Ben-ny Ol-sen! Ben-ny Ol-sen! Ben-ny Ol-sen!

What a great game that was. United destroyed the Galaxy, Beckham was non-existant, Landycakes got a bloody nose and the heart and soul of DC United was back on the field. I must admit I got a little choked up when Moreno handed the captain's armband to Olsen. BTW, I am totally taking credit for starting the Ben-ny Ol-sen chant.

Nice WaPo article here.

Pic courtesy Michael Connor/Washington Times

Oh yeah, and it turns out Becks can't sell a win at DC. HA!

Is there anything he can't sell?

The answer is no, there is nothing he can't sell... as long as he doesn't speak.

For a second there I thought the woman was Cynthia Nixon. Too bad, that would have been awesome.

Beer for Obama

Also, check this out. Apparently, McCain can't even monitor the comments on his own website. And he thinks he should be in charge of the country?

ಟೆಸ್ಟ್

ದಿಸ್ ಈಸ್ ಜಸ್ಟ್ ಅ ಟೆಸ್ಟ್.

So, about Scottie's book

So, former chief liar White House spokesperson, Scottie McClellen has written a book saying that most of what he said as spokesperson was lying propaganda.

Karl Rove's response:

This doesn't sound like Scott, it really doesn't, not the Scott McClellan I've known for a long time. Sounds like a left-wing blogger.

Well, Karl, you are correct it does sound like a left-wing blogger because we were/are FUCKING RIGHT. Sorry for the profanity but sometimes there is just no other way to convey something.

Hey

Hillary, Bill, Terry McAuliffe, Howard Wolfson, Geraldine Ferraro, James Carville, Harold Ickes:


Doesn't look like his daughters are too pleased with you either.

This is fun

Found this Electoral College tracking tool. My most pessimistic prediction is a 270-268 Obama win (need 270 to win). The swing state for me - Virginia. And actually, in this scenario, Obama loses Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

My most optimistic is 362-176 landslide. I think the deep South, with the exception of Florida (can we give it back to the Spanish already) is very much in play. I could see North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana going for Obama. Also, the Mountain West and the Southwest might have some surprises. I think Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado are all in play, with New Mexico almost sure to go blue. Montana, North and South Dakota might be possible with Montana being the most likely.

OMGWTF!

Words almost fail me. The jackassiest president in all past and future history just surpassed his own record for jackassiness.

West Virginia results coming in... zzzzz

I started this post yesterday morning:

So WV voters are going to overwhelmingly endorse Clinton maybe by as much as 40%. So what. By that I mean it really isn't going to make much of a difference in the nominating process. WV has 28 pledged delegates at stake and I think the most likely split is 19-9 for Clinton. And apologies to all the people who aren't racist in WV but 25% of Clinton voters cited race as a deciding factor. The demographics of WV, for the most part, mean that Clinton wins the over 65 crowd, the poor, the under-educated and the bigots, sounds like a Republican's wet dream. Hopefully, Obama is able to win over some of the over 65 crowd, the poor, and under-educated. Screw the bigots.

Wednesday:
First, for any Obama supporters who are feeling nervous or depressed, don't worry read this. The best part is the counter to "no Democrat has won the presidency without winning WV's 5 electoral votes." No Democrat has won the presidency without winning DC...and Obama won DC by 52%.

Which also brings me to this:



Notice where Obama took the lead? That's right, the Potomac Primary. Makes me proud to be a Virginian.

Finally, the real stories from yesterday. MS-01, which proves that no Republican seat is safe (DCCC press release), and NE-Sen, which proves once again that the Netroots have clout.

Something else to chew on: if you're not white and not male and not straight and not Christian, you're probably a Democrat. Minorities are not minorities when they are together and they overwhelmingly identify with the Democratic party and they are stepping into roles of power within the party. The Republicans have the white, male, straight, Christians, we have everyone else. I would speculate that the Republicans won't even have that demographic much longer.

This makes me sad.

Whenever I think of my DC United heroes: Marco Etcheverry,Jaime Moreno, John Harkes, Eddie Pope, Carlos Llamosa I always leave out Ben Olsen. Because, for me, he is a given, the bedrock upon which the tradition of United has been built. So when I hear that he, like Josh Gros, may have to retire prematurely, it makes me sad.

It's all over but the crying

With Obama's win in NC and squeaker loss in IN Clinton is done. Playing around with CNN's delegate tracker there are ways that she could still pull it out. But those scenarios are so unlikely as to be non-existent. Let's start with an across the board number for all the remaining races. If she wins all of them (WV, KY, OR, MT, SD, PR) by 85% she would still need 60% of the remaining unannounced super delegates. That 85% is impossible. Hell, in IN McCain only won 77% running unopposed.

