On the Dem side this should be Democrats Abroad and a few superdelegates who have expressed a preference in the last week or so. (I don’t however actually see the Democrats abroad listed in CNN’s state by state breakdown, so maybe they have forgotten them, but that would be stupid… it is a small number of delegates of course, and they have that whole fractional delegate thing, so maybe their system choked on that. :-) )
Anyway, the net results of today’s changes were very small. 13 new delegates were added to CNN’s totals. 8 for Obama, 5 for Clinton. We went from Obama 50.8%, Clinton 48.2%, Edwards 1.0% to Obama 50.9%, Clinton 48.1%, Edwards 1.0%. Like I said, tiny change.
We are mathematically still a long way from the end. Obama needs 1281 more delegates to win. Clinton would need 1353 more to win. Of course, the big question is will one of them give up at some point. (I’m of course guessing Clinton will do just that if she loses Ohio and Texas.) Otherwise, we could certainly go straight through to the convention.
69 delegates were added on the Republican side. 20 of these were from the Republican caucuses in Puerto Rico. Like the Democrats abroad on the other side, CNN doesn’t list this on their state by state breakdown. I’m not 100% sure where the other 49 come from. I suspect they are from CNN finally getting around to adding up final delegate results from Wisconsin and Washington State. In any case, McCain gains 53 more delegates. Also for the first time since my February 10th update, Huckabee gains some delegates… a whole 16 delegates.
In any case, McCain is closing in on the magic number. 220 delegates left to win.
A lot of people believe [Lieutenant General Stanley A.] McChrystal will be the next Iraq commander after David Petraeus finishes his tour. The horserace—and this is pure gossip here, to be clear—has it between McChrystal and Lt. Gen. Pete Chiarelli, who was corps commander under George Casey.
I never met Stanley. Just his brother whom I worked for and another brother who I worked with. Of the two brothers I knew, one was OK. The other… well, let me not talk about that here. And of course none of that likely has any relevance to Stanley.
But I still find it interesting to note when I see new news about General McChrystal.
Just looked at my dashboard and saw this in the weather forecast. On Sunday (the day that just ended) the sun is raining. What the hell does that even mean?
I note however, there is a lot of sun in this forecast, and the highs are in the 50’s. I think Spring may have arrived in the Pacific Northwest. All weekend the kids were out on the street riding their bicycles and such. And it was quite nice out when I walked Roscoe. There may yet be a relapse to winter, but for now… it is very nice!
As of this podcast, I’m adding the directly embedded podcast to the announcements of each week’s podcast. If you don’t feel like subscribing in iTunes, you can just hit play. Quicktime required.
Just as I was at the climax of the Harry Potter book last night some horrible animal screaming started happening from right outside my window. After a couple of minutes I went out onto the deck outside the bedroom to investigate with a flashlight. At first I could not see anything. The howling and crying was coming from the trees. And there was much rustling of leaves. Things were fighting. Things were not happy.
I eventually saw a raccoon. Not all the noises were raccoon though. I’m sure there were also squirrels fighting the raccoon. And there were a bunch of birds yelling too. And there may have been more than one raccoon.
This went on for more than an hour. They would not stop if I went and flashed the light at the trees. Dogs in the neighborhood started barking. The back door had been open when this started, but I made sure Roscoe was in and closed the door.
The entire time I was finishing the Potter book, the background noise was the angry screaming, howling and hissing of a variety of animals in my back yard. It was… interesting.
No signs of anything at all come daylight of course.
Author: J. K. Rowling
Started: 17 Feb 2008
Finished: 24 Feb 2008
759 p / 8 d
95 p/d
So, back in January I read Book 6 and commented that it was a little slow. In the comments to my post Matt offered that Book 7 “moves much faster”. And that is definitely the case. The book starts and then BOOM you get to page 55 and there is massive action and tension which barely ever lets up from there until the end of the book. It sucked me in and this book is one of the major reasons I didn’t get a lot done this last week. I had hoped to get lots of stuff done, but no, each time I had an excuse, I’d go read for a chapter or so instead. I did have the discipline to not just sit and read the whole thing without stopping, although it was tempting. Even so, I ended up averaging almost 100 pages a day, which is rare for me. Not because I can’t read 100 pages a day of course, but because normally I’m busy doing other things and only end up reading for a few minutes a day, which of course slows things down.
