How is it exactly that in the first decade of the Twenty-first Century, America still has colonies?

Kevin Drum, on the "power" of the blogosphere:

If the respective left and right blogospheres had any real say in things, would we be looking at a McCain vs. Obama contest in November? Or McCain vs. Hillary? We would not. It would be Giuliani vs. Edwards, or maybe Romney vs. Dodd. The blogosphere is good at raising modest sums of money, and it likewise plays a modest role at the congressional level, but its influence on the national stage appears to be pretty close to nil. That was true in 2004, when Kerry won the Democratic nomination, and it appears to still be true four years later.

I think that's about right. Obama didn't really excite any of the Kool Kidz on the left until Super Tuesday; Edwards was the candidate who made the most conscientious effort to woo bloggers during the run-up to Iowa. And I'm not aware of any popular conservative blogger who backed McCain; even now, most of them are more anti-Obama than enthusiastic backers of the presumptive Republican nominee.

However, there is more to the netroots than just the blogs at the top of the Technorati 100. Even if bloggers like Kos were slow to warm to Obama, other bloggers were much more enthusiastic; even if their daily hits were a fraction of Daily Kos or Atrios, their combined totals were more impressive. Obama has been the most effective in raising funds over the internet, in large part because he pursued a "long tail" strategy concerning the blogosphere.

Today is the Fifth Anniversary of the "end" of major hostilities in Iraq.

One of the beneficiaries of the President's stimulus plan: credit card companies. The IRS announced today that those $600 checks being mailed out this month will be considered property of the estate in all bankruptcies filed after the rebate was signed into law by President Bush.

A point well-taken, over at Volokh:

Friendship is not necessarily based on someone's political views, no matter how goofy or even hateful, especially if the person is not sticking their views in your face all of the time. It is also appropriate not to be friends with someone whose political views you abhore, especially if they are flamboyant about it. But whether someone holds mainstream political views is not the basis on which acquaintances are built. If you have a sincere affection for someone built up over many years, you tend to forgive their occasional lunacies. Especially if it is a person who you came to respect, admire, and befriend many years before, perhaps when that person was not nuts. To me, I don't necessarily see it as a flaw in Obama that he hasn't made a big show of denouncing Wright or Ayers until he was forced to. I do think that he probably is fed up with Wright from the standpoint that he has tried to treat Wright with the respect that he sees owed to a longstanding pastor who is now making a public embarrassment of himself. He has tried to be patient with Wright in hopes that Wright would sober up, but instead Wright just keeps pouring it on, at which point Obama says "enough." So it seems reasonable to me that Obama has been largely sincere through this whole process, first in trying to give Wright an opportunity to clean up his act but then to say "enough" when Wright refused to do so.

As I said, Obama seems like quite a decent guy. I'm not going to vote for him because of his policy views but he still seems like a decent guy. He has a lot of tolerance for nutty political views, but anyone who hangs around academia or any political movement will certainly have friend and acquaintances who have nutty political views. If you are a basically decent and compassionate person you try to look for the best in people and work with everyone, not throw aside friends just because you don't agree with their political views. Moreover, if you have a friend who has idiotic political views you don't run around adding to his embarrassment making a public spectacle out of denouncing those views, but instead I would think that you would hope that the guy would wisen up.

Amen to that. The writer, Prof. Zywicki, makes clear he isn't going to be casting a ballot for Sen. Obama, but does a nice job putting the whole issue into context. Read the whole thing.

Obama's Mulligan: Damn if he isn't the most gifted political figure of my lifetime. There's been a little criticism, mainly coming from white conservatives who weren't going to vote for a black man for the Presidency anyway, but the reaction this afternoon couldn't have plotted any better. He gets the best of both worlds: he gets to make the unselfish, non-political speech on race in Philly last month, refusing to knife his friend, and when his friend, in turn, shows his gratitude by throwing him under the bus (John Cole has a better analogy, here), he gets to play the aggrieved victim, spelling out exactly where he and Rev. Wright differ. From now on, all the You-Tube videos of Wright damning America or acting the buffoon won't define this issue; today's denunciation will.

A "Sista Souljah" moment that's better than the original, since this took courage. Anyone who doesn't hold McCain to the same standard with Hagee is a racist.

When Mariah Carey passed the King last month on the Billboard list of most number one songs, I was intrigued, since I hadn't heard of any of her hits. This writer in Slate tries to come up with some reasons as to why she's as culturally significant as Elvis or the Beatles, but when the top reasons include her vocal influence on "American Idol" contestants (another show I've never watched) and her mid-90's rivalry with Whitney Houston (which the writer facetiously compares with Biggie v. 2Pac), it's a losing argument. To use a sports analogy, she is to pop music what Larry Holmes, the 1980's N.Y. Islanders, the Bulls of the 90's were to their sports: bland, uninteresting champions that dominated when the competition was weak and the sport was dull.

