Wow, the right-wingers are really showing their true colors as bigots. They just filibustered (what, the 5,349,816th time this session?) a bill that would make it possible for workers to sue for pay discrimination, essentially killing it. Obama and Clinton returned to D.C. to vote for it, and McCain stayed away, signaling that he would have voted to kill it anyway.

Let’s rehash: this is based upon a scummy re-interpretation of law by the Bush administration. The original law was intended to make it so that if you found out your employer was paying you less than another worker for the same job because you were the wrong gender or race, you could sue them, so long as you filed suit 180 days after the last occurrence of the discriminatory pay. That was obviously meant to be structured so that the 180 day deadline happened after the last disparate paycheck was issued.

In a suit based upon this law, an employer tried to claim that the 180-day deadline started when the initial decision was made to issue unequal pay, taking advantage of wording that was just nebulous enough to allow for that interpretation (if you’re a complete idiot). Co-workers don’t immediately disseminate how much money they make to all coworkers, and employers often strongly discourage (or even try to prohibit) such sharing in any case. Finding such disparity within 6 months of the initial pay difference is so rare to discover that the law would essentially be meaningless under the new interpretation. It’s about as obvious as it can get that this was not the way the law was supposed to work.

The plaintiff, Ms. Lilly Ledbetter, won her case, and all the appeals until it reached the conservative-stacked 11th circuit (a spin-off of the 5th circuit, the most conservative in the country)–whereupon the law suddenly changed to support discrimination. Then the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, and naturally, the Bush administration jumped on the company’s side, filing a brief in support of the bigotry, in opposition to the EEOC’s rational application of the law in accordance with decades of precedence. And the 5-member Republican majority on the Supreme Court voted along straight party lines to uphold the ludicrous reinterpretation that essentially gutted the law. (Message: if you’re a corrupt, lawbreaking corporation, now is the time to get your suits before the high court! Get the payoffs while they last!)

Some right-wingers used the “it’s the law’s fault” defense, saying that they’d like to fight against discrimination, but darn it, the law is just so clearly written to be stupid, we have no choice but to follow it and be stupid ourselves. The Bush administration made no such dodges; they simply claimed [PDF] that once a decision was made to discriminate, a corporation could not be expected to remember that it had initiated such discrimination beyond 6 months, and it would be a travesty if people were allowed to sue after discrimination had continued for years and years. (They even made the deranged argument that the Ledbetter law would discourage allegations of discrimination from being “expeditiously resolved.”)

So if a corporation got away with discrimination for 180 days, then they were home free–untouchable from that point on. As I pointed out before, this asinine view of the law just begs for abuse, and is even institutionalized in posterity if pay increases are decided as a percentage of initial pay levels.

Well, no problem–just re-word the law so that it clearly states the obvious intent. But there’s a big problem–no, two big problems: one, the president–who vowed to veto the reworded bill, and now the Senate Republicans, who just filibustered it to death before it could even get to the president’s desk.

So the conservative wingnuts in all three branches of government have not voiced their intent to let bigotry reign.

Ready to vote yet?

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: the insidious Liberal Media™ continues to call Republican obstruction “blocking” or “denying” in their headlines, even eschewing the correct term “filibuster” in the full text of most of the articles covering this story (the few that there are, that is). They showed no such reluctance to use the word “filibuster” almost endlessly in the far more rare cases when Democrats blocked a handful of the most extremist right-wing judicial nominees.

Oh, and here’s a bonus bit of Republican hypocrisy:

Republicans said Democrats were playing politics, by timing the vote to give the Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, time to return to the Capitol from the campaign trail. Both senators spoke in support of the bill before the vote.

Yes, how terrible that they allowed senators time to vote on legislation. As opposed to four years ago, when Kerry returned to D.C. to vote for a veteran’s health care vote… and the Republican leadership delayed the vote so Kerry couldn’t vote on it. Those Republicans are just pips, aren’t they?

Apple reports their quarterly performance today after the markets close. They’re supposed to outperform expectations (after their stock “adjusted downwards” 40% after forecasting a poor quarter earlier this year). But Steve at Marketing Apple has an interesting observation to make:

if Apple had underperformed it would announce its earnings on a Friday (to let the market cool down over the weekend.) If it had over-performed, it would announce on a Thursday (to allow the market to run up the stock price.) So what does announcing on a Wednesday tell us?

As I said, Hmmm. Cautiously optimistic.

One point less than is being reported, though many points more than I expected (and of course hoped for). That is to say, Hillary didn’t win it by 10 points–the results right now have her with a 9.39% lead, so let’s establish that and stay with the facts. It may seem like a quibble, but you can be certain it is one that the Clinton campaign (and unsurprisingly, the media) wants to claim: a double-digit win instead of a single-digit one.

But even that is relatively meaningless, because for all the fuss being made, what I said before the election and what has been established for some time still stands true: Hillary needed a lot more than this to have a chance at winning the nomination.

She made no more than an 11-delegate gain, although perhaps as small as an 8-delegate gain. After the results so far tonight, CNN has Obama ahead by 138 delegates; MSNBC by 133; CBS and USA Today/AP by 126.