One of the things that made a difference here I think, and which sets this book aside from all the other Harry Potter books, is that Rowling almost as soon as the book started ditched the structure which governed all the other books. That structure basically being the structure of the Hogwarts school year. That had provided a certain amount of predictability to all the other books. This time that was out the window. Now, you still had the bit at the end where everything that had gone on is explained and comes together. But that wasn’t too bad.
There are a few bits of how it all came together than I was expecting long before it happened. (Trying to be vague so as not to spoil anyone who has not read it yet.) But there are other things that did indeed take me by surprise. And other things I expected to happen which did not.
All in all a good mix though, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
It is a shame the series is over. But things did get wrapped up nicely, so I actually hope Ms. Rowling sticks to her guns about it really being over, rather than coming back for another dip and diluting the original seven books.
Having said that, bring on the rest of the movies! This last one will be a doosey if they do it right!
OK, so the primary season is not over yet, and even McCain doesn’t have it wrapped up officially, let alone the Democrats. But I am going to start looking at the Electoral College anyway. Since I think Obama is going to come out the winner on the Democratic side, and McCain will be the Republican nominee barring something catastrophic, I will be assuming a McCain vs Obama general election. If something happens to change this, then I will revise things.
As before, I have started a wiki page to track this. The link on the image goes to the full page, including a larger image of the graph and explanations of my methodology and a breakdown of the numbers by state. Basically I’m looking at the last five McCain vs Obama polls in each state, and then classifying them as Strong or Weak Obama or McCain states, with the lead needing to be at least 10% to be considered “Strong”.
At the moment there are actually not that many state polls of this sort. I don’t actually yet have five polls in any state. And many of those polls are more than a month old, which is forever in terms of how things are moving. And the states for which there are no polls at all still account for more than 50% of the electoral votes. Presumably as the nominations become final on both sides, this will rapidly change and we will get polls in more states. Hopefully eventually all of them.
Weak McCain: Pennsylvania (21), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Massachusetts (12), Minnesota (10)
Weak Obama: Missouri (11), Washington (11), Wisconsin (10), Oregon (7)
Strong Obama: California (55), New York (31), Iowa (7), Rhode Island (4)
Unless I missed some (which is possible) there have been no other states with McCain/Obama general election matchup polls (since 5 Nov 2007) yet.
So to start with we stand at 283 electoral votes with no polls, 136 electoral votes leaning Obama, 119 electoral votes leaning McCain counting both strong and weak states. With only strong states we have 97 Obama, 48 McCain. Of course, the huge number of states with no polls yet makes it very hard to tell anything from this yet. And I am refraining for putting states in one category or another based on 2004 results or any such. I’ll wait for actual polls in those states.
I will of course continue to update the 2008 Presidential Delegate Graphs when there are changes there. But I will now also be updating this general election prediction page whenever there are new polls that change the category of any state.
And of course, if either Obama or McCain ends up not being the nominee, then I’ll have to redo the whole page. But that’s OK. I can do that.
I should also note that the way I am representing the overall race in the one chart only applies if there are only two candidates with an actual shot of getting electoral votes. If some third party candidate enters and looks like they are actually strong enough to potentially get electoral votes, I will have to revisit how to represent things.
Author: Barack Obama
Started: 20 Jan 2008
Finished: 17 Feb 2008
375 p / 29 d
13 p/d
I finished this a week ago, but am just getting around to posting about it. It was time for a non-fiction book. I had read Obama’s first book back in late April / early May. It was good. But it was mainly about Obama’s youth and search for his roots, etc. This second book is actually about his thoughts on politics. I had wanted to finish reading it before the Washington caucuses, but I didn’t make it. Then I wanted to make it by Super Tuesday. I didn’t make that either. Nor did I make it before the Patomic primaries. But I did finish before Wisconsin. Go me!
