January 2008 Archives

When Bill was in office, Hillary was the hatchet man.

Now that Hillary is running, Bill is the hatchet man.

Whatever you think about Billary, they're a team. It's called marriage.

One wonders why none of the political pundits has figured this out yet. Bill can attack any of the other candidates, and come off as an offended husband defending his wife. Hillary did the same thing when Bill was running and in office.

Hillary may be evil, but she's pretty fucking competent.

One good thing about Hillary is that hopefully she's ended the "quiet, demure wife-of-the-candidate" stereotype.

I'm really glad McCain is doing so well. It's pretty much what got me started blogging again, because 8 years of the Borg Queen was too depressing to contemplate.

Venezuela is driving their Jews away

Ever notice how countries that lose all their Jews end up biting the big one? I'm not trying to be anti-Semitic or even pro-Semitic here. All my Jewish friends suck at managing their money, so I don't believe Jews are any better with money than anyone else.

I'm just saying that Egypt used to be the richest country in the world. Then the Jews left , and wham! there goes the empire. (That was a Moses joke). The Romans came up with the Diaspora, and wham! there goes the empire.

And of course, there's the Palestinians, and the rest of the Middle East for that matter. All the Jews move to Israel and the next thing you know, the Middle East, except for Israel, is a toilet.

I'm just saying...maybe Jews ARE the chosen people, like they keep telling us, and we shouldn't fuck with them. In fact, maybe we should actively recruit Jews, because it seems like countries with more Jews do better. Maybe Jews are lucky!

BTW, you should in no way take this blog post seriously.

Here's a cool picture

Video about them here

According to my Dad, the jocks at engineering college were all football players.

That's the real reason the bridge in Minnesota collapsed.

Minnesota Bridge Collapse Causes and New Plans - St. Anthony Falls Bridge Photos - NTSB Report - I-35-W - Popular Mechanics]

Finally, an on-line to-do manager that understands the concepts of contexts, sub-tasks, works with the iPhone, email, SMS, etc.

I'm going to seriously look at supporting this with Frictionless, my freeware program for Getting Things Done.

Check it out.

As always, a magazine-article length essay, but well worth it about the real reason the surge is working.

40 Second Boyd and the Big Picture

Clinton won New Hampshire.

Caucuses are just too fucking weird.

However, Edwards is dead. He's going to hang on until South Carolina, but even if he wins South Carolina, everyone will just say "oh, that's his home state".

Clinton's Best Anti-Obama Slogan: "Where's the Beef?" Gee, if only she had gone around saying that about Kerry...

Meanwhile, on the Republican front, McCain won. Which is good news, because of all the candidates, he's the only one who hasn't been packaged like a soft drink. McCain campaigns by having town meetings and interacting with people, even people who disagree with him.

My fervent dream is a McCain-Clinton matchup. But if that happens, my wife and I will have dueling yard signs...

Someone else talking about delegates instead of percentages.

Money quote:

Obama will probably win New Hampshire tonight. And he is in a very good position to win his party's nomination. But don't count Clinton out. She's the insider, the candidate of the establishment - and they have a habit of winning.

So if you do this right, you can have the democratic results in one browser tab and the republican results in another tab, then click to switch back and forth. The nice thing is that you can see the three big cities that affect Iowa: Omaha, Des Moines, and Iowa City.

My conclusion? Iowa doesn't mean anything.

From Patrick Ruffini:

I’m not saying I buy this entirely, but let me play Devil’s advocate. Even if he wins New Hampshire as he seems certain to, I’m not sure that Obama has much better than even odds for the nomination.

The key to this analysis lies in the Democratic calendar. From Wednesday morning until February 5th, the Democrats have only two delegate-awarding events: Nevada on January 19th and South Carolina on January 26th. Assume that Obama’s momentum hits its high water mark on Wednesday. He has to keep it up for 27 days under withering assault from the most ruthless political machine in Democratic history. And with an expected win in S.C., Obama can’t squeeze much more juice from the orange for the next four weeks.

Unlike New Hampshire, Obama simply can’t ride momentum from state-to-state-to-state for the next month. There are 11 days from the New Hampshire primary until the Nevada caucus. Of all the early states, Nevada has been the most Clinton-friendly (though there hasn’t been any polling since early December). Four days before, a full week of settling out from New Hampshire, will be the Las Vegas debate, which will be covered as yet another make-or-break moment. It will happen during a lull in their calendar, so it will leave a bigger mark than New Hampshire’s drive-by debates. And let’s remember that the debates (with one glaring exception) have been Clinton’s strong suit.

Edwards told supporters, "The status quo is yesterday. And change is tomorrow. And tomorrow begins today, right here in New Hampshire."

(ABCNews via, of all people, Fake Steve Jobs)

The mind boggles. Someone on FSJ put it pretty well: The only reason Edwards exists as a presidential candidate is because he has a white penis.

All I want for next Holiday season is a decent presidential candidate. I hear McCain is doing better.

Oh no. Obama won and Edwards came in second. Now we'll have another few days of media nonsense "Clinton campaign in crisis, etc.". Iowa is a freaking media circus. Here's a hint: They're not writing "big boost for Obama from Iowa", they're writing about the Borg Queen.

You know what the end result will be? 16 Delegates for Obama, 14 for Edwards, 15 for Clinton. WikiPedia

That's right, where it counts, Clinton came in second! The percentages actually worked out to be 29.47% for Clinton vs. 30.00% for Edwards, so don't take the "Edwards came in second" thing too seriously.

Clinton still has most of the superdelegates locked up, according to WikiPedia again, she has 175, Obama has 75, and Edwards has 46.

Looking at the raw numbers on CNN, this does seem like the Iowans were impressed with Obama. He consistently did well across most of the sate.

But still, its the freaking Iowa caucuses. Winning it is practically the touch of doom!

Past non-incumbent "winners": Muskie. "None of the Above", Gephardt, Harkin, Kerry, and now Obama.

Past incumbent winners: Mondale, Clinton (lost the first time round, ran unopposed in '96), Gore.

I think its interesting that Clinton did worse in the more populous counties and better in the more rural counties. I think that's because the Borg Queen's strategy has always been to play to the center.

DesMoines Register has the best map. I couldn't find one scaled by population though.

Whatever. Here's the kiss of doom for Obama: "Obama campaign manager David Plouffe agreed that the outcome came down to "record turnout and lots of independents and first time voters."

Oh, you mean what all the other campaigns call "losers who never show up on election day? Those guys?" Kind of amazing they showed up for the caucus though, come to think of it. Who knows? Maybe Obama will be able to motivate the mythical 'first time voter'. You know, the ones that were going to push Kerry over the top?

Well, at least this nonsense will only last until Jan 8th, when people actually get to vote in New Hampshire.