previously published FHM photos here, here and here. All links are probably SFW, but she's scantily clad -- in her underwear, to be specific -- which is why I've refrained from posting any of the pics, except the magazine cover.

(Hat tip: Perez Hilton, via Becky. Yes, that's right, Becky.)

P.S. Much more at megansafox.com. Like for example, this, from the red carpet at the MTV Movie Awards:

Previous Megan Fox-related posts can be found here, here, here and here.

About that Kevin White thing...

By Brendan Loy

I realize I'm incredibly slow in blogging about this story, but just in case you've been living under a rock and haven't heard, Kevin White is no longer Notre Dame's athletic director.

Kevin White was hired as Duke's athletic director Saturday, leaving Notre Dame for a school with an elite basketball team and a football team that has had 13 straight losing seasons and has not been to a bowl since 1994.

Notre Dame appointed Missy Conboy as its interim athletic director. The school said there is no timetable for a permanent replacement.

White will replace Joe Alleva, who was hired as LSU's athletic director in April after a decade of leading the Blue Devils' 26 sports programs.

"Kevin White is in the first rank of athletics directors nationally and will make a perfect fit at Duke," university president Richard Brodhead said.

White had been at Notre Dame since 2000. He hired football coaches Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis, and hired former Duke assistant Mike Brey as the men's basketball coach. ...

White helped Notre Dame plan a $26 million renovation of the basketball arena and expand the school's nonrevenue sports. He and his wife were made honorary alumni three days before switching jobs.

But White was widely criticized by Irish fans because the football team hasn't won a national championship since 1988 — the longest stretch in school history — and some fans place much of the blame on White.

He gave Bob Davie a contract extension in 2000, then fired him after the next season. White replaced Davie with George O'Leary, who resigned after less than a week on the job after he admitted he had lied about his academic and athletic past. White's next hire was Willingham, who lasted just three years.

In all, the Irish football team had four winning seasons, three losing campaigns and one .500 finish during White's tenure.

Her Loyal Sons and Rakes of Mallow have complete coverage of White's departure and the search for a possible replacement.

I apologize for not blogging this sooner. My parents were in town this past weekend, visiting us and the baby, so my free time for blogging was limited. Even so, as I mentioned in comments on another post, I actually drafted a whole post about this on Saturday, only to have my computer crash before I'd saved it. I then intended to post something Monday or Tuesday, but got totally consumed with blogging about the rapidly changing Hillary Clinton-related developments, and never got around to it.

Anyway. Yeah. Kevin White, gone. I can't say I'm shedding any tears over it. What do y'all think?

P.S. Duke sucks.

Clinton to endorse Obama on Friday Saturday

By Brendan Loy

ABC says Hillary Clinton will drop out on Friday and "ced[e] the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama."

I'll believe it when I see it.

UPDATE: For some reason it didn't auto-post, but CNN sent out a breaking-news alert at 7:10 PM stating: "Sen. Hillary Clinton will officially end her campaign for the presidency by the end of the week, multiple sources tell CNN."

UPDATE 2: This isn't just based on anonymous sourcing now. Here's the official statement from the campaign: "Senator Clinton will be hosting an event in Washington, DC on Friday to thank her supporters and express her support for Senator Obama and party unity."

Politico's Ben Smith writes:

Clinton delivered something approaching a victory speech Tuesday night, just minutes after the media reported that Senator Barack Obama had clinched the nomination with a majority of the pledged delegates. But reality began to sink in Wednesday, as party leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, declared Obama "the nominee" and close supporters like Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel lost patience with her delays. ...

Clinton had convened a conference call with congressional supporters Wednesday to plead for time. Instead, a Clinton backer said, her supporters laid down the law: Time had run out, and she needed to leave the race this week.

More from NYT's Adam Nagourney:

Her decision came after a day of telephone conversations with supporters on Capitol Hill about what she should do now that Mr. Obama had claimed enough delegates to be able to clinch the nomination. Mrs. Clinton had initially said she wanted to wait before making any decision, but her aides said that in conversations, some of her closest supporters said it was urgent that she step aside. The news was first reported by ABCNEWS.com.

“We pledged to support her to the end,” said Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”

UPDATE 3: The event has been pushed back to Saturday. It'll be competing for news coverage against the possible Big Brown Triple Crown.

Final popular-vote update

By Brendan Loy

Here are the final "popular vote" numbers, courtesy of Real Clear Politics. Leaving aside the fact that the "popular vote" is a fundamentally flawed and illegitimate metric for determining the "winner" of the Democrats' byzantine primary and caucus process, the results are as follows:

• Obama wins if you don't count Michigan, whose primary results were rejected as illegitimate by the DNC.
  
  
• Clinton wins if you count Michigan fully, and give Obama zero votes (thus granting her the benefit of an utterly undemocratic, Soviet-style 328,309 to zero "victory" there).
  
  
• If you count Michigan, but give Obama the votes of "Uncommitted" -- which is more generous to Hillary than the DNC was, and represents less support for Obama than he would have gotten if Michigan had held a real primary -- Obama wins, provided that you include the estimated tallies from Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington. Clinton wins only if you exclude these four caucus states, in direct contradiction of her insistence on "counting every vote" from "all 50 states." Even if you use Washington's non-binding primary instead of its binding caucus, and include caucus estimates for Iowa, Nevada and Maine only, Obama still wins, albeit by a measly 11,000 votes.

Thus, the answer to the question I posed back on May 7 -- can Hillary Clinton "win" an "arguably plausible" popular vote tally? -- turns out to be "no." She only wins if she does one (or both) of the two indefensible things that I've been decrying all along: awarding herself a unanimous victory in Michigan that would make Saddam Hussein proud, and/or disenfranchising four whole states that did nothing wrong.

Stepping back from those controversies, though, a bigger-picture view of the "popular vote" reveals just how freakin' close this election was. The most Obama-friendly scenario has him winning by 151,844 votes, which is just 0.4% of the total cast. The most Clinton-friendly scenario (giving her the unanimous Michigan victory and excluding the caucus states) has her ahead by 286,687 votes, or just 0.8%. Basically, the popular vote was a tie.

Now, that said, if the 13 caucus states had held primaries, Obama probably would have had a more substantial edge. For instance, although he won by a whopping 79.5% to 17.2% in Idaho, he netted only 13,225 votes there, because only 21,224 people voted. If Idaho had held a (real) primary, Obama's percentage margin would likely have been more akin to his 56% to 38% win in the state's non-binding primary, but turnout probably would have been more on the order of 175,000 or thereabouts (judging from Kerry's total in 2004). That translates to a margin of roughly 31,500 instead of 13,225. Repeat that effect in the other 12 caucus states -- Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Washington and Wyoming -- and you're probably talking about an additional several hundred thousand votes for Obama if all 50 states had held primaries.

Nevertheless, it's clear that the battle for the nomination was achingly close, and the central reason Hillary lost is because of the strategic gaffes committed by her incompetently managed campaign. She and Obama essentially split the Democratic Party right down the middle, but Obama came away with a clear delegate majority for the simple reason that he ran a better campaign than she did. This obviously burns her up inside, and helps explain her current irrational behavior. She's sitting there thinking, over and over again, "I should have won this thing, I should have won this thing." And that thought process makes it incredibly difficult for her to acknowledge defeat.

