The NYT gets it half right

In a somewhat-bemused article, they note that the punditocracy has finally figured out what the blogosphere has been saying for weeks, that Hillary is farther than ever from the nomination, and that it's now effectively over.

But the impact was apparent almost immediately, as evidenced by The Drudge Report... It had as its lead story a link to a YouTube clip of Mr. Russert’s comments, accompanied by a photograph of a beaming Mr. Obama with his wife, Michelle, and the headline, “The Nominee.”

The thought echoed throughout the world of instant political analysis. “I think there’s an increasing presumption tonight that Obama’s going to be the nominee,” Chris Wallace, the Fox News host, said to Karl Rove, President Bush’s longtime political guru, who is now a Fox News analyst....

A posting on the DailyKos Web site included a mock memo to Mrs. Clinton entitled, “To-Do List Before Dropping Out.”

Speaking on CNN, David Gergen, a former adviser to several presidents, including Mrs. Clinton’s husband, said, “I think the Clinton people know the game is almost up.”

Stating it more bluntly, Bob Franken, the political analyst, told the MSNBC host Dan Abrams shortly after 2 a.m. Eastern time, “Let’s put it right on the table: It’s over. It’s over.”

But, unable to completely let go of a narrative, no matter how wrong, it goes on to argue that even though it's over, it's not really over.

The instant analysts on television and on the Web have not exactly showered themselves in glory this year. They have frequently made predictions that have been upended by actual votes from actual people.

But their opinions matter as much as ever in this late phase of the primary race, when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are battling to sway the opinions of the uncommitted superdelegates....

The superdelegates are a largely elite group that presumably will track the conventional wisdom of Washington’s class of political insiders as they weigh their decisions. And the big donors and fundraisers whose help Mrs. Clinton will need to continue her campaign are similarly tapped into the news media echo-sphere.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign indicated early this morning that it would try to prove the commentariat wrong once again. “Pundits have gleefully counted Senator Clinton out before, and each time they have been wrong, because they don’t decide this race -- voters do,” Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director, wrote in an e-mail message. “And as the results in Indiana demonstrated, voters are rewarding Senator Clinton with victories, even in states Senator Obama predicted victory in.”

See? The delegate lead doesn't matter, it's about perception. And as long as we're talking about predictions, let's talk about North Carolina being a game-changer, about double-digit wins in Indiana... You know, those things that were going to prove the Clinton campaign had some realistic chance. At this point, Clinton has to get over 80% of remaining unpledged delegates and most of the unpledged superdelegates. Ain't gonna happen. And perceptions, pundit opinions, and media narratives don't decide that.

Wolfson's got a point, actually. Voters decide this. And at this point, even if you count Florida and Michigan the way Hillary wants, she still trails in the popular vote, in delegates, and in states won. She has fewer donors, her campaign's broke, she can't get the Black votes that no Democrat can win without. The votes simply aren't there.

Future pundits will decide whether Obama was inevitable from the start (I don't think he was; his campaign's been skillfully run, but it's not a juggernaut), or whether the Clinton campaign took the strongest brand in Democratic politics and ran it into the ground (and there do seem to have been some key strategic missteps, beginning with the complete lack of contingency planning for anything after Super Tuesday--such hubris never goes unpunished).

From the "Gee, ya THINK?" Dept...

TIME: Is Obama's "electability" code for race?

Well, at least they're saying it out loud, even if they have to pretend it's just a wildly speculative question. I suppose that's progress. Of some sort.

The persistence of stupid habits of thought

I don't usually blog about personal stuff, but as this is what's foremost in my forebrain lately, and the purpose of a blog, any blog, is to memorialize the brainfarts as well as the deep thoughts, well, why not...

I'm dealing with a minor frustration regarding some behavior by a friend of mine that's leaving me feeling a bit neglected & taken for granted. On its face, it's no big deal. And rationally, by any sane measure, it is, truly, minor. Not worth getting worked up over, move on to something that's worth firing a few neurons about because this certainly isn't. (Other people do have lives, and sometimes, shocking though it may be to admit it, some aspects of their lives don't involve me.)

And yet. In the back of my head, there's the little voice (my friend Wayne calls his "Waldo") that would be more than happy to play the poor-poor-me game all day long.

Now this is hardly a new phenomenon. (Waldo causing trouble, I mean, not the feeling-neglected issue.) And in fact, that's what's most annoying about it. That this is far from new, in fact it's the same old crap I've fallen into off & on for years. I guess there's some progress, though. I'm not wallowing in it, I'm recognizing what I'm doing, and going out of my way to tell Waldo to STFU for a change. To paraphrase Snoopy, "It's not much, but it's something."

This is ridiculous.

Life has a way of interfering with the blogging, or something... At any rate, I'm still alive, as I'm sure my regular readers (both of you) will be pleased to hear.

We're heading into finals, so there should be a little more time in the schedule Real Soon Now.