The polls show Indiana (84 delegates) as going either way, but certainly closer than Pennsylvania. North Carolina (134 delegates, the last big state left) shows Obama beating Clinton by as much as she won Pennsylvania by. Clinton will probably then get West Virginia (39 delegates) and Kentucky (60 delegates), Obama should get Oregon (65 delegates), Hillary Puerto Rico (63 delegates), and then Obama probably gets Montana (24 delegates) and South Dakota (23 delegates).

But remember: like tonight, winning a state does not take all, and even Clinton’s 9% lead did not give her 9% more delegates–at most, she’ll get 6%, but perhaps even as low as 4%. That’s how it works. Now work those numbers. Let’s say Indiana is a tie, but that Hillary gets a 20-delegate gain in Kentucky, 15 in West Virginia, and maybe 5 in Puerto Rico. Not even counting Obama’s gains, that still leaves Hillary more than 80 delegates short of Obama, and Obama has been picking up superdelegates far faster than Hillary has been. Even if Hillary steals away Montana and South Dakota, that would only add a paltry half-dozen delegate-lead, if even that much. And Obama is set to add at least 10 (probably 15 or more) delegates in North Carolina, and another half-dozen or so in Oregon, keeping Hillary almost a hundred delegates short of just catching up.

But winning? Preposterous. And the superdelegates are professional enough to see that. The math simply denies the possibility. Somehow I doubt they’ll start stacking up for Obama after Pennsylvania–it would seem too much like trying to overturn a popular vote (never mind the cumulative totals). They’ll probably creep up over the next few weeks, but I expect to see movement in early May, after North Carolina and Indiana. Hillary will try to make as much as possible out of Pennsylvania, but even nothing but Clinton victories from here on out would not put her ahead in pledged delegates–she’d need to powerhouse overwhelmingly just to get the superdelegates to hand her the race, and the likelihood of that is near to zero percent. That even with the media continuing to bash Obama mercilessly as they have been in the past several weeks.

Chris Matthews put it this way:

“…But I really do think it’s a strange time because we’re all watching to see who won, but as Nora pointed out, 4 out of 5 ,or so, of the Hillary voters today believe she’s still in the running. That this is still up in the air and I think that was probably a mistake of the media. I think in the effort of the media, to try to keep this game going, we’ve created the delusion that somehow this race is still open. I don’t think it is open. I think if you look at the numbers Barack has to really blow it in the weeks ahead to lose.”

The only thing going for Hillary is that she now reportedly is ahead in the popular vote as opposed to delegate counts. But that won’t win the nomination for her, even if every last superdelegate goes her way. The fact is, you’ve simply got to ask for far too much for Hillary to win, with the faint possible exception of stringing it out to the convention and then winning it with back-room politics… and I simply cannot see the party letting that happen.

But hey, I was wrong about Pennsylvania. I just hope I’m not wrong about this.

Update:I thought the popular-vote-for-Clinton claim sounded fishy. MSNBC gives the real figures: Hillary wins the popular vote only by cheating, as you have to count both Florida and Michigan, and even then you have to deny Obama the “uncommitted” votes, most of which were clearly for him; Obama didn’t campaign in Florida (ha has always narrowed Clinton’s lead by campaigning), and he wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan.

But since neither Florida nor Michigan had a “real” primary that gave them the chance to see both candidates equally and in person, and more importantly, because those primary contests broke the rules and so do not get included in the actual count, you have to discard those numbers… which leaves Obama with a half-million-vote lead in the popular count.

Today was one of our ceremony days. I don’t usually blog much directly about my school, but I figure it might not be a bad idea to start. In the next few weeks, as we welcome the several hundred new students, move into a new building, and start several other new projects, this is probably a good time for me to give some blog time for introducing the college where I teach.

Today’s ceremony is a big gala bash kind of thing that we have every year to welcome the new crop of students to the school. Both my institution, Lakeland College Japan, and our local administrative affiliate, NIC, hold a common welcoming event.

As usual, the party is held at the ANA hotel in Akasaka, near Tameike Sanno and Roppongi (our graduation ceremonies, in contrast, are held at the Century Hyatt in Shinjuku). With all the students, faculty, staff, parents, and special guests, it fills up a pretty large room.

The first two hours of the ceremony are a bit, let’s say, “official”–it is a series of speeches, either in Japanese, or in English with translation. The directors of the NIC, the Vice President of our college, two visiting scholars, two student representatives, and two guest speakers (one a U.S. embassy official, the other a doctor and professor, author of a book on health) each give a speech. You see the two student representatives below, but the longest speech–more than a half-hour–was given by the author/doctor, and most of us in the faculty on the sidelines couldn’t follow a bit of it.

After that, we gather for a huge group shot–this image is a bit washed out because the flash didn’t take on this shot and I didn’t get another chance before we were shooed together for the official shot–but I wanted to include it to give you an idea of the sea of people it formed.

And then the real party started, lasting about four hours. It began with a toast and a buffet lunch–and if you’ve never had a buffet spread at a Japanese hotel event, you’re missing out on a delicious if high-caloric feast… if you’re fast enough to get your share before the food runs out. More than a dozen entrees, all of them very good. I get this four times a year at our various events.

The opening ceremony always has class, including this string quartet (accompanied by piano in this shot) serving as a nice background for the dining.

A little more official business–in this case, an introduction of the two or three dozen visiting representatives from consortium schools in the U.S. and U.K. (more on that in a future post).

