Morning Coffee (123)

Greetings, Coffee Drinkers.

Singing Fat Lady Proclaims It to be Over for Roosting Chickens:

Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Someone else opined that, “It’s not over until the fat lady sings.” Others have made comments about chickens coming home to roost. Then, there’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. More still have asserted that it was the final nail in a particular coffin.

Well today, for Hillary Clinton, that fat lady might start singing, and it might be over. Clinton’s campaign has for weeks been fueled by the notion that she has more electability than does Barack Obama, and she has survived one contest at a time. But she has faced an uphill battle, against math and inevitability. She has had to win - and win big - every contest for quite some time now and today might be the real beginning of the end. North Carolina holds its primary today (an epoch from the first in this cycle) and Clinton is expected to lose by as much as 15 points. Of course, she might stay in until next Tuesday’s primary in West Virginia. It’s even possible, but even more unlikely after today’s probable loss, that she could win the Democratic nomination. Who really knows except god and Yogi Berra (and a few hundred “superdelegates”)? I’m no expert, so I won’t predict her demise. The woman seems to have more lives than a Hindu cat, and an indomitable will so you can’t really count her out. It’s admirable, frankly. I don’t necessarily agree with the manner with which she seeks power, nor do I agree with her politics, but it sure is admirable. Would she make a better President than either of the two men still running? I suppose the voters will (or will not) decide.

Primus Primary:

All this conveniently provides me with an opportunity to gripe about our antediluvian election process. I find it remarkably odd that the Reverend Wright fiasco might do nothing to shift the chances of Obama being the Democratic nominee. I am not, in this instance, passing any particular judgment on his relationship with Wright. Instead I am pointing out that many of the people who voted for Obama in months past might not have done so had they known as much about Wright as they do now. Unfortunately for them, their votes have been cast. One may say that it’s no different than someone regretting their vote for a President, but it is because Obama is not yet President. I.e. we have a chance to prevent him from being so.

Certainly, Obama’s relationship with his pastor impacts his electability. So the Democrats may field a candidate who stands little chance of defeating John McCain, and they can’t do anything about it because he has an insurmountable delegate lead because half the nation has already held their primaries at one point or another before Wright was a household name?

I’m not about superdelegates. I do not want a bunch of party officials selecting our choices in elected officials. To me, it smacks of an aristocracy. “We know better than you mere citizens, so we’ll select some people for you to vote for.” No thanks. But I’m also not about a primary season that stretches for across six months. Campaigning is one thing. Let the voters get to know the candidates. But the disparate voting times makes some votes more meaningful than others. It might make some voters wish their states held primaries later, as they find out that the messiah for change with whom they fell in deep love has held a very close relationship with a bigoted preacher for 20 years.

I say we have a good and long campaign season. Let all the wonks talk and talk about the politicians. Let all the politicians make mistakes and faux pas. Let all those wanna-be Presidents blow through the equivalent of several small nations’ GDPs in cash campaigning for two years, and then we’ll all have us a good old fashioned democratic vote on a predetermined date. Sounds like fun to me. More exciting even.

Operation Chaos:

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Like some mad experiment by some secret government agency to control the minds of bee farmers in order to sew the seeds of the New World Order. It’s not though. It’s Rush Limbaugh’s foray into screwing with the Democratic campaigns. I wrote about it a while ago, and asked you all what you thought of it. But I never got back to you. Most of the respondents to my query opined that it was in bad taste. I agree. I’m all about doing what you can to win, or to make it harder for your prospective opponents to win, but encouraging people to switch parties to vote in primaries is despicable. Sure, Republicans haven’t much to vote for in their primary, as McCain’s “the man.” But I do not like this trend. It’s meddling. If you want to switch parties because you’ve developed an ideological difference with that party’s ideology, fair enough. But to do so simply to undermine the opposition…must we make politics even dirtier?

Limbaugh’s a moron. I’ve never liked his self-important rambling. Check out the top of his webpage. See him in his disgustingness with his smug look and expensive suit and cigar. See that gold microphone, as if he’s telling us that he’s speaking to us through an instrument of the divine. I don’t agree with Al Franken on much, but I do agree with his basic assessment of Limbaugh’s character.

In other news, I’m a fan of a few fringe celebrities (authors) that you’ve possibly never heard of. Thomas Friedman is sort of one of them, but he’s more in the mainstream than say, Victor Davis Hanson. Anyway, Freidman is one of the most perceptive people writing today, I think. Read this article if you’ve the time. In it, he talks about some topics I mentioned yesterday.

Word of the Day: Amalgam (noun): 1. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals; used especially (with silver) as a dental filling. 2. A mixture or compound of different things.

On This Day in History: Renaissance ends as Spanish and German troops sack Rome (1527). The Hindenburg, a German zeppelin, is destroyed when it catches fire near Lakehurst, New Jersey. “Oh the huge manatee.” John Paul II becomes the first pope to enter a mosque (2001). That’s hard to believe.