Plans for the summer: Development work on orientation for new grad students, working with another instructor to brush up on Python (the language, not Monty) and some gaming applications.
We'll see how it actually goes.

Hillary's latest: I lied.

John at Americablog has the story. Her wording is that she "said some things that weren't in keeping with what she knew to be the case."

Most of us call that "lying."

At least she admits it.

If things were different, they'd be different

The latest spin from Hillaryland: Her (actually Mark Penn's) strategy didn't work, therefore the system is flawed. A GOP-like winner-take-all system would be better because under that system she'd be winning right now.

Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats in primary states choose their nominee on the basis of a convoluted system of proportional distribution of delegates that varies from state to state and that obtains in neither congressional nor presidential elections.

And both candidates were well aware of that system, or could have been, well before the election campaign started. But at this stage, it appears to be just another attempt to provide the GOP with Obama's-not-legitimate talking points.

Is the Democratic nominating process convoluted, perhaps too much so? There's evidence supporting that contention. Perhaps it should be changed. But for the next election cycle, not this one. You don't change the rules halfway through because the current ones aren't producing the outcome you want.

Yes, I'm still alive.

Mass craziness preparing for a week-long trip, then a really good conference, now back just in time to host a conference this week and run the student programming contest. Fun, but busy. More later as time permits.

Thumbs up for the Apocalypse!

The Atheist Apocalypse (if there could be such a thing) would actually be pretty cool....

[H/T: PZ]

Why I Am Not A Theist

An occasional series, with installments whenever I feel like it.

Theism requires the following assumptions:

• That God exists;
• That God is benevolent;
• That God is able to communicate with us in a way we can perceive;
• That God is willing to do so;
• That God has done so;
• That this communication has included God's preferences regarding our behavior;
  
• That we have noticed this communication;
• That we have understood or interpreted it correctly.

If any one of these assumptions falls, maintaining religious belief becomes much more difficult. (Not impossible; a deist, for example, may posit only the first two items and deny everything else. Accepting all but the last one allows the sort of questioning that moves you from one religion to another. Accepting all including the last one is the setup for various religious wars, since if we've understood it correctly, anyone with a different understanding is incorrect--and probably needs to be shown the error of their ways.)

That's an awful lot to swallow on faith. More than any rational being should be willing to accept.

Of course, that's part of the theist/religionist dodge, isn't it? It's all got to be taken on faith and questioning isn't allowed, or is allowed only as long as your answer leads you back to obedience.

Bands Playing Badly

The saga of the Really Terrible Orchestra.... An inspiring story about amateurs. (The word amateur is based on the word "love"... An amateur does something for the love of doing it.)

Go read it, it's worth it.

Quote of the day

"Freedom of religion does not mean no one ever gets to tell you you're wrong."

--Ed Brayton

Midweek weekend update

Finishing touches on the conference paper for the end of the month, heard from my college roommate thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, heard from a former long-distance BF just because, and they're voting in 4 states today, 2 of them big. Hillary's position has kept shifting (big surprise); the latest is that unless Obama takes them all by big margins, he really lost, and she's in the campaign regardless. Looks like she's going to push it to the end, getting more negative along the way, until she's destroyed either herself or the party. Typical.

At any rate, it's been a while since I posted, but I'm not dead.

god help us all...

Nader is considering another run.

The man most responsible for the Shrub's election, right up there with Rove, is thinking about jumping in again, because his ego hasn't been stroked enough lately and the idea of these other people getting attention and him not is just soooooo annoying.

It takes a healthy ego to run for President in the first place. It takes a pathological ego to launch a vanity bid well after deadlines have passed, with the idea of generating free media with ballot-access lawsuits while piously posturing about his virtue.

Who's paying his bills? Where's he getting his funding? The timing is just too convenient.

She's not singing yet, but she *is* warming up...

Mark Kleiman announces that it's over and that he will no longer be criticizing HRC, because that would be "unnecessary roughness." To his mind, Obama's got the nomination, no further critique of Hillary is needed and would just be piling on.

Except, of course, there's still Super Tuesday, and a potentially deadly floor fight about what to do with the Florida and Michigan delegates, and who's going to control the Credentials Committee and thus make the delegate decision.

Please. You don't think the Clinton machine would launch a party-wounding internecine war rather than go quietly? I doubt Hillary would give up the nomination until it was pried out of her fingers. I could be wrong--I'd love to be wrong--but I don't think I am.

Media watch edition

So let's have a look at what's in the news today...

• Fidel Castro is stepping down after 50 years in power. Implications for U.S. policy isn't entirely clear.
• The ruling party in Pakistan has gone down to defeat in a (relatively) clean election. This is a serious blow to the U.S-leaning ruling clique, and is seen as a rebuke to the U.S. Implications for U.S. policy aren't clear.
• A group of military officers has completed a study showing our military is "stretched dangerously thin" and could not undertake another major operation. Almost half agree with the word "broken" to describe the current state of the military.
• Florida has approved educational standards requiring teaching "the scientific theory of evolution."

