EPITAPH FOR THE BUSH YEARS, OR THE FINAL REPUBLICAN POOR DECISION: Yglesias:

The House conservatives who sank the bailout didn’t do so because they were listening to loud and angry voices. They sank the plan by accident. They were trying to double-cross the Democrats. First, they wrung lots of concessions out of Democrats at the negotiating table as the price for delivering 80 votes. Then, by not delivering 80 votes and forcing Pelosi to pass the bill as a partisan Democratic bill, they were going to wage a demagogic anti-bailout campaign. But Pelosi refused to be played for a sucker and so the conservative inadvertently sank a bill that, all evidence suggests, they actually wanted to pass. They just wanted to vote “no” on it for short-term political gain.

Getting rolled by Nancy freaking Pelosi is the final indignity for the GOP. If Matt's right with this, I mean.

And of course playing political chicken with financial armageddon in the balance is probably in poor taste. That said, I'm glad the bill died on Monday, since by all accounts it really is a big giveaway that won't solve the fundamental problem--see Yves. Of course Paulson's going back to try and get this particular bill done again, without explaining what the problem is (of course not, then he'd have to come up with a plan that wasn't a giveaway.)

By the way--I've always been curious if hedge funds contribute anything of real value to the economy, or if we'd even notice if they and their gallons of wealth disappeared. I guess we find out tomorrow!

AND PONTIUS PELOSI SAID TO THE CROWD, "WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE PASS UPON YOU: A BAILOUT, OR A DEPRESSION THAT SHALL BE CALLED GREAT?" AND THE CROWD SAID, "FREE MARKETS!!!11!: Pelosi to give everyone a day to decide if they like the final bailout bill or not. If a bill gets done, that is.

Yes, I am moving into the "something must be done fairly quickly" camp. Too many people (Roubini, Krugman, Buffett) saying we're in it deep this time.

OH LIKE LAUTENBERG EVEN KNOWS HOW TO WORK A FAX MACHINE: But if he did he'd be seeing this totally state-of-the-art Krugmanny bit of US American democracy:

I’m one of your constituents, and I want to urge you to not vote for any version of the bailout plan that does not involve an exchange of equity for taking troubled assets off a bank’s books. This is close to what Sweden did when they were going through a similar crisis to our own, and I think it would work much better than the massive cash dump Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson are proposing. The Chairman and the Secretary seem to think the crisis is one of confidence, and if we just pump more money into the banks things will turn around. I do not think they are right. We are in the midst of a massive deflation of the housing market and no amount of emergency lifelines from the Federal Reserve will change that. I think Congress will be serving the nation much more effectively if they offer banks the chance to exchange equity for their bad assets. This will ensure that the banks that are in trouble receive help—at a price—without simply giving money away. I believe this was how Sweden dealt with their crisis; it was painful, but it dealt with the crisis quickly. The alternative model is Japan’s, which propped up their failing banks for far too long and lost a decade of economic growth because of it, that they even now have not fully recovered from. I do not think that needs to happen here.

Thank you.

Hurray! My vote counts! Or something. Anyway--as far as I can tell the housing bubble is deflating no matter what. Tossing money at banks who may not even need it is not going to help.

ADMIRAL ACKBAR, A LONELY NATION TURNS ITS EYES TO YOU: Please, Democrats. Don't fall for it.

(Harry Reid said somewhere that they had no idea what to do. They should stick with that.)

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION REALLY HAS ONLY ONE RESPONSE TO A CRISIS: When in doubt, take more power!

AH, THE ECONOMY: At this point it's hard to do anything besides sitting back and watching the carnage.

MY FINAL WORD ON THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AS OF TODAY: I just don't think this is the year where stupid shit like moose hunting is going to work.

And at this point I should probably just secede from the blog reading community as I do have stuff (ugh) to worry about. But I probably won't.

WHY SO SERIOUS: Is making me pine for the days of I drink your milkshake.

YOUR POLITICAL CARTOON WITH JAY WARD REFERENCE OF THE DAY: Rocky & Obamawinkle. I laffed and laffed....

