The Critics Rave:

In Jumper, the time-space continuum is no match for Hayden Christensen, who plays David Rice, an ordinary boy in Michigan who one day discovers that he can teleport himself across a room or to the other side of the world in the blink of an eye. He, and others like him, "jump" through wormholes, pulling objects such as a Mercedes-Benz, a double-decker bus and even part of a building through the hole with them.

In fact, the only force on Earth so dense that it apparently can't be moved even by the movie's special effects is Christensen's wooden acting. After bringing the second "Star Wars" trilogy to its knees as the inert Anakin Skywalker, his performance here threatens the very fabric of time and space.

--Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News (2/14/2008)

Quote of the Day:

[T]he tree of progressive politics must be watered with the metaphorical blood of sellouts ever now and again.

--Matt Yglesias, on a primary defeat by an incumbent Democratic Congressman last night.

The Power of Euphemism: How to praise torture, while gainsaying its use:

Just as we've monitored the communications of enemies at large, we've also gotten information out of the ones that we have captured. The military has interrogated terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. And in addition, a small number of terrorists, high-value targets, held overseas have gone through an interrogation program run by the CIA. It's a tougher program, for tougher customers. (Applause.) These include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. He and others were questioned at a time when another attack on this country was believed to be imminent. It's a good thing we had them in custody, and it's a good thing we found out what they knew. (Applause.)

--Vice President Dick Cheney, before a bundist rally in D.C. last week. He also later asserts that "we do not torture people. It's against our laws and against our values." Because, as another great leader once put it, "it would be wrong, that's for sure." [link via Patterico]

To answer Mr. Chait's question, Texas and Ohio matter more than the tweener contests beforehand because those are the states that Senator Clinton is making her stand. To remain the de facto frontrunner, Obama not only has to maintain a lead in terms of elected delegates, he has to show at some point that he can win a race in a state where the battle has been joined.

Having lost New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, and arguably Florida and Michigan to boot, he needs to win a big, urban state at some point to make the case that his political reach extends beyond the retail skills he has demonstrated in the smaller states and in the caucuses. Losing in Ohio and Texas would show he can't deliver the knock-out punch, and that he can't win the Big One; moreover, it would give Clinton the momentum going into the remaining contests, particularly Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Since it is in the larger states that a disproportionately high number of SuperDelegates are situated, he can't afford to continue the trend of winning only the easy battles and losing all the contested races in large states.

We Are the Change That We Seek:

I hope you find this to be as inpiring as I did:



[link via TPM]

Go Crazy, Wingnuts: John McCain, Friend of Soros? OMG....

I would be more outraged about unelected SuperDelegates deciding the party's Presidential nomination if a disproportionate voice wasn't already being given to the barely-democratic election of delegates from states which hold caucuses, instead of real-life primaries. To put it another way, why shouldn't there be an institutional voice of the Party that has a say in who the Party nominates, when we've already given independents, Republicans and other non-Party members a voice in many of the contests to date.

If either Obama or Clinton run the table and build a clear lead in the remaining primaries, and then the SuperDelegates vote for the loser, then I'll be upset. But if, as both campaigns are projecting, the two end up almost even after the final primary in early-June, that will be a clear sign that there is no consensus within the Party as to who should be nominated. SuperDelegates strike me as being a fairer way of breaking a tie then, say, flipping a coin or shooting penalty kicks.

Who did she have to f***? Go ahead and read this piece in today's Opinion section of the LA Times, and tell me what earthly reason existed to publish it. Of all the things to dis Nancy Pelosi for, the fact that she's mandated the service of healthier food in the House Cafeteria seems rather minor. If its fried chicken you want, the Library of Congress cafeteria is within easy walking distance....

