Speaking of people that want to negotiate, which apparently means “appease” Hamas it’s good to see John McCain used to be one.

But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government, sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them; one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

Now I sure people on the left will try to make a big deal about this. Sure he used to say the same thing he’s now criticizing Obama for saying.

The way I see it this is his way of showing how Presidential he is. Seriously it took Bush a few years of being in office before he started contradicting all the relatively smart stuff he said in the past. McCain is way ahead of the curve Bush set for being transparently full of shit.

On Chris Matthews’ Hardball just now Radio Host Kevin James couldn’t tell Matthews what Neville Chamberlain actually did wrong at Munich. It’s pretty surreal that someone would go on television to accuse Barack Obama of being like Neville Chamberlain without actually knowing what is Neville Chamberlain did.

All thing considered it’s pretty amusing. That said I’ve got to say as glad as I am that Chris Matthews called him out, it would be more preferable that Chris Matthews not put idiots on his television show in the first place.
UPDATE Here’s the video

This is from the Sports Illustrated Major League Baseball rankings for the Washington Nationals .

There’s a lot wrong with the Nationals. Certainly more than we have the space, or the inclination, to get into this far down in the PRs. But one guy you can’t blame is lefty starter Odalis Perez (0-3, 3.43), who has been better than those numbers indicate.

The Nationals are pretty terrible right now. Odalis Perez is paid the league minimum, and his success pretty obviously a fluke. It really says something about they’re talent level when they’re this bad, despite getting such good production from a player like Perez.

I thought this was a really strong opinion piece of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinian refugees who have lived away from their homes for 60 years have established themselves elsewhere. Few have a sincere desire to live in today’s Israel. Respected Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki found in 2003 that only 10 percent of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip were willing to move to the areas that today constitute Israel.

What Palestinians want is for Israel to admit its historic and moral role in creating the refugee problem and its moral responsibility to them. Such an admission by a courageous Israeli leader would satisfy, and neutralize, many Palestinians who hold their keys and demand the literal right of return. As part of a bilateral agreement, surely Israel would allow divided Palestinian families to reunite with relatives who stayed in what became Israel after 1948.

I don’t have a lot to add, but I did always think that the oft asserted position that Palestinian right of return was somehow an illegitimate was preposterous. I mean there are some people that can show you the keys to their houses they were forced to abandon, what’s illegitimate about wanting to return? The flip side is that right of return, while being a legitimate desire, is largely politically unrealistic and not particularly important to everyday Palestinians.

The Wall Street Journal thought this was Quotable

Obama has run a brilliant campaign. He has won over many white voters by making them proud to vote for a supremely educated and capable man who, at his best, makes race a secondary concern. It is not inconsistent, unfair or unsavory to point out, at the same time, that Obama has been growing weaker over the months in his ability to win all but black voters. Nor am I necessarily suggesting that white voters are drifting from him because of his race – as opposed to judgments about the content of his character or candidacy. This is about facing facts. And history will reflect poorly on Democrats if they believe it is virtuous to ignore race in the name of nominating the first black candidate for the White House – even if it means giving the Republicans a better chance to once again walk away with the big prize of the presidency.
-Juan Williams Political Analyst for NPR and Fox News

I’d say this is about half correct. Juan Williams is wrong to suggest that Obama’s support among white has eroded. I think we’re seeing more clearly what his appeal to white voters is, then was clear earlier. Most importantly, Juan Williams is right to suggest that Democrats would be wrong to ignore the issue of his appeal to white voters.

However, I’m not sure what they’re supposed to do about it. Start running ads with pictures Obama’s white mother? Teach Barack how to bowl better? Try to convince people he loves NASCAR racing?

Obama’s strategy on race had been to transcend race. Then came half a million little racially charged swipes from the Clinton campaign and Rev. Wright and now the big thing is suggesting that Obama needs to do something different about appealing to whites.

