This is awesome.

This is funny. In a story about Hillary Clinton challenging Barack Obama to a “Lincoln/Douglas style debate”, the geniuses at Fox News accidentally used a photo of Frederick Douglas :

Maybe if Obama challenges Clinton to a Burr-Hamilton style duel, they can use this photo :

- Nice to see Obama can throw a punch. Wright’s narcissistic remarks about Obama over the last few days are the ultimate dick move considering the lengths Obama has gone to not throw Wright under the bus. While I doubt this will make this trivial, media-fueled “controversy” go away, I love the way Obama can simultaneously underscore his campaign’s unity theme while delivering a harsh ’screw you’ to a friend who stabbed him in the back.

- Okay, I’m officially giving up on Lost. I’ve heard people gush about it. My wife and I sat through two discs of the first season and we came to the realization that this show isn’t going to suck us in. There’s no there there. It’s just Gilligan’s Island with watered-down David Lynchian plot twists. Maybe the mystery would work if I gave a damn.

- Considering how closely intertwined our economic fates are with China (they own our debt, make our consumer goods, etc.), protesting their human rights record by threatening to skip their party (Olympic opening ceremony) sounds about as effective as protesting Wal-Mart’s labor practices by writing “You Suck” on your receipt. Y’know, we’re in the middle of a hotly contested election year in which trade has become a pretty important issue (at least, when it comes to NAFTA), maybe the protesters would have more luck bringing attention to human rights abuses by pressuring Obama, Clinton, and McCain than trying to dump water on a torch.

- This didn’t get enough attention at the time, but Michael Moore is right to point out the shameful way in which Hillary Clinton name-dropped Farrakhan during the last debate. When Russert pulled the same stunt in February, I considered it “vile and reprehensible”. That Clinton would sink so low now is even worse.

- Hilarious :

On the April 28 edition of Fox News’ Special Report, Fox News correspondent Major Garrett noted that Sen. Barack Obama was asked for his “favorite Scripture” at a town hall campaign event. Garrett then asserted: “Obama’s answer not exactly rooted in Scripture, but in the ballpark.” Garrett then aired Obama’s answer: “[T]he Golden Rule. It’s very simple. I mean, it’s a very simple concept. I think what he asks of me is that I treat my brother as — and my sister — as I would have them treat me.” Obama’s answer is, in fact, “rooted in Scripture.” The Gospel of Matthew 7:12 states that Jesus, during his Sermon on the Mount, said, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (New Revised Standard Version). This verse is described by the Vatican as the “Golden Rule”: “This saying, known since the eighteenth century as the ‘Golden Rule,’ is found in both positive and negative form in pagan and Jewish sources, both earlier and later than the gospel.”

I’m trying to avoid undue optimism, but I’m thinking the 6-8 point spread for Clinton that most polls are predicting is a little high. Looking at this graph from Pollster.com, I think the gap between Clinton and Obama will be five points or less :

The things on this graph that strike me are that (a) Clinton’s support seems to have a ceiling around 50% and (b) there’s still a pretty big chunk of voters who are undecided. Considering the rule of thumb that undecideds tend to break against an incumbent, I think Clinton’s name recognition and her lack of significant momentum in the polls seems to indicate that the 8% voters who haven’t made a choice might break for Obama. I don’t think it’ll be enough for Obama to win it, but I do think it’ll be a big enough improvement for him to claim a moral victory, despite claims over at FiveThirtyEight :

Now, I’ll tell you what is spin — the argument you’ll hear from some Obama surrogates that they won a moral victory because they were once 20 points behind in the polls. While this fact has the virtue of being true, its application has been rather specious, as it relies on a comparison between actual voting results and pre-election polling several weeks out from the election. Yes, Obama was once down 20 points in Pennsylvania — but the same was also true in Ohio, Texas, Connecticut, and a host of other states. And in each of those states, Obama’s standing improved substantially in the run-up to the election, sometimes enough to give him the victory and sometimes not. However, Obama was never really in danger of losing Pennsylvania by 20 points, given the presence of an active campaign. The state isn’t wonderful for him demographically — but it’s a -8, not a -20. On the other hand, this argument has its place as a counter to the even more facile argument that “Obama is not a good closer”. If Obama couldn’t close, he would have lost Texas and Ohio and Connecticut and New Hampshire by 20 points apiece — and Clinton would have wrapped up the nomination long ago.