And you know what? In a sense, she's right. She should have won. If her campaign had merely matched the strategic competence of Obama's campaign, such that she'd essentially tied him in delegates as well as votes, she'd very likely have ended up being the nominee, precisely because of the electability arguments she's been making. If this race were truly a tie, the superdelegates would be very open to those arguments, and she'd probably win the floor fight in Denver. But because her campaign arrogantly failed to compete in various states, and thus allowed Obama to rack up an unassailable delegate lead in February, she clearly lost the pledged-delegate count, which is the closest thing we have to an accurate reflection of the "winner" and "loser" of this byzantine process. As a result, it's game, set, match, Obama.

So, Hillary, you're right: you should have won the nomination. But nobody stole it from you. It's your own damn fault you lost, and putting your party through hell in a futile attempt to make up for your own campaign's blatant strategic errors is hardly the mark of a leader.

Blog countdown PSA

By Brendan Loy

I was going to delete the blog sidebar thingy that was counting down to "MT, SD primaries," which stated (under "Upcoming events" at left) that those elections are "-1 days" away. But then it occurred to me to do something different. Instead of deleting the countdown, I've changed its text to read "Obama clinches," and I'm going to leave it there until Hillary Clinton drops out of the race and endorses Obama. So, this way, we can keep a running tally of how long Hillary continues her campaign even after she's lost.

This is sort of like how, back in 2006, I left the "Shannon's due date" countdown in place until Shannon actually had her baby -- at which point it said "-7 days." I wonder if Hillary will beat that record? (For what it's worth, the Democratic National Convention begins in 82 days.)

Headline of the day

By Brendan Loy

"In Defeat, Clinton Graciously Pretends to Win."

What is Maureen Dowd talking about?

By Brendan Loy

Her NYT column today contains this bit of sheer nonsense:

[Hillary Clinton] has told some Democrats recently that she wanted Obama to agree to allow a roll call vote, like days of yore, so that the delegates of states she won would cast the first ballot for her at the convention. She said she wanted that for her daughter.

Memo to Maureen: there is always a roll-call vote, at every single convention, not just in "days of yore." Obama does not have the ability to "allow" or "disallow" such a vote, because it is the roll-call vote that will make him the nominee, as opposed to the "presumptive nominee."

The speeches

By Brendan Loy

Watch Obama's speech (in particular the opening portion, about Hillary), and then watch Hillary's speech, and tell me, which one of these candidates really wants the Democratic Party to be united?

Hillary's claim that she wants the party to be united is, at this point, an utter and obvious lie. Her speech last night was sheer demagoguery, deliberately using rhetoric -- about the "popular vote," about Michigan and Florida, about electability, and so forth -- that will keep her supporters in a frenzy of anger and/or denial about the outcome of the election.

I said beforehand that it would be unforgivable if she made these sorts of arguments last night, and she made them, and it is indeed unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable. On the very night when the party should have begun coalescing once and for all around its presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton continued to stoke the fires of intraparty civil war, instead of beginning of the process of standing down and backing off.

I'm not saying she needed to concede last night, but she needed to be gracious and conciliatory and valedictory, not combative and defiant and demagogic. She needed to explicitly attack McCain's candidacy, not implicitly attack Obama's legitimacy. She needed to speak the language of unity, not merely pay lip-service to it. She failed -- she deliberately chose to fail -- on all counts.

This notion out there that we should "respect" Hillary by not acknowledging the repugnance of last night's speech, and of her recent campaign tactics generally, is completely back-asswards. It's disrespectful to be anything other than repulsed, because such a reaction requires a belief that Hillary doesn't know perfectly well what she is doing. To give Hillary a pass is to assume she's a witless child, which she most certainly is not. She knows precisely what she's doing -- and it is the exact opposite of "uniting the party." She is willfully undermining her party's nominee.

If you don't believe me, just watch the beginning of John McCain's (widely panned) speech, in which he made a blatant -- and somewhat ham-handed, in my view, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't work -- play for disaffected Hillary voters.

McCain's efforts in this regard, aided and abetted by Clinton's rhetoric, are already bearing fruit:

[T]he RNC's convention office in St. Paul has received numerous telephone calls in the last few hours from people who identify themselves as Clinton supporters asking how they can help Sen. McCain.

See also:

HillaryGrassrootsCampaign.com, an organization with upwards of half-a-million supporters, announced today it is committed to breaking ranks with the Democratic Party and supporting Senator Hillary Clinton in the general election - regardless of her status as the party's nominee.

There will be more developments like these, and no matter what she says publicly about "unity," Hillary can't wash her hands of them. She created this monster. If you tell people, over and over again (even unto the very night that your opponent clinches victory!), that their votes aren't being counted, that they aren't being "respected," that they're "invisible," and that their chosen candidate, despite having lost, is the legitimate winner -- no matter how untrue all of those things are -- many of them are going to start believing what you're telling them. Hillary's dead-woman-walking "campaign" has become one giant Big Lie.

At this point, the only way Hillary can even begin to redeem herself is by aggressively countering this stuff -- not merely by dropping out and endorsing Obama, which she will inevitably do at some point, but by explicitly walking back her combative, divisive rhetoric. She needs to passionately make the case to her supporters, particularly women, that Obama's their man, and McCain isn't. She needs to find a plausible way to openly contradict her past statements about "elitism," electability, the "commander-in-chief test," and so forth. She needs to be the one who convinces her supporters that Obama is really and truly the legitimate nominee, that the "popular vote" doesn't matter, that nobody was "disenfranchised," that no one is "disrespecting" her "18 million" supporters. Above all, she needs to make perfectly clear that she was not robbed, that she lost fair and square.

She needs to do all this, irrespective of the fact that it will leave some of her most fervent supporters feeling "betrayed." She can't use their fragile emotions as an excuse, because she created those emotions with her shameless demagoguery. (That's what demagoguery does. That's its whole purpose.) Like I said: she created the monster. Some of the damage she's done is irreparable, which is why she can never fully be forgiven for her actions. But she can take a small step toward reconciliation by undoing as much of the damage as possible.

Somehow, though, I don't think she'll be walking back her rhetoric on any of these key points. Oh, she'll make the case for Obama on policy, and argue that he's better than McCain, for the sake of appearances. But, having planted the "she was robbed" seed in her supporters' brains, she'll let them stew about it, and she'll tell herself that if they want to stay home -- or vote for McCain -- because of that, well, there's nothing she can do. Like so much of what she says, that's a lie. But maybe it'll let her sleep at night.

Personally, I am not a Democrat -- I'm an independent -- and although the portion of my brain that views politics as a sport can't help "rooting" for Obama (he's exciting! he's inspiring! he's shiny!), the rational part of brain, which governs my actual vote, is totally undecided between Obama and McCain. Thus, my anger at Hillary is more based on my internal sensibilities -- about right and wrong, about proper and improper behavior, and, above all, about truth and untruth -- than on fear of what she'll do to Obama's chances in November. And yet I'm pretty damn angry. So I can't imagine how intense the anger must be among committed Democrats who are 100% behind Obama. They have to be livid. At this point, she's got be reaching Bush/Cheney/Lieberman levels of earned hatred, yes?

Oh, and as long as we're talking about Hillary hurting Obama's chances, check out this video clip that the Republican National Committee sent out last night:

This is Exhibit A, B, and C for why the unity ticket is wolf-face crazy. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if she were his runningmate?

UPDATE: Here's another clip the RNC is circulating:

Tell Hillary where to go

By Brendan Loy

In the climax of her remarkable, contemptible speech, Hillary Clinton asked her supporters for their advice on whether to drop out:

Now, the question is: Where do we go from here? And given how far we've come and where we need to go as a party, it's a question I don't take lightly. This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight.