Then came the highlight of the evening: an occasional guest at the opening ceremonies is Toshi, of X Japan fame. X Japan was a very big rock band in the 90’s, and Toshi was a co-founder. The band has recently re-grouped and sold out three Tokyo Dome concerts a few weeks ago. Toshi became a fan of one of NIC’s directors, Hiroko “Zukie” Hirota, after his wife read Zukie’s book and introduced them; he frequently sings at events Zukie organizes.

After treating us to a song, Toshi showed incredible charm and patience in agreeing to take a group photo on the stage with the students who cared to join in–and was swamped in a rush of 18-year-old fans to the stage.

After that came student performances; first was a cheerleading squad, which I happened to catch in an apparent defiance of gravity:

Then a karate demonstration. While breaking the boards never impressed me as they get broken along natural striations in the wood, this guy broke a wooden baseball bat with his foot and a concrete block with his hand. His first attempt that the cinder block didn’t work and you could hear the thunk and see it was not a styrofoam stand-in. Even our librarian, a martial arts practitioner, was very impressed with the guy.

Then came a dance group, two members of which are shown going at it here:

And then another celebrity (a future one, at least), this time one of our own–Hiromi was a student with us six years ago, and releases her first CD soon. (Here’s her blog, where she posted already on today’s event, and on meeting Toshi.)

The evening ended with a few more performances, and then a san-san-nana byoushi clap. I don’t fully understand it yet actually–it seems to be half-cheer, half-good luck tradition. Everyone claps in unison: three sets of three claps followed by a single clap, repeated three times. The father of a former student led everyone, and then we wrapped.

Quite a party, all in all. Welcome, students! And more on my school soon.

But still, this news is rather interesting:

NTT Docomo says the logo will go into regular use from July 1st. It is being introduced as part of a broader overhaul of strategy which the company hopes will help it regain momentum in the mobile market. If you want to read the new mission statement, it is here (Japanese).

Hmm… A new logo and a push to “regain momentum in the mobile market”… which just happens to take place at almost exactly the time Apple is expected to release the new 3G iPhone and version 2 of the iPhone software, namely after the June WWDC conference in mid-June.

Like I said, maybe I’m reaching, but nevertheless coincidences like this should raise red flags.

Hillary is still acting as if winning the nomination is a strong possibility for her, when it clearly is not–like when Hillary said she’s consider Obama as a vice-presidential candidate, it was almost comical in its presumptuousness. But that is what Hillary has to do, because if Pennsylvanians go to vote and figure that she really has no chance, then she will lose, no matter her lead over Obama in the polls: Democrats will vote for Obama, even if they favor Clinton, because they recognize what is best for their party as a whole. It has been made pretty clear to enough people that a Clinton victory would only prolong the inevitable and hurt the party, and I think that this is worth quite enough that Obama stands a good chance of getting a surprising number of votes this week.

Then there are the polls: as I have noted, they are all over the place. This is probably due to the pollsters trying to figure out how to weight the numbers. For example, will young voters or old voters have higher turnouts? Each pollster makes different decisions like these, and therefore we see a 20-point spread in polls with supposed margins of error far smaller than that. But as I note above, I think there will be an effect beyond polling: the polls measure which candidate is supported, and that is not necessarily who they will end up voting for. In my case, right now the idea of a Clinton candidacy is galling–but if the delegate counts were reversed and Obama had as slim a chance as Clinton has now, then painful as it might be, I would vote for Clinton for the good of the party. And that’s saying something.

Not to mention that both Ohio and Texas had semi-open primaries; Pennsylvania’s is closed. That means we’ll see fewer “Limbaugh” Republicans crossing the lines to get the candidate they want, and that could have an effect as well.

This close to the end, with the damage from a prolonged campaign so clear, and the real conclusion of the race so evident… I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict Obama will, if not win, at the very least lose by no more than 4 or 5 points in Pennsylvania. I would favor, however, something much closer, near a tie.

The question is, how will Pennsylvania be spun by the high and mighty media? In the past, Obama has been hurt by high expectations; his advancing in the polls in the days just before other elections made him seem like the favored candidate, and that hurt him mightily–look at New Hampshire, where the polls saw him jump from a double-digit deficit just a week before the primary to the 5-to-10-point favorite on election day–only to lose by a slim 3-point margin. Hardly a stunning victory for Clinton, who had as much as a 16-point lead just days before–but because the polls gave Obama such momentum, it looked like a stunning victory, and perception is everything.

So how will they spin, say, a 5-point Clinton victory here? Some polls say that is what will happen, some say Hillary leads by 18 points or so. We haven’t seen a poll that had Obama tied or ahead in more than two weeks–but will the media cling to that former image of Obama catching up? You can guess where my money is–the media is addicted to this race, and if they can help Clinton, they will. A 5-point Clinton win will probably be called a Clinton “victory,” despite the doom it spells in terms of delegates. There might be some small caveats in the small print, but the headlines will probably trend Hillary’s way. I would think that only if Obama comes within two or three points of a tie will the media abandon the pretense.

The question is, even if Obama wins, will Hillary finally give up?

China’s pissed:

“Reaction [in China to protests in Japan] would be huge in comparison to the reaction against protests in France,” in which Web sites called for a boycott of French products sold at Carrefour stores, an international issue expert said, pointing out that negative feelings toward Japan remain strong in China due to historical issues.

A man in his 30s who runs a Web site that is popular with many Chinese “patriots,” told The Yomiuri Shimbun, “Chinese people won’t forgive [Japan] if the Japanese do the same things as the Americans and Europeans, such as making distorted reports about the Tibet issue.”

Well, China asked for it, and now they’ve got it. Seriously, did they expect that they could hold a summer Olympics and not have Tibet take the opportunity of a world spotlight to rebel? And when scattered protests break out in various nations, do they really think that threatening other countries is the way to make things better?

As for Japan, I bet they must really be scared at the threat this guy is making. Because, after all, Japan is so used to and dependent upon China forgiving it. Haven’t the Chinese been just the picture of forgiveness? Not that Japan hasn’t gone the full distance in asking for it, but China has come even less close to giving it.

If nothing else, these Olympics will serve an important purpose: to demonstrate that China is not ready to be an internationally respected leader of any global interest. Hell, they might even outdo the Bush administration.

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But then again, Japanese right-wing extremists have been behaving badly themselves:

At a special preview of “Yasukuni” demanded by rightwing groups, some of the 150 members criticized the controversial, but award-winning, documentary about the so-named Tokyo war shrine and even threatened to sue the state for subsidizing part of its production. Rightwing groups arranged the preview so their members could have an opportunity to watch the film before passing judgment on it. Lawmakers demanded and got an earlier preview. …

One in the audience suggested he and his like-minded colleagues should sue the agency and the state, demanding the return of the film’s subsidy. Another said the movie should not be shown in Japan because it would give the impression that the war Japan waged was an act of aggression. “This is no good,” he said. “I absolutely do not want this movie to be screened.”

Mitsuhiro Kimura, one of the preview’s organizers and the president of Issui-kai, a rightist group, “I would like to produce a pro-Yasukuni movie with about ¥15 million” in agency subsidies.

My first reaction is, “right-wing extremists can force the government to give them a special screening so they can trash the film?” How did that happen? Lawmakers getting a screening I can understand, but the extremists? What official say do they have in this?

Of course, the rightists are extremely vocal about such things, and people on the other side tend to shut up, especially when the rightists threaten them with loud, hostile protests and even violence. These extremists have something of a hold over social commentary in Japan, often getting their message out in a louder and more aggressive fashion–and they are not shy about intimidating others.

An interesting contrast would be the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit of the Enola Gay fuselage. When text for the exhibit was released and it seemed to show sympathy for the Japanese victims of the bomb, American veterans and right-wing groups protested that the text was an “attack on America’s conduct in the war,” and successfully got the Smithsonian to tone down the message to a minimalist description. Historians then objected right back–but they did not have the clout that the right-wingers did. Conservatives controlled Congress at the time, and started threatening the Smithsonian with budget cuts and investigations. Intimidation of a different sort, but still intimidation.

And, oh yes–Japan protested as well, as they did with a similar Enola Gay exhibit in 2003. Hmm. Someone want to remind them of this in light of the Yasukuni protest?

It’s not as if Japanese cinema doesn’t get its share of right-wing sops; from heavily anti-American documentaries on the Tokyo Tribunals to a right-wing revisionist love letter for Hideki Tojo, Japanese cinema has without doubt leaned toward right-wingers’ view of history. Even Akira Kurosawa, long neglected by Japanese viewers, enjoyed a popular comeback when he produced a film about Nagasaki which featured Richard Gere delivering a heartfelt apology from America to Japan.

But films which portray the other side of things tend to get this kind of reception in Japan. Not to say that this doesn’t happen elsewhere, but at least in debates on such subjects in the U.S., both sides tend to get heard. Right now, there is some doubt that this movie on Yasukuni will even see the light of a public film projector.

While some polls have Obama keeping even with or even gaining a little on Clinton after the ABC “debate,” many polls–especially Gallup’s tracking poll–show Obama losing ground. Little wonder, considering how the debate seemed designed to tear Obama apart and allow Hillary to pile on and look better at the same time.

Some might disagree that the ABC fiasco was “designed” to do that, but look at some of the evidence that is piling up. Aside from the fact that George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton official, literally took notes from right-winger Sean Hannity on how to smear Obama with irrelevancies, there is now proof that ABC actually sought out an anti-Obama Pennsylvanian woman who has been featured before in the press as being obsessed with Obama’s lack of flag lapel pins.

Clinton is following this up with a new strategy: despite Obama’s classy “you just gotta brush these things off” reaction to the attacks, Clinton is now labeling Obama as a “whiner.” As if somehow, she and her media allies can ruthlessly smear Obama, and if he rebuts–which is universally agreed upon as a necessary response to such attacks (and which Clinton has done before herself)–then he’s a “whiner.”

But since rebutting is whining in Clinton’s book, then surely she will have no reaction to yet another witness to Clinton’s disrespectful 1995 remarks about voters. Theda Skocpol was there when Hillary reportedly told Bill to screw the voters (insert your own Bill Clinton joke here), and while she can’t confirm or deny any exact words, she did get this directly from the notes she took that day:

… there was extensive, hard-nosed discussion about why masses of voters did not support Clinton or trust government or base their choices on economic as opposed to what people saw as peripheral life-style concerns. Hillary Clinton was among the most cold-blooded analysts in attendance. She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices — usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is.

In other words, she cares.

Insipid, shoddy, despicable, ridiculous, tawdry, astonishingly miserable, embarrassing, inane, frivolous, historically poor quality, stupid, disgusting, a really, really horrible freak show, a trainwreck, an unmitigated travesty, and the biggest sham I’ve ever seen. These are all descriptions taken from various blogs and editorials about the “debate” tonight, where former Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos took notes from Sean Hannity on how to smear Obama, and Charlie Gibson acted even worse. The first half hour was nothing but Obama-bashing, talking about lapel pins, the Weathermen, “Bittergate,” and Wright–with Hillary piling on. The “mediators” were even booed by the audience at the end. Even arch-conservative Jonah Goldberg called it “nothing but Republican water-carrying,” and many expressed the belief that John McCain was the big winner of the debate.

Like Kevin Drum, I am thankful I was not able to watch it live. The problem: from what I have heard of the freak show, it was a microcosm of “media” coverage of the Democratic race: primarily a long streak of candidate-bashing, manufacturing fake “controversies” so as to boost ratings and prolong the “exciting horse race” which is this disaster of a primary season. The “press” is thoroughly and apparently unashamedly invested in turning this into festival of scandal, while not reporting on trivial stuff like the Vice President, Secretary of State, and Attorney General gathering in secret to discuss how often a child’s testicles may be crushed as they quietly repeal the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

Of course, this may all just be the infamous “Liberal Media™” at work….

Some are suggesting that this will backlash and Obama will receive a surge of donations and maybe even a boost in Pennsylvania (I’m considering donating myself, if for no other reason than to make a statement). I am hoping for a bigger backlash against the so-called “journalists” and the noxious, steaming river of manure they are calling “news” these days. Some of this is expressed in this roundup by The Moderate Voice.

Update: Obama wraps it up:

Hillary has been making a huge deal about Obama calling working-class Americans “bitter.” The media, wanting to prolong the primary battle, has accommodated her, making a “huge political firestorm” out of it for her.

Now we learn that in 1995, Hillary said of the same people: “Screw ’em.” That’s a verbatim quote:

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

“Screw ’em,” she told her husband. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.”

Let’s see if this becomes an issue the media picks up on. Any wagers?

You might want to read this article in The Politico by Joel Kotkin about the emerging class war in the United States, and how it will replace the culture war:

Increasing numbers of Americans find it ever more problematic to maintain a “middle class” lifestyle. The current mortgage crisis, which has eroded the value of the most valuable asset of millions of Americans, only exacerbates these concerns. In such a situation, it’s hard to see how micro fractures among ethnic and gender identities will continue to be the defining issues of our politics as they were during the last half of the 20th century.

… [E]conomic issues seem certain to become more important in the next decade. This is a matter for not only older Americans: As the large millennial generation ages, it could well face an increasingly difficult economic climate. In the past, a college education alone has been the sure ticket to upward mobility; in this century, the newest research shows that it no longer guarantees any such thing. Wages for recent college graduates, particularly males, have been dropping since 2000, even as less-educated workers, at least in some places, have done better.

I have trouble believing that this faux-Bruce-Springsteen video is not a hoax, a really bad joke meant to take a jab at Microsoft:

Engadget, however, claims it’s for real–a Microsoft-made video promotion for Vista SP1. Even if it was intentionally made for camp value, it is still cringe-inducing.

The antidote:

Meanwhile, the actual Bruce Sprinsteen, the one with ultimate blue-collar image, has endorsed Obama (“Hi, I’m a Mac” to McCain’s “And I’m a PC”):

LIke most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams From My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.

Let’s see if that doesn’t carry any weight in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

This on McCain being reported from a new poll:

McCain was seen as a better steward of the economy than either Democrat despite their repeated criticism of his economic credentials. He led Obama by 3 points and Clinton by 5 points on the question of who would best manage the economy.

This despite McCain showing no reason to believe he would be a good steward of the economy, and in fact demonstrating that he would not be. The only thing he might do differently is to not favor pork as much, but with Democrats in control of Congress, he would do that anyway–and would still likely favor his own party’s pork in any case. But McCain wishes not only to extend Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, but to add his own to the pile, while allowing the middle class to lose their homes while he bailed out those who foreclose on them.

So why is McCain seen as a better steward? For no better reason than he is a Republican, and Republicans–completely contrary to all evidence–are still considered better on the economy. Yet another baseless favor McCain will enjoy, like being seen as stronger on campaign finance reform despite having violated federal laws on campaign finance and surrounded himself with lobbyists, or like he is considered strong on defense and foreign policy despite having authored the failed surge, promised an endless war in Iraq and a new costly war in Iran, and so much more to his detriment. He is seen as a centrist maverick when he is really a strong conservative who readily toadies to the most extreme elements of his party. And so forth and so on.

Kevin Drum put it succinctly and well:

The results are simple: Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There’s just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations.

Democratic presidents generate more jobs–even the worst Democrat in the past century has outperformed the best Republican. Deficits fall under Democrats, and skyrocket under Republicans. The rich get just as rich under both, but while the middle class and the poor suffer under Republicans, they do very well under Democrats. While Democrats keep spending down to a dull roar, Republicans spend like there’s no tomorrow; while Democrats responsibly try to find ways to pay for what they spend, Republicans carelessly pile up massive debts which cripple the economy, costing us $469 billion this year alone just to pay interest [OMB figures, Excel file] on our Republican-generated debt. Without the interest payments on the Reagan-Bush-Bush deficits alone, we would have a balanced budget right now.

The facts are clear for anyone to see: elect a Democrat, and your income will go up, jobs will increase, the deficit will fall, the economy will do better. Elect a Republican, the reverse will happen. And yet, millions of Americans continue to vote against their own financial interests based on nothing more than a fairy tale, a PR sham job.

How could anyone resist this sales pitch?

This is the outside of a used motorcycle shop in Ikebukuro.

Actually, it refers to prices they offer to buy bikes, so in fact, it makes sense. But unless you know what the shop does, the sign looks like a huge mistake.

In Akita Prefecture, Japan, there is a measure coming before the legislature to ban door-to-door sales to minors and the elderly. Naturally, several categories of businesses (financial, insurance, and retail, according to the report–I’m surprised that newspapers were not mentioned here, as they do tons of door-to-door sales) are whining, saying that this will ruin their businesses. All I have to say is, if these businesses cannot function without conning people of limited capacity into buying their product, then they deserve to fail. Me, I’m waiting for them to go all the way and give “no solicitors” signs the force of law. Oh, wait, they’re doing that too!

The ordinance will also ban door-to-door sales of financial products in which the principal is not guaranteed, including investment trusts, stocks and variable pension insurance, for all people.

Under a proposed registration system, sales people will be banned from visiting homes of consumers who have registered with the prefectural government as people who do not want sales staff to visit. The registered consumers can also display a sign at their homes to keep away sales people.

Yayy! I wonder what real estate prices are like in Akita? Better yet, how about Tokyo legislators getting off their butts? Next: start punishing people who fill your mailbox with ads. Meanwhile, they can similarly outlaw NHK collectors, now that the politicians are calling for NHK to drop all pretenses and become an official propaganda arm for the ruling party. Yeah, I’d love to be forced to fund that, thanks.

(Hat tip to f*cked gaijin)

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“Liberal” (turncoat) Joe Lieberman wonders aloud (on Fox Noise) if Obama is a Marxist. Um, yeah, right.

Bonus: Andrew Sullivan points out that in 2006, Lieberman loved Obama, inviting Obama to speak for him in Connecticut. Obama held no different stands then relative to now, so apparently Lieberman loves Marxists. Er, potential Marxists.

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John McCain, playing up his imprisonment and torture on the campaign trail, also had this to say:

We cannot ever, in my view, torture any American, that includes waterboarding.

Apparently, everyone else in the world is fair game.

Obama, meanwhile, says this:

We have to be clear and unequivocal. We do not torture, period. … Our government does not torture. That should be our position. That will be my position as president. That includes, by the way, renditions. We don’t farm out torture. We don’t subcontract torture.

I’m glad that McCain’s impressive foreign relations credentials have not turned him into a wishy-washy hypocrite.

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Wow. They’re calling it “Bittergate.” Also a “huge political firestorm.” Certainly, Obama suggesting that Pennsylvanians are bitter is not nearly as newsworthy as John McCain violating campaign finance laws that carry a five-year prison sentence, or revelations that the Bush administration approved the crushing of children’s testicles at the highest levels. Yeah, calling Pennsylvanians “bitter” was way out of line, and I can easily see such a huge gaffe wiping those other stories clear off the media’s radar altogether.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, they tend to agree with Obama:

As a native-born, small-town Pennsylvanian, a son of native-born, small-town Pennsylvania parents – one from the coal region, one from Lancaster County – let me assure you that the so-called offensive, condescending things Barack Obama said about the people I come from are basically right on target.

“Bitter” perhaps best describes my late mother, an angry Irish Catholic who absolutely clung to her religion.

Dad, also a journalist, wasn’t really bitter as far as I know, but he sure liked to hunt.

So, despite carping from Hillary Clinton and annoying yapping from her surrogates (really, it’s like turning on the lights at night in a puppy farm), I take no offense.

What’s offensive to me is suggesting that small-town, working-class, gun-toting and/or religious Pennsylvanians are somehow injured by a politician’s words.

Are you kidding me?

Indeed.

Here’s a hypothetical I’d like to ask those in the audience who are pro-gun: if a weapon were developed that would be an effective stun weapon, in essence knocking someone unconscious but not killing them, and therefore would be safer in the home for children and could not be used easily for suicides, especially if such a weapon could more reliably subdue an intruder than a traditional firearm, would you be willing to replace your gun with such a weapon? And if not, why not?

Same for hunting: let’s say there was a weapon which could act like a rifle, but instead of shooting a bullet, it would instead shoot a small cloud of paralyzing darts, like a flechette gun. It would instantly drop an animal unconscious, and the hunter could either (a) count it as a “kill,” and move on to let the animal recover, or (b) walk up to the animal and slaughter it while unconscious. Would you be willing to give up a hunting rifle in exchange for such a weapon? Again, if not, why not?

The point being to ascertain, of course, if it is actually home/self defense and hunting which are the issues, or whether the issue is wider than that.

There has been a lot of talk about how the sound bites will hurt Obama, from the endless loop in the media about Wright and “God Damn America,” to Obama’s own words about Americans being bitter and taking refuge in guns and god. Somehow I never thought that these things would hurt Obama in the long run, but it was hard for me to put my finger on exactly why.

