Chill your scene.

Somebody is BITTER.

Where were these people in May 2007 when their legislature changed the date of their primary?
Go to bed. Everyone.

Words I am sick of:
"veepstakes"
"tween"

[Wonkette]

The answer is No.

You can learn a lot about the state of a campaign from its rope lines, and about the style of the person running. There is a giddy celebrity vibe on the Obama rope lines, with the candidate darting along. He is less of a hugger or a hand-shaker than he is a finger-pincher, spreading memories in half-second increments — about 20 voter touches per 30 seconds, on average. He rarely stops for autographs (his aides collect items and Mr. Obama later signs them for the aides to return).

He hugged me, fools.

[NYT]

"A truly successful hangover cure is probably going to be slow in coming. In the meantime, however, it is not easy to sympathize with the alcohol disciplinarians, so numerous, for example, in the United States. They seem to lack a sense of humor and, above all, the tragic sense of life. They appear not to know that many people have a lot that they’d like to forget. In the words of the English aphorist William Bolitho, “The shortest way out of Manchester is . . . a bottle of Gordon’s gin,” and if that relief is temporary the reformers would be hard put to offer a more lasting solution. Also questionable is the moral emphasis of the temperance folk, their belief that drinking is a lapse, a sin, as if getting to work on time, or living a hundred years, were the crown of life. They forget alcohol’s relationship to camaraderie, sharing, toasts. Those, too, are moral matters. Even hangovers are related to social comforts. Alcohol investigators describe the bad things that people do on the morning after. According to Genevieve Ames and her research team at the Prevention Research Center, in Berkeley, hungover assembly-line workers are more likely to be criticized by their supervisors, to have disagreements with their co-workers, and to feel lousy. Apart from telling us what we already know, such findings are incomplete, because they do not talk about the jokes around the water cooler—the fellowship, the badge of honor. Yes, there are safer ways of gaining honor, but how available are they to most people?"

Amen.

[New Yorker]

Obama poetry.

Scene: A small, private New England college where seniors are celebrating their last nights of derpness. A young woman cascades out of her apartment towards an idling car. She holds a can, presumably bud light or equivalent, and yells:

"You're not taking my car I'm fiiine! I'm not gonna sit on no nigger's lap!"

Many Americans are still very, very racist.

The chief executive of the United States is no longer a mere constitutional officer charged with faithful execution of the laws. He is a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise. He—or she—is the one who answers the phone at 3 a.m. to keep our children safe from harm. The modern president is America’s shrink, a social worker, our very own national talk show host. He’s also the Supreme Warlord of the Earth.

[Reason]

For the first time, neither major party's nominee was born in the continental United States. Six years later, Tom Friedman will write a best-selling book expressing the poignancy of this fact.

Sketchy.

Hahaha from a Washington Post account of a Clinton rally in West Virginia:

A better choice for Clinton might have been Harper's Ferry, just a few miles from here and a monument to brave but futile struggles. It was there, in 1859, that the anti-slavery rebel John Brown captured the federal armory -- only to be captured, tried and executed.

The signs of a last-minute event were everywhere. Security was minimal, and problems with the sound system gave the Clinton staff fits; it didn't help that one of the men working the sound system wore an Obama T-shirt.

"I'm not turning it inside out," he said, when Clinton supporters protested. In the back of the crowd, a camera riser collapsed with a huge crash, sending bodies, coffee and cameras flying. "Metaphor?" a reporter asked as he picked himself off the ground? "Metaphor," confirmed another.

Hillary is done. Go to bed. Barack Obama is going to be president and he is black and that is worth noting and I hope he does not get shot at.

I mean just look at last names.

Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon
Ford
Carter
Reagan
Bush
Clinton
Bush
Obama

My first "live blog" since the lunar eclipse:

Obama is going to win Indiana! Win Indiana, Obama! Please! PLeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaasse!!!


1158: Hillary 50.9, Obama 49.1

91% reporting

FUCKING SHIT!!

Update 1208am

I think what this map means is that Hillary won many counties, but only by small margins, and Obama's wins were fewer, but greater at the county level.

If Obama takes it Hillary must drop out. She must. I am so sick of her. I hate it. Anybody else would have dropped out by now. Bill Clinton in 92 would have dropped out.

I will drink the Jonestown Koolaid if Obama does not take it. (more below)
1243: Hillary 50.7, Obama 49.3

95% reporting.

I think I will give Obama money when I get paid on Friday even though I will have none. Seriously. This is too important. I do not want historians to look back on this election and lament about how fucking stupid we were.

This is the most excited I have been about Barack Obama since I was in a high school gymnasium in Cedar Rapids, Iowa the night before the caucuses (and I told Obama that I was from New Hampshire and that I was going to vote for Kucinich but not any more and I attempted to shake his hand and he hugged me said "that means a lot to me, it really does" I had a purple tie on the end).

And the superdelegates are now where the fight is moving: after 50 nominating contests, there are only 6 left, with just 217 pledged delegates left to be elected, not enough to get either of them over the 2,025 threshold necessary to win the nomination.

[NYT]

Indiana has an open primary which means republicans can vote in the democratic primary and while I am sick as shit of this shit, I am wondering what that means for the outcome.

He told the K.S.U. students that their country was “deep in a malaise of the spirit” and suffering from “a deep crisis of confidence”—the kinds of phrases that no politician has dared utter since President Carter was pilloried for speaking of a national “crisis of confidence” during his notorious “malaise speech,” in which he never used the word “malaise.”

Before returning to the Kansas City airport, the Kennedy press corps stopped for a quick restaurant meal. Jimmy Breslin asked a table of reporters, “Do you think this guy has the stuff to go all the way?”

“Yes, of course he has the stuff to go all the way,” John J. Lindsay replied. “But he’s not going to go all the way. The reason is that somebody is going to shoot him. I know it and you know it. Just as sure as we’re sitting here somebody is going to shoot him. He’s out there now waiting for him And, please God, I don’t think we’ll have a country after it.”

[Vanity Fair]

If the set list looks like this in August, I will be very pleased.

Not derp:

Too soon and tooooo expensive.
Seriously.
Who is going to buy a 45 dollar book about the 2008 primaries? I would rather marinate Mike "Get AIDS and Die" Savage's book in Labatt Blue, put it in between a couple glazed donuts dipped in tabasco sauce, light the whole thing on fire, and then eat it every day until I am collecting social security scraps.

DERP

Here is what is wrong with the world. Kids on the other side of the world are able to get Winnie the Pooh t shirts but lack adequate food safety/health care/human rights. Fuck you, Tom Friedman.

Colossal Squid Blog!!!

The colossal squid specimen weighs 1,000 pounds, has 11 inch eyes--the largest of any animal--and has ovaries.
Do squid have their period?
Discuss.