Yup.

Mine hasn't. As far's I can tell, Coulter just wants attention (surprise). Or it could be a gender issue.

I saw the video clip... she believes that Clinton is more conservative on Iraq than McCain is. Which is not a compliment from her about Clinton, FYI.

I think Huckabee is supposed to be at my college campus tomorrow.

Panning for donations?

i can has moneys?

Watching the Factor last night I was surprised to hear how many conseratives/republicans had issues with McCain. Strong Foreign Policy, Against Tax Cuts, For illegal immigration was what I remembered hearing.

I still like Mike though. I'll have to start listening to Mitt more on his views. I've heard some and what he's been slandered with.

I'm not. He's got Limbaugh and Dobson against him, and right there is your conservative wing of the Republican party.

It won't be a surprise if he takes up some slack in the South and parts of the Midwest...

CA SEIU endorses Obama; LA Times endorses McCain & Obama...

Yes, this is real:



"Fired Up" indeed...

I don't get it.

>.<

Heard a bit of the Repub debate while at the gym today. About the only part I liked was the comment on the Iraq war from crazy man Ron Paul. Maybe I just don't understand Repubs (well, I know I don't..) but it sounded like they were cheering being involved in Iraq. Then they cheered for getting out of it or not having gone in the first place.

I don't get people that always vote for a particular party. It's not a Powerglideing sports team, you vote for the particular candidate/party that promotes the policies that you feel are the best at that particular point in time.

America has this really entrenched "I only vote Republican/Democrat" culture that I think is more detrimental to it's democracy than anything the politicians could possibly think up.

If you live in America vs. read about it on the INTERNETS, you get a different picture. Sure, there are a lot of partisans, but there are also a lot of independent voters, and they're always the ones who end up deciding these big races.

I do also think that there are some significant differences between the parties, especially this time around. Interestingly, I don't think there's a single bona fide "conservative" candidate in the race, on either side.

There's also a diff between people who always vote for their party because it's their party and people who do because they are just really that opposed to the other party. I'm in the latter. And I voted for a Repub once -- Schwarzenegger (who is largely a RINO).

To be honest, I disagree with around 50% or more of all actions taken by my own party. But my disagreements with any Repub actions are almost exclusively 90-100%. And my disagreements with the opposing party are always much higher priority to me than the few times I do agree. I've also taken to voting for more Libertarian candidates and would do so more often, except that they're mashugga.

I would make the argument that there hasn't been a bona fide conservative candidate in quite some time, actually.

As far as partisanship goes, I'm with Glue. There's a lot of things my party does that I don't agree with, but I still see them as the lesser of two evils, especially when the other party just racked up the biggest debt EVAR. That doesn't effect who I vote for in state or local elections necessarily, but it does determine my senatorial and presidential voting habits.

Maybe they should be called moderates? I would have voted for him if I had still lived there.

I guess two out of the four (if you count RP) republican canidates are RINO's and John is not one of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_In_Name_Only

BTW I can't believe its crying again.

You know, I hate to sound overly cynical, but:

a) Clinton gets teary in NH
b) women vote en masse for Clinton in NH
c) Clinton claims that she "found her voice" in NH
d) Obama is steadily gaining on Clinton in all polls
e) Super Tuesday is tomorrow
f) time for some more

Yeah. Although.. I wouldn't really term myself a moderate. I'm far from as extreme as those in the Green or P&F Parties, but I figure to qualify as moderate one has to regularly vote for any party in practice as well..

Or perhaps I'm "moderate" in terms of supporting both Dems/Libs, but Libs aren't really a major party of note. I think the independents or the Independent Party (can never tell the diff between them all) have the highest representation of the third-parties. I tend to vote for Dem candidates and but somewhat against the party when it comes to ballot measures.


Well we'll see what happens. They're pretty close here.

Delegate count going in to Super Tuesday:

Clinton: 48 pledged, 184 superdelegates, 232 total
Obama: 63 pledged, 95 superdelegates, 158 total
2025 needed to win

Huckabee 26 pledged, 3 unpledged RNC, 29 total
McCain: 95 pledged, 2 unpledged RNC, 97 total
Romney: 85 pledged, 7 unpledged RNC, 92 total
1191 needed to win

FYI, superdelegates and unpledged RNC are basically the same thing -- delegates who are free to vote for whomever they choose, regardless of state primary/caucus results. Also, most GOP primaries are winner-take-all, whereas all Democratic primaries apportion delegates based on total percentage of the vote (more or less).

Which means that after today, there will most likely be a clear Republican candidate, but for the Democrats, it is possible that neither Clinton nor Obama will emerge as a front-runner.

Any findings on how many of each type of delegate are still remaining?

Democrats: 4049 total = 3253 delegates + 796 superdelegates
Republicans: 2380 total = 1917 delegates + 463 unpledged RNC

FYI, delegates won by candidates who have since dropped out still "belong" to those candidates. Although Edwards is the only person in that category; he retains 26 delegates. Ron Paul has six.

BTW Huckabee has won the West Virginia GOP caucus; he gets 18 delegates, and apparently Romney gets one.

Obama projected to win big in Georgia... Huckabee may be winning on the GOP side

Actually I'm just going to link to here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23000449/

I've been watching CNN...it doesn't seem to look as good for Huckabee. Weird if it turns out that way, but this was his last chance. I think I'll give up until after everything's counted, I'll drive myself crazy.

Final results:

Huckabee: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia
McCain: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma
Romney: Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Utah

Clinton: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee
Obama: Alaska, Alabama, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, New Mexico, Utah

Delegate count:

McCain: 516
Romney: 207
Huckabee: 142
Paul: 9

Clinton: 582*
Obama: 485*

and Edwards still has his 26 delegates

*does not reflect final tally... in fact: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8358.html

From what I heard, it's shaping into an interesting race on the GOP side... McCain is emerging as the clear front-runner, but he mostly won states that never go to Republicans in general elections. All the East Coast states, California... Huckabee did very well in the southeast, but there's only one more state (Mississippi) left in that region, so it's questionable whether he'll be able to survive after that point. And Romney is still there as well, having picked up enough support in the west to stay alive. What's interesting to me is that the three traditional pillars of the Republican party (national defense, fiscal conservatism, social conservatism) are split almost exactly between the three Republican candidates (McCain, Romney, and Huckabee, respectively). And none of those candidates are particularly strong on the other two areas. McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts and called people on the Christian right "agents of intolerance". Romney has no foreign policy credentials and was previously pro-gay rights and pro-choice. (And as much as people might not like to admit it, he's a Mormon, and that doesn't play well among evangelicals who view Mormonism as a cult.) And Huckabee, also with no foreign policy cred at all, raised taxes during his tenure as governor of Arkansas. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with that.

On the Democratic side, it's essentially a tie. There's a very real possibility that this might go all the way to the Democratic convention. The superdelegates are vitally important all of a sudden, as is every subsequent state's primary/caucus (including Texas, w00t!). The question is going to be, what are they going to do about Michigan's and Florida's delegates at the convention. Clinton won in those states, but their primaries officially "don't count" because they moved their primaries ahead in violation of the DNC's rules. And now (of course) she wants them to be seated at the convention. It could be utter chaos if there isn't a clear victor going into it, this summer.

This has been a very cool process so far...it seems like every state is going to matter (GOTTA CATCH THEM ALL). The turnout is what impresses me. All this for primaries.

I'm looking forward to having Obama drop by... we missed him the last time he was in Austin. w00t relevance

I'd like to think that Iowa go the Obama train started, but I'm not too sure of that.

Well, I'll definitely send you a gift basket if he wins. He always seems to do really well in caucus states, apparently.

I think it goes to show how passionate his supporters are. My fellow Obama-bots are pretty convincing/annoying.

I'm willing to tolerate chaos in the dem party if it makes for such a vigorous primary and general voter turnout and helps to break everyone's apathy.

And the dem nominations are already a win-win for me. And though I already voted for Obama a while ago, I keep finding myself liking him more and more..

What I meant by "chaos" is this: what if Obama pulls ahead in the pledged delegate count going into the convention, and then Clinton's camp tries to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, who weren't supposed to count? Or what if the superdelegates (the Democratic establishment) pick Clinton over Obama? In other words, what happens if the candidate who wins the popular vote ends up getting shafted by the Democratic in-crowd? What happens to all the people who came out to support Obama? Are they going to be okay with that? Would they walk out of the convention? It's very very close and it could get pretty ugly, depending upon what happens.

The whole point of having superdelegates was to *avoid* picking a nominee at the convention, and now it looks like they might possibly be doing just that. It's reminiscent of 1968 (which is not a year that Democrats want to relive). From Wiki:



I'm hopeful that it won't come to that, but it is a possibility.

If McCain gets the Republican nomination, with Clinton getting the nomination in the way you jsut described, McCain walks away with the independent and moderate Democratic vote.

FYI, Team Clinton is now trying to paint Obama as the establishment candidate. Des-per-a-tion time, come on!

And they also want a bunch more debates. I wonder if that's because they're going to be hurting for money vis-a-vis Obama and need some free publicity

No doubt. Look for Obama to start getting really specific about his plans.

...aaaaand update on the delegate count:

McCain: 719 (60% of # needed to win)
Romney: 256 (21% of # needed to win)
Huckabee: 194 (16% of # needed to win)
Paul: 14 (1%, in case you couldn't figure that out)
(Thompson: 5)
(Hunter: 2)
(Giuliani: 1)

Obama: 838 (41% of # needed to win)
Clinton: 834 (41% of # needed to win)
(Edwards: 26)

Le yikes.

So, I have to admit, I was flipping to Fox News last night () to their take on returns. Karl Rove was really talking up how great a night it was for Clinton. The Republicans REALLY want to run against her in the fall...

I don't really have a fall-back mental preparedness strategy if she should win the nomination... I think I'll end up rocking back and forth in a dark room or something.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/020..._5_million.html

I saw that this afternoon...talk about lousy

She better raise a boatload of cash by the weekend, because if she gets beat in those contests, she'll be borrowing money from Bill too.

The one thing I notice about this... the timing of the announcement.

From the "My Ears... They Bleed" department:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/...rest_until.html



Listen to it here... if you dare

http://lists.pearljam.com/Roust/rock_around_barack.m4a

Mitt to quit?

Too bad he can't give his points to Mike.

And yet Ron Paul holds strong to hope.

I'm trying to think of something funny to say that incorporates "who let the dogs out", but so far I'm coming up empty. Maybe next time.

WTF they hate bush.