Having just watched Obama in the “Compassion Forum” on CNN, it hit me as to why Obama will survive these attacks against him: eventually people who hear these sound bites will hear Obama speak more at length, and that will burn away all the damage done by these attacks.

What it comes down to is this: the real Obama is not compatible with the version of Obama portrayed in these sound bites. They cannot be reconciled. McCain and Clinton can fall from their own actions and words because they are applicable. We hear McCain saying we could be in Iraq for 100 years, and it is believable. Despite his words and past actions on campaign finance, the fact that he is neck-deep in lobbyists and has violated campaign finance law can only hurt him more. We see Hillary and the lengths she will go to for her own sake at the expense of others, and it will stick.

But what the sound bites try to do to Obama is to make him out to be the kind of person which is contradicted by his manner and speech when you see him in action. The “bitter” comment idea is to try to make him out to be an elitist who sees the voters as hicks and rednecks–but listen to him at the compassion forum and that impression is so far from what you can clearly see him to be, it is impossible to maintain the idea that the sound bites were somehow accurate. The comments of Wright may be one thing, but you listen to Obama for more than a few minutes and you can clearly see that Wright’s speech is light-years from where Obama is.

An attack against an individual is only as effective as it is believable after having seen and heard the candidate yourself. Kerry was stodgy enough that you could maybe buy into the claims against him; Gore, with his debate sighs and wooden manner, was believable in the role of prevaricator. In contrast, Reagan didn’t seem like a liar or a front, which contributed to his “teflon” status. In each of these cases, the public image contradicted the reality, but the image stuck because people could witness the politicians and believe the images applied.

The Obama that people have seen and eventually will see simply is not consistent with the elitist, condescending, “Muslim” foreign snob his opponents have been trying to paint him as. Were they to try to paint him a slick huckster, that might possibly fit the image–“oh, he talks sweet, but he doesn’t mean any of it” could possibly sell to some people. But that’s not what is being sold. If you want to lie about someone and make people believe a good person is really bad, or that a bad person is really good, you have to come up with a lie that will not melt away as soon as people see and hear the person.

A few days ago, Obama got into trouble for making this comment about what people in Pennsylvania and the midwest do when they feel abandoned by politicians in Washington:

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

The criticism of this would have to be a bit nuanced, and it is: Clinton was more roundabout, and criticized Obama for saying that Americans are “bitter” when she says they’re not; McCain criticized Obama for being “elitist” and “condescending,” which is closer to the point. What they want to say but can’t directly is that Obama’s statement sounded like he was calling folks in that region rednecks who are all about god and guns, who are protectionist and don’t like immigrants. To say that directly about Obama’s remarks would be a bit too much, as it would provoke closer analysis of what he said and a more clear defense of it. Instead, they dance around it so that just the quick clip out of context and no analysis gets played again and again, allowing people to make the inference themselves.

Obama’s comment was indeed pretty sloppy, and did not sound good at all; in a follow-up, he expressed himself much better:

So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on.

This is not a politician “clarifying” themselves by essentially completely remaking what they said, or just claiming they were “misunderstood” and leaving it at that. When you look at his original statement, the sense of what he said was fully there–it was simply said in a truncated way, as if Obama had the idea in his head, but used a shorter version that came out sounding wrong; taken out of context and not considered fully, it sounds the way his opponents want people to think it sounds.

The truth is, Obama’s statement is 100% true: people were disgusted by not having a good choice to vote for, so instead they voted on negatives, issues ginned up to play on their fears, and that’s how Republicans won those elections. Obama is right, that is exactly what happened.

For those of you who prefer to read comments in fuller context, here are wider transcripts containing the above quotes (highlighted in bold); the first:

So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people are most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre…they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today – kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.

Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What is the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is so we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — to close tax loopholes, uh you know uh roll back the tax cuts for the top 1%, Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to uh middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide healthcare for every American.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.

And the second, where he clarifies, explains, and responds to McCain and Clinton:

When I go around and I talk to people there is frustration and there is anger and there is bitterness. And what’s worse is when people are expressing their anger then politicians try to say what are you angry about? This just happened – I want to make a point here today.

I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser and somebody asked how’re you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What’s going on there? We hear that’s its hard for some working class people to get behind your campaign. I said, “Well look, they’re frustrated and for good reason. Because for the last 25 years they’ve seen jobs shipped overseas. They’ve seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare.

And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we’re going to make your community better. We’re going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they’re bitter. Of course they’re frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement– so, here’s what rich. Senator Clinton says ‘No, I don’t think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack’s being condescending.’ John McCain says, ‘Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he’s obviously out of touch with people.’

Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain—it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he’s saying I’m out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I’m out of touch? No, I’m in touch. I know exactly what’s going on. I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania. I know what’s going on in Indiana. I know what’s going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They’re angry and they’re frustrated and they’re bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.