And what's the lead story at CNN? On a busy day like today, what did they select as what you most need to know to be a well-informed citizen?

None of the above... They're doing an uplifting puff piece on blind veterans who are learning to ski.

Feh.

Darn ear-worms

A few days ago, in this post, I linked to a couple of old campaign ads on YouTube.

Warning: It's been quite some time, and I still find the "I like Ike, You like Ike, Everybody likes Ike (for President)" ditty wafting up through my brain.

I'm hoping it's just a bizarre side effect of the cold meds or something.

Creationist "science"

Bonnie Goldstein has a must-read over at Slate showing the peer "review" process at a creationist journal that passes itself off as science. Among the helpful things in the style manual is how to cite biblical references correctly in your science papers, instructions regarding use of pseudonyms (if you'd rather your home institution didn't know about your publishing), and a reminder that the submission must support a Creation/Flood model or it won't be accepted.

Pssst. Guys? Here's a hint. If you decide on what the answer is going to be before you ask the question... it's not science.

If you want to have a journal called "Distorted Facts Forced To Fit Bronze-Age Legends," that's one thing. Not as catchy, I'll grant you.

Anyway, go have a look. It's really pretty funny.

So I'm not the only one...

It looks like someone else is noticing the increasing air of unreality coming from Camp Hillary.

Perhaps good spin is an oxymoron, moral if not linguistic. But good spin is clever and forward-leaning pitches of actual realities, facts. The word in the sense we use it today actually came into being in the early 90s and to a great degree around the '92 Clinton campaign, which had such mastery in its practice. But this Clinton campaign has been doing it in a weird parody mode. Not sharp 'spins' on favorable realities, but aggressive pitches of complete nonsense. So now you have Penn successively saying caucus wins don't really count, small state wins don't really count, medium state wins don't really count, states with large African-American populations don't really count, all building up to yesterday's gem: "Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama."

Clinton is ultimately responsible for putting her political fate in this fool's hands.

I think it's significant that we're hearing a great deal about how Hillary values loyalty in her staff, sometimes above all else. That's understandable, given what she's been through, but in this case, competence would be a higher virtue. Pretending everything's fine and she's well on her way to the nomination isn't going to work. Not when the momentum, the fundraising, and the number of wins keeps favoring her opponent. As for the strategy of getting enough superdelegates to go over the top,

The super delegates who are gettable for Clinton by loyalty, conviction or coercion are already got. And enough's been seen of both candidates for everyone to be more than acquainted with them. The ones who remain -- who make up roughly half the total -- are waiting to see who the winner is.

If they haven't signed on with Hillary by now, what's the likelihood that they're going to if Obama enters the convention with more elected delegates, more cash on hand, and better polling numbers against McCain? Not very much. If Hillary's going to salvage her chance at the nomination, she needs to do something quickly. There's still time. But the clock is ticking.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

No side effects here...

So I'm on medication for whatever-this-is, my temperature is going up & down & all over the place, at the moment I feel relatively normal... And have an attention span of about 3 minutes.

Seriously, firing up The Sims feels like it would take too much effort and thought commitment. Checking the same dozen-or-so news sites and blogs every few seconds is getting old... hmmm... Oh well, I'll think of something.

Someone gets it...

I'm currently dealing with a sinus infection of some type... Just when I think I'm almost over it, it knocks me on my butt again. So either I'm going to be even more erratic than usual in posting, or I'm going to be stuck home from work with just enough energy to think that I can put two sentences together coherently.

At any rate... Misty Irons has a post worth reading on her blog.

To say that homosexual people are all about the baser impulses of sexual attraction, minus any of the nobler feelings, is essentially saying they are less human than the rest of us. In other words, it is saying they are incapable of human love.

I think the reason the idea of homosexual love makes some Christians uncomfortable is that it doesn't provide much basis for their negative reaction to homosexuality. It would seem more justified if homosexuality were about people who are of a fundamentally lower moral quality. But to say that there are people who are capable of the exact same kind of sexual attraction as everyone else, except that they find themselves attracted to people of the same sex for reasons even they can't explain, is a more disturbing idea. It turns a part of your universe upside down. How can something as sacred and sublime as love take on this orientation? How could God allow this to happen? What is he doing? What does it mean? Why am I feeling so freaked out by it?

As much as Christians like to talk about "the homosexual agenda" and their righteous anger over "perversion," at its root this is really about the deep issues regarding our own personal faith, isn't it?

Exactly. It's always about their own personal faith, and how to justify it, which is why it makes them so uncomfortable. If you're doing something that doesn't affect me much at all, I probably won't feel the need to institutionalize hatred of it. But if it's something that makes me uncomfortable regarding my own issues, I'm going to persecute it for all it's worth.

And she is exactly right, of course. To define it strictly as a matter of lust is to make gays less than, not equal to, not fully human, and thus fully deserving of whatever mistreatment they receive. Being gay isn't solely about lust any more than heterosexual marriage is just about sex.

Nice to see that at least a few people get that.