“Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself.” The shape of things to come? Scientists at Berkeley conceive a way to use MRI imaging to “map” images in the brain. “Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience at any moment in time…It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30 to 50-year time frame.”
Month: March 2008
Blame Canada.
“‘He said someone from Clinton’s campaign is telling the Embassy to take it with a grain of salt,’ said one participant in the conversation. The source added, ‘someone called us and told us not to worry.’” As I’m sure y’all know, one of the late-term factors redounding against Obama in Ohio was Goolsbeegate, where it seemed one of Obama’s top economic advisers had suggested to the Canadian government that the Senator’s rhetoric on NAFTA was just political hot air. Senators McCain and Clinton, of course, ran with it. (This has caused a political uproar in Canada, as the leak seemed an attempt by the right-leaning Canadian government to help out McCain.) Well, now it turns out that, not only is there less to the Goolsbee story than first appears (Canadian officials sought him out before Super Tuesday, not the reverse, as reported), but that it was Sen. Clinton’s campaign actually making overtures to the Canadians on the subject of NAFTA.
Charming. Somehow, with Ohio come and gone, I doubt this side of the story will have much in the way of legs. But, if you needed any further indication at this late date that Sen. Clinton can be a tremendous hypocrite at times, just look to our friends to the North.
Rewriting the Legend.
As y’all might remember, I quite liked I am Legend last year, despite the fact that it pretty much falls apart in the last half-hour or so. (It still made #18 on the 2007 list.) Well, fwiw, the original ending to the film is now online, and it’s definitely more Matheson-esque (and sidesteps the goofy New England Utopia at the end, although I guess it is still implied.) Worth a look, if you saw I am Legend in the theater.
It’s all about the D.
In the NYT, former Knick coach Jeff Van Gundy explains how to shut down the NBA’s top players, with the aid of some nifty graphics. (Via Yglesias.)
Reality Check: It’s Over.
Sigh. Since the spin levels today coming out of the Clinton camp are reaching Iraq war proportions, let’s take a moment to review. As I said on Monday and several times before, Sen. Clinton had a very tough task before her last night. Unfortunately for her candidacy, she failed to accomplish it. The Clinton campaign did not “turn a corner” last night, unless you mean they’ve now rounded the corner to oblivion. Let’s assess Sen. Clinton’s post-March 4th position by her own standard, before we collectively sign on to the notion that the Clinton “surge” is suddenly working: (Via David Plouffe on Monday.)
“This election will come down to delegates…After March 4th, over 3000 delegates will be committed, and we project that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be virtually tied with 611 delegates still to be chosen in Pennsylvania and other remaining states…As history shows, the Democratic nomination goes to the candidate who wins the most delegates – not the candidate who wins the most states.” — Mark Penn, February 13, 2008. (Well, he’s right about the delegates. But it’s March 5th, and they’re not tied. And Sen. Obama has won the most delegates and the most states.)
“We think that at the end of the day on March 4 we will be within 25 delegates.” — Clinton aide Guy Cecil, February 13, 2008. (They’re not. They’re down at least four times that.)
“I Think We Will Be Ahead In The Delegate Race After Texas And Ohio.” — Howard Wolfson, February 11, 2008. (They’re not. They’re down big.)
None of these happened. While the numbers are still being crunched, it looks like Sen. Clinton picked up between 4 and 10 pledged delegates last night (depending on how the Texas caucus ultimately comes out.) She was down approximately 150 pledged delegates, and there are not enough contests left for her to feasibly make up that difference. Ohio and Texas were her last, best hope to turn things around, and — in spite of all the sorry Republicanisms of the past week — she failed to do so. As such, the race is now effectively over. Finished. Kaput. In the fridge. Our nominee is Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
True, some news outlets are tipping their hat to the mathematical reality today: Fournier at AP, Dickerson at Slate, the Wash Post and the New York Times. But, since all too many (ostensibly Clinton-hating) media outlets seem to be playing the idiot and rolling with her “comeback” spin today, I’ll try to explain it using a sports metaphor. Obama is up 34-7 in the fourth quarter. Clinton just scored a touchdown. The score is now 34-14, but now there’s only 2 minutes left and Obama has the ball. For all intent and purposes, he can just take a knee and run out the clock. (Not that I suggest he do so. Since the other team is playing dirty, we might as well run up the score.) Or, since we’ve been talking knockout punches of late, Obama failed to land one last night, true. But he’s way up on points and will clearly win the decision. Clinton needed to score her own knockout last night. Unfortunately, for her, she didn’t connect.
Now, some might argue, “What’s the rush?” Why not just let the Clinton campaign continue to send dispatches from their make-believe world until the convention in September? Well, that might’ve been acceptable if Sen. Clinton had chosen to go the amiable, Huckabee route. But, she hasn’t. Rather, she’s been trying to make Obama bleed, and has now — as if her credibility wasn’t already at rock-bottom — donned the fearmongering and national security wardrobe of the Bush-Cheney GOP. In effect, she is now basically acting as a McCain surrogate. Since we can only expect her to continue this behavior for as long as we indulge her delusional fantasy that she can be the nominee, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is time for the Democratic party to collectively put its foot down.
So, to sum up, the race is over. And, since Sen. Clinton will not withdraw gracefully, or do anything that might put the good of the party before her own desperate ambitions, it is now up to the supers to force her out. Every day they wait is another day our chances in the general election are threatened, merely for the sake of assuaging the vanity of an also-ran who is “drawing dead” and has conducted a truly terrible campaign.