....otherwise I might get depressed! I don't get these Democrats. You have this one who's picked up this gas tax holiday thing from a Republican and is running with it for all it's worth. You have this other one who's pointed out that a gas tax holiday is not going to change a blessed thing. And yet the one who's pushing the Republican idea, and who went on the Republican house organ tonight, is the one who is coming on strong. Is--how you say?--curious.

(This is my preferred explanation for the Wright-Obama breakup: they're in cahoots! Wright says something off the wall, Obama says "now you've gone too far" and DENOUNCES!!!! and REJECTS!!!!!! him, the cretinous media finally lets it go. Obama doesn't look like he's turned on his friend, especially after defending him for what feels like months. Wright keeps his ability to say whatever comes into his head. Everybody wins!)

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT: John Cole is right, nothing to worry about, Barry is in fine shape. Yep. Said the Kerry/Dean before Kerry/Nader in '00/Perot in '96 supporter. I'm so scared....[/blair witch whisper]

Yeah. I personally am on the Obama "no stupid bullshit, love it or leave it" train. But I fear a steady disembarking, just enough for the hideous Clinton strategy to pay off. Oh numbers, help me!

Close in Indiana.
Still way ahead in NC.
This little data in Kentucky?
Not much in Oregon either but it looks like Obama country.
Same for West Virginia except it's Clinton country.
South Dakota is for Obama. Don't see any Montana numbers but I'm sure they're similar.

So John's right--she just can't win straight up. Her only hope is the same hope she's always had, that the supers get all nervous as the economy becomes a bigger issue than the war (profiting Clinton in conventional wisdom terms) and they vote her in over the primary results. But if anybody can win in this backhanded way, it's a Clinton. And then Justin Slotman, mild-mannered office drone with an endless graduate school campaign, becomes the purple-shorts-wearing INCREDIBLE MCAINIAC! SLOTMAN SMASH PUNY CLINTONS! And so on.

WELL. THIS WAS ALL THE TEST MARKETING FOR ULTIMATE LORNA THE JUNGLE GIRL MARVEL NEEDED: I can just see how this got started, somebody down in the basement at Marvel Legal, got some request from some indy publisher, thinking "how many jungle girls we got anyway?" and then "shoot, just give 'em Lorna, mebbe it'll catch on in the Internets or sumphin" (since the guys in the basement at Marvel Legal all talk like Ben Grimm.) But no.

(This isn't right to say, but no blogfight wants to make me break out the popcorn quite like an intra-feminist blogfight. It's a very....earnest style of blogfighting.)

DURRR THE OLYMPICS DON'T MATTER AFTER THE COLD WAR: And that is one of the more annoying tropes I've heard in my time in the bloggy intertrons, particularly at Reason (otherwise my favrit mag--well TAP is good too, and I will never be left enough to hate The Economist) here in particular (I swear there was more, in comment threads at least, but I can't find any evidence. Matt Welch is scrubbing the archives TO THWART ME!!!!) Of course this latest torch run proves my header to be the "end of history" of sports punditizing.

Anyway--I've been reading a lot lately about these whole "China vs the world" protests, like and this and this and this and this and this (no cites, the blogs I've been reading, mainly the ones on the Peking Duck blogroll, were all talking about similar stuff), and the one thing I'm really convinced of is China has atrocious image management. I mean, why did it take the Internet for me to see this sequence of photos? This is a propaganda coup! Wheelchair-bound paralympian fends off torch snatcher! Especially the sequence those photos are in--she starts off just happy to be there, protesters show up, she cradles the torch with both hands (fantastic form--she should play para-American football next since apparently she's too old for the fencing team (mentioned in the EastSouthWestNorth translation)), does not let it get stolen from her, and the relief on her face when the ordeal passes is palpable. (Where were the dudes in the blue track suits, anyway?) And yet the only people who seem to be seeing and getting exorcised by these photos are the worldwide Han community, who are obviously predisposed to getting exorcised by them. Possibly a little too exorcised. And yes--the "Western" (god I hate that term) media has its own set of biases that's going to preclude it from wanting to do anything China-sympathetic on the Tibet question. I think for educated Americans and Europeans, that question has been answered: China's wrong! Therefore Tibet should be free. And that's that. What? Northern Ireland is entirely different....