[At this point, her supporters cheered wildly, and some chanted, "Denver! Denver!"]

But this has always been your campaign. So, to the 18 million people who voted for me, and to our many other supporters out there of all ages, I want to hear from you. I hope you'll go to my Web site at HillaryClinton.com and share your thoughts with me[.]

As NRO's Jim Geraghty writes, it's fairly obvious where this path leads:

She wants people to visit her web site and help her decide what to do next.

Can you see what's next? "I wanted to concede, but my supporters didn't want me to."

Like I said, it's the Ross Perot strategy. "The volunteers have asked me to run!"

Luckily, Hillary's "18 million" aren't the only people who know how to use the Interwebs. So, I invite you all to follow this link, and give Hillary the advice she so desperately needs. For example:

Reactions to Hillary's speech

By Brendan Loy

Jonathan Chait:

Incredible. She justifies her continuing the campaign by saying that she finished the campaign. She doesn't concede that Obama has a majority of delegates, let alone that he's won. She repeats her bogus popular vote argument. She congratulates Obama's campaign on its "achievements," but barely musters a single good word about him.

I don't know what the fallout will be, but at minimum, I'd say that anybody on her staff who cares about their party has a moral obligation to publicly quit and endorse Obama.

Dana Goldstein:

The more I think about it, the more it seems that Hillary's entire speech was manufactured to rile up her supporters -- instead of priming them to shift their allegiance to Obama. Yes, there's a situation with Michigan and Florida. But is it really fair for Clinton to claim that her 18 million supporters nationwide have been made "invisible?" Who's supposed to be the bad guy here, scary Howard Dean? Clinton is offering more fighting rhetoric. But the fight should be over.

Isaac Chotiner, who calls the speech "A Total Disgrace":

[H]er speech tonight has been combative and petty (mentioning the states she won, saying the primaries ended in South Dakota, not Montana, claiming a popular vote win), with scant praise for the Democratic nominee. If Clinton wants people to believe that she cares more about the Democratic Party than her own career, she is failing badly.

Jonathan Cohn:

I have no problem with her reminding people of her campaign highlights--or postponing an actual concession. But implying that Obama can't win in November? Whether or not she believes that, she has no business saying it now. And suggesting that she'll fight on until her supporters are no longer "invisible" and get "some respect"? What on earth is she implying there?

Matthew Yglesias:

I probably shouldn't write any more about this woman and her staff. Suffice it to say that I've found her behavior over the past couple of months to be utterly unconscionable and this speech is no different. I think if I were to try to express how I really feel about the people who've been enabling her behavior, I'd say something deeply unwise. Suffice it to say, that for quite a while now all of John McCain's most effective allies have been on Hillary Clinton's payroll.

Andrew Sullivan:

The speech tonight was a remarkable one for a candidate who has lost the nomination, though not remarkable for a Clinton. It was an assertion that she had won the nomination and a refusal to concede anything to her opponent. Classless, graceless, shameless, relentless. Pure Clinton.

Her narcissism requires that she deprive her opponent of a night, or a second, of gratification or attention. And she has now won, in her Bush-like version of reality, 18 million votes. Her invitation for her supporters to email their suggestions to her website is pure theater, a way of keeping herself in the spotlight and maneuvering her delegates to demand a second spot on the ticket. The way she is now doing this - by an implicit threat, backed by McCain, to claim that Obama is an illegitimate nominee if she does not get her way - is designed to humiliate the nominee sufficiently to wound him enough to lose the election.

Either way, she is clearly intent on getting Obama defeated this fall if she is not offered the vice-presidency. And if she gets the veep nod, the way she has gotten it will allow her to argue that a November loss was not her loss. It was his. And she will run again in 2012.

She will not go away. The Clintons will never go away. And they will do all they can to cripple any Democrat who tries to replace them. In the tent or out of it, it is always about them. And they are no longer rivals to Obama; they are threats.

A Sullivan reader:

What Democrats needed from Clinton tonight, aside from at last CONCEDING to Obama, was to go after McCain with everything she had: this would have been a first step to pulling her supporters into the larger Democratic fold. Instead, incredibly, she chose to continue her veiled critique of Obama. Instead, incredibly, she chose to emphasize and repeat all of her lies: that she won the popular vote, that she has "more votes than any other candidate who's ever run in the primaries", and, most damagingly, insinuating that somehow, this election was "stolen" from her. We see, more clearly than ever, that this is not about defeating Republicans in 2008: it is, for her, solely about her own career.

The Jed Report:

If I had any respect for Hillary Clinton going into tonight, after watching her speech, it is now gone.

She is now running for a nomination that she has lost. She cannot win it. The game is over.

She is, however, clearly willing to put John McCain in the White House if she doesn't get her way. Now, I don't think she has the power to do that, but she seems to think that she does, and she thinks that is a legitimate negotiating tactic.

The most pathetic part of the speech was her appeal for fundraising dollars. Because of her own mismanagement, her campaign is millions in debt. She's wealthy -- she can afford it. But yet she asks her constituency, which she says is struggling to get by, to help her pay off her own debts.

Absolutely no class -- and completely self-absorbed.

John Aravosis:

Obama won tonight and she still can't concede. Take a flying leap. You lost. You nasty woman. She can't decide what she wants to do, whether she concedes or not. So she wants people to email her and help her decide. ... She's just a nasty nasty woman. I'm so glad the Democratic leadership gave her space and her time to grieve. How's that working for you?

FinneganOregon, a Daily Kos diarist:

I am sitting here listening to her speech this evening and my jaw has slowly dropped to the floor.

This woman has no class.

She deserves absolutely nothing. Not a f***ing thing.

The only dissenting voice I can find in the liberal blogosphere is Al Giordano, who says, "I think that Senator Clinton’s speech was fine. She didn’t concede. (The Field didn’t expect her to.) But nor did she declare that she’s going to go on a Kamikaze mission. ... Everything is good. She’s getting out. She just has to negotiate her terms. But she stopped short of starting an internecine Civil War in the Democratic party. And nothing in her tone or words indicated otherwise."

Needless to say, I completely disagree. In fact, I'm baffled; Giordano must have been watching a different speech than I was. I think Dana Goldstein, quoted at the top of this post, is 100% right: "Hillary's entire speech was manufactured to rile up her supporters -- instead of priming them to shift their allegiance to Obama."

P.S. See also Noam Scheiber.

Hillary speaks

By Brendan Loy

"Thank you so much to South Dakota. You had the last word [sic; that would be Montana -ed.], and it was a good one."

"I want to start tonight by congratulating Senator Obama and his supporters on the extraordinary race that they have run." (She then proceeded to say some other nice things about him, battling through a few hecklers at one point. I couldn't quite make out what the hecklers were saying, but I think it was anti-Obama.)

"And it has been an honor to contest these primaries with him, just as it is an honor to call him my friend. And tonight, I would like all of us to take a moment to recognize him and his supporters for all they have accomplished."

"Now, 16 months ago, you and I began a journey to make history and to remake America..." blah blah blah

UPDATE: "You asked yourself a simple question: who will be the strongest candidate?" (Crowd yells "Hillary!") "Who will be ready to take back the White House and be commander-in-chief..." Hmm, where is she going with this?

UPDATE 2: "Our campaign carr[ied] the popular vote with more votes than any campaign in history."

UGH.

Hillary Clinton just implicitly called the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party illegitimate.

