Obama's Clinton Bump

So before the Democratic convention and during there was lots of talk about the great pains Barack Obama and Joe Biden would need to take in order to woo former supporters of Hillary Clinton. Polls taken around the start of convention showed only 70% or so supporting the Democratic ticket and the pundits were all a buzz. Now, however, it seems that a new poll shows a statistically significant bump in that number, with around 81% of former Hillary supporters planning to vote Obama/Biden. That's a nice jump... and hopefully the start of more good things to come. No word on whether this poll was taken pre or post-Palin.

Does anybody think that will matter? I, for one, honestly don't think the Palin pick is a serious play for Hillary voters. Perhaps for far right voters yes, but the values are just two different, and honestly the two women themselves couldn't really be much more different than they are. Anyway, please feel free to weigh in!

54 contests + 362 decisive super delegates = ...

"Yes We Did" - Andrew Sullivan

"Historic" - HuffPo

"Destiny" - NY Post

"Barack Obama is President of America" - Wonkette

"Obama Clinches" - Philadelphia Inquirer

"Taking Back the Story" - Purple State Blog

"The End of Clintonism" - John Dickerson at Slate.com

"I Will Be Making No Decisions Tonight" - Hilary Clinton


... wait wait... WHAT?!?!?!?!?!!?


"Senator Clinton may not have made any decision tonight, but the Democratic Party has." - Tim Russert

Fair enough, thanks Tim!

"I look forward to seeing you on Last Comic Standing." Jon Stewart to Terry McAuliffe on tonight's Daily Show.

"It's Our Time" - Barack Obama

I'm not gonna lie, I think this is all pretty damn exciting. Forget about all the sleazy sad bizarre no-decision-making etc. This thing is Over. Happy Math Day at The Best Way, folks!

... and good night.

WAIT! Let's end Math Day the way we started, with some stuff related to the new Weezer album. Their actual video for Pork & Beans turns out to be, well, awesome. Check it out here:



Why not celebrate with a who's who list of YouTube phenomena? And actually... let's end on a touching and intensely cool note from Andrew Sullivan.

My Ears (and Eyes) are Bleeding

John likes to post videos here, and what better thing to post than the first YouTube clip in a couple of months that made me literally sit stupefied with my mouth open, incredulous that somebody thought this video was a good way of getting people to vote for your favorite candidate.

And what, might you ask, was the last thing that left me agape in cartoon-style shock? The last video that the same guy made.

Note: Please don't watch all of either of these videos as the combined insanity may make your head asplode.

Assassination Talk

I'm late to the game in writing anything about this, and hopefully it's a bizarre group of episodes that will be past and forgotten before long. Still, it seems impossible to ignore the numerous instances lately where the idea of assassination has been discussed in relationship to the Democratic primaries. It's unlikely anyone has missed Hillary's now repeated mentions of Robert Kennedy (the various instances where she has dropped this tidbit are chronicled well in the video of Keith Olbermann's Special comment available on Huffington Post), but I for one missed for a few days the fact that a Fox News commentator joked and chuckled about the idea of Obama being "knocked off" (she did later offer an apology). Yesterday when I uncovered this ugly piece of cable news, I'll admit I was so enraged... outraged... saddened that I couldn't even figure out what to say about it.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a young person and have a relatively brief experience in being politically informed and engaged. I was not alive during the bleak stretch of American history where numerous leaders who stood ready to speak out on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden (Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy) were cut down in cold blood, preventing them from living out a full life and continuing to advocate for deeper equality and justice. As someone who works in the arena of fighting poverty I take personally the ethical charge to help those less fortunate.

I truly believe that focusing on issues that help people build stronger futures for themselves, their families, their children (education, increasing access to affordable healthcare, help to our elderly) are the types of issues that are build a stronger nation. Here, in a year where a candidate of relatively unique ethnic background also speaks so clearly to these types of issues and to aspiration for a better future I think we should all speak out in outrage against those who would raise the prospect of assassination interfering as it has in the past. The notion is bleak at best, nauseating really, and while I agree that preparing to prevent such an outcome is wise, tossing the prospect around lightly is grotesque.

