So, there are two possibilities here today. One is that I won the $122 million MegaMillions last night, and can afford to buy a radio station and make a real liberal radio network. The other is that I am once again a miserable loser, and will have to go to work again on Monday. Anybody wanna take bets on which comes true?

Good thing Laxapalooza is free today.

Friday once again. My second Friday, sort of, since I’m at my undisclosed (and much preferred) location today. That means I get to come home and see the doggy at lunch time, and I should be out in time to get him to the park. It’ll be nice to get the week over with. Maybe I can even sleep ’til eight tomorrow.

OK, I’m officially tired of the 2008 presidential campaign. Unfortunately, I keep being drawn back to it. Same old shit every day, pretty much, but I keep wasting time looking at it. Just aint the same without Grampa Fred.

I deliberately decided not to pay attention to how things went last night (one of the advantages to recording everything you might want to watch, and skipping the commercials; I have a month’s worth of Boston Legal to catch up on). So I don’t know who the big winner was. My prediction, before I go ahead and look, is that Obama took the night.

For those who care, I did, indeed, go ahead and pull the lever (yes, here in NY, we still have levers – for now). My plan was to vote for one candidate, and choose John Edwards’ delegate slate. I figured that would somehow fuck things up. Unfortunately, only Obama and Clinton actually had delegates in my district, so that shot that plan down.

Granny, I might add, couldn’t bring herself to vote at all. Can’t blame her.

Anyhow, in the end, I decided to be very analytical. As Kat said yesterday, I’m not much of a predictor as to who will win, so I decided to leave out electability as a criterion. And anyway, that got us Kerry as a candidate last time around. I also decided to forget about likability. I don’t actually like either one of them. Not right now, anyway. I still resent the fact that Edwards was ignored, and I’ve transferred my animosity to both of them.

So, anyway, I spent a great deal of my free time yesterday (by ‘free time,’ I of course mean ‘while I was working’) looking at both of their voting records in some detail (Obama has a bit less to look at), and I also reviewed their official platforms on everything. They are astoundingly similar in just about every way. In ways I like – and in ways I don’t. Oh, Obama seems to pay some lip service to ethics reform and the like, but mostly they’re the same side of the same coin (at least as official positions go).

What I noticed, though, was that every one of Clinton’s positions had a pretty fair amount of detail behind it. A lot of detail, actually. Now, Presidents don’t get to just implement their plans. They have to get them though Congress, and they get all kinds of changed along the way, and they always seem to pretty much suck when they come out the other end of the sausage machine. So, what’s the difference whether there’s any detail behind the plan?

Well, to me, it shows that the person really put some thought behind it. It kind of shows me that they really know the issue inside and out, and understand a lot of the – hate to say this – nuances behind it. Also, I’m what granny always refers to as left-brained (truth be told, there’s a lot more right brain in there than I get credit for), and I have to admit, I like to see some detail. I like the vague ‘feel good’ talk as much as the next guy, but unless you tell me just how things are gonna work, I’m likely to think you’re just making up a good story.

I guess that’s why I prefer Isaac Asimov to Ray Bradbury.

So, in the end, I voted for Clinton. Did it fast, too. Like pulling off a band-aid^®. And that’s why I predict that Barack Obama was the big winner last night, and why I predict he’ll be the Democratic nominee for President. Because nobody I vote for ever wins.

Now I guess it’s time to get up and see how I did.

So, Super Tuesday is finally here. Thanks to the withdrawal of John Edwards, I have a few decisions to make today. First off, should I even bother to vote at all?

It wasn’t that long ago that I was a registered ‘no preference,’ meaning I was ineligible to vote in New York State primaries. I didn’t actually register as a Democrat until after the rat bastard Republicans wasted a lot of time and money impeaching Bill Clinton.

It takes a while for a change of party to kick in here, so the first Presidential primary I had a chance to vote in was 2004. I voted for Howard Dean and, well, true to form, he didn’t win. So, this’ll be my second crack at putting the curse on a candidate (technically, I suppose, I already cursed Edwards, so maybe I can bring down two people this primary season).