Now she's babbling about swing states. What a freaking creep.

UPDATE 3: Now she's talking about "count[ing] every single vote!" Unbelievable!!

I don't know why I'm continually surprised by Hillary's shamelessness. Someone tell me again, why the HELL would Obama want to make this utterly contemptible woman his V.P.?

She really doesn't know when to stop, or have any idea what she sounds like to people who aren't either idiots or sycophants. This speech isn't remotely conciliatory or valedictory. It's a blatant attempt to undermine her own party's nominee on the very night he clinches the nomination. Absolutely beyond belief.

UPDATE 4: I don't want hear her say another freakin' word about "party unity." It's like Loeb said: "Every time Mrs. Clinton claims she has a popular majority, she's...making it that much more likely that her supporters will stay home in November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop."

Clearly, she has made a conscious decision not to stop. Unreal.

Now she asks rhetorically: "What does Hillary want?" ... "I want the 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard, and no longer to be invisible." (!!!)

What does Hillary really want? She appears to want Obama to lose in November. That's the only rational explanation for this speech, at this time, given in this way.

UPDATE 5: The crowd chants, "DENVER! DENVER!"

See?!? What did I tell you about rhetorical momentum?? This is exactly what I meant!! Using rhetoric like this, even now, she is creating a situation where many of her supporters will view not fighting to the convention as a betrayal! Now watch her use that as an excuse.

"Now, the question is, where do we go from here? ... This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight." The crowd goes wild. You know what decision they want!

UPDATE 6: She's telling people to "go to her website" and tell her what to do!! This is the Ross Perot strategy -- "I do what the volunteers want!" So she's deliberately creating rhetorical momentum, so she can say that she's staying in the race because her supporters demanded it!!

FINAL WORD: Hillary Clinton had one last chance, tonight, to exit the stage with dignity.

She missed it.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Barack Obama has enough delegates to clinch Democratic presidential nomination, CNN projects. Coverage on CNN and CNN.com Live.

CNN: Obama wins

By Brendan Loy

Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer says Barack Obama, Barack Obama is the presumptive nominee.

UPDATE: Here's the video:

Fuzzy math

By Brendan Loy

Fox News's delegate count in the scroll at the bottom of the screen has Obama at 2,128 delegates, 10 more than the "magic number" -- but he still doesn't have a little check-mark next to his name, like McCain does. Not sure what's up with that, or where they're getting their numbers from. (Maybe the Associated Press?)

CNN, meanwhile, has Obama at 2,114 delegates, four away from securing the nomination. I think that means Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer will be declaring Obama the nominee at 9:00 PM, if not sooner. (By the way, yes, I still have cable at the moment. Long story.)

The Huffington Post has a running tally, naming names, and they claim he's at 2,110 delegates, eight away.

Obama's campaign says he's at 2,108, ten away.

However you do the math, it's clear that Obama will be able to accurately say in his speech tonight: "Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States."

It's over

By Brendan Loy

Obama is now 12 delegates away from the nomination, without considering any "private commitments" or making any projections of tonight's results.

That means he'll definitely be able to declare victory as soon as Montana is "called" for him, even if South Dakota is still too close to call (or, for that matter, if it's "called" for Hillary). Even a one-vote win in Montana gives him 9 delegates, and there's no way he won't get at least 3 delegates in South Dakota.

UPDATE, 7:22 PM: Now he's 10 delegates away. CNN is quoting the same number. If he gets a few more endorsements, the mere fact of the polls closing in South Dakota may put him over the top.

UPDATE, 7:29 PM: CNN says he's now within 7 delegates.

You know what would be hilarious? If Obama gets within 1 delegate of clinching, and then Donna Brazille -- an undeclared superdelegate on CNN's "best political team on television" -- announces her endorsement live on CNN, thus putting him over the top. :)

UPDATE, 7:45 PM: Now 6 delegates to go, says CNN.

Obama will get at least 7 delegates in South Dakota unless his vote total is less than 41.66%. He'll get at least 6 delegates unless his vote total is less than 38.88%. He's essentially guaranteed at least 5 delegates, since he'd have to dip below 27.77% to get less than that, which pretty clearly isn't going to happen.

So, assuming the exit polls do not suggest a West Virginia-style blowout by Hillary (i.e., in a range where a 73-27 victory is conceivable), the mere fact of the polls closing in South Dakota should add at least 5 delegates to Obama's column.

That means that if just one more superdelegate endorsement happens before 9:00 PM EDT, South Dakota puts him over the top -- even if Hillary wins the state. No need to wait for Montana.

Paging Donna Brazille!

UPDATE, 8:04 PM: CNN says Obama is 5 delegates away.

This appears to be based on CNN's own independent reporting, talking to superdelegates. Obama's own delegate countdown is stuck at T-minus 10, presumably because he wants pledged delegates to put him over the top.

Clinton must not raise the "popular vote" tonight

By Brendan Loy

The last 24 hours have seen an incredibly vigorous guessing game of, "What will Hillary Clinton say tonight?" Here's the New York Times's Adam Nagoruney's take:

Mrs. Clinton’s aides said that, should Mr. Obama cross the line Tuesday night — and be declared at least the presumptive nominee — their candidate would acknowledge his accomplishment, without going so far as to drop out.

That seems quite likely to be true, but in my mind, the big question is, what will she say about her non-concession? Will she make a conciliatory, valedictory speech that's basically mum on her next step, leaving things vague until tomorrow (perhaps at AIPAC) or the next day? Or will she present an affirmative case for her decision to stay in the race, which would almost certainly involve arguing again that "I lead in the popular vote and Senator Obama leads in the delegate count"?

If she does the latter, two major problems crop up immediately. First of all, if her logic is, in essence, "we're tied, because he won more delegates and I won more votes," it's difficult to understand what would change that logic between now and August. The core premise of her argument -- incorrect and illegitimate though it may be -- will remain in place indefinitely; nothing after tonight is going to change the popular-vote math, obviously. So it's hard to see how "he has more delegates, but I have more votes" is an argument for staying in the race tonight but then dropping out later this week. If it's anything at all, it's an argument for going all the way to Denver. (Cue my argument about rhetorical momentum.)

Secondly, even if she does drop out later this week after reiterating her phony "popular vote" argument tonight, she'll have already seriously damaged Obama by implicitly questioning his legitimacy as the nominee on the very night when the party should be starting to formally unify around him. Again, I quote Baltimore Sun columnist Paul Rogat Loeb:

Given the bitterness of so many Hillary Clinton supporters that the woman they thought would be America's first female president will not be, the more they hear the suggestion that Sen. Barack Obama's win is illegitimate, the more likely they are to bolt. If Senator Clinton's voters embrace the story that "a man took it away from a woman," denying her a victory she deserved, they're at risk of staying home come November, or holding back from the volunteering and get-out-the-vote efforts necessary for the Democrats to prevail.

That's why it's so unfortunate that Mrs. Clinton continues to claim that "we are winning the popular vote." Because that statement is a lie - and it undermines every word she has recently spoken about the need for the party to come together. ...

Every time Mrs. Clinton claims she has a popular majority, she's...making it that much more likely that her supporters will stay home in November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable.

In my opinion, making this argument tonight, of all nights, would be absolutely unforgivable. And I bet she'll do it.

