We happy few who read Matt Welch's epic McCain: The Myth of a Maverick were already well aware of the propensity of the Engineer of the Straight Talk Express to shade the truth in blatant, often clumsy, ways. The revelations this week that he used his position as committee chairman to help the cause of a favored lobbyist (and who would have ever believed that conservatives would rally behind the presumptive GOP nominee after allegations of an affair with the principal lobbyist for Univision !!) were certainly old news to us: Welch describes the controversy with Paxson Communications on p. 197 of his book.

But the audacity of his lies on this issue beggars credulity. Here's a video of Mr. Welch which shows what the state of play is on this week's stories. What really is dispiriting about the whole mess is the pointlessness of his mendacity. No one cares about an ethical mess that occurred (and was fully aired) eight years ago; it's his desire to be such a sanctimonious scold on this and any number of other issues that gives this issue resonance. It's like a recovering alcoholic going through the Program but unable to publicly admit that they could ever do anything foolish or hurtful to others while under the influence.

Please Back Away From the Keyboard: Classic Ken Layne, liveblogging tonight's returns over at Wonkette:

11:24 PM — Lanny Davis is on Fox News right now, giving Hillary some much-needed weak Obama attacks to Sean Hannity’s elderly bedridden viewers.
11:29 PM —Wait, is that Blood Red Moon Eclipse tonight? Because the Moon is not doing much over here, outside our window.
11:30 PM — Barack won overwhelming majorities of every demographic except for “bitter middle-aged liberal women who always bum
everybody out, even at a child’s birthday party, because cake is part of the institutionalized misogynist order.”
11:31 PM — Did we mention the CNN view of the McCain “victory party” when Washington state was called for the old crazy person? The room was completely empty. All 30 people went to bed when Grandpa Nutsy went to bed. (And his wife Cindy moves stealthily from hotel room to hotel room, collecting Rx bottles.)

The last reference is to a story that is told with much more clarity by Matt Welch, here, and of course, here.

Fidel Castro and Bobby Knight retire in the same month, to be replaced by family members. Figures.

Fan Shen: There seems to be a great disconnect out there between what bothers journalists and what bothers real people. With sports, we saw last week how that disconnect operates, when the jackasses in Congress spent an entire day trying to decide whatever it was Roger Clemens injected into his ass a full decade ago. For sportswriters, it was an issue of Clemens taking steroids and imperiling his HOF credentials. For fans watching the display, it was the comical sight of a former baseball icon ineptly lying, during a spectacle that was little different than the HUAC hearings fifty years ago, with friends being asked to snitch out friends.

One of the sad spectacles we are seeing now is the demand that baseball stars named in the Mitchell Report perform a public self-denunciation ritual that would have embarassed a Maoist satrap during the Cultural Revolution. One pitcher candidly discusses his use of HGH to recover from an injury, and he gets denounced by some harpy for not being contrite enough. Another great refuses to answer questions to a previous Congressional mob some years back, and it's as if he leaked the H-Bomb secrets to the Reds. So it's no wonder that the first inclination of some players is to issue the non-apology apology: Mistakes Were Made, I Regret Anything That May Have Offended Others, and I'm Sorry to Have Been a Distraction.

Fans, of course, could care less. Although there has always been a consensus point of view that the use of anabolic steroids is worthy of public admonishment, largely because they are both unhealthy for the user and give the user a competitive advantage, the use of HGH simply doesn't carry the same stigma, for good reason. The evidence that HGH has a deleterious impact on adult users simply isn't as overwhelming, and the motivation for using, to recover quicker from injuries, is one all fans can cheer. That it can also be used to more quickly recover from fatigue is more problematic, but I doubt there are any Dodger fans out there who regret being excited about seeing Eric Gagne coming into a game in 2004. Smoking pot is also against the law, but I doubt that will keep Barack Obama out of the White House this November.

Like the recurring media obsession with college athletes getting money under the table, it is a topic that simply doesn't resonate in the real world. Malum prohibitum violations rarely do, since all of us "cheat," to some extent. All of us overstay our time in a one-hour parking stop, hoping we don't get caught, and the fact that occasionally we do means we don't begrudge others for doing the same. But much like the a-holes on talk radio who obsess about the "illegals" coming across the border to pick lettuce at $5 an hour, sportswriters need a focus to vent their feelings of inferiority, so the Ritual Denunciation story about the Athlete Who Cheats is the hoary chestnut of the Toy Department.

SuperDelegate Math: Right now, the debate is over the manner in which the SuperDelegates should exercise their influence at the Convention this summer, ie., should they vote for the candidate who leads in pledged delegates, should they exercise independent judgment, or should they reflect the will of their constituents. Obviously, if you support Obama, you're more inclined to freeze the race after the last primary, since he will probably be ahead in the pledged delegate count, and/or the combined popular vote, after all the votes are counted.

But if every SuperDelegate were bound to vote for the candidate who won his state's primary or caucus, as of today Clinton would have a narrow lead over Obama, 230-224, even though she trails in the combined popular vote by almost a million.* This reflects the fact that Clinton's wins have generally been in large Blue states, which have a disproportionately higher number of SuperDelegates, and have been by relatively narrower margins, while Obama's wins are generally coming from states that vote Republican, and thus have fewer delegates. I suspect that if SuperDelegate votes were determined by who won a Congressional District, or by even smaller, localized criteria, Obama would have the lead.

All the more reason why the contests in Ohio, Texas, North Carolina and Pennsylvania will decide this battle well before the Convention. Most of the SuperDelegates are going to have more loyalty to their local constituents than to some amorphous determination of the national will that could be established by a series of contests over a six-month period. Many of them are elected officials in their own right, and have more concern with their next election than they have in supporting whichever candidate wins a narrow plurality in the rest of the country. A Clinton sweep of the remaining four largest states would give her the clear momentum heading into Denver, and give her a stronger electability argument over the slumping Obama, while an Obama win in any of those four states would thwart that narrative.
*I have not counted SuperDelegates from Florida or Michigan in this total.

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.