God, too many explosive tangents there--I have no idea how I didn't work abortion in. The point is, Jin Jing is an enormously sympathetic figure that you probably don't know too much about unless you're plugged into the Chinese mediasphere. Never mind that the Chinese intertrons have already turned on her since she spoke out against the Carrefour boycott (though I have no idea if those comments are representative or not. Imagine gauging the AMERICAN STREET!!! using LGF commenters.) Non-Chinese institutional biases and good ol' yellow perilism aside, China--and by "China" I mean the goofy government of China--has been given a gift-wrapped propaganda moment and they seem to have no clue how to push it. Other than pushing it at their own citizens, which strikes me as a poor long-term governing strategy, this whole idea of ramping up nationalist sentiment and then trying to cut it off before it explodes (I hate to say anything bad about Jin Jing, but her anti-boycott comments fit this strategy perfectly.) As Raj at The Peking Duck put it:

The Chinese government should be shitting their pants over this - they have created a self-conscious monster (a very nasty strain of Chinese nationalism) that will demand people conform to what it wants, but not necessarily what Beijing wants. If things carry on as they are, with manipulation of the media to stoke xenophobic attitudes and repress open discussion and more generally the support of angry nationalism to divert attention away from the CCP, one day this beast may well turn against the political establishment. Then there will be blood, one way or another.

I can't wait for the torch's journey through Japan!

IT'S PROBABLY A TRIBUTE TO OBAMA'S INTELLIGENCE: That it takes so little from him to get so much stupid written. And then he responded like this. I mean look at this:

“Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain—it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he’s saying I’m out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I’m out of touch? No, I’m in touch. I know exactly what’s going on. I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania. I know what’s going on in Indiana. I know what’s going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They’re angry and they’re frustrated and they’re bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.”

Do you really think what he said was a gaffe? I think it was more of a bait and POW! (Note that he's openly running against two people now, if it wasn't obvious before.)

EDIT: I liked this general summary of Obama news cycles from The Commentator Formerly Known as NCSteve. Particularly "And then, as always, Obama will calmly do that Akido thing he does with all these nontroversies" both for use of the word nontroversies and for somebody else thinking there's something very martial arts about Obama's political style. (Via Carpetbagger comments.)

"WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE? HISTORY WILL NOT JUDGE THIS KINDLY.": John Ashcroft, ladies and gentlemen! Ah, for the days when we thought he was the worst part of the Bush administration. If you read the story he comes off not so much as anti-torture as thinking it looks bad for cabinet officials to be discussing the torture of individuals, but still.

Via unfogged.

IF I HAD ONE OF THEM FANCY NEWFANGLED BLOGS WITH CATEGORIES AND SUCH THIS WOULD GO UNDER "THINGS OBVIOUS IN RETROSPECT", "BSG": In the role of John McCain: Colonel Tigh. And Cindy McCain is so clearly Ellen Tigh! This is amazing. Plus with the "Adama gets shot" storyline we have a pretty close approximation of a McCain presidency.

AND SOMETIMES MLS FRANCHISE NAMES DON'T TOTALLY SUCK: Seattle's franchise to be Seattle Sounders FC. (Via The Swamp.) I had no idea that Drew Carey was involved, or that a condition for his involvement was that the franchise had to have a marching band. Doubly awesome that Seattle gets the American-style name and the American-style spectacle. (Doesn't quite make up for the Sonics, though.)

NCAAPOCALYPSE: To a certain kind of basketball fan--and I am of this kind--having a Final Four composed of all number one seeds, and not even interesting number one seeds (like the year St Joe's was one), is pretty much the worst possible outcome. I know it's interesting because it's never happened before, but this tournament isn't popular because it's predictable. (Predictable in the sense of higher seeds beating lower seeds--I know it's predictable in a bracketology sense.) It's popular because crazy stuff happens and very occasionally crazy stuff wins it all. It's not supposed to be an annual blue-chip program coronation process (though it turns out that way more often than not.)