Whatsmore, despite her grasping this morning, Sen. Clinton will not be on either end of the Democratic ticket this year. In fact, now that she’s in the process of destroying any likelihood of her being Senate Majority Leader, the closest she’ll get to the White House anytime soon is if President Obama is charitable enough to let her on a Health Care Task Force of some kind. (Although, a word of warning, Mr. President-to-be: She ran the last attempt at health care reform right into the ground.)
Not Dark Yet, but it’s getting there.
So, how was your evening? It’s late, and I just got home, so I’ll save a full post for tomorrow. But, in brief: As I said the other day, a knockout punch in either Texas and Ohio would’ve been grand. Still, Clinton did not win either state by the margins she needed. So, simply put, her campaign from now herein is Dead Woman Walking, mathematically speaking. As such, I’m not too depressed about the Texas and Ohio results, frankly…You can’t always get what you want, but we got what we needed, and, even with a 10-point margin in Ohio, Sen. Clinton has only managed to forestall the inevitable.
I am bugged, however, that the Clinton campaign’s pathetic shenanigans this week have been seemingly rewarded by the voters, particularly in the Buckeye State. (Late deciders seem to have broke heavily for Clinton in both states.) But, oh well. More tomorrow when we have a fuller picture, and I’ve had a few hours’ rest to steel myself to the now very real possibility of several more weeks of Clinton hacks insulting our intelligence daily with their ridiculous spin.
All O’s X’s live in Texas. | Ohio Assemble!
Election Day: If you live in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, or Vermont, please consider voting (and caucusing) for Barack Obama today. Even notwithstanding all of the Clinton campaign’s bad behavior of late, it’s time to focus on Sen. McCain and the Bush-Cheney Republicans.
24.
“‘This convention,’ wrote H.L. Mencken, the most famous reporter of the age, is ‘almost as vain and idiotic as a golf tournament or a disarmament conference.’” Those political junkies out there pining for a brokered convention, be careful what you wish for: The WP‘s Peter Carlson reminds everyone of the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York, which stalled out between Al Smith and William McAdoo before finally deciding on Wall St. lawyer John W. Davis, who in turn lost to Republican Calvin Coolidge and — in twelve states — Progressive Robert La Follette. (For the longer version, see Robert Murray’s The 103rd Ballot. Which reminds me, having spent the day myself in 1924, it seemed a strange confluence to find this staring back at me upon my return to 2008.)
A disaster for the Democrats that year, the “unconventional convention” did at least provide choice grist for political wags then, and has ever since. “This thing has got to come to an end,” Will Rogers pleaded well into the nine-day stretch. “New York invited you people here as guests, not to live.” (Rogers also noted on the day of the infamous KKK resolution that it “will always remain burned in my memory as long as I live as being the day when I heard the most religion preached, and the least practiced, of any day in the world’s history.“) When William Jennings Bryan, after days of thundering himself hoarse, wheeled around to support the final Davis ticket (which included as a sop to the Bryanites his younger brother in the veep slot), one reporter quipped: “If monkeys had votes, Mr. Bryan would be a champion of evolution.”
And then there were the snafus. The Carlson piece talks about the Democratic decision to broadcast the convention on the newfangled radio, which turned out be a public relations catastrophe for the party. And there was worse. The Texas delegation — aghast that they shared a block with St. Patrick’s Cathedral and a city with Wall Street and the House of Morgan — had to be talked out of burning a cross. And when the convention band tried to appease their southern guests at one point by striking up a “Dixie” song, they obliviously settled in on “Marching Through Georgia.” Speaking of the Civil War, progressive Republican Hiram Johnson quipped once the Democratic ordeal was over, “How true was Grant’s exclamation that the Democratic Party could be relied upon to do the wrong thing at the right time.” (Let’s try not to live down to that assessment this year, please.)
24, 24 hours to go…
“All that matters tomorrow – and we might not know the answer until later in the week – is which campaign advanced in delegates and which campaign did not, and by how much. That Clinton spokesman Wolfson is saying here that the Texas Caucuses don’t matter is your clearest indication that he thinks they’re going to get shellacked at ‘em. He’s already spinning them into ‘doesn’t-matterland’ before they’re even held. That’s because it is precisely the caucus results that will advance Obama to a greater lead among pledged delegates nationwide than he has today.” As the election season builds to a fever pitch in Ohio and Texas, Clinton sends out more attack ads, and the Clinton campaign begins trying to move the goalposts all over again to stay in the race after tomorrow night, Rural Votes‘ Al Giordano puts things in perspective.
In the meantime, the polls — minus Zogby, who had Obama up 13 in California, and is thus someone I’m not putting much stock in at the moment — seem to suggest Clinton is pulling away in Ohio (although not by enough to really make a dent in the delegate situation.) Texas polls are more favorable to Obama, although at least one has Clinton pulling ahead there too. But, to be clear, despite these leads (which also don’t reflect the respective ground games), neither state shows anything like the margins Clinton needs to stay mathematically viable. Her campaign may continue wheezing and sputtering for several weeks yet, but — if these numbers hold up, even with Clinton wins — the race for all intent and purposes ends tomorrow…and not a moment too soon.
Morning in America. | Enquiring Minds.
“On questions of substance and leadership style, Mr. Obama is the better choice. In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton’s antics mocking his optimism, Mr. Obama has shown that it is possible to have both hope and intellectual heft. Her campaign has confused proximity to power with work experience, selectively taking credit for her husband’s accomplishments.” The Dallas Morning News endorses Obama, as does the Cincinnati Enquirer: [I]t is Obama’s ability to reach beyond the partisan divide and gather in support that prompts The Enquirer to give him our endorsement for the Democratic nomination.” As far as Ohio and Texas go, Sen. Obama has previously earned the endorsements of the Houston Chronicle, Cleveland Plain Dealer, San Antonio Express-News, El Paso Times, and Austin American-Statesman.