The following things are likely to happen, 1) Hillary Clinton will endorse Barack Obama and give a speech at the convention enthusiastically calling for him to be elected, and 2) Barack Obama will choose a white running. Other then that, what Barack supposed to do?

If you’ve got ideas I’d like to hear them, but right now I’d say his best bet to continue trying to transcend the issue of race.

A few months ago I wrote a post about Washington Nationals player Elijah Dukes and accusations of domestic violence against his wife. Completely separately I also wrote and posted a couple jokes about Washington DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, (that had nothing to do with his family or wife).

The result of all this is that if you google “Adrian Fenty wife beating”, and yes people do search this, my blog comes up as the first item

Check it out

Same thing with “is adrian fenty and his wife separated”

This sucks. I knew you could do this kind of stuff but I didn’t know having two unrelated posts on a blog you could create search result like that.

Last Saturday I read this Washington Post editorial about Klingle Road

MAYOR ADRIAN M. Fenty (D) has more than proved his mettle in taking on such entrenched interests as the District school system and the city’s cabbies. But even he may be no match for the few but powerful opponents of reopening Klingle Road. The setback to his plans to restore and reopen the road is sad testament to how the best interests of the public can be trampled by the wants of a self-interested minority.

The latest chapter of the 17-year saga of Klingle Road came on April 30 when a D.C. Council committee voted to stop the mayor from using $2 million to begin work on the project. For some 100 years, this Northwest Washington road was a key crosstown connector across Rock Creek Park before flooding led to part of it being closed in 1991. Lack of money to fix the road allowed residents of surrounding neighborhoods to use it as a recreation area, even though no decision was ever made to abandon its use as a road.

I grew up about a mile and half away from Klingle road and never once used it for “recreation”, so naturally I always figured turning back into a road was the right idea. According to these guys that makes me a, “roadie”.

I understand why the neighborhood would rather keep their little playground, no cars means you have a really nice tranquil spot. But it’s not a spot that even people that live really close can get any utility out of. Further it seems absurd to suggest it won’t help ease traffic, since it not like the decision to repair Klingle road will cause more construction or something.

Generally speaking running for President costs a lot of money right? In fact two months ago I would have assumed that running president always cost more then not running president. However

Clinton loaned her struggling campaign $11 million in recent months. A little-known provision of a 2002 campaign- finance law cosponsored by McCain prevents candidates who drop out of the race from raising money after the nominating conventions to repay themselves for personal loans.

I think we may be seeing the first ever politician to choose to stay in the race because they can’t afford to quit.

You’d have to see the books for the Hillary Clinton campaign to confirm it, but it seems really possible that their goal is to run the campaign on the cheap for the next few weeks, while getting every last drop of found raising dough out of their donors. How much money could buying television and radio ads in West Virginia and Kentucky really cost? If they can raise even half the money they’ve been raising (and quietly cost back on personnel and other costs) then you’d think she could make a fair bit of the 11 million dollars she loaned the campaign.

If you’re big reader of the blogs, then you might be aware of this blog that blogger and UC Berkley Professor Brad Delong set up to “discuss” his UC Berkley colleague John Yoo and the fact that Yoo wrote memos justifying torturing people for the Bush administration.

Question: How many professors in the history of blogosphere have set up blogs dedicated to getting another professor at their school fired?

People like to complain that blogs have no impact on anything, but they are one of the few forces that has successfully shown the ability to get universities to take action against their professors. Sadly I don’t think John Yoo is going to get fired, short of actually getting charged with war crimes by an American Court.

Here is an excerpt from an article about Barack Obama picking up a few more super delegates. Via the AP

The developments left the former first lady with 272.5 superdelegates, to 271 for Obama. Little more than four months ago, on the eve of the primary season, she held a lead of 169-63.

Superdelegates are party leaders who attend the convention delegates by virtue of their positions, and are not selected in primaries and caucuses.