At least freaking Duke is done. And hey, Memphis isn't that blue-chippy, certainly not compared to the other three. And Conference USA is barely a league! So go Tigers, I guess. Deny the entitled fanbases, please. Let me have some joy in this post-Stephen Curry tournament. (He's only a sophomore! They'll be back.)

ANNUAL LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE FINALLY OVER: You-know-who loses. Time to get me down to Goodwill for a couch, and then to the hardware store for some kerosene.

HOW OFTEN DOES THOMAS NOT VOTE WITH SCALIA, ANYWAY?: He didn't today in this Washington primary case. And he wrote the majority opinion. Just found it curious since I thought they were joined at the hip.

MAN, THAT SPEECH: Even Charles Murray went ga-ga for it! (Does that make The Bell Curve less racist?) You just have to admire Obama's willingness to do things completely differently and go after the race issue in a way that's intelligent, nuanced, and (possibly) easily digestible (in the "media eats x and poops out y" sense--the poop they make out of this somehow won't stink. Or I don't see where they'll get the soundbites that make him look like a doofus out of this.) My current wishful thinking is that rightwing radio is going to regret trying to make a big deal out of this, that he just jujitsued them all over the mat by not disowning the crazy (in a good way--I mean, Condoskeeza Rice? HAHAHAHAHAHA!) reverend (so they couldn't accuse them of DUMPING HIS FRIENDS! NO CHARACTER) and turning it into a general conversation about race (which rightwing radio and friends definitely do not want to go.) They thought they had him kobayashi marued (look it up, non nerds) in a situation where they could get him to dump his old pastor OR make him at least appear to agree with his old pastor's words but he just mushed them together and went into the legit and non-legit points of the Wright speeches and spun that into the conversation about race we've been avoiding since the 90s. Excellent stuff.

"KRISTEN" UPDATE: Waitaminnit--she's filthy rich now! Or much wealthier anyway. That's kind of awesome. Remind me to write a book or something and sell it wherever people sell e-books so I can at least profit from any future notoriety.

(Via naked capitalism, I've been on a big finance blog kick lately because of the coming Great Depression II: Electric Bugaloo and all. I can't tell--because I've just started reading them--if finance writers/pundits/bloggers always think we're DOOMED! DOOMED! DOOMED! or if we really are doomed this time. Wasn't billmon a former finance reporter? He always thought we were doomed.)

YEEEARGGH OBAMA PASTORGATE: Well--at least all this means he's isn't a Muslim anymore. As far as I know.....

LEAVE "KRISTEN" ALONE!!!!: Seriously--she is not the person at the center of the Spitzer mess or the person who brought down a governor, etc. This is not that kind of story, the lazy-ass media is doing this as a Bill Clinton or Kwame Kilpatrick kind of deal and it's not. It's a guy who saw hookers! Cripes, if he had a regular affair he could have kept his job, since everybody who has affairs gets to keep their jobs and even run half-baked campaigns for the presidency (hi, Rudy!) But he wasn't even having a pseudo-affair with her, like she was his main pay-for-sex squeeze or something. She was the latest in a series and any previous woman in that series could have been the one WHO COST THE GOVERNOR HIS CAREER (and I'm sure they're thanking their lucky stars that they weren't the ones on the wiretap.) So please, lay off poor Ashley Alexandra Dupré, nee DiPietro, nee Youmans. Focusing on her is like focusing on the vice cop in the stall next to Larry Craig WHO BROUGHT HIS PROMISING SENATORIAL CAREER TO AN END. Or not.

Plus she seems fairly goofy based on her MySpace (not actually seen by me, "Category: Personals & Dating" is banned at work) and not really deserving of major ridicule. Then again, I don't know who wouldn't appear goofy based on their MySpace. Don't you know SERIOUS PEOPLE HAVE BLOGS???