Taking this argument at face value and looking at it from the other side, I still think Clinton’s victories in the “states that matter” are a serious problem. Sure, she won California, Texas, Ohio, and New York, but her victories in those states almost have a “saved by the bell” quality to them and the trendlines imply that Obama could continue to close the gap with her and perhaps even win if the election were held later. In the big states that Clinton won, the polls show that she either bled support between the beginning of the campaign until election day or barely clung to her lead. It’s enough to make you worry about what those “Clinton vs. McCain” matchups really mean six months before the general election.

UPDATE : Damn.

Didn’t we see this ad used against John Kerry in 2004?

Hillary says the president should “be ready for anything”, so if she manages to get the nomination, let’s hope Osama Bin Laden doesn’t try to organize a caucus. She sucks at those.

The thing I find depressing about this ad isn’t the tacky fear-mongering (I’ve come to expect that from the Clinton campaign), but my concern that these last few weeks are the toughest I’ve ever seen the Clintons work for something. If Hillary Clinton applied the same take-no-prisoners attitude she brings to the primary to her role as a Sentor, she’d be mounting filibusters and demanding impeachment hearings. Where was this toughness when the Patriot Act sailed through Congress or when we rushed to war in Iraq or on telecom immunity, net neutrality, torture, or any one of dozens of other issues in which Clinton has failed to take the lead.

Moreover, why should we expect Hillary Clinton to bring her “kitchen sink” strategy to the general election and aim it at her BFF, John McCain?

Campaigning in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Friday, the former president brushed aside suggestions his wife would prove to be a divisive nominee for the Democratic Party, pointing out how she has successfully worked with Republicans in the Senate — including one of the current GOP presidential candidates.

“She and John McCain are very close,” Clinton said. “They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they’re afraid they’d put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other.”

Sorry for going into fanboy mode here, but this post “Why Superman Will Always Suck” is just wrong :

Really, what lessons do the Superman comics teach? It says that mankind is full of dull, pointless weaklings and evildoers who can only be stopped by a white ubermensch from another planet, who didn’t work a day in his life in order to achieve his powers. Yeah, you could say he’s a symbol of “hope,” but not hope in human nature – hope in an all-powerful alien who saves the world daily so you don’t have to get off your butt and act like a moral person. What sort of message is that?

Just because Superman comics and movies are almost universally made by people who share this “Superman is boring” attitude doesn’t mean there aren’t any interesting stories to tell. The way I see it, Superman has a number of traits that could be mined for interesting stories :

He’s an immigrant – Although raised on Earth, Superman is constantly aware of the fact that he’s not from here. He tries to assimilate as much as he can, even trying to stand up for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, but the mixture of awe and fear he inspires among humans is a constant reminder that he’s different.

He’s adopted - As much as he loves his adoptive parents in Smallville, there’s the part of him that’s always wanting to know about where he came from. Who were his parents? Why was he found as a baby in a fiery hole in the middle of a field? Why is he stronger and faster than anyone he’s ever met?

He’s lives in the closet - It’s hard enough to hide your personal life from your coworkers, imagine how it would feel if your were living two completely separate lives? As comfortable as he feels living life as Clark Kent, he lives in constant fear that his secret life as Superman will be revealed.

He can’t be everywhere at once – How would Superman deal with the fact that while he pulled a cat out of a tree, across town someone got hit by a car? Or that while he stopped a bank robbery, an earthquake killed 1000 people in a country a few hundred miles away?

Moral Complexity – How does someone with the moral code of a boy scout (to use a frequently-cited cliche) deal with an environment in which poor people are dying because they can’t afford health care and there’s a direct correlation between lower-income communities and high crime rates? Superman may see things in black and white, but the real world is much more complex.