In an interview with National Public Radio, former candidate John Edwards said Clinton has made a compelling case for her candidacy, but “I think it’s very hard for her now to make a compelling case for the math. I mean, I think that’s the reality of what she’s faced with. She knows that. … It’s just very hard to see how the math works.”

These numbers are a little different then what’s on Daily Kos. Here’s something that the AP can do to help us understand the math of the delegate allocation process. Explain the half delegate situation.

I did some “research” (asked somebody) and the answer I got is that Guam divides they’re delegates in half and sends twice as many delegates as actually have. Then I did some actual research and found that’s not correct, it’s actually the Democrats Aboard that have subjected us to the half delegates.

I’ve read at least a dozen articles and blog posts about the delegate count and I’ve never heard this explained. Anyway if you didn’t know about the Democrats Aboard delegates situation, then there you go. If you did you’re a really smart person, and I’m sure you’ll feel no need make an annoying comment about my ignorance on this pressing matter.

As of April 21 there were two half delegates uncommitted, but I’m pretty sure it’s down to just one half delegate floating around. I wonder if the half super delegate gets half as many phones calls from the Obama and Clinton camps as the real super delegates?

My grandmother’s mothers day present from the family was a new purse, which got me thinking about something.

How many purses does an average American women go through in there life time? I’d figure the average was around 2 per year for each year of the there life, but I’m not really sure if that’s an accurate estimate. My girlfriend thinks that estimate is way too low, but she claims she only gets about 2 a year. I’m sure it varies greatly with some women getting 6 or more a year and others less then one a year.

My Grandmother is around 80 years old, and I’m sure her purse consumption has gone down in the last ten years. Still my calculations suggest she’s probably purchased well over a hundred purses, which seems like a lot of purses.

I thought this was pretty funny. Over heard in Washington DC .

Overheard of the Week

A man and a woman are walking dogs in Logan Circle:

Man: “You look familiar…”
Woman: “I think we are neighbors. 1st and Bates?”
Man: “Yeah, we live on the 1st street side.”
Woman: “Ah, I live near the crackhouse on Bates.”
Man: “Can you be more specific?”
Woman: “The RED crackhouse on Bates.”

Anyway aren’t crack houses so 1980s. I seriously can’t remember the last time anyone brought up crack houses in conversation. Maybe it’s just me. I’ve really lost touch with the crack smoking scene since 4th grade.

It rained a whole lot last night and they interrupted Lost to say there were some weather related warnings for certain area counties . Growing up in Washington DC I always felt it was unlikely I’d have to deal with a natural disaster. I mean you get some occasional flooding in DC, but not much else. We get hit with blizzards, but they’re the same blizzards everyone else on the east coast gets.

So needless to say I was surprised to learn the DC area was hit by a Earthquake a few days ago.

Subscribers to the Arlington Alert email list received a message earlier with the news that some event in Northern Virginia this afternoon registered on the richter scale.

The National Earthquake Information Center, via FEMA Operations, is reporting that Northern VA has experienced rumblings equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 2 to 3. It remains unclear if this was an actual earthquake, or due to another cause. Arlington OEM will continue to monitor.

Did you feel the rumble?

It was such a small earth quake that 1) they thought it might have been underground blasting at a local military base, 2) as near as I can tell it’s only been reported by the DCist website and WTOP.

Here’s an op-ed via the Jubilee Debt Network by Desmond Tutu on Debt cancellation featured in the Baltimore Sun

Debt cancellation a victory for the world

Last month, the House of Representatives showed leadership in the fight against global poverty by passing the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation, which would extend lifesaving debt cancellation to more poor nations around the globe.

Too many of the world’s poor children needlessly starve or go without education because too many impoverished nations - even after the laudable debt relief provided to date - are still funneling scarce resources to multilateral banks instead of paying for needs at home.