Anyway, this was another good book. It did not give super deep insight into specific policies. He has actually been more specific in recent speeches. This was more about his general political philosophy. A lot of the moving beyond left and right, being pragmatic and looking for solutions that work, etc.
I still have a fundamental difference that I struggle with which I have mentioned before. I think he will be a good president in the sense of leadership and tone and changing overall perceptions, etc. But on policy there is probably little I agree with him. Fundamentally, Obama is indeed a believer that government is a good thing, a potential source of solutions, whereas I see it as a necessary evil, to be used only when there is no other choice, and then only reluctantly and in the most limited form possible. And this is independent of “what works”. There may be many cases where a government program would be the most effective way to achieve a goal that I agree with… but being effective does not make it the RIGHT way to solve the problem. Sometimes the right way to solve a problem is not the most efficient way. Sometimes a solution will solve a problem, but do it in a way that requires things that are just wrong to happen in order to make it happen. And then how do you balance that? And sometimes you just have to live with a problem, because the only effective solutions would require doing unacceptable things. It is all about the classic “do the ends justify the means” question.
Sigh. Anyway, if you take as a given that government is not inherently a bad thing, which unfortunately both major parties these days do, then I think the way Obama reasons is very reasonable. He shows a great deal of open mindedness to consider the views of those who disagree with him. And I think this is by far the most critical aspect of Obama that makes him appealing to me, and to many people. And at the same time greatly frightens the left wing of the Democratic party.
The political debate for almost 16 years now has been typified on both sides by the increasing view that the people on the other side are not reasonable people with differing opinions, but rather the people on the other side are stupid, malicious and evil. There was not healthy respectful debate on issues, but rather vilification of those who disagree. This is horribly unhealthy.
Throughout his book, Obama time after time shows respect and understanding of Republican positions on various issues. He talks about some areas where Republicans over the years have done things right and Democrats got it wrong. He talks about various individiuals on the other side of the isle with respect. Not agreement. But respect. He has positive words for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and a variety of others. He off course has a lot of positive words for a lot of Democrats as well. But it is not black and white. It s not we are good, they are evil.
And there is room for compromise and working together.
And this is a very positive thing. It may drive a few aspects of the Democratic party crazy. Those folks who are saying “No! We need to fight!” And in the end, it may end up being somewhat naive. You of course need two to tango, and unless there are partners on the other side that are also willing to work together, it won’t happen. And of course, when you compromise, you end up with something that isn’t quite what either side wants.
Fundamentally, I’m quite fine with that. I am scared of a world where the left wing Democrats get everything they want just as much as I am of a world where the right wing Republicans get everything they want. We’ve kind of seen the right wing Republican world these last few years. We need to come back to the middle, not swing the pendulum all the way to the other side.
Having said that, despite all the centrist talk, looking at actual policies and such, Obama is VERY liberal. Way too liberal for me on most issues. I am hoping though that combined with his openness toward working with the other side, and the plain realities of how difficult it is to get ANYTHING done in Washington, than what an Obama presidency would actually produce would be closer to the center than the left. And so would be capable of undoing a lot of the damage of the last administration, but without producing TOO MUCH new damage.
I just want to end this though by quoting one passage in the book that made me laugh out loud. It is part of the story of Obama’s first meeting with President George W Bush:
“Come over here for a second,” he said, leading me off to one side of the room. “You know,” he said quietly, “I hope you don’t mind me giving you a piece of advice.”
“Not at all, Mr. President.”
He nodded. “You’ve got a bright future,” he said. “very bright. But I’ve been in this town awhile and, let me tell you, it can be tough. When you get a lot of attention like you’ve been getting, people start gunnin’ for ya. And it won’t necessarily just be coming from my side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody’ll be waiting for you to slip, know what I mean? So watch yourself.”
“Thanks for the advice, Mr. President.”
“All right. I gotta get going. You know, me and you got something in common.”
“What’s that?”
“We both had to debate Alan Keyes. That guy’s a piece of work, isn’t he?”
And yes, that Alan Keyes *is* a piece of work. Something that even George W. Bush and Barack Obama can agree on with confidence.