There are plenty of ways to write interesting Superman stories as long as you have writers that can break out of the trite, anti-hero stereotypes of the 80’s that pretty much ruined superhero comics. Then again, considering that Superman is owned by DC Comics which is owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. which is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), maybe it’s safe to assume Superman will always suck. At least, as long as we’re talking about Superman as a globally-recognized brand name and not the guy in blue tights. Interesting ideas and corporate groupthink rarely mesh well together.

Note to Self : Next time I go to Cindy McCain’s to snag some Percoset and Vicodin, stick around to get her “family recipe” for Passion Fruit Mousse. Kleptomania has never been so delicious. Yum!

Sometimes it feels more like Hillary is pushing for a McCain/Clinton “dream ticket”. Like the way she so eagerly pushes the “Democrats are liberal elitists” meme :

I’m so ready for this stupid primary to be over.

I’ve only heard a few of the names being tossed around so far for McCain’s VP pick, but so far, two of them are widely rumored to be gay. I have no idea whether or not these rumors or true and have no interest in outing anybody, but I do think it would be hilariously ironic if the gay-baiting GOP accidentally nominated a homosexual. It might even be enough to kick off a fundie third-party candidacy.

Wouldn’t it have been easier for Hillary Clinton to kiss John Edwards’ ass and beg for his endorsement in private?

From the Memphis church where King delivered his last sermon on the evening before he was gunned down by James Earl Ray, Mrs. Clinton gave her support to an idea long advocated by the King family, a cabinet position that she said would be “solely and fully devoted to ending poverty as we know it, that will focus the attention of our nation on this issue and never let it go.”

Mrs. Clinton added: “No more excuses, no more whining, but instead a concerted effort.”

While the idea of having a poor people potentate is a laudable one, I’m a little curious about what this person is supposed to do. Like Dennis Kucinich’s idea for a “Department of Peace”, this seems like one of those ideas that sounds good in a stump speech but in practice would amount to little more than a cabinet member whose job it is to beg other cabinet members to care about poverty. Considering how much flack Obama has taken for not delving into specifics in his speeches, I hope Sen. Clinton provides a little more detail about what powers, if any, her poverty czar would have that isn’t already covered by the secretaries of labor, commerce, and HUD and the rest of the cabinet.

As you may have seen on other sites by now, Gallup has an interesting poll on the Clinton/Obama “dream ticket” :

Only 42% of Democrats nationwide want Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee if Barack Obama wins the presidential nomination, while 55% think he should pick someone else. By contrast, the majority of Democrats — 58% — would like to see Obama nominated as vice president if Clinton heads the ticket.
. . .
The reason for the disparity is that a relatively small number of Obama supporters — just 29% –favor Obama choosing Clinton as a possible running mate. Seventy percent say they’d rather he choose someone else. In contrast, a majority of Clinton supporters — 53% — would want Clinton to choose Obama for vice president if she is nominated.

I think Chris Bowers has the most accurate explanation for Gallup’s findings :

Hillary Clinton has repeatedly floated the idea of Obama being her Vice-President, and as such her supporters are following her lead in thinking he would be a good choice. By the same token, Obama has never floated Clinton as his Vice-President, and has even repudiated the idea of a “dream ticket” on multiple occasions. As such, his supporters are following his lead, and looking elsewhere for a a possible VP choice.

Kinda pathetic to think that one of the best chances Hillary has of catching up to Obama is to try to convince people that a vote for her could be a vote for Obama as well. It makes sense if you think about it. Considering the way the Obama campaign has broken fundraising records, attracted millions of new voters, and packed stadiums all over the country, if the stars align and Hillary Clinton were to somehow squeak by the with the nomination, she’d still need Obama on the ticket. The same isn’t true in reverse, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that Obama supporters aren’t enthused by the idea of rewarding the person who’s spent the last few months trying to destroy their candidate.