It’s worse, too, because, unlike the Republican primary, this one isn’t winner take all. If it was, I could safely vote for whoever the hell I wanted to (or not at all) ‘cuz Hillary is probably gonna win here. But for the primary, my vote actually represents some tiny fraction of a delegate (depending on how many people vote).

In New York, there are a total of 281 delegates for Democrats. 151 of them are allocated proportionally based on the results of the primary within each Congressional district, either 81 or 85 delegates (I’ve read both; I don’t know if anybody actually understands how the fuck this works, to be honest) are elected at the State Democratic Convention in May (presumably, whoever gets the most delegates in the primary will walk away with them), and 49 (or 45, again, depending on which number you believe) delegates are unpledged super delegates, who will vote whichever way the wind blows (probably most of them will go for Clinton, ‘cuz, well, she’s a bit of a player in the NYS Democratic Party).

That’s not confusing enough, of course, so in addition to selecting a presidential candidate, Democratic voters in each Congressional district can also vote for 5 or 6 delegates. We can choose delegates who are supporting the candidate we vote for, or we could, say, vote for Obama while voting for 5 delegates committed to Clinton. Why would we do that? I have no idea, but we could (we could even do it by mistake, and never know we did it). And, not every candidate has a full slate of delegates in every district. So then they pick the delegates some other way. Or something.

In each Congressional district, a candidate has to get 15 percent of the vote to receive any delegates. And, yes, there will still be six people on the ballot: Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Kucinich, Richardson and Biden.

So, assuming I decide to vote, then what? I’m inclined to vote for Edwards anyway, but is that just throwing my vote away?

Do I vote for Obama? He was against Iraq as an Illinois State Senator, but once he was elected to the US Senate, he never saw a war appropriations bill he didn’t like. He also seems to have a propensity to duck the tough votes, and declared the Alito filibuster dead before he grudgingly voted against cloture. As Sue posted the other day, on the campaign trail, he touts a bill that started out requiring all nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of any size leak, no matter how small. This came about after a plant operator – Exelon Corp – was found to have not disclosed leaks at one of its nuclear power plants. But the reality is that Obama ‘compromised’ the bill to death until it became just a suggestion that maybe the plant owners would let people know about a leak, if they felt like it. Obama’s staff insists that this has nothing to do with the fact that, since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon have contributed at least $227,000 to Obama’s campaigns for the US Senate and for president, two top Exelon officials are among his largest fund-raisers, and another Obama donor is chairman of both Exelon and the Nuclear Energy Institute (the Nuke industry’s lobbying group). In fact, Exelon’s support for Obama far exceeds its support for any other presidential candidate, and Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, has worked as a consultant to Exelon.

Obama’s health care plan leaves about 15 million people uninsured, and, according to Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T. (via Krugman):

“a plan…resembling the Obama plan, would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year. An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured — essentially everyone — at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700.

In other words, as Krugman points out:

One plan achieves more or less universal coverage; the other, although it costs more than 80 percent as much, covers only about half of those currently uninsured.

Then, of course, there’s Obama’s rather maddening tendency to embrace the Republican frame on many issues (Social Security is in crisis, “Harry and Louise” mandated insurance, etc.) while invoking the name of St. Reagan (not that he agreed with Reagan, of course).

Perhaps the biggest problem I have with Obama is something that doesn’t really have much to do with him. It’s the whining ignorance of so many of his supporters (not all; probably not even most. The asshole minority always stands out, though). They hated Edwards, even as their candidate rushed to incorporate much of Edwards’ platform into his own campaign, and whine at every perceived slight to Obama, no matter how tiny or obscure.

But then there’s Hillary. Hillary, who gave a great speech against giving Bush the authority to use force against Iraq, and then voted to go ahead and give it to him anyway – and refuses to say, “hey, I was wrong.” Like Obama, she continues to vote to fund the occupation, and hasn’t exactly been leading the charge to get us the hell out of there. She didn’t stand up, as Chris Dodd did, and threaten to veto retroactive immunity for telecom companies (neither did Obama). Hillary voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran (a vote Obama conveniently missed), and is beholden to any number of huge corporate donors and lobbyists – including the insurance companies. Her healthcare plan, while it appears to cover everyone and has subsidies for low income families, is still not a single-payer system, and is still a boon to her friends in the insurance industry.

I would fully expect a President Hillary Clinton to do any number of things that I would totally disagree with (just as her husband did). But my biggest fear is that she’ll be goaded into bombing somebody, just to prove she’s as tough as a man. Maybe I’m a wimp, but I wouldn’t mind a little less ‘tough guy,’ and a little more ‘gentle woman.’

There’s a lot to dislike about Hillary. Her posturing, her political calculation, her inability to admit she was wrong (reminds you of somebody else, no?), just for starters. Plus, I’ve been told for almost 20 years now that I should despise her, and that’s sunk in a bit. I wonder, if she was a man – or even just anybody else – would I find her ‘bad’ characteristics as discomfiting?

How much of my unease with Hillary is that I don’t find her particularly likable? And, do I really want to base my vote on who is more likable (who I’d rather ‘have a beer with,’ so to speak)?

Then there’s the issue of – dare I say it – ‘electability.’ I can think of few things more frightening than President George W. Bush – but President John McCain is definitely one of ’em (President Cheney would be another). McCain is a crazy megalomaniac who wants endless war. Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton – no matter what you may think of her personally – is absolutely despised by wingnuts and liberals alike. She may be the one person who can drive the wingers to the polls while keeping the ‘progressive purists’ at home – or voting for Nader – this year.

Not that Obama won’t engender a certain amount of hatred and bigotry. There are plenty of crackers, I’m sure, who will refuse to vote for ‘one of them.’ But I think the prospect of a smart woman – especially this particular smart woman – is a lot scarier to a lot more people than a slightly brown, ‘ethnically diverse’ man. Hell, everybody loves Tiger Woods, after all. Smart ambitious women, though…. They’re scary bitches. If you don’t believe me, ask Maureen Dowd.

There’s no debating the fact that the young folks are on the Obama bandwagon, and it’s nice to see the kids all excited about politics. And many of us, um, more mature folks are just plain sick of hearing the name Clinton, I think. Plus, all the celebrities and most of the Kennedys are pulling for Obama, too. Yep, it’s ‘cool’ to be an Obama supporter, and who doesn’t wanna be cool? I’m not sure why he’s cool. I guess it’s ‘cuz he’s different, and he’s gonna “change” everything (although, I can’t figure out how he’s different, to be honest. I find his rhetoric to be the same pablum I’ve heard a million times before). Frankly, I think he and Hillary are just about indistinguishable. If Hillary is Republican-lite, Obama is Hillary-lite.

So, anyhow, after lots of hand-wringing and angst, I’m still no closer to figuring out who the hell to vote for. It would have been so much easier had Edwards stuck around for another week. And it’ll be a lot easier come November, too, because either of these two would make a much better preznit than these idiot old white Republican men.

Today, though, I continue to be at a loss. If you’re in one of the 22 Super Tuesday states, I hope you’ve figured out what to do, and that you’re certain (if not happy) about your choice.

As for me, I might just have to sit this one out.

Today really ought to be a national holiday. I find it hard to believe there will be any noticeable productivity in the workplace today, so why not just give us a well-deserved day off, and try it again on Tuesday?

It was a pretty good weekend for Central New York. SU beat Villanova. Former SU great Art Monk was voted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame. And the Giants – whose head coach, Tom Coughlin, is from Waterloo NY – about 50 miles west of here – and was Syracuse’s halfback during the Floyd Little/Larry Csonka years – won the Super Bowl. The Giants’ WR/special teams guy David Tyree – who caught a pass for a touchdown, and made a spectacular catch to keep the final touchdown drive alive – played for SU. And their Asst. Strength and Conditioning coach – Markus Paul – is another SU guy.

All in all, not a bad weekend.

This could be one of the ugliest Press the Meats ever, and the potatoheaded one has Bob Shrum, James Carville, Mary Matalin & Mike Murphy. And Mike Murphy is the pick of the litter.