It is naive to ignore what has happened in the past when applicable to our current situation, but I would raise the challenge that the past gives us two possibilities:

1. We can treat the past as a script, believing that those who have tried and failed simply show how efforts for progress are inevitably doomed. Cynically we can accept that efforts for good are going to be derailed by corruption, violence, or other means and we can prepare ourselves by deciding in advance that there is no chance for progress.
2. Or... We can learn from what we have seen. We can take up the challenge of being a creative people who engage our own problems head-on with the innovation and energy needed to build something different. Without denying that bad things can happen and certainly will at times, knowing the world is not simple, and being unafraid of the fact that there will be bumps in the road. We can set out towards a bright future taking the unity and strength we've seen growing this spring all across America as a sign of what might be if we are daring enough to believe.

For whatever reason the Clinton camp has decided that the last best way they can argue for their continued existence in the race is to raise all the prospects of what might go wrong if they leave (or are not chosen... even though it becomes clearer every day that the nation's Democrats already chose quite clearly). All the assassination talk is, to me, the most bleak development in this slowly unraveling string of rhetoric, and it deserves all of our resounding rejection. Fear is not the way to our brighter future.

Hillz The Early Years

Today is the day for me to mimic Wonkette, apparently. Caught this enjoyable video over there... it includes a bizarro cameo by once big star Jerry O'Connell.



I really enjoy the voice-over they use when the text "Young Hillary Clinton" comes on screen.

Terry McAuliffe, One Craaaaaaaaaaazy Dude

This has been up at Talking Points Memo for a few days, and I just finally got around to watching it today. I'm going to admit, I never quite realized what a nut Terry McAuliffe is, but this little treasury of video clips certainly is a fun little intro if you, like me, haven't fully appreciated his zany antics. Once you watch it, let me know if you agree that America can likely completely eliminate our dependence on foreign oil if we figure out how to harness the energy stored in Terry McAuliffe. Patent pending on that brilliant idea, so don't go trying to steal it.

Here's the video:




If nothing else, be sure to catch the voice crack at 1:52!

Weekends and Sunshine

Heller's and Pfeiffer's and Sky oh my, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Well, folks, I think it's been a pretty remarkable week... don't you? ABC is the first news outlet to tally recent announcments (and defections from Camp Clinton) and say Obama now leads in super delegates... perhaps another sign of the wave that is forming to come tidy up any unresolved questions in the Democratic primary. Not sure if it's a bigger piece of the wave or not, but the Time magazine cover is pretty darn cool. Also amazing, the website Hillary is Mom Jeans (a response to the brilliant Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle). I've got too many favorites from their all-caps little quips, but a new favorite of mine today is, "HILLARY YELLED FREEBIRD AT YOUR CONCERT" brilliant stuff.

Meanwhile, outside the world of primaries there's a whole mess of other stuff going on, right?

• On Ebay you can pick up JFK's air guitar... sweet (hat tip: Wonkette).
• Sadly, probably the biggest story in the world is still the mess in Myanmar, where somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 people were killed by a cyclone that has supposedly impacted over a million lives, yet the military leaders are balking at letting outside aid workers inside the borders of their tightly-controlled nation. Hopefully progress on this mess will be swift (at least there are some signs of hope), but so far there's a lot to feel bummed out about here.
• The oldest gorilla in captivity celebrated his 55th birthday with a frozen fruit cake. I take it they mean a cake made of frozen fruit, not an unwanted Christmas gift retrieved from the depths of somebody's freezer.
  
• When bong-making creativity goes horribly wrong: In Texas some kids dug up a secluded grave, removing a skull that they then crafted into a bong. Wow.
  
• Finally, on a lighter note, researchers say some sexy orchids may reap the benefit from the way their forms attract certain insects, but they may also hurt the insects that pollinate them since they decrease their chances for reproduction. See, the confusion over their appearance causes the bees to, "frequently ejaculate and waste copious sperm." Wait... did I say that last story was on a lighter note... well, if you hate bees I guess this is good news.
  

Anyway... there's your Friday dose of randomness, have a wonderful weekend!

Oh, and the photo above is another from my March visit to Washington DC... taken along Mt. Pleasant Ave. in downtown Mount Pleasant. I'm not sure why I didn't post this sooner, but it's one of my favorites from that trip.

