Predicting IN and NC

Ok, I nailed Pennsylvania, so here is my prediction for the results of today's NC and IN primaries:

• Clinton will win Indiana by 5-8 points
• Obama will win the larger and more delegate rich NC contests by 10-13 points

I'd love to see Obama squeeze that Indiana number down to 2-3, but I'm not counting on it, nor am I holding my breath for an Obama win there. But, I also won't be surprised if Obama wins NC by more like 15+...

Hillary is running out of time and contests to make the big game-changer. So, if my above predictions hold true, expect the trickle of Superdelegates that have been consistently moving toward Obama to pick up steam over the next week...

UPDATE - 5/7/08: Well, it was better than I hoped. Obama won by 14 points in NC and nearly pulled off the epic upset in IN before losing by 2 points there. This pretty much ends it, folks. It's all over, thank you for playing the "2008 Democratic Nominating Process Game." There is a bit of an end game that will now play out, but we definitely have a nominee and his name is Barack Obama! Let's bring it together everyone. It was a tough primary with lots of bruised feelings, but we must now unify for victory over McCain in the Fall...

Graphic Resistance

Bill Moyers Lays It Down on Obama, Wright and Race

Here is what Bill Moyers had to say about Obama, Wright and race in the U.S.

(If you are not familiar with Moyers' work, check out his television show on PBS.)

May 2, 2008
BILL MOYERS:Welcome to the Journal.

Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist. Many black preachers I've known - scholarly, smart, and gentle in person -- uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I've known many white preachers like that, too.

But in this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media — the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help — people who for their own reasons set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of a preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Which means it is all about race, isn't it?

Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. Politics often exposes us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this — this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers".

What do you think?


UPDATE: Frank Rich strikes a similar chord in his NYTimes column today. The heart of the matter for Rich is this:

"... it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick...

There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused of “political correctness” or “reverse racism.”

An all-white Congressional delegation doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern strategy in the Nixon era. No one knows this better than Mr. McCain, whose own adopted daughter of color was the subject of a vicious smear in his party’s South Carolina primary of 2000."

Matt Taibbi's "The Great Derangement"

This is a good video-ad for Matt Taibbi's new book. Check it out...

Music, Sweet Music

We went to Kansas City on Thursday night to see Alicia Keys, one of Drea's absolute favorites. I must say, at the risk of losing my manly-man card, I dig her, too, and she was really great live. This might sound strange, but one of the things I dig about Alicia is that she is a woman with some broad hips and meaty thighs, and she proudly struts her stuff. In a world of paper thin models and unhealthy female body images at every turn, it is pretty righteous to see Alicia comfortable in her skin and flaunting it. It is really appealing...

This one is called "Sure Looks Good to Me," and it is nice and soulful:


Later tonight, we are going to see EOTO, a couple of the guys from the now broken-up String Cheese Incident, who make funky, groovable, percussive, electronic music:


Dig it...