Blane Lives: I can't let the week end without mentioning the fine series of posts in Slate by one Andrew McCarthy, a Brosnian diary of the mundane tasks and activities that one goes through when acting in a TV show. For example, on the time-honored ritual of rehearsal:

Traditionally, table reads are notoriously dull affairs in which the director, writers, actors, and producers, along with various crew members, hear the script aloud for the first time. It can be a stressful moment—up to this point, the show has just been words on a page, and it can be nerve-wracking when it suddenly begins to take on three-dimensional life. Typically, actors react in one of two fashions: They either mumble their lines into their laps, or, worse, "perform" them with a gusto that I always find embarrassing. For years I had been a mumbler (most young actors are), until somewhere along the line I realized that I was going to be judged by everyone anyway, so I might as well speak like a normal human and be heard by the 20 or so assembled in the chairs lining the walls around us.

Or what a bad day is like for a professional actor:

And then there is the one day in 10 when nothing feels right. It's all a struggle, I have no rhythm, I strain to remember lines I know, and everything seems to be working against me. My body mic keeps cutting out, and the sound man has to keep shoving his clammy hand up my shirt to adjust the wire. I'm too pale under the lights, so the makeup lady must relentlessly bounce a puff at my nose, and the wardrobe man keeps plucking invisible lint off my shoulders ("It's very dusty in here"). It is on days like this that I tell myself it's high time I did something else for a living.

It's funny, because it's true:

And shortly thereafter I walked over to Ann Coulter's clandestine speech (she was banned from the main ballroom for last year's gay slur against John Edwards) sponsored by YAF and realized that it was really, really self-selected. A terrible Henny Youngman routine in a sound-sucking underground room drew about 9 times as many people who stopped to chat with the LP, most of them wearing "I WANT ANN COULTER" buttons. Even the sweatier, more "seasoned" men. Especially them. They probably hadn't seen so many cameras since their run-ins with Chris Hansen.

--David Weigel, Reason.

Ezra Klein has some nice posts today, two on Obama and the internet, and one on a phenomenum I alluded to a few weeks ago when I wrote about Rachel Cusk and the micro-culture of people who actually read Serious Fiction. Klein notes:

Bookshelves are not for displaying books you've read -- those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be. I am the type of person who would read long biographies of Lyndon Johnson, despite not being the type of person who has read any long biographies of Lyndon Johnson. I am the type of person who is very interested in a history of the Reformation, but am not, as it happens, the type of person with the time to read 900 pages on the subject. More importantly, I am the type of person who amasses many books, on all sorts of subjects. I'm pretty sure that's what a bookshelf is there to prove. The reading of those books is entirely incidental.

Awhile back, I read (I think it was Harpers, but I might be wrong) that some goof put a note on the same page of a book that had received a great deal of hype among the literati, inviting the recipient to send it back and receive a cash reward equal to the price of the book. The rebate was placed so that it wouldn't fall out or be seen unless the book's purchaser actually turned to the page it was located, presumably forcing the recipient to actually read the book to collect the reward. In the end, only two out of one hundred coupons were redeemed, thus showing that most of the books in the realm of Serious Fiction are purchased to be seen, and not read. Or perhaps it only shows that most of the people who indulge in the reading of Serious Fiction are too wealthy to be bothered by rebate offers under $50.

A Tsunami Tuesday Primer: As much as I hate to say this, you really can't call last night a "victory," or even a draw, for Senator Obama, as Prof. Kleiman does here. And contrary to the impression left here, simply holding down Clinton's margin of victory from what she was pegged to receive back when she was the best-known name in the race is not a "victory." There simply aren't enough primaries left for the Obama Magic to work. Sip will I not thy KoolAid, Professor.

Every state where the battle had been joined last night was won by the former First Lady, in most cases by surprisingly large margins. Irrespective of delegate counts from states like New York and California, Clinton's decisive wins will give her a big head-start in terms of capturing those state's SuperDelegates, that motley collection of political hacks and elected officials who will attend the summer's convention free of any electoral mandate to vote for a specific candidate. Being the popular choice of the party in those states will better enable Senator Clinton to pick up the support of those pols, who will comprise a fifth of the delegates in Denver, and whose influence will become more decisive as the primaries continue to produce an even split in elected delegates. And due to the party's arcane rules, SuperDelegates disproportionately represent states that have reliably voted for Democrats in the past, so Clinton's edge will be more decisive.

Obama needed a decisive, sweeping win on Tuesday, and he didn't get it. That isn't to say he's out of the running, since he does have a financial edge (although it has not helped him that much so far) and wins in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania in the next two months would create a sense of inevitability in his nomination, as well as giving him actual, real-life "large states" in his column, rather than the assortment of caucus states and regions where Democrats don't have a chance this November (ie., who knew the first major black Presidential candidate would have such an appeal in states with large Mormon populations?). But in spite of what Prof. Kleiman and others say about delegate counts, the real battle will be for the SuperDelegates from the large states, and Clinton's wins last night are way more important in that battle than the even split in elected delegates allocated to the candidates last night.

Which is a shame, since he's clearly shown himself to be the more electable of the two candidates, and the one who promises to have the more historical Presidency. While most eyes were on California, New York and Massachusetts last night, Obama narrowly won the four "Purple" states up for grabs, the contests where the last two Presidential elections have been decided by razor-thin margins: Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado, and New Mexico (UPDATE: New Mexico still hasn't been called, as of 10 p.m. Wednesday). Clinton, on the other hand, continues to be more adept at capturing the low hanging fruit among the base of the party, voters who will vote Democratic no matter who the nominee is, and thus less valuable in choosing a winning candidate. Obama also kicked some serious ass in Georgia, a southern state that any Democrat seeking a large national mandate would love to pick up.

A Clinton-McCain match-up in November has always been the nightmare scenario for Democrats. Although much attention was played to The Maverick's win in California, which effectively ended Romney's candidacy, the tipping point was probably his extremely narrow win over Huckabee in Missouri. In spite of it being one of the closest battles of the night, he ended up winning every delegate in the Show Me State, giving him a decisive total for the night. He now has a comfortable, and probably insurmountable, advantage.

McCain has done much better in Purple States than his likely Demcratic opponent, and his defiance of his own party on symbolic issues gives him greater credibility with swing voters than Clinton, a bland but partisan technocrat. Since he's not identified by the media or the public as a run-of-the-mill conservative, and he's distrusted, even hated, by much of the VRWC, he can begin making centrist appeals almost immediately, while Hillary Clinton has to fight and scrape for the backing of SuperDelegates. An Obama nomination would have drawn a much brighter line between the two parties, and been a decisive break from the Clinton-Bush Era. While he could still win, the chances of that happening are less than they were twenty-four hours ago.

The Blogosphere and its Discontents:

A blog is generally a loathsome, tedious creation of the electronic age, an opportunity for even those with nothing to say to reach thousands and perhaps millions of people who own computers and say it. I intend taking advantage of that.

--Al Martinez, of the local paper of record, on starting a new blog today. [link via LA Observed]

Just voted for the Junior Senator from Illinois. Looks like we have a long night ahead of us.

A football fan reacts to last night's Super Bowl:

For one night, hardened New Yorkers acted like shameless tourists in Times Square, begging one another to take their pictures in the middle of a moment that felt a long time in coming.

"It's all about the Giants winning," said Greg Packer, 44, a retired highway maintenance worker. "I'm as proud as I was in the Yankees dynasty years."

Quite the opposite reaction, after a bitter defeat by the Yankees' cross-town rivals in 2006:

For most of the drizzly night, the Mets gave its towel-waving fans plenty to cheer about, including an acrobatic home run-robbing catch by left fielder Endy Chavez.

Through it all, Cardinals fan Andy Cohen cheered the St. Louis highlights, quietly.

"I am very excited, but I am trying to be very quiet about it," said Cohen, a Clayton High School graduate who lives in New York and attended the game with comic Jerry Seinfeld.

"There's another Cardinal fan over there, and I am BlackBerrying people in St. Louis."

Greg Packer of Huntington, N.Y., stepped forward to offer grudging congratulations after the Cardinals took the lead late in the game.

"It looks like you guys are going there," Packer said. "I just can't believe what I saw. … Heartbreaking for us."

Earlier that year, though, things were much cheerier for the fan of the Giants, Yankees and Mets:

Greg Packer, 42, a lifelong Steelers fan from Huntington, N.Y., wanted to see it in person after failing to bag a ticket to the Super Bowl.

"I couldn't get into the game, so I decided to make a detour to Pittsburgh to root for the team here at the rally," said Packer, who staked out a front-row spot near the stage at 5 a.m. "There was no way I was not going to be up close for this. It's fantastic."

So who is Greg Packer? Why, he's a Jets fan:

No. 1 in line is Greg Packer, a 43-year-old "retired highway-maintenance worker." He's been here since 5 a.m. Monday, 110 hours before the iPhone goes on sale. No one else showed up until midway through the afternoon.

(snip)

At the moment, he's shirtless, to display his round and hairy belly for morning TV. Littered around him are the provisions for his five-day techno-vigil: two camp chairs, a small New York Jets bag of clothes, an umbrella, an entire box of Kettle gourmet potato chips, and a large bag of Flava Puff Cheese Balls.

Go Big Blue: For those of you cannot, under any circumstance, separate your politics from your football on Super Bowl Sunday, take note that New England Pats owner Robert Kraft is a classic LieberDem, giving most of his money to Democrats in the past but recently opting for GOP aspirants John McCain and Mitt Romney, while the owner of the New York (football) Giants, Steve Tisch, is a Clinton supporter through and through. Here's an entire list to where greats from the world o' sports contribute their political tithes; perhaps the most solid Republican bloc in America comes from the world of professional golf, with NASCAR driver and football coach right behind.

And to think, a whole generation of Persian crooners was inspired by this:

Heal Thyself: Clinton supporter Sean Wilentz, on comparisons between Barack Obama and JFK:

Few will disagree that it is very rare for a candidate with as little experience in politics and government as Obama to capture the imagination of so many influential Americans. One way for a candidate like this to minimize his lack of experience is to pluck from the past the names of great presidents who also, supposedly, lacked experience. Early in the campaign, Obama's backers likened him to the supposed neophyte John F. Kennedy. More recently, some have pointed out (as did New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, among others) that Abraham Lincoln served only one "undistinguished" term in the House before he was elected president in 1860.

These comparisons distort the past beyond recognition. By the time he ran for president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won election to the Senate, where he was an active member of the Foreign Relations Committee. In total, he had held elective office in Washington for 14 years. Before that, he was, of course, a decorated veteran of World War II, having fought with valor in the South Pacific. Kennedy, the son of a U.S. ambassador to Britain, had closely studied foreign affairs, which led to his first book, "Why England Slept," as well as to a postwar stint in journalism.

(snip)

Historians cannot expect all politicians and their supporters to know as much about American history as, say, John F. Kennedy, who won the Pulitzer Prize for a work of history. But it is reasonable to expect respect for the basic facts -- and not contribute to cheapening the historical currency.

Since it is common knowledge that the Pulitzer Prize won by John Kennedy was for a book actually written by his speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, while his earlier book, which supposedly evidenced how he "closely studied" foreign policy, was a mediocre doctoral thesis re-written by columnist (and Joe Kennedy toady) Arthur Krock, I suppose it would be nice if the Times were to actually find a real historian who could write on this subject.

WireMania: Me neither....

According to this LA Times poll, Obama has cut Clinton's lead in the race from 24 to 9 points in just over a month. The other results are predictable: it's a virtual tie on the Republican side, with Giuliani cratering faster than the stock market; both Dems doing as well as the other in head-to-head match-ups with their GOP counterparts; and McCain is the only one who seems competitive right now. Perhaps the two most interesting facts are that there are almost no undecideds in any of the Hillary contests, and that Obama loses about 10% more of the Democratic vote than Clinton, a clear sign that the race-baiting strategy her campaign has followed is working. Each of the Republicans, except for McCain, lose support among the voters, particularly independents, when Barack is the opponent.