Followup: Josh Marshall posted this video of Obama in 2004 giving nearly the identical message, again put in less-twistable words:

For those of you who have not been following the story in P.Z. Myer’s blog Pharyngula, there is a “documentary” out called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed which is essentially a brazenly slanted and strongly dishonest “Intelligent Design” propaganda film, hosted by one of the “theory’s” most prominent proponents, Ben Stein. From the very start, the entire project was a sham. Contacting various scientists and others who are proponents of evolution, an organization calling itself “Rampart Films” asked them if they would like to be interviewed for a film titled Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion–a very reasonable-sounding title. A search on the organization’s web site at the time would have brought forth this blurb:

Crossroads – The Intersection of Science and Religion:

It’s been the central question of humanity throughout the ages: How in the world did we get here? In 1859 Charles Darwin provided the answer in his landmark book, “The Origin of Species.” In the century and a half since, biologists, geologists, physicists, astronomers and philosophers have contributed a vast amount of research and data in support of Darwin’s idea. And yet, millions of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other people of faith believe in a literal interpretation that humans were crafted by the hand of God. This conflict between science and religion has unleashed passions in school board meetings, courtrooms, and town halls across America and beyond.

Indeed, this sounds like a very reasonable presentation of the issue in a fair, unbiased way. The scientists agreed to be interviewed. However, once the interviews were procured, the name of the production company was switched, and the title of the movie and its summary changed to:

Ben Stein, in the new film EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed; His heroic and, at times, shocking journey confronting the world’s top scientists, educators and philosophers, regarding the persecution of the many by an elite few. Ben travels the world on his quest, and learns an awe-inspiring truth…that bewilders him, then angers him…and then spurs him to action! Ben realizes that he has been “Expelled,” and that educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the “crime” of merely believing that there might be evidence of “design” in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance. To which Ben Says: “Enough!” And then gets busy. NOBODY messes with Ben.

A slight change in tone, one should admit. When Myers and others’ interviews were put into the film, they were presented not only out of context, but in a completely new one: their filmed answers (shot in a style as if they had to be filmed with a hidden camera) were intercut with footage of goose-stepping Nazi storm troopers. You can guess where things went from there.

Basically, the film does what ID’ers generally do: present no actual evidence for their own argument (not possible, because there is none), but instead attempt to expose the “fallacies” in evolutionary theory (all such claims are demonstrably false) whilst trying to cast evolution and “Darwinists” (are the filmmakers “Yahwehists”?) as responsible for every reprehensible person, organization, and event in history.

A recent development is the lengthy review by Scientific American which, predictably, rips the filmmakers a new hole in their space-time continuum. A short excerpt:

Like the decision to call evolution Darwinism, the omission of science from Expelled was a deliberate choice. In fact, it was crucial to the film’s strategy. Because they know Americans revere freedom of speech and fairness, the producers cast the conflict between evolution and ID as purely a struggle between worldviews—a difference of opinions, a battle of ideologies—in which one side is censoring the other. They know that the public will instinctively want to defend the underdog, especially when that opinion aligns with the religious beliefs many of them already share.

It is a terrific strategy, but with one caveat: that airy skirmish of opinions must never, ever touch the ground of solid evidence. Because if it does, if viewers are ever allowed to notice that evolution is supported by mountains of tangible, peer-reviewed evidence gathered by generations of scientists, whereas ID has little more than a smattering of vanity-press pamphlets from a handful of cranks… the bubble pops.

Expelled is all about how science should not reject people with ID “theories.” The filmmakers must therefore stop you from ever asking, Why?—because even children understand that in science, two ideas are not equally good if one of them is wrong. Some of the ideas fluffing up ID are demonstrably wrong; the rest are often described as “not even wrong” because they are so untestable or irreconcilable with the rest of science.

It was hard to choose just that one snippet because the entire review is excellent, going to great lengths to show how completely full of BS the film and its creators are, with Scientific American using as much evidence to prove their point as the filmmakers do not use to not prop up their own.

For more on the general subject, check out the Index to Creationist Claims, which exhaustively shoots down every creationist and ID myth and lie; the PBS documentary Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (the entire documentary is viewable online, and it is excellent); my discussion of the reactions to that documentary; the site Expelled: Exposed, which covers reviews and other coverage of the “documentary”; and (again) P.Z. Myers’ blog, Pharyngula.

You know how Bush (along with his supporters) likes to say that history will judge him? (No doubt in an attempt to delay judgment till well after he’s dead.) Well, the early verdict is in, and it doesn’t look too good for him. 109 noted historians, among them Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winners, were asked to judge Bush, and fully 61% call him the “worst in the nation’s history.”

However, 35% of the respondents had a more favorable impression, saying that he ranked only somewhere among the worst ten presidents (though a few of those said that only James Buchanan saved Bush from coming in dead last). Others in that 35% credited their generosity to a hesitancy to decide too soon: “It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush’s presidency is the worst ever,” said one historian; “though it certainly has a shot to take the title. Without a doubt, it is among the worst.”

In fact, only 4% of the respondents ranked Bush among the 2nd-to-30th group, and half of them–two historians–dared call Bush’s tenure a success.“

It’s not as if these people did not explain their reasoning, either:

”No individual president can compare to the second Bush,“ wrote one. ”Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.“

”With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,“ said another historian. ”When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.“

One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: ”the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.“ Another classified Bush as ”an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .“ Still another remarked that Bush’s ”denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.“

”It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,“ concluded one respondent. ”His domestic policies,“ another noted, ”have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.“

”George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,“ wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. ”Bush does only two things well,“ said one of the most distinguished historians. ”He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.“

And there’s more. But I think that covers the high points.