Since the good Rev. Wright seems content on not letting his fifteen minutes expire, Barack Obama has been given a pretty sweet opportunity to go public with his position that, no, he doesn't believe AIDS was cooked up in some lab to kill blacks, and that the semi-crazy egotist who we've seen babbling for the last couple of days is not the same person who brought him to God, no more than the Pope who drowsed his way during the pedophilia scandals of the final years of his pontificate was the same John Paul II who brought the Soviet Union to its knees.

Obama's thoughtfulness, his ability to explain nuance, is the prime reason he is the presumptive nominee, and why he continues to lead McCain in most polls. To be given a chance to first give a speech putting Wright in the context of American race relations, and then a few weeks later to distance himself from some of the loonier conspiratorial ravings of the black pulpit, is better than your routine mulligan; it's a chance to dominate the agenda through the end of the primaries.

Newsweek has a new poll out showing both Obama and Clinton maintaining a three-point lead over McCain; a month and a half ago, before the controversies involving Rev. Wright and assorted members of the Weathermen, and before Senator Clinton began her "kitchen sink" strategy, Obama had a one-point lead over the presumptive Republican nominee. Other polls, including Rasmussen and Gallup, show essentially the same thing: there has been no change in the polls, and even a slight gain for Obama, over the last eight weeks. As long as McCain continues to shill for the Bush Administration's disastrous policies in the Middle East and the economy, the Democrats could nominate Michael Vick and win in November.

Finally, an explanation of the Isiah Thomas Era in New York that makes sense....

You're doin' a heckuva job, Saunders: Allison Hope Weiner lets the Federal Government have it with both barrels for its handling of the Pellicano Trial, here. Apparently, no one in the Bush Justice Department ever deigned to figure out whether one of the defendants had really filed bankruptcy (a copy of the forged petition can be found here), or if their star impeachment witness might herself be a scam artist:

And so, on Monday, the court noted that the witness will return and she will consider whether to declare a mistrial. It's really incredible that after six years of investigation, the government managed to call a witness to impeach a defendant's testimony without checking that witness' criminal history. Mr. Hummel has said repeatedly that his client denied having filed a fraudulent bankruptcy application. He said it five years ago when Mr. Arneson first spoke with the government and he said it before Mr. Saunders proceeded to seriously delve into the issue on cross-examination in his effort to prove to the jury that Mr. Arneson was a liar. And, despite all the times that Mr. Arneson insisted that the signature on the document was forged, the government refused to investigate his claims. Frankly, it makes one wonder what else they forgot or didn't bother to investigate.

Is it possible that there is all kinds of other evidence that the government overlooked in their desire to prosecute these few, rather insignificant Pellicano associates who were so down on the ladder that they scored truly pathetic financial benefits from their alleged criminal activity? Is it possible that in questioning Mr. Pellicano's clients, the government didn't bother to really ask them really hard questions because the government was focused on charging this truly bottom rung of Pellicano associates and not any of Mr. Pellicano's powerful and influential clients? And given what's happened with this prosecution, can you blame them? Did the government really even want to charge Mr. Pellicano's wealthy clients given their deep pockets and endless resources? Did they go after people like Mr. Arneson and Mr. Kachikian and even Mr. Turner because it was easier? And if so, can you even imagine what's going to happen in the courtroom when Mr. Saunders and Mr. Lally finally prosecute Mr. Christensen and they face off against a defendant with not only deep pockets, but an arsenal of attorneys ready and able to research any legal issue at a moment's notice? Even with over thirty tapes of Mr. Christensen chatting away with Mr. Pellicano about wiretapping Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, you've still got to wonder how that one is going to play out given what happened today.

Read the whole thing, and while you're at it, read some of Ms. Weiner's prior posts from the courtroom about the trial, which really should be placed in a time capsule for the way they account for the entire above-the-law mentality that exists in Hollywood.

Working Class Heroes: From this morning's local paper of record:

Some analysts question whether Democrats need to make big inroads among blue-collar voters. Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said that Clinton's focus on the working class is a distraction, because Republicans tend to win among such voters.

Democrats John F. Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000 lost with that group by more than 20 points, he said. Even former President Clinton did not win among white men. "Obama doesn't have to win the working class," said Richards, referring to white voters without college educations. "He just has to cut Democrats' losses."

And this, from a 2006 article in the liberal American Prospect:

The key weakness of the progressive coalition can be summarized easily: very weak support among white working class voters (defined here as whites without a four-year college degree). These voters, who are overwhelmingly of moderate to low income and, by definition, of modest credentials, should see their aspirations linked tightly to the political fate of the progressive movement. But they don't.