Morning Coffee (102)

I know, I know, fellow Coffee drinkers. I have been in contempt recently, for I’ve failed to deliver a steady supply of delicious Brew. Regrettably, I came down with quite the illness during the past week; I had a debilitating combination of the Plague, a cold, the flu, Ebola, hoof and mouth disease, SARS, gout, West Nile virus, and rheumatoid arthritis. I was in no condition to Brew much less breath. I feared for my life on several occasions.

There was a veritable short ton of material about which to write, and I diligently saved links and ideas so I could discuss them with you. However, most of it is now “OBE” or overcome by events, so there’s little point in bothering now. It’s tragic, really, because I enjoy our time together. And frankly, ranting about the world’s absurdity is a good way to stay sane.

The Dying Democracy of the Democrat:

Perhaps you’ve heard about these supreme beings called “superdelagates”, a strictly Democrat idea. The creation of these things is rather simple: the Democratic Party wanted the Democratic National Convention’s (DNC) composition to be less dependent on the will of party leadership and more reflective of the votes the common man cast. Of course, party leadership felt that these changes might have crimped their power and influence a little too much, so they created superdelagates. Where regular delegates (attendees to the DNC) are selected by the voters, superdelegates are not and are free to support whoever they want. Since the Democratic nomination is so tight this year, the superdelegates might play “king-maker.” By that I mean they will have the ability to select the nomination, somewhat usurping the role from the people. Remember, superdelegates can support whoever they want; they’re not beholden to the will of the people.

Some, however, are probably beholden to one of the candidates. These superdelegates are usually elected officials. Elected officials like campaign donations because as we all know, money rules the day when it comes to candidate viability in elections. So, it’s feasible that some of these superdelegates could be, I don’t know, influenced by certain campaign donors to vote/support one candidate over the other because he or she happened to slip some cash into the super’s pocket. You know, to support their reelection. It just so happens that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have done just that with a number of superdelegates. The point is made in that article that handing out cash to individual voters or the delegates pledged to represent the voters’ wills would be considered somewhat tasteless, if not illegal, in our democratic process, doing the same to other elected officials who happened to be superdelegates to help these supers in their own elections isn’t so bad. It can’t be. Since Obama and Hillary have donated a total of $890,000 to superdelegates in the past few years. Obama’s political action committee has given $694,000 since 2005, and has 81 superdelegates who’ve pledged support to him. Of those 81, 34 were the recipients of $228,000.

Surely not all superdelegates are so easily swayed. I don’t doubt that some of them are moral and objective (well, reasonably so). But the old adage “money talks” must apply here as well. Some of these delegates will pledge support to someone in a dance of political favors. (Speaking of political favors, Bill Clinton recently yelled at Bill Richardson for his not supporting Hillary – asking him if two cabinet posts wasn’t enough. Richardson was a two-time Cabinet appointee of Bill Clintons.)

I’m bothered by the superdelegate issue for two reasons. One, as previously mentioned these delegates simply don’t have to cast their vote towards the candidate that the people want. They can vote for whomever. That’s placing yet another barrier between the people and the selection of their President. Two, these delegates can be bought, because they’re not required to represent the people, and because most of them are party or other elected officials and while it’s not bribery, campaign donations surely influences one’s decision about who to support. Must we really have more non-representative steps in our processes?

In fairness, the Republicans also have non-pledged delegates. But while non-pledged superdelegates make up approximately one-fifth of the 4,049 votes at the DNC, the Republican superdelegate total consists only of the 123 members of the RNC. This is out of 2,380 delegates. The likelihood of the DNC supers making a difference is much greater.

Frankly, superdelegates as a whole make me a little ill. Not being beholden to the will of the people is bad enough, but they get a disproportionate amount of power when it comes to electing a President. They can cast their delegate vote to whomever they wish, and then they get to vote in the general election, not to mention that they may influence voters simply by the virtue of their offices and ability to nominate and thus endorse a candidate.

And you thought this was a democracy. Well, it is, sort of. Loosely. In a way.

Mao: The Generous One:

Chairman Mao Zedong was concerned that his country was poor, and had little to offer the US in the way of trade. So he came up with an interesting proposition, which he posed to US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973. He offered what he had a surplus of: Chinese women. He offered to “give a few” to the US. Tens of thousands. A few minutes later in the meeting, he came back to that issue and offered Kissinger 10 million Chinese women. Mao stated to Kissinger that they had too many women, and these women birthed too many children. Kissinger did the only thing he could do in the situation without embarrassing Mao: he said that it was such a novel proposition that “we will have to study it.” Could you imagine being a fly on the wall in those negotiations?

Word of the Day: Ennui (on-WEE) (noun): A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest; boredom.

On This Day in History: The USS Maine sinks in Havana harbor, which leads to the Spanish-American War (1898). Does anyone remember that ship, what was it, the Maine? The Soviet Union officially announces that it has completely withdrawn from Afghanistan (1989).

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell.