- With all the election news, it's easy to forget about the day to day drudgery of actually, you know, being at war. Needless to say, our troops in Iraq are not forgetting, so they're either donating money from their scant paychecks to anti-war candidates or committing suicide in record numbers. Just to keep things in perspective.
- A correction from my post from this morning, it looks like Barack Obama not only won more states than Hillary Clinton, but he won more delegates as well (just barely). This doesn't especially bode well for Senator Clinton, who is so low on funds and so skeptical about her ability to raise more that she's loaning her own campaign $5 million dollars, in anticipation of a week with seven primaries where she's only expecting to win in two. Meanwhile, Obama is once again on pace to have another $30 million month.
- Somehow, and I don't know how but somehow, amidst all of these right-wing cranks getting their knickers in a knot about how the evil (i.e. slightly more moderate on one or two issues) John McCain might get the Republican nomination, Jonah freakin' Goldberg has to be the voice of reason. No, really.
- Just in case you didn't hear, the final bit of schadenfreude for the Giuliani campaign is this: on a dollars-to-delegates ratio, "America's Mayor" ran the worst campaign in American History, with $50 million dollars spent for a single delegate.
- In a lot of ways, a brokered convention would be a bad thing for the Democrats. The biggest concern is that the candidates would be dealing with each other up through the end of August, leaving two months for the eventual winner to take their campaign to the GOP, while McCain will have been taking his potshots for months. Nonetheless, reading this breakdown of what exactly an unscripted convention would look like, I AM SO DELIRIOUS WITH EXCITEMENT FOR THE DRAMA OF IT that I almost don't care. I want what's best for the party, and I don't think a brokered convention would be in everyone's best interest, but if it happens, I won't exactly be disappointed.
- It would be easy, with the Democratic race so close right now, to start breaking down numbers and try to figure out who's stronger with demographics that will matter more, to get the edge on the GOP in November. But Yglesias makes two very strong points against that sort of anticipatory panic.
- Nearly every poll has indicated that the vast majority of Democrats are happy with both of their options, and that one candidate will have little trouble picking up the voters who went for the other.
- Voters in Democratic primaries are vastly outnumbering voters in Republican primaries. In the Super Tuesday primaries, Democratic ballots cast outnumbered Republican ballots cast by about 2:1. McCain, Romney and Huckabee combined only drew in about a million more votes than either Obama or Clinton on their own.
- Nearly every poll has indicated that the vast majority of Democrats are happy with both of their options, and that one candidate will have little trouble picking up the voters who went for the other.
- Rumors that Mittens Romney will be dropping out appear to be inaccurate. Instead, he plans to win the nomination by subverting the electoral process. Go Mittens!
In religious news, today marks the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, when the Church encourages its followers to give in to the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder and plan on being depressed for about the next 40 days. This willful depression is in anticipation of the day when Jesus, like bears and squirrels, will decide it's warm enough to come out of hibernation. In honor of religious depression, here is a list of ten moderately to severely depressing albums which appear from their titles, to have some sort of religious connotation:
- Depeche Mode - Songs of Faith & Devotion
- Swans - Children of God
- William Elliott Whitmore - Ashes to Dust
- Kronos Quartet - Black Angels
- Carla Bozulich - Evangelista
- The Residents - God in Three Persons
- Cocorosie - Noah's Ark
- Various Artists - Plague Songs (It's a concept album compilation about the 10 plagues. Really.)
- The Birthday Party - Prayers on Fire
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Good Son (The title track is written from the perspective the brother of the Prodigal Son, who stayed home dutifully and didn't get treated any better than his ingrate brother.)
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