Leaving aside the truthiness of the above passages, I've noticed that definitions of "working class" or "blue collar" used by the punditocracy in this country have tended to be based not on what a person does (ie., "work") but on what they didn't do (ie., attend college, or earn a degree, for that matter). There are a few high-paying jobs (baseball player, supermodel, etc.) for which a college education is superfluous, while many union jobs either require a college degree (like teaching) or some amount of post-high school continuing education; in neither instance does this new definition of "working class" seem to fit. Are we to surmise that those terms have now become euphemisms of a sort, a way that the media and pols can condescend to the less-educated without actually calling them "stupid"?

Clinton Wins PA: By rounding off, an illusion of a ten-point win is created, but the real margin is 9.32%(54.66%-45.34%). The difference right now between a "double-digit", decisive victory for Clinton and a mere single-digit, superficially close moral victory for Obama (after rounding down) is less than 3,800 votes, out of more than 2.3 million votes cast.

UPDATE [4/24/]: With all the votes counted, the actual margin of victory ended up being 9.1%. Had a mere 1,200 votes switched, her margin would have sank below 9%, and after rounding down, the headlines would have been that she won by "8%."

I wonder if Hillary Clinton realizes that even if her rival for the nomination was to announce that he had engaged in a threesome on 9/11 with Louis Farrakhan and Bernardine Dohrn, and that henceforth he would refer to the white working class as the "potato-eating lumpenproletariat," she still isn't going to be the nominee. There's a slim chance the SuperDelegates might put the kibosh on Obama's bid for the nomination (after all, we tend to forget that Obama needs an actual majority; if enough Supers vote for George Clooney or Tiger Woods, they can tie the Convention up forever). But even if they screw Barack, Hillary isn't going to be the beneficiary. She's finished.

If we could all be so gracious when we err:

If you want to know if anyone is reading your stories, make sure you insert a mistake about George Washington.

Oh, if only I could claim it was all a ploy by Calendar editors to gauge readership. But when I wrote in Saturday's story about HBO that George Washington stepped down from the presidency after serving only one term, it was just a stupid, blind error, the sort that leaves you smiting your forehead, literally and repeatedly, the moment it is pointed out to you.

For the six or seven people living in the Los Angeles Basin who did not e-mail to correct me, he served two terms, not one. And my daddy was a history teacher! Ever since the first e-mail hit my box (on Friday afternoon, about two seconds after the story went up on the website), I have been bathed in hot shame. But I want to thank you, well, most of you, for the gentle tone you took -- most clever subject line award goes to: Is a TV Critic Smarter Than a 5th Grader? -- though I certainly deserved all those incredulous exclamation marks as well. And yes, I did go to college. Graduated even.

Also, for the record, we entertainment writers are held just as accountable for flubbed historical references as any other journalist. The correction runs today online and in tomorrow's print edition, and I will try to comfort myself with the knowledge that a good, strong dose of humility is always good for the soul. Especially the soul of a critic.

My criticism Saturday was aimed more at the Times for letting that howler through than it was at poor Ms. McNamara. We all make mistakes, and, unlike President Bush, I certainly do not pretend omniscience about what I do not know. But a good newspaper (unlike a blog) is supposed to have people whose job it is to catch that sort of thing, and having a staff with diverse interests and backgrounds should mean that someone who knows how many terms Washington served is around to catch such mistakes.

Kaus goes the fanshen route, here, and admits that he might also have latent tendencies towards snobbery. From his argument, I don't see how any political advocacy could ever be separated from the tendencies he criticizes: we engage either in "Vulgar Marxism," where people only act in the political sphere based on their perceived self-interest; or "social inequality-based snobbery," where you attempt to convince others that you have a more refined view of what their actual self-interest is than they do.

American History X: From this morning's LA Times, in an article about the resurgence of HBO:

In his portrayal of our second president, Paul Giamatti creates a man perpetually dissatisfied, disgusted by the preening ambition of politics even as he is infected by it. If his relentless crankiness was a bit hard for some of us to take in early episodes, in the second half of the series it makes much more sense. While exhorting angry men to throw off the shackles of tyranny offers many opportunities for rhetorical fabulousness, setting up a new government is a bureaucratic nightmare, with oversized personalities disagreeing over things both petty and fundamental. George Washington (David Morse) so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term.

ARGH !!! ARGH !!! ARGH !!!

Sweet Jesus that's amazing. George Washington served two terms. Period. It's in the history books. It's also in Wikipedia. Moreover, his second term is even alluded to in the aforereferenced Adams miniseries: for example, Abigail has to convince PigVomit at one point that despite his somewhat truculent reservations, he should continue to serve as Vice President in Washington's second term. Serving two terms is one of the things Washington is famous for.