MERRY SPITZMAS (IF THAT IS A HOLIDAY YOU CHOOSE TO CELEBRATE): Eeeyikes.

Yes, yes, victimless crime, two consenting adults, in a sane world it would be legal, etc. And I never really hated the dude that much. Still, the fact that he was involved in busting up prostitution rings at the same time (or close to the same time) he was using prostitution rings and thus allowing them to exist makes this a solid double in hypocrisy baseball terms (Larry Craig, for the sake of comparison, hit a bases-loaded grand slam. He had an amazing hitting stance--okay I'll stop.)

WE MUST REPEL THE MAPLE LEAF MENACE: Foreign interlopers in our elections! GASP! (Via a commentator at The Field, I think.) They haven't tried something like this since 1812. Yet we refused to learn the lessons of the past.....

GREAT THOUGHTS FOUND IN THE COMMENTS SECTIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BLOGS, THE CONTINUING SERIES: "Exhibiting any discretion whatsoever in what you watch is the film buff’s version of original sin. Everybody does it, but if you any soul you’ll beat yourself up about it." --Alex Jackson, one of my favorite internerd film critics.

Watching everything you can get your hands on is something I associate with the Tarantino school of watching movies; the guy doesn't possess in any traditional notion of taste, which is pretty evident from his movies. And I routinely keep my Netlifxes out for months and then just give up and send them back and hope for better motivation with the next batch. Forgive me, cinema gods, I have sinned.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO HATE SIMMONS: He's clearly on the side of the angels with this whole Sonics debacle.

Here's something I've been having a hard time finding information about--I hope somebody in Seattle is working on whatever Cleveland did to keep the Browns' history in town.

EDIT: Googling for reasons Howard Schultz sold the Sonics in the first place got me to this, which I liked insofar as it implied that the skillset for running a large, successful corporation are much different from running a somewhat successful pro sports franchise. And I hate Starbucks sometimes and Schultz comes off like an ass in this whole debacle. Venti my ass. It's a large coffee. LARGE!

MAYBE--DON'T FEAR THE MILLENNIALS?: Kept meaning to write about this, it's your pop sociology article of the moment that the Inky published a week or so ago about the generational dynamics behind the Obama phenomenon. It fed into my Boomer hatred (or whatever flattened emotional response a card-carrying GenXer is supposed to have) as it portrayed them as an idealistic generation unwilling to compromise and thus unable to get shit done, and contrasted them with a civic generation--and they're putting the Millennials in that category--who're more low-key and--gasp!--actually capable of compromise. Previous civic generations gave us Lincoln and FDR so Obama is going to be a super-memorable president, is I guess what the take-away conclusion is. And it wouldn't be a pop sociology article without one moment of stupid overreach:

Since they started watching Barney as toddlers, the millennials have learned to be concerned for the welfare of everyone in the group and to try to find consensus, "win-win" solutions to any problem.

Yeah. And Mr Hooper taught Generation X apathy!

Note: following Kevin Drum's guide to blogging, I googled the authors and neither one is an actual sociologist and they have a book to push. Yay for pop sociology written by laymen!

RIGHTWING NOISE MACHINE NEEDS REWRITES: Not this stupid Deval Patrick thing, which is from the leftwing noise machine (when even Cap'n Ed says something is bogus.....). It's even stupider! Both Hannity and Medved had these clips of an Obama audience member fainting on multiple occasions--not the same audience member, but a front-row audience member fainting at multiple rallies. Obama responds the same way at each fainting--interrupts his speech, asks people to give the fallen space, etc. And this was evidence of PERFIDY! The Obama campaign is planting fainting people! To make Obama look....umm....more like the kind of guy who cares about fainting people! Yeah! To me, this is evidence that Obama is kind of a rockstar, something your average rightwinger wouldn't know anything about since they weren't allowed to watch the Beatles in the 60s. (WHY DON'T THEY CUT THEIR HAIR???)