Obama-Clinton '08: wolf-face crazy

By Brendan Loy

In response to Hillary Clinton's suggestion this afternoon that she's open to being Obama's VP, I would just like to reiterate my previously stated belief that picking Clinton as veep would be "wolf-face crazy...the kind of decision you make when you are drunk, and on cocaine, and on deadline, and on fire." (Hat tip: ESPN Page 2.)

As I put it then: "How can Hillary be on a ticket with someone she has called an out-of-touch elitist who is unready to lead from day one? Not that she'd have any shame about it, mind you, but the constant repetition of those charges out of her mouth would provide such a constant drumbeat of 'gotcha' moments that it would totally eviscerate any electoral benefits such a ticket would otherwise reap. Imagine the negative ads! 'Even Barack Obama's runningmate says...' NO WAY. Will not happen. Crazy." (If you don't believe me, here's a preview. Imagine how much worse this would be if she was his runningmate!!)

And that's without even getting into all the other problems with such a ticket. It really would be terminal insanity. Again: "Picking Hillary is suicide. It a) gains him a sliver of her base that he'd have otherwise lost, and b) loses him the election."

Alas, as I wrote in that May 8 post, "the media will be absolutely obsessed with the notion of a 'dream ticket' ... and the Clintonistas, given their endless supply of self-centeredness, will be only too happy to add fuel to the fire." That prophecy is now predictably coming true. As a result,

I actually think Obama would be well served to announce his running mate earlier than usual, just to prevent the inevitable Clinton-for-veep speculation from consuming the entire summer, and from further dividing the party when he finally gets around to rejecting what many pundits (and Hillary supporters) will myopically see as the "obvious" choice.

Before the "healing" can truly begin, the last shot must be fired, and that shot will be Obama's choice of a vice presidential running mate who isn't named Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mark Halperin echoes this point today, writing that "any delay [by Obama] in choosing a running mate will only bring rampant speculation about whether he is going to pick Clinton – and if not, why not – speculation so extreme it might warp and dominate the entire process (and potentially create reams of critical and distracting press for his eventual Veep selection)."

The earliest vice-presidential selection in the last 20 years was Kerry picking Edwards on July 6, followed closely by Clinton picking Gore on July 10 and Dukakis picking Bentsen on July 13. (Bush picked Cheney on July 24. Gore picked Lieberman on August 7. Dole picked Kemp on August 10. H.W. Bush picked Quayle on August 17.) Personally, I'd like to see Obama beat Kerry's speed record. How does, oh, June 23 sound? Like I said before: rip the band-aid off quickly.

AP: Obama clinches nomination!

By Brendan Loy

Breaking news:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House. ...

The AP tally was based on public commitments from delegates as well as more than a dozen private commitments. It also included a minimum number of delegates Obama was guaranteed even if he lost the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.

(Hat tip: Becky.)

My initial, gut reaction is that this AP report, which Team Clinton will inevitably describe as "premature," actually increases the chances of Hillary fighting on to the convention. I fear they'll say a bunch of things this afternoon and evening that will make it harder to backtrack and drop out once "effectively clinched" turns into simply "clinched."

On the other hand, Mark Halperin says Hillary "underestimates...the number of her staff and top supporters who will not tolerate her campaign continuing beyond Wednesday – and just how gravely they feel about it." He's probably right, and I may well be wrong about the risk of the Clintons talking themselves into a continued fight. But beware of rhetorical momentum!

UPDATE: TPM's Greg Sargent writes:

The AP is including over a dozen super-dels who privately indicated to the news org that they will ultimately back Obama, should the contest continue, but haven't said so publicly. Not everyone counts private commitments; the Obama campaign, for instance, only includes publicly declared supporters in its super-delegate tally.

So this isn't an official clinching of the nomination, obviously. And indeed, it's really a no-brainer that Obama has reached the magic number when you factor in private commitments. It's highly likely that far more than a dozen have privately signaled support for Obama.

And Politico's Ben Smith weighs in:

Not to be a stickler here, but that's not how this has been working, either in our count or in in the Obama campaign's. The commitments that matter are the ones that are public. So the story is trivial: I think you could probably get virtually all of the superdelegates at this point to privately acknowledge that they'll vote for Obama at the convention.

So as far as the (academic) matter of deciding when exactly Obama gets the majority, I'm going to stick with named supporters. Our count, and the Obama campaign's, leave him about 30 shy.

Meanwhile, Halperin puts up this graphic:

P.S. Here's a lengthier version of the AP article, which is essentially a wrap-up of the entire race.

Clinton's non-concession concession?

By Brendan Loy

The debate rages over whether Hillary will concede tonight.

It appears that the confusion may turn on what the meaning of "is" "concession" is, as Politico's Ben Smith explains:

This morning's report that Clinton would "concede" that she's lost the delegate race -- and the campaign's subsequent denial that she's conceding the nomination -- triggered wide confusion.  

But Clinton herself explained her position yesterday in Yankton, SD yesterday:

"Tomorrow is the last day of the primaries and the beginning of a new phase in the campaign. After South Dakota and Montana vote I will lead in the popular vote and Senator Obama will lead in the delegate count," she said. "The voters will have voted and so the decision will fall to the delegates empowered to vote at the Democratic Convention. I will be spending the coming days making my case to those delegates. Their responsibility not only to the Democratic Party but to our country is to vote for the candidate who is best able to lead us to victory in November and best prepared to lead our country into the future."  

The theoretical case here is that -- even if Obama currently holds the absolute majority of convention delegates -- the delegates can't cast their votes until August, and could change their minds.

So in theory, Clinton can concede that Obama -- presently -- has the majority, but maintain that he doesn't have the nomination.  

In practice, she's pretty much out of options: He's on the verge of locking up the majority, and a bandwagon effect -- which has already begun to pull on her supporters -- will only intensify.

But as Clinton choreographs her defeat, she's outlined a two-step: First conceding that Obama's won the delegate race, then that he's won the nomination.

That makes sense in theory, but as Smith says, it falls apart in practice, unless her intention is to take the fight to Denver.

If she doesn't concede -- and I mean fully concede -- very quickly after it becomes clear that Obama has wrapped up a clear delegate majority, there is no logical point until the convention at which it will make sense for her to fully and finally concede.

Moreover, as I said earlier, the feisty rhetoric she'll inevitably use to justify her non-concession could create, perhaps unintentionally or half-intentionally, a sort of unstoppable rhetorical momentum that would make it nearly impossible for her to concede anytime before August 28 (the date of the roll call in Denver) without angering and alienating her supporters.

This is why I think the campaign either: a) ends this week (probably in the next 48 hours) or b) continues until August. And it's also why Harry Reid's plan -- telling superdelegates to wait a little longer -- is such a bad idea. This is no time for Obama's people to be delicate and deferential. They need to Clinton off the stage, now. This is their last, best chance to avoid a floor fight. It's now or never.

P.S. In comments, kcatnd quotes the Beatles:

If you don't take her out tonight
She's gonna change her mind
And I will take her out tonight
And I will treat her kind.

Heh. Indeed.

Kcatnd also speculates that Hillary will "bow out gracefully tonight once it's clear Obama has clinched it. Until then, it's still a 100%-absolutely-not-conceding tack." That's a distinct possibility. This all may be nothing but tough talk, both to influence Montana & South Dakota voters and to try and prevent the superdelegate flood that would allow Obama to hit the "magic number" tonight. If so, I hope it has the opposite effect. It will, if these Democratic party "leaders" have any sense at all. To quote from another song:

No other road
No other way
No day but today

Hillary way ahead in South Dakota??