Finding the Right Time to End It

I was part of a fascinating conversation last night with a group of engaged and informed Democrats all raking over the details of what happened Tuesday. The consensus of the group was that the primary is basically over now, but the conversation took an interesting turn (I described this in a comment earlier this morning, but then thought it was post-worthy). What fascinated me, and what I would love to hear others' thoughts on was the following observation:

Someone in the group suggested that it would make no sense at all for the Democratic Party to have Hillary drop out of the race now. If she did, there is a fair likelihood that she would still beat Barack in West VA, and also a good chance she would win in Kentucky. The idea being suggested was that it is against the interests of both the party and Obama's candidacy to have Hillary drop out just in time for Barack to lose two of the first three uncontested races. Instead it would look much better for her to stick around and play nice for a couple weeks.

What I found intriguing about this idea is that I think many people are eager to see this whole thing end, to see Hillary change her mind, hold a press conference, and close up shop today. It's been interesting for me to ponder whether she would serve her party better to stick around at least for another week or two. Still, this all ignores the question of whether altruistic thinking like this is at play at all in the Clinton Campaign's considerations this week.

On an interesting side note, check out this post on Talking Points Memo regarding repaying the Clintons for their "loans" to Hillary's campaign (hat tip to Amiercablog where I saw this discussed). I had not heard about this piece of the picture until today, but as one of the 1.5 million small donors to the Obama campaign, I can say with certainty that I never intended my donations to go for paying the Clintons back on the loans that kept Hillary running in spite of inadequate fund raising totals this spring. I find the notion this could possibly happen quite troubling.

Update: Check out a completely dweeby but fascinating discussion of super delegates and primary election math over at SUPERDELEGATELAND.

Oh What a Night!

Well, I don't know if anybody else is having a hard time convincing their eyes to stay open after staring deep into the CNN ridiculousness until well after 1AM, but I think it was worth it.

While around 9PM it looked like Hillary had pulled out a somewhat reasonable margin in Indiana and Barack had hit one out of the park in NC, by the time I finally allowed my head to hit the pillow it was quite different, with the margin in Indiana down to 2% or less, and with NC staying up near 14%... a result I for one thought was quite decisive indeed.

Still, perhaps the most interesting development of the evening was CNN's discovery that Obama is, in fact, running against a space alien from Star Trek. Seriously, though, it's truly a new day today and if you need something to convince you of that, perhaps the best post I've seen around is this one from the Jed Report. The content is about changes to his blog, but the picture says it all. It's time to look forward to November and beyond.

Zinger VS Burns

Last night I watched a good bit of SNL's the Best of Alec Baldwin, whose presence has been amazing on 30 Rock, no matter what you may think of his voicemail messages and other nasty habits. Some fine laughs were had over the absurdity of the Zinger v.s. Burns skit featuring Seth Meyers and Baldwin. Today, I caught a couple stories out there that struck me as little blogosphere zingers on Camp Clinton... both interesting in their own way.

First, I saw a piece from Andrew Sullivan over at the Atlantic, describing a poll that shows New Jersey democrats, who voted for Hillary by a 10% majority are now demonstrating some buyer's remorse. I think polls like this one are really interesting, especially given how much recent political conversation has been focused on who is electable in the fall.

Then, this afternoon, a piece floated out across the AP wires about how fake Hillary's stop by a gas station was. Wonkette had a nice tongue-in-cheek (surprise there) piece on how hilarious it is for the AP to stress the fakeness of one photo op, when all the campaigns are pretty much daily engaging in little choreographed exhibitions... anyway, whether it's fair or not, I thought the piece was pretty interesting, if only for the fact that they give you a nice portrait of the staging that goes into a "casual visit to a NC gas station."

Is anyone surprised when politicians are playing fake-it-till-ya-make-it? It's old news that a large chunk of America's best informed citizens (or at least best informed young people) tune in more reliably to the fake news than almost any other news source. Still, if the scheduled conversation between BillO and Hillary tonight is any indication, I don't see the Democratic discussion in the next few days veering back towards the land of the sensible. I bet we'll be hearing more about useless "tax vacations" and crazy preachers. YAY!

Does all that sound... jaded? Be not jaded! Laugh at this (Hillary trying to figure out a coffee machine):



Ok... not sure that last one was entirely fair... but it is funny. Promise to you: my next post will be about something entirely apolitical.

A Picture's Worth A Thousand...