A QUESTION OF POLITENESS: Is it better to let the poor lady in Hyderabad go through her whole "let's get your account activated today" routine and then say no (because you always say no--honestly, if you fall behind on your payments aren't you going to end up spending the same amount? These protection plans just take the money from you gradually, versus socking you with the fees all at once) or to interrupt her mid-spiel so neither of you waste your time? I go with the former, just because it seems nicer not to try and fluster someone--not everybody can swiftly recover from spielus interruptus, after all. And we're both working for the company store, y'know? Might as well not get mad at the wrong people.

DEFUSING THE "OBAMA LOVES CHE" CONTROVERSY (HA!) IN TWO LINES: A comment in a Cap'n Ed thread:

1...WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THAT WAS A REPUBLICAN OFFICE?

2...WHAT IF THEY HAD A CONFEDERATE FLAG ON THE WALL?

There are as yet no replies to this comment. (Whole stupid story via John Cole.)

CLINTON RACEMONGERING NOT A RANDOM SLIP OF BILL'S TONGUE?: Not that it ever was, in reality, a random slip of Bill's tongue, but at least they could claim that and it looked like they realized it backfired since they locked in him in Dick Cheney's bunker after he said what he did. But now Hillary's doing it? Jeez. Doesn't that generate far more bad press than it does votes for Hillary?

I am an Obamabot, of course, so feel free to point out where he dismissed California due to all the Latinos or something.

ONE WAY THE SHAQ TRADE MIGHT MAKE SENSE: Riffing off this Yglesias post--if you believe the NBA to be sort of mildly fixed (mildly fixed: assigning certain refs to games when a certain outcome is desired, like when you want a playoff series to go seven games, as in the sixth game of that Lakers-Kings series a few years back; allowing refs to be influenced by star power, though this might be a problem with basketball at all levels; arbitrary enforcement of the rules, like the Horry incident from last year (Horry is one of the great on-court bastards, by the way, and he never gets enough credit for it); the general appearance of wanting certain personalities to be successful, as in the atrocious championship won by the Shaq and D-Wade Heat) as I maybe* do, and you believe the Suns sort of realize the league or the officials were never going to really reward their style of play (THE NBA IS PHYSICAL!!!! DEFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!) you might as well roll the dice and get a guy who has been handed titles in the recent past and still might have some pull with the refs. And you weren't going to win in your present configuration.


*I know it's the Internet, and it's okay to be a total crank, but still, thinking the NBA is fixed is still just outside reasonable opinion. Because of and/or in spite of Simmons.

RECOMMENDED: Chris Bowers handicaps Hillary's chances for the rest of the race. (Via tennbengal in The Swamp.) The comments break down Texas district by district. It's good to know that not even Texans understand how the caucus part of the Texas primary-caucus thing works.

2004 WAS SO LONG AGO: And so was my Howard Dean fandom. And I thought, "Let's say we click on this Joe Trippi interview and take a little trip down memory lane, hmm?" So I did! And it's from right before Super Tuesday and I was struck by this bit:

On Hispanics, I didn't know how he was going to undo what had been baked in cake in Nevada about his appeal to Latinos. There's no better name in the party [to help him with that] than Ted Kennedy. The Kennedy name, particularly Ted. Look at Massachusetts. He was 38 points down. Now he's got Kennedy, Kerry, Patrick. He's got a real chance. He can win. No way he can win California without a big shift in the Latino vote. If he could somehow pull out California and Massachusetts, he could be right back in it. If she wins California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arkansas, what states is he going to win? Illinois and Georgia? Then where? Alabama? Then where? She's way ahead in Tennessee, Oklahoma. You know what I'm saying?

And everything he was talking about came true--Obama lost CA and NY and NJ and even the hoped-for MA. And TN, and OK, and AR. But he still won the day, more or less, or at least tied it (tied in the popular vote it looks like, slight victory in the delegate count.) And I'm like--how did he do it, despite Trippi's points above?