So, let us look at some more realistic results. WV - she will win WV and she'll win it big. I'll give her the best result she has had and say she wins it 65%-35%. For many of the same reasons she will win KY, probably not by as large a margin but for argument's sake we'll say she does. OR looks like an Obama win and it should be a comfortable 5%-10% margin but we'll say he squeaks by with a 52%-48% win. I haven't seen any polls for MT so it is a bit of a mystery, it is more rural which favors Clinton but it is a Mountain West state which favors Obama. The netroots/blogger community has been very influential in the rise of the MT Democratic party which also favors Obama. I'm sure there are other factors but I'm going to give it slightly to Obama, 52%-48%. SD I think is similar to MT with the exception of the netroots/blogger influence. The one poll I've seen from there had Obama 46% Clinton 34% with 10% undecided. We'll give Clinton all of the undecideds and split the mystery missing 10% to give Obama another 52%-48% squeaker. Finally, PR. For reasons I can't figure out Clinton does very well with Hispanics so we'll give her another landslide 65%-35%. Given all that she would still need 78% of the super delegates.

In conclusion, right now Clinton could technically still pull it off. But, here are the absolute numbers. If Obama gets 188 of the remaining 488 delegates it doesn't matter what else happens. I don't think he reaches that number until after the last primaries on June 3. For that reason, I don't think Clinton should concede yet, BUT, I do think she should recognize the inevitable and change her campaign focus from bringing down Obama to unifying the party and attacking McCain. Will she do that? I doubt it but unlike her and her supporters I have HOPE.

Update: Something I noticed about their respective websites. They both have a "Find an Event" tool. Clinton's defaults to within 250 miles of your zip code. Obama's defaults to within 100 miles. Clinton's turns up 4 events, Obama 237 events at the 250 mile distance.

This is how the machines will take over.

The best part is the dude going "Um..."

Brought to you by the always hilarious xkcd

OH NOES!!!

Two of my favorite blogs, Wonkette and Gridskipper have been sold from the Gawker media empire. Hopefully the new owners don't change too much. Although they could change the tags of Gridskipper, apparently DC posts are tagged, Washington, Washington-d.c. and Washington-dc.

Sloths are scary looking

see more crazy cat pics

Squirrels are funny.

see more crazy cat pics

So True. Oh, so true.

From the always awesome xkcd.com. Although my embarrassing songs would probably be random chapters of various audiobooks...or traditional Christmas music from the Shetland Islands... or 80's hair metal power ballads... or Hungarian folk music done with sitars... or minimalist trance techno. I have some odd music.

Lane Myer: Ohhhh. Tentacles. N-T. Big Difference

1PM Must've Been Talking about Jellyfish

Visiting sales rep: Wow, that aquarium is really cool! Is it a lot of work?
Desk owner: Thanks. It's not too hard once it's set up for a while.
Visiting sales rep: I've never seen one with all those things with testicles in it before.
Desk owner: [Silence until sales rep obliviously boards elevator.]

75 Battery Street
San Francisco, California

Overheard by: We didn't buy her product.

via Overheard in the Office, Mar 18, 2008

Obama: I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

I have been avoiding politics lately, mostly because I was fighting off teh killah strep bacteria of pain. So, I've really kinda missed the whole build up of this Obama/Wright (his pastor) brouhaha. But now I'm paying attention and I won't lie, I'm very nervous about Obama's speech. On the one hand I like to see a Democrat who is going to aggressively and substantively attack the skewed narrative of the corporate media. But on the other hand, he is talking about race and racism which is alive and well in America. And unfortunately there is a lot of nuance required to walk that fine line of race discussions in this country. I am worried about the ease with which that nuance can be ignored or twisted. Will the voting public take the time and effort to hear what Obama is saying and embrace it or will they continue to let the corporate media interpret things for them? I fear the latter but hope for the former, because, dayummm, that's one of the best speeches addressing race I've ever heard.

Full text here.

Some commentary:
Firedoglake
Talking Points Memo and TPM Election Central
Daily Kos Open Thread here, here, here and here.

And of course Glenn Greenwald exposes how badly the corporate media is about discussing this kind of issue here.

And Clinton or a Clinton surrogate belittling this speech in 3...2...1...

Update: One thing that went through my mind after seeing this speech was, "Who the hell are Obama's speech writers? Whoever they are they are awesome and deserve a raise." According to one source the name of the speech writer is Barack Obama. Other people are beginning to comment on this although I haven't seen any sources other than Marc Ambinder. Something else, it seems that he has 3 speech writers, the oldest of whom is 30.

Gonna have me a Corona tonight

Mexico failed to qualify for the Olympics. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Reason # 5975 why Clinton is unacceptable

Seriously, Ickes, you're right, those states are never going to switch...UNLESS YOU FIGHT FOR THEM. Dumbass.

clipped from www.nytimes.com “Most of those states haven’t voted Democratic in a presidential since the Johnson landslide over Goldwater in 1964, and we don’t see that changing,” said Harold Ickes, a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton. “They’re great states, but Idaho, Nebraska and the Carolinas are not going to be in the Democratic column in November. He’s winning the Democratic process, but that is virtually irrelevant to the general election.”