So, I don't know about you, but I had a GREAT weekend. I was down in Atlanta, celebrating my brother's 30th birthday and his friend Chris's 30th as well (do you make a word that ends in s possessive with an apostrophe s or just an apostrophe? Thanks in advance, grammarians). I took a zillion and a half pictures and will spend the next 6 weeks cropping and color correcting in photoshop, then uploading them all to Flickr. Or maybe it will happen more quickly than that. We'll see, but suffice to say there are some hilarious pictures that came out of the birthday celebration/"Play All Day" in the park.

I returned to work today and dug into my pre-work political blog reading to discover something wonderful posted over at Jed Report... originally posted at The Craggle Post.

Skywalkers Cross Han Solo

Now, looking at the title of this post, you might think that you could only ever see it on a blog. If that's what you're thinking... check this out. My buddy Adam recently mentioned, and then yesterday emailed me a story he was blown away by... wherein the headline, "Skywalkers (in Korea) cross Han Solo" makes sense in a real world context. Thus begins today's post, themed FRIDAY AWESOMENESS. For more random, joyful, distract you from the democrats bashing eachothers' heads in, ridiculous, goofy awesome, read on below!

• This week in Taiwan, a lawmaker famous mostly for shouting and picking his nose in public will step down from his post. Bummer. I only wish we had been tracking his career these past few years.
  
• Ok, maybe you're not bummed about the nose picker, but you should be bummed out about the priest in Brazil who floated out to sea under thousands of helium party balloons as a fundraiser... for a trucker chapel (how much awesomeness can there be in one post???). Sadly the Brazilian authorities are calling off the search for him, saying there is little chance they will find him at this point. Now, my question is this: how can you miss the guy who's washing around in the ocean attached to over a thousand party baloons? Are the balloons all teal?
• Wow, is this post of awesome things turning into a post of sad things? NO! Here's some awesome for ya: Fictional President Josiah Bartlett endorses Barack Obama.
• Not awesome enough to kick off your weekend? How's this: Cartographer Hillary redraws the US to her liking... er... to the "will of the votes of the people who have voted..." or something like that.

Finally, we'll close out the awesome for now with the Superfun Video of the Week: I Was Told There'd Be Cake



The people who made it do such interesting stuff. You can check out another of their YouTube videos here.

Obama and the Harsh Realities of Pennsylvania Politics

I had hoped to make my first post something a bit more upbeat, but ideas for posts are starting to pile up and I figure it would be best to get a move on. How's that for an introduction?

The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was reading Dana Milbank's article in today's Washington Post about Obama's visit to McKeesport, PA yesterday evening. McKeesport, the "Second City of Allegheney County", was our father's hometown and a place we visited often growing up. We would take week-long trips out the length of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to see our grandparents, often finding time to visit Kennywood or the garden club where our grandmother was a member. By the time I started forming memories about the city, it was already in decline from the heyday of Dad's youth. Most of the steel mills sat silent. Stores were melting away from the downtown area. As we grew up, McKeesport sank deeper. Steel mills were torn down, blast furnaces toppled while grown men cried, and little grew up to take the place of the huge and rusty old factories. I recently visited McKeesport for the first time in ten years in order to show my wife where we had spent so much time as children. I was aghast to see how little had changed and how seemingly nothing had changed for the better. The Eat N' Park full of smiley-faced cookies is still right where we left it and with some searching I found the retirement homes my grandparents briefly occupied. Other than that, I didn't know what else to show off. There just isn't much there anymore. I feel a bit sad even for typing that.

So with that in mind, the Washington Post article didn't come as much of a surprise to me -perhaps just a sad reminder of the difference between today's McKeesport and the one Dad talked about all the time. When the furor over Obama's "bitter" remarks flared up, McKeesport is actually one of the places that immediately came to mind for me. With its shrinking, aging population and a lack of jobs, it's just the type of place where people might justifiably be bitter about their lot in life. Regardless of whether Obama misspoke or voiced an opinion he shouldn't have shared, the reactions in the article shows the problems facing his campaign: for people who have been battered by our economy for the better part of the last three decades, Obama will need to talk about something more tangible than hope if he wishes to mend the wounds of his comments and allay the voters' sometimes "illogical" peccadilloes when it comes to his candidacy. Hope is great, but it isn't creating jobs right now in McKeesport.