It's enough to make a lefty sympathetic to Patterico. Does the fact-checker at the Times have to regularly drink water out of the toilet or lose their back teeth from subsisting on a diet of rocks to get that job?

UPDATE [4/20]: A classy correction by the writer, here.

The tone is sometimes off-putting (I could do without the "Stupid/Evil" ratio), but the creator of Alicublog has a pretty good run-down of the Far Right blogosphere. An example:

MICHELLE MALKIN (michellemalkin.com)

ORIENTATION: Nativist

TONE: Very, very angry

FUN FACT: In 2004, attacked Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox and her protégée, Washington call girl Jessica Cutler, as "the female Beavis and Butt-head" and "skanks"; was thereafter subjected to years of mercilessly mockery by Wonkette scribes, including doctored photos of Malkin frolicking in a bikini, which were strenuously debunked by her ("updated: tracking the source of the bogus Flickr photos . . .
Wonkette editors demonstrate further malice . . .").

CANDIDATE: None—McCain's too liberal

STUPID/EVIL RATIO: 97/3

HISTORY: In the early '90s, reporter and editorial writer for the Los Angeles Daily News; later wrote for the Seattle Times, became a Fox News commentator, and joined Creators Syndicate, which currently distributes her columns. Has published books about the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II (pro), illegal immigration, and "Liberals Gone Wild" (both con). Columns have focused on culture-war subjects ("Voices From the Womb") from a more-right-wing-than-thou
perspective (e.g., citing "President Bush's cave-in on government funding of embryonic stem-cell research"). Illegal immigrants get special attention, as do nefarious nonwhite Americans, be they of Asian ("Asian-Americans milking 9-11"), Arab ("myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic"), or African ("Sept. 11 brought home the lesson that vile ideas have bloody consequences—no matter how 'daggone funky' they may sound to mush-headed music critics") descent. Began blogging in
2004, mainly bringing Internet-response speed to the usual subjects, plus a few new tropes, including frequent accusations of "dhimmitude" against parties insufficiently hostile toward Muslims, including YouTube ("JihadTube").

MODUS OPERANDI: Parses news feverishly for offenses to her worldview. Has been enraged by the D.C. networking group Professionals in the City (for holding an event at the Cuban embassy), Jessica Alba (for "making pro-assimilation remarks"), and Google (for bias in news-site affiliate selection, logos, and search results). Doesn't spare conservative outlets ("P.C. at the Washington Times") or the Republican Party ("Is the GOP Lost?") when they run afoul of her on doctrinal matters, especially regarding immigration. Attacks
McCain on this subject, often without the benefit of hyphens ("I don't want another George W. Bush open borders type in the White House").

WHAT TO EXPECT: Barring a dramatic reversal on immigration by McCain, will wash her hands of the whole election and concentrate on everyday liberal- and foreigner-bashing.

(link via Winds of Change, who apparently believe that Obama is trailing McCain in the polls)

I don't care what Obama says, chronic unemployment and regional economic emasculation cannot excuse this sort of thing...so far, the polls aren't showing much of an impact, which shouldn't be surprising. First, the overwhelming majority of voters pretty much have decided on who they will support, and something that is perceived as a slip of the tongue isn't going to weigh as heavy as, say, getting out of Iraq or what to do about four dollar gas.

But more importantly, I don't think the "elitist" label really hurts Obama, the same way it has hurt other Democrats in the past. Perhaps the biggest personal attribute Obama is selling is his intelligence; after eight years of a failed Presidency helmed by someone widely perceived to be dumber than a bag of hammers, having a candidate who speaks in complete sentences and who actually seems to think about what he's saying may be precisely what swing voters are demanding. After Katrina, Iraq and the real estate bubble, why not give the A-students a chance to run things for once?

Moreover, Mickey Kaus may be on to something when he says that Clinton and McCain may be making a huge mistake by focusing too much on the "bitter." Voters are angry, and over the last thirty years neither party has offered the voters Obama was addressing much in the way of policies that would actually improve their lives. That may be why The Speech last month resonated so deeply: rather than doing the politically expedient thing, which was to throw his friend overboard, he used the opportunity to recast the debate as one about how race continues to affect our perceptions. Voters didn't see a politician treating them with condescension; they saw an intelligent person speak to them as adults, put their feelings into words, and define a problem we would all rather avoid talking about in an honest fashion. It was most unexpected, which may be why they are willing to cut Obama some slack here.

Did you know that you have a better chance of being killed in a terrorist attack than you have of seeing a good movie that opens in more than 2000 theatres? Well, not exactly, but the inverse relationship between movie quality and Hollywood release strategies is explored, here.