By Brendan Loy

Whoa:

HILLARY CAMPAIGN EXPECTS 25-POINT WIN IN S DAKOTA, TOP SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... DEVELOPING...

And:

[An] American Research Group survey of South Dakotans [released today] shows Clinton leading 60 percent to 34 percent among Democrats in the state. There have been few surveys of South Dakotans this year; the last poll was conducted two months ago and showed Obama with a 12-point lead, according to Real Clear Politics.

A new ARG poll of Montana voters shows Obama with a four point lead in Montana, beating Clinton 48-to-44 percent.

The new numbers are subject to some skepticism because they are so at odds with prevailing notions about South Dakota in particular. Electoral projection blog FiveThirtyEight.com predicts Obama will win the state by five points and calls ARG's scenario "completely bats**t crazy."

FiveThirtyEight isn't alone:

[C]ampaign officials for both Clinton and her opponent, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, questioned the accuracy of the [South Dakota] survey results...and urged news outlets not to run them prior to the primary. ...

While accurately reflecting some primaries in the Democratic race, New Hampshire-based American Research Group has also missed others, in some cases by substantial margins. ARG indicated Clinton was ahead in Iowa, where she lost, and that she was behind in New Hampshire, where she won. An ARG survey showed at 3-point edge for Obama in South Carolina, where he actually won 55 percent to 27 percent.

On the other hand, ARG has been spot-on in some other primaries. I guess we'll find out tonight whether they're right this time, too, or whether this last-minute poll is indeed "bats**t crazy."

Obama lines up the supers

By Brendan Loy

On Sunday morning, I wrote:

Assuming conservative projections of 22 pledged delegates in Puerto Rico today, and 8 each in South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, he needs 27 more delegates -- out of 218.5 undeclared superdelegates and Edwards pledgees.

The only question, really, is whether he'll get those 27 delegates by the time he takes to the stage in Minnesota Tuesday night, so he can declare victory then and there. I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of supers declare for Obama within, say, an hour after the polls close in Montana and Souta Dakota.

Now it looks like that's exactly what's going to happen:

Sensing an opportunity to shut down the nominating contest, Obama campaign advisers said that they were orchestrating an endorsement of Mr. Obama by at least eight Senate and House members who had pledged to remain uncommitted until the primaries ended, and that the endorsements would come the moment the South Dakota polls closed on Tuesday night.

Only one problem: the final polls close in South Dakota at 9:00 PM EDT (though polls in most of the state close at 8:00), but Montana's polls stay open until 10:00. So if these supers are really going to "remain uncommitted until the primaries end," don't they need to wait until "the moment the Montana polls close"?

Then there's the Harry Reid theory, which is that the remaining supers should stay mum "until the final votes have been counted." That would mean Wednesday morning at the earliest. But I think Obama has the right idea here. As I wrote last night, I think there's a danger of Hillary & co. talking themselves into continuing their campaign -- or at least taking the "middle option" of suspending-but-not-endorsing -- if the momentum of the moment doesn't very quickly usher them offstage tonight.

Dragging this thing out further is not a good strategy for anyone who wants the campaign to end this week (which is the same thing as saying "end before the convention," because IMHO, it either ends this week or it ends in August). Tonight is the best possible moment to declare a definitive winner and be done with it. If you give Hillary a chance to dither and delay, she'll dither and delay, and when the dust settles, she may well have fallen under the sway of her own (and Bill's) "keep fighting" rhetoric. Far better to rip the band-aid off quickly. Forget about "disrespecting" the Clintons; first of all, they deserve it, and second of all, the pain of that "insult" will fade. The pain of a three-month battle en route to Denver, won't. So, with all due respect to Harry Reid, he's wrong. Once Obama is assured of 2,018 delegates, there's no reason to delay, and doing so could prove grossly counterproductive. He should declare victory tonight, if he can. 

Luckily, it seems I'm preaching to the choir on this; Obama apparently agrees with me. Here's another take on his efforts to end it tonight:

With an expected late wave of support from congressional Democrats, Sen. Barack Obama appeared poised to secure enough delegates to earn his party's presidential nomination, perhaps even before the votes from the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana are counted Tuesday night. ...

A Democratic source said at least five to 10 House members would endorse Obama on Tuesday morning, at least 10 senators will endorse him by the end of the day and an additional 10 superdelegates will also endorse him during the day. That would assure enough delegates by the end of the day to clinch the nomination.

Keep in mind, if the networks are able to immediately "call" South Dakota and Montana (based on exit polls) when the polls close, that'll be 17 delegates right off the bat. Currently, by his own count, Obama is 39 delegates away from clinching an outright majority, so he'll be able to declare himself the presumptive nominee at 10:00 PM -- assuming early "calls" in South Dakota and Montana -- if he gets 22 superdelegate endorsements between now and then. (That's not including his first three supers today -- Clyburn, Lalonde and Chappelle-Nadal -- who are already included in the count.)

P.S. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza reports:

The three highest ranking Democrats in Montana plan to wade into the Democratic presidential race as soon as the state's primary is decided tonight, according to a source familiar with the decision.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer as well as Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have agreed to all endorse the winner of Montana's primary -- almost certain to be Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) -- immediately upon the contest being called. The trio will be joined in the endorsement by state party chairman Dennis McDonald and vice chairman Margaret Campbell.

Politico's Ben Smith writes that the Montana 5 are "likely to be part of a substantial wave that comes to Obama when polls close."

P.P.S. Pablano projects that Obama will win by 18 points in Montana, but only by 5 points in South Dakota. If that's correct, Montana will probably be "called" right at 10:00, but there might not be a clear winner in South Dakota until late into the night, in which case Obama might want to pick up another couple of supers today (perhaps 24 or 25, instead of 22), so he can still declare victory at 10:00 or very shortly minutes thereafter. (He'll want to do so before 11:00, certainly, lest Tim Russert go to bed before Obama's victory speech!)

UPDATE: A potentially significant bulletin from the AP:

Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said Tuesday that once Obama gets the majority of convention delegates, "I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee."

UPDATE 2: CNN clarifies:

Sen. Hillary Clinton's is "absolutely not" prepared to concede the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama, her campaign chairman said.

Terry McAuliffe rejected as "100 percent incorrect" an Associated Press report that Clinton is preparing to acknowledge that Obama has the delegates to win the nomination Tuesday night as the five-month Democratic primary process comes to a close.

Obama "doesn't have the numbers today, and until someone has the numbers the race goes on," McAuliffe told CNN.

But that's not much of a denial, or "rejection." He said "until someone has the numbers" -- which could well be tonight! His bluster notwithstanding, the clarification is totally consistent with the earlier report.   

The longest election

By Brendan Loy

The remarkable Democratic primary and caucus process of 2008 -- the "campaign that wouldn't end" -- finally ends today, whether Hillary Clinton likes it or not, with primaries in Montana and South Dakota. After tonight, there's nothing of any significance left on the calendar until the convention begins on August 25.

There's been a lot of talk about what a long, drawn-out campaign it has been. (Remember when it seemed exotic to look past February 5?) I have a unique perspective on that, as the Iowa caucuses occurred the day after Becky and I came home from the hospital with our firstborn child. So we barely remember what our lives were like before this election began.

For Loyette, the situation is even more extreme. This campaign has literally been going on for her entire life. :) She was three days old when the first votes were cast; now she's five months and three days. She's more than doubled her weight, gotten five or six inches taller, and has changed from a tiny, dazed and confused newborn into a vibrant, happy, bouncing baby girl with a distinct personality and an ever-increasing set of skills. And all the while, the Democrats have been fighting over who'll be their nominee. Remarkable.