My answers would be: 1. C'mon--it's Joe Trippi. 2. His "Then where? Alabama?" query was answered with CO, MO, ND, AK (sounds like Cthulhu's brother-in-law.....COMONDAK!), DE, CT, ID, UT, MN, and KS. Now--did Trippi forget about them? Not consider them a big deal since five are pretty tiny? Not think about CT or MO at all? Or think Clinton's Hispanic edge would give her CO, and so on. I don't know. CT and MO are ones he could have lost (or "lost"--proportional, proportional!) but won (or "won" in the sense that CNN will color them his color), and those were the only close races at all. That's part of the perception of Victory: Obama. 3. I'm taking Trippi out of context, he wasn't saying Obama was doomed, just sort of handicapping the race. Probably true. I was just struck by the (basically accurate) paragraph above in combination of what seems to be an Obama win. 4. Obama really is a media creation! Or an elite blog creation! (Like that would translate into actual votes.) Like the people at Talkleft keep saying. So of course the elite bloggers/talking head media think he won. I dunno, wouldn't the televised media prefer to keep the Clintons around? If they really are obsessed with them, which strongly suggests that Clintons mean RATINGS!!! 5. Trippi didn't realize the Obama caucus advantage. Which he wouldn't realize before yesterday

Eh, I'm rambling at this point. Trippi's larger point was that he thought Hillary had repositioned herself as the Change Candidate but I don't think she's going to convince the Obama fanbase of that anytime soon. And it's the same size of her fanbase at this point. Tie game! I am not looking forward to "smoke-filled rooms" being the catchphrase of the summer of '08.

SO WHAT WAS OBAMA'S MOST IMPORTANT VICTORY?: Missouri? Really? It is what they call a bellwether.

New Jersey was personally disappointing. New York was a loss but at least Obama got to 40%. California was a huge bummer. And stupid TAXACHUSETTS! But you gotta remember, it's proportional, no matter how many times Wolf mentions California going to Hillary or whatever. It's the delegates, stupid. And Missouri.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, THE 2007-08 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS WERE TO BE REMEMBERED AS A HISTORICAL CURIOSITY: Holy crap.

By the way--what was up with that mindbendingly offensive animated pandas speaking broken Engrish ad? Somebody's going to get several strongly worded blog posts in the morning, if they haven't already.

SUPERBOWL XLII MENU: What a depressing season. The only rational response is GLUTTONY:

Barbecue turkey legs. My boss told me her slow-cook method (simmer a few hours, then bake for an hour under foil, then add your sauce) and it's wonderful.
I am going to attempt the Tom in Texas chili recipe. Couldn't find a chili beer in Jersey, though, and I don't think I have exactly the right dry peppers either.
This is the wing recipe I've settled on. Shamefully, I do like the wings at Applebee's or Chili's or whatever.
Bacon-wrapped jalapenos. The simplest, tastiest appetizer of all time.
Spam musubi! Must invoke spam at the Superbowl! (All references to the Superbowl are property of the NFL Corporation.)
White Castle enchiladas. Yeah. And then I make actual sliders with Asian pork patties.
Recipezaar has this recipe plastered over its front page. It looks good, so it's bound to turn out right when I make it!
Oh, there's some other stuff too. Maybe even some vegetables.

TONIGHT'S DEBATE IN FIVE WORDS: Get a room, you two!

(Sorry. Still an Obama guy, but I suddenly don't hate Hillary anymore. That may change.)

"NO SUBSTANTIVE POLICY DIFFERENCE" REDUX: After watching that debate--I'm convinced! The differences were: "I'll be long-reaching change" versus "I'll be safe change." But change is apparently on the table! Nobody was taking Wolf's bait to fight either. I think the Hillary campaign has decided that anything that looks anything like dirty trickses is not going to fly this year, and especially not against Obama, and the new strategy is: kill with kindness. It might be enough to stop the bleeding.

"NO SUBSTANTIVE POLICY DIFFERENCE": I keep hearing this (and if I wasn't a lazy, bad blogger I'd go find some links) and I'm not sure how true it is. I mean, isn't Hillary (based on Bill's record, and I guess her war votes too, and just the general Clintonian preference for taking the politically more expedient path) more likely to blow some shit up then Obama?