On Faze the Nation, it’s Maverick McCain and the man who’s gonna change everything – honest – Barack O’Bama.

At Fux News Sunday, Weaselface Wallace also has St. John, but they’ll swap Obama for the woman who voted to authorize the war, except she didn’t know it was for war, so it wasn’t a mistake, Hillary Clinton. Plus the usual Fuxheads, of course.

Continuing the presidential round robin, George Snufalufagus has Hillary, but swaps out McCain for Mitt and the magic underpants. Then at the roundtable, it’s Clinton Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers (she was actually quite likable, unlike the evil nazi robot spokesbitch we have now), l’il Robert Reich, ex-Pentagon spokesbitch Torie Clarke and George :jerk: Will.

Wolf Blitzer’s Late Emission has Mike “hey, I’m still running you know?” Huckabee, Bill Bennett (on to take your action on the elections), Willard Romney again, and the man who helped get us where we are today (whether he’s willing to admit it or not) Ralph Nader.

It’s Mormon night on 60 Minutes, as they rerun a Mike Walace interview with the now dead grand wizard (or whatever they call it) of the Mormons, Gordon Hinckley, plus interviews with a couple of your favorite Mormons, Steve Young and Orrin Hatch. If you want more than Mormons, there’s also a Steve Kroft story on Dubai.

Oh, and there’s apparently some sort of football game on tonight, too.

Not much going on today. Maybe go up to my sister’s house, and bask in the glow of the pellet stove we put in last week. SU’s on at noon on ESPN HD, so maybe I’ll just hang out and watch that (tough to watch, though; due to injuries and other issues, they’re down to 7 scholarship players – and they’re all freshman and sophomores, for the most part). Whatever I do, I think I’ll try not to pay any attention to politics for a day. It all hurts my little head, and I’m still at a loss as to who to vote for on Tuesday. Oh, John, why didn’t you hang on for another week? You’d have made things so much easier on me.

Those of us who live in one of the ‘Super Tuesday’ states and are eligible to vote in the primary will probably spend at least a little time this weekend trying to figure out how we’re going to vote. One place that might be useful to check out is ProgressivePunch, which has searchable rankings of how our representatives have voted. Of particular interest (given the candidates for prez) is their Senate rankings, which you can order by the current year’s votes, lifetime, and “chips are down” votes, which they described as

…votes where either progressives lost or where the progressive victory was narrow and could have been changed by a small group of Democrats voting differently. The definition of a vote where progressives lost is one where a majority of the progressive cohort (see list below) was on the losing side of the vote. Narrow progressive victories are defined as votes in which progressives won by 20 votes or fewer in the House (so a shift of 10 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result) or by 6 votes or fewer in the Senate (so a shift of 3 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result).

Absences by members of Congress are penalized in scoring only if the margin was <10 votes in the Senate or <20 votes in the House.

You can also drill down to look at votes on single issues, and they describe their methodology for how they do their rankings, so you can look for ways to dismiss the results when they don’t turn out the way you wanted them to.

For the current Congress, Barack Obama is ranked #43 in the Senate – slightly ahead of Joe Lieberman. Chuck Schumer, somewhat surprisingly, comes in at #5 – well ahead of ‘liberal lion’ Ted Kennedy who, at #28, is just ahead of #29, Hillary Clinton.

Teddy’s lifetime score is much better, of course, as he comes in at #7. Hillary’s tied with Pat Leahy at #17, and Obama is close by at #24.

When the chips are down, Schumer also comes in at #5, Clinton is all the way down to #30, and Obama, at #43, is two spots ahead of his Senate mentor, Joe Lieberman.

There are tons of ways to drill down on all the issues, and it’s pretty interesting (and a good Friday time-killer at work). Unfortunately, it hasn’t made me feel any better about the two choices I seem to have left in Tuesday’s primary. But they’re both a hell of a lot better than John McCain, who comes in at #84 for this Congress – and #59 lifetime.

Now, let’s get this crappy week over already.