Anyway... what are your predictions for today's election? And when will Hillary drop out? Tonight? Tomorrow? Thursday? August 28? January 21? ;)

P.S. Remember how Mitt Romney dropped out, and endorsed McCain, at a speech in front of CPAC? Well, is it possible Hillary will drop out, and endorse Obama, at the AIPAC convention tomorrow? She and Obama are both scheduled to speak there tomorrow morning.

Fight on for HRC?

By Brendan Loy

Are Hillary Clinton and her supporters talking themselves into continuing their fight all the way to the convention? Or is the tough talk just posturing?

As Hillary huddles tonight in Chappaqua with her inner circle, I fear there's a real risk of an echo-chamber effect taking hold, and the Hillaryland brigades convincing themselves of the logic of continuing the campaign even after Obama surpasses the magic delegate threshold. She's being deliberately vague about staying in the race "until there's a nominee" -- what exactly does that mean, especially given that delegates can change their minds, and that the "magic number" itself is still in doubt? -- but we'll find out soon enough. If Obama clinches a delegate majority and Clinton doesn't drop out, then we'll know. If that happens, there'll be no preventing a party-crippling floor fight. Once the train leaves the station, it won't be stopped. It's either this week or the last week of August, methinks.

The question is, does anyone in Clinton's inner circle truly understand the depth of the backlash that would occur if she were to attempt such a thing? Do they realize it would be career suicide? Do they understand that these next couple of days represent her last chance to exit the race with some semblance of dignity, such that she and Bill might someday have a chance of rebuilding their image in the party? Or are they so myopic at this point that they'll fall under the spell of their own talking points?

Even if Hillary & co. don't truly believe their own rhetoric, they'd better be careful: their words may become increasingly difficult to back away from. When you've got supporters chanting "Denver! Denver!" (not to mention "McCain! McCain!") and fundraisers saying "August, and no earlier," how do you bow out gracefully -- even if you want to -- without leaving those folks feeling betrayed? Particularly when you've been casting your argument in terms of "upholding bedrock principles" and saving the country from certain doom? If she doesn't at least begin the process of standing down and backing off tomorrow night, the sheer force of momentum produced by her "fighting" rhetoric may carry her all the way to Denver, whether she means it to or not.

P.S. On a somewhat related note, it's incredibly frustrating to keep reading bogus reports -- from legitimate journalists in mainstream newspapers! -- about how the Obama campaign may "reach deeply into its well-stocked coffers" in order to repay Clinton's campaign debt. There's only one small problem: it'd be illegal for Obama to do anything of the sort, as noted here:

Obama is not allowed to take millions of dollars from his own campaign and give them to Clinton's campaign. The most his campaign could legally give would be $2,000. Any deal to help Clinton with her debt would have to be in the form of Obama helping to raise additional money on Clinton's behalf.

This is a very basic piece of essential information, yet it keeps getting utterly ignored by "reporters" when they "report" on this issue. Such inexcusably sloppy reporting is journalistic malpractice, plain and simple.

Fighting fire with fire

By Brendan Loy

A California blogger fights back against the noise pollution emanating from a nearby Cadillac Escalade that was blasting vulgar rap music "loud enough to be heard a block away" ... by cranking up his own car stereo system and blasting the Clancy Brothers.

I ramped up the volume to "11" and let the boys rip into their version of "Whiskey in the Jar" from nigh-on 45 years ago. ... Maybe it was the line about producing my pistol, and then producing my rapier, but after a couple of minutes, my problem was solved. No more boom-boom from said Escalade.

LOL!

Countdown to Obama's victory

By Brendan Loy

Barack Obama needs 25 superdelegate endorsements today and tomorrow -- maybe a few less than that, depending on his Montana and South Dakota margins -- to clinch an outright delegate majority in time for his St. Paul victory speech tomorrow night.

Can he do it? As of this writing, he's gotten two today, so he needs 23 more. Check this link or Halperin for updates throughout the day, as I'm sure there will be more endorsements. Also keep in mind, it isn't the "net" that matters, but the absolute number for Obama.

One key question is when the "Pelosi club" superdelegates, who've said they'll endorse the pledged-delegate winner, will specifically announce for Obama, who has already secured the pledged-delegate majority.

As for those in the alternate Hillaryland reality who want to trump the pesky delegate count by relying on a fundamentally flawed, inherently illegitimate, hotly disputed, and at best extremely narrow "popular vote" victory, here's a handy popular vote scenario tester, where you answer various questions about how the vote should be counted, and the tally updates automatically. There are a grand total of 972 possible scenarios. :)

P.S. Baltimore Sun columnist Paul Rogat Loeb makes an excellent point about Hillary's phony "popular vote" claims:

Given the bitterness of so many Hillary Clinton supporters that the woman they thought would be America's first female president will not be, the more they hear the suggestion that Sen. Barack Obama's win is illegitimate, the more likely they are to bolt. If Senator Clinton's voters embrace the story that "a man took it away from a woman," denying her a victory she deserved, they're at risk of staying home come November, or holding back from the volunteering and get-out-the-vote efforts necessary for the Democrats to prevail.

That's why it's so unfortunate that Mrs. Clinton continues to claim that "we are winning the popular vote." Because that statement is a lie - and it undermines every word she has recently spoken about the need for the party to come together. ...

Every time Mrs. Clinton claims she has a popular majority, she's shattering whatever cease-fire exists and making it that much more likely that her supporters will stay home in November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable.

P.P.S. On a barely related note, Politico quotes a Clinton aide as stating, "It’s clear to us that Barack Obama has won the Drudge Primary, and it's one of the most important primaries in this process." Hmm, does that make Matt Drudge a super-duper delegate?

UPDATE: Obama is definitely hoping to clinch tomorrow:

Looking to bring finality to the Democratic presidential campaign, Barack Obama worked furiously Monday to win over enough superdelegates to clinch the nomination with the final primaries Tuesday.

Obama wants to formally kick off his general election campaign against Republican John McCain in a victory speech Tuesday night as the final primary campaign polls close in South Dakota and Montana.

"Senator Obama is trying to line up people that are going to come out for him tomorrow during the day so that he'll have enough that puts him over the top that he can declare victory tomorrow," said Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire, one of about 200 superdelegates under pressure to take a side in the contest.

For what it's worth, the polls close at 8:00 PM EDT in eastern South Dakota, 9:00 PM in western South Dakota, and 10:00 PM in Montana. Obama's rally in St. Paul is scheduled to begin at 9:00 PM EDT, but I assume he won't be speaking until sometime after 10:00. (Montana is expected to be a landslide, so it'll probably be possible to declare it for Obama -- and award him 9 delegates right off the bat -- immediately after the polls close. [UPDATE: Or maybe not?])

Oh, and about those superdelegates: 15 of them, all U.S. Senators, are meeting this afternoon to decide what to do. I imagine a mass Tuesday-morning endorsement by the remaining undeclared senators could go along way toward bringing a few more supers along and putting Obama over the top by 10:00 PM tomorrow.

Hillary's mixed signals

By Brendan Loy

What happens after Obama clinches the delegate majority this week? Well, on the one hand...

Clinton campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe tells my colleague Ken Vogel in San Juan that Hillary Clinton will “probably” continue a retail-level campaign operation after Tuesday’s primaries regardless of what happens in them.