(Hey, if your main issue is the drug war--and it's pretty close to mine--who do you vote for? I imagine Obama would be better on it, just because--again--you know the Clintons aren't going to anything different in general, so at least with him you got a chance at something different. But Stop The Drug War says don't get my hopes up. And the Hillary people tell me Barack's an ordinary politician that the media's in love with, so I might as well just vote for Hillary. How very inspiring....)

ETA: Obama has made some noise about marijuana decriminalization, so that's something.

YEAH, JUST TO PILE ON HERE: With Giuliani out now the number one worst possible presidential scenario has been avoided, and we can all be thankful for that. Now the question becomes, who's more awful out of Hillary and McCain? (Which is why I'm pro-Obama, it's an easy decision with him versus anybody.)

IF I MAY GET EASTERBROOKIAN HERE FOR A MOMENT: The Patriots are the defining team of the Bush years. Being introduced as a team in the first post-9/11 Superbowl, just a bunch of blue collar guys not given much of a chance against the Greatest Show on Turf--it was such a feel-good moment when we needed a feel-good moment. And here they are now, the most hated NFL franchise since the 70s, having been convicted of cheating and not having to pay a competitive price for it. It's a Bushian arc! (If only in terms of approval ratings. Look--it's an Easterbrookian analysis. It doesn't have to make sense.)

The above probably makes Eli into Barack Obama, so it's utility as a metaphoric explication of the Patriots is questionable. Still--Patriots, Patriot Act, amirite?

"TESTOSTERONE TO ME IS SO IMPORTANT FOR A SENSE OF WELL-BEING AS YOU GET OLDER": Your quote of the day that made me laugh for some reason.

THAT'S JUST POLITICS LOL: I swear, there is no more annoying defense of the Clintons than that. At least Talk Left tried to make an actual argument defending their latest shenanigans--though I myself am unconvinced by one link to somebody's diary from three months ago.

A week ago I could have gone with any Dem candidate, but things start looking a little bit bad for the Clintons (Iowa, the ambiguous Nevada result) and they react like they have been....I don't want people who govern like that in power again. End of line. So let's go you-know-who (now available in Hebrew.)

MAN, THIS COULD BE TOTALLY UNFAIR: But it seems like a lot of your bigger lefternet blogs have steadfastly refused to pick a candidate, I guess so they don't say something they regret later, and it's annoying. You're telling me, lefternet, that you really don't have an opinion on Bill making skin color campaign issue number one of the moment? Or Hillary's Reagan bullshit? I feel like only the wonkier blogs have stated their preferences at this point, like Kevin Drum's Hillary love or the gang at ObWi trending Obama.

It's the ObWi gang who's got me in an Anyone But Hillary mood at the moment. Publius, then hilzoy then hilzoy again. And they'll probably end up supporting Hillary if she gets the nod, but I'm not a durn demmycrat and if anybody can get me to vote Republican in '08 it's the Clintons.

Not that I won't change my mind in the next 10 months, McCain can be a legit scary dude and "President McCain" sound like the name of a fictional President in your average 80s low-budget science fiction dystopia (the ones where the United States is strangely depopulated and most of the movie takes place in abandoned factories.) But as for right now there's an Obama beanie with my name on it just as soon as I get paid.

CAN YOU NAME A GREAT TEAM GRIMMER THAN THE 2007-08 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS?: What are "Questions Bill Simmons would be asking if he wasn't from Massachusetts," Alex?

(Note: If he has mentioned this, I apologize. But he's become unreadable for obvious reasons so I can't really check for myself.)

MEMO TO THE PS3-OWNING INTERNET: If you're trying to format your external hard drive to FAT32 so the PS3 can recognize it, just use GParted. It's graphical, easy to use, and doesn't give you the opportunity to screw things up like with the terminal-based partition editors. Take it from one who knows.

Then again, I'm like, "Why am I bothering? You know how many copies of Q*bert you'd need to fill up 50 gigs?" But maybe I'll stick a bunch of movies in there and never have to take a DVD out of the case again. I dunno.

(Q*bert actually available at Playstation Network, the sick man of next-gen console download services.)