Big Ole Day Down in PA

Well... it's going to be a heck of a day down in my home state. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Keystone State doesn't turn out to be yet another anti-climax in this long drawn-out experience, but we'll see how it goes. Until we find out... here's a goofy little diversion:



And if you're not feeling the politics today, perhaps you should watch this one instead. I found it yesterday on You Tube in the "Featured Videos" section... funny little music video for a singer songwriter I hadn't ever heard of (Jack Conte, the song is, "YEAH YEAH YEAH"). Anyway, enjoy both if you like!

Friday Political Rant

I was browsing through the NY Times yesterday and came across an interesting if disturbing article on the current food crisis. This particular article drew a connection between global warming and a shortage of rice. Fair enough. But what is more interesting is the following tidbit, tucked away in the article, far from the headline:

“The global agricultural crisis is threatening to become political, pitting the United States and other developed countries against the developing world over the need for affordable food versus the need for renewable energy. Many poorer nations worry that subsidies from rich countries to support biofuels, which turn food, like corn, into fuel, are pushing up the price of staples.”

Again, this is a completely fair point. Subsidies for biofuel, in particular corn-based ethanol are one of the worst ideas I’ve ever come across. (Beet ethanol is perhaps another matter). But honestly: would the Times have us believe that biofuel subsidies are the only ones that pit the developing world against the rich countries? I can’t imagine ANY agricultural subsidies in the, EU or Japan are very popular among the world’s poor.

Unfortunately, they are currently very popular among American politicians, especially Democrats. It’s all too easy to see why. Nothing gets votes like the promise of subsidies for you and higher tariffs for your foreign competitors. When you consider that Iowa is among the greatest beneficiaries of agricultural subsidies, then it becomes obvious why virtually every presidential candidate this year has spoken favorably of such subsidies, usually well bashing NAFTA and/or immigrants. Brazilian beet-farmers, on the other hand, can’t caucus in Iowa. Even Ox-Fam is mostly run by Brits.

I often wonder why this issue doesn’t get more press. Isn’t this as important as who is bitter, whose pastor said what, etc, etc? If one believes, as I do, that agricultural subsidies and tariffs contribute to the appalling gap between rich and poor countries, then one ought to demand better of our politicians and our press.

The contrast between the three major candidates could hardly be greater. Both Obama and Clinton have campaigned against free-trade, and both would undoubtedly continue the subsidies that pit the haves against the have-nots. (They will, of course, do this out of altruistic concern for the well-being of American farmers!) You can’t really blame them for it. As I said before, virtually every major candidate promised more biofuel subsidies while campaigning in Iowa. The one exception was Senator John McCain of Arizona, who told Iowans bluntly that he did not and would not support such subsidies. Anyone who truly cares about closing the global wealth gap ought to keep this in mind in November.

Love: Is it Wrong or Wright?

I'm going to label this post as a continuation of a theme that I find remarkably important, one that was stirred up quite a bit by last night's farcical debate on ABC. If you watched it, I'm sorry, because I caused my roommate to sit through it with me, and neither one of us enjoyed it one bit. Come to learn today apparently 9 out of 10 questions were written by Sean Hannity who was hidden beneath the moderator desk operating an Avenue Q-style puppet of George Stephanoplis. For more developed coverage of this mockery of what a debate is supposed to be about, visit Daily Kos or any other progressive blog. Take your pick!

Still, I was struck this morning by one piece of the picture, and that is an analysis of the Jeremiah Wright portion of the evening. A few weeks back I posted a quote I found on Andrew Sullivan's blog where Hillary Clinton's pastor lauded Pastor Wright as an important figure whose good works are done a disservice by sound bite politics. Today, Daily Kos highlights the military service that Obama mentioned last night in the debate. You can read their whole post here, but I was struck by the following:

"Who loves America? Jeremiah Wright loved it enough that while Dick Cheney was getting his string of five deferments, Wright voluntarily gave up his student deferment, left college and joined the United States Marine Corps. Wright was valedictorian of his class in Corpsman School. When asked about the sacrifices he'd made, Wright said he was inspired by the words of John Kennedy that he should 'ask what he could do for his country.' "

I hope that before this whole election season is over we see more people stand up and speak out for the sad smear that is being made of someone who seems like a pretty remarkable leader in his community.