Team Clinton also won’t necessarily consider the campaign over if rival Barack Obama soon reaches the 2,118-delegate threshold necessary to clinch the nomination. ...

[McAluiffe said,] “We’ll see. We’re going to get through Tuesday’s votes. We’re going to see where we are, and we’re going to look at all of our options. Every option is on the table.” ...

And he hinted that the campaign might be targeting some superdelegates committed to Obama. ... “Just remember: No superdelegate is bound until they vote at the convention.”

On the other hand...

Members of Hillary Clinton's advance staff received calls and emails this evening from headquarters summoning them to New York City Tuesday night, and telling them their roles on the campaign are ending, two Clinton staffers tell my colleague Amie Parnes.

The advance staffers -- most of them now in Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana -- are being given the options of going to New York for a final day Tuesday, or going home, the aides said. The move is a sign that the campaign is beginning to shed -- at least -- some of its staff. The advance staff is responsible for arranging the candidate's events around the country.

With the future of her campaign in doubt, Clinton hasn't announced her plans for the final election night of the primary cycle or beyond, but the aides said she would stage her election night event in New York City.

Her home state sounds like a great place to make a concession speech, no? [UPDATE: According to Ben Smith, Hillary's election-night speech will be "at Baruch College in Manhattan. A Clinton source says it'll be 'valedictory' but she seems unlikely to actually drop out and endorse Obama tomorrow." Meanwhile, one of Hillary's top supporters, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, says she should concede after tomorrow's elections.]

Anyway, I don't think anyone knows what Hillary will do yet -- I doubt she herself has even finally decided -- but it's quite possible that McAuliffe's tough talk is largely posturing for negotiating position. Consider this report from over the weekend:

Hillary Clinton will be offered a dignified exit from the presidential race and the prospect of a place in Barack Obama's cabinet under plans for a "negotiated surrender" of her White House ambitions being drawn up by Senator Obama's aides.

Hmm... peace with honor in Vietnam Hillaryland? Well, hey, it could be a good test run for ending the war in Iraq. :) More after the jump.

The sun sets... on Hillary's campaign?

By Brendan Loy

Above, a pretty sunset in Knoxville. Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, Hillary ended up winning by about 142,000. By my armchair calculations, Obama still leads by 35,000 in the count that includes the caucus states, Florida & Michigan, and counts Uncommitted for Obama.

UPDATE: My armchair calculations were a bit off; Real Clear Politics puts Obama's lead in that count at 44,605.

Basically, barring huge upsets in South Dakota and Montana (both in turnout and in result), Clinton will only be the "popular vote winner" in the counts that either: a) give her the benefit of a Soviet-style, 328,309 to zero "victory" in Michigan, and/or b) exclude and thus effectively disenfranchise the caucus states of Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, in direct contradiction of her recent statement that "I want to be sure that all 50 states are counted," not to mention her 2007 pledge to snub the Michigan and Florida primaries because of the "unique and special role" played by, among others, Iowa and Nevada, which she now excludes from her count.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Fashion Designer Yves Saint Laurent has died in Paris, French media report.

Turnout low in Puerto Rico

By Brendan Loy

With 14% percent of the precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama by 67% to 33% in Puerto Rico -- and, more importantly for Hillary's hopes of a "popular vote" win, by a raw vote margin of 22,253 votes to 10,924 votes. So far, then, the results corroborate anecdotal reports of surprisingly low turnout.

If we assume that 14% of the precincts means roughly 14% of the votes, and if we further assume that the margin will remain roughly constant across the remainder of the island, Hillary's current 11,329-vote edge translates into roughly an 80,000-vote victory, which is not nearly enough to earn her an arguably plausible "win" in the national popular vote count (barring major upsets in South Dakota and Montana).

Even if Hillary's margin ends up being 100,000 or 110,000, it won't be enough. Hillary needed her Puerto Rico margin to get well into the 100,000's to have any shot at winning the national "popular vote" without the benefit of a) a Saddam Hussein-style, 328,309 to zero "victory" in Michigan and/or b) the indefensible exclusion of four caucus states that held valid elections.

Bottom line: unless overall turnout and/or Hillary's support is much higher in the precincts that haven't reported yet, Hillary now has virtually no chance of earning a claim on the popular vote that isn't facially ridiculous, undemocratic and absurd.

UPDATE: With 56 percent of the precincts reporting, Hillary now has roughly a 70,000-vote lead, which extrapolates to approximately 125,000. Still not enough unless you only give Obama his "exit poll share" of the Uncommitted vote in Michigan, and maybe not even then, depending on what happens in South Dakota and Montana. Also, given that the DNC gave Obama more than his share of the Uncommitted vote, and given that Obama unquestionably would have gotten more votes in a "real" primary than Uncommitted got, I'd say a count that gives him only a 73% share of Uncommitted stretches the definition of "arguably plausible" somewhat. But that's the only arguably plausible count -- or perhaps arguably arguably plausible? -- that Hillary now has a shot at.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Hillary Clinton will win the Puerto Rico Democratic primary by a wide margin, CNN projects.

Great Scott! Universal Studios fire destroys Back to the Future set

By Brendan Loy

An update on this morning's Universal Studios blaze:

A fire at Universal Studios has destroyed a set from "Back to the Future," the King Kong exhibit and a video vault containing more than 40,000 videos and reels.

Los Angeles County fire Captain Frank Reynoso says the blaze broke out just before dawn Sunday on a backlot stage at the 400-acre property. The fire has been contained.

Officials say the iconic courthouse square from "Back to the Future," has been destroyed, and the famous clocktower that enabled star Michael J. Fox's character to time travel has been damaged.

Quick! Find the De Lorean, give it 1.21 gigawatts of power, go back in time 12 hours, and stop the fire from happening! :)

On a happy note, it seems there are duplicates of the videos and reels that were destroyed.

The new math

By Brendan Loy

After yesterday's Rules & Bylaws Committee decision, Obama has 2,052 delegates (including Edwards pledged dels who have declared for Obama), and the new "magic number" is 2,117. That puts him 65 away from clinching the nomination.

Assuming conservative projections of 22 pledged delegates in Puerto Rico today, and 8 each in South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, he needs 27 more delegates -- out of 218.5 undeclared superdelegates and Edwards pledgees.

The only question, really, is whether he'll get those 27 delegates by the time he takes to the stage in Minnesota Tuesday night, so he can declare victory then and there. I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of supers declare for Obama within, say, an hour after the polls close in Montana and Souta Dakota.

One thing he won't necessary wait for, before declaring victory, is a Clinton concession. Reportedly, however, Clinton is coming to terms with the fact that she's going to lose, so a concession may actually happen.

Large fire, possible explosion at Universal Studios

By Brendan Loy

Yikes:

More than 100 Los Angeles-area firefighters are battling a large fire on a back lot at Universal Studios, fire authorities said.

There were also reports of an explosion in the Southern California amusement park, said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Frank Reynoso.

The three-alarm blaze began about 4:45 a.m. PT (7:45 a.m. ET) Sunday and reportedly damaged two "prop" buildings, including a chapel, and a popular ride called the "Cyclone," Reynoso said.

"It will be awhile before we have it under control," he said.

Television footage showed the blaze burning through the roofs of structures at the park and large plumes of smoke.

Firefighters were dropping water on the blaze from helicopters.

"We don't know what the cause of this is," Reynoso said.

Reynoso said he heard reports that filming may have been going on when the fire broke out.

CNN TV said something about the "film vault" burning.