The world community has found crushing debt to be akin to a modern-day apartheid, and has responded with debt cancellation. Unjust debt leaves developing nations at the behest of the powerful. Shall we let the children of Africa and Asia die of curable disease, prevent them from going to school and limit their opportunities for meaningful work - all to pay off unjust and illegitimate loans made to their forefathers?

When I think of the crisis of international debt, I think of my African neighbor, Lesotho. Many of Lesotho’s people cannot afford basic nourishment. The AIDS epidemic has plagued the nation, but needed medicine is out of reach for too many.

Saying that if we don’t pass a bill thousands of children will die in Africa, is the kind thing that thing a lot of people in polite society seem to think is an illegitimate argument. Like the debate equivalent of asking if you’ve stopped beating your wife or comparing everything to the Nazis.

I have to say in the when it comes to debt relief, it is in fact true that if Congress passes this bill it will save the lives of many thousands of poor children around the world.

Prestigious film maker and recent commenter, Derek writes in via e-mail with an observation about the Democratic primaries he wanted to get off his chest.

Why is it that everyone for Clinton talks about how she is the stronger candidate because she has won important states? And, that Obama is somehow discredited for winning states that are going to go red. Yet, no one talks about how the counties that she has won are not counties that Democrats can win in the general election. The cities, where Dems are going to win, are overwhelmingly in favor of Obama, which means he has strong support in one of the significant bases of the party. This really pisses me off, there is no way that the rural nobody counties are going to be winnable by her in November. I think that the supposedly pro-Obama media would have picked this up if they were truly biased towards him.

This observation is pretty much right on, and the short answer for why I think this happens is that it’s because he’s black.

Longer answer is that there are always two ways to look at a close race such as the Clinton-Obama race. You will always have one candidate doing better among base Democrats and one candidate doing well among non traditional democrats. This will be hold true for traditional age groups, income groups, and regional patterns; similar people will vote in similar ways.

Subsequently there will always be a question which candidate will do better among the other candidate’s base supporters. I’d even go as far to say it’s almost always going to be a genuinely ambiguous question. Sure you can poll people about who they’ll vote for, but it’s not clear why any Democratic primary voter would ever vote for a Republican. Further Hillary will presumably have stopped trash talking Obama by the time the election comes around. This year has lots of odd voter patterns, Hillary wins in slightly more swing states, but does poorly when independents are allowed to vote. Obama wins red states, but not conservative regions and counties.

In the absence of overwhelming strength in polling, saying which candidate will do better is basically like saying what you see when look a Rorschach ink blot; people see things based on who they are and their own biases. In Obama’s case I think we’re seeing that a lot of people don’t think a black guy could possibly be as strong a candidate as the white wife of a former president. I wouldn’t say it’s racism per se, but that people are more comfortable with Hillary and thus imagine other people would be to.

I imagine many of the people talking down Obama’s electability in the media actually like him personally and would themselves vote for him over Hillary. But when presented with unambiguous evidence about his ability to get elected, they revert to base impulses or gut instincts.

Are they wrong? I think so, but I can’t be sure. My theory is that there are lots of people in America that won’t vote a black guy for President, they’re commonly referred to as Republicans. There are a few additional folks that aren’t going to vote Obama, but I think they’re a smaller group then the new voters and swing voters Obama will bring into the fold.

So it’s no longer cutting edge to say Obama’s the all but certain nominee, but I figured I’d present you with some delegate math on the subject. According to the Associated Press Obama now needs 178.5 more delegates, 217 delegates are to be decided in upcoming election, and 265 super delegates are uncommitted.

Assuming Hillary doesn’t drop out, a conservative estimate of the delegates Obama can expect to win in the remaining states is around 100. That will leave needing 78.5 (and no I don’t know why he need’s 1/2 a delegate or how exactly he got half a delegate in the first place.)

Barack Obama will then need to get only 30% of the remaining super delegates to win the nomination. If any uncommitted super delegates vote according to the delegate lead or the popular vote lead, they’ll be voting for Obama. If they vote according things like how their district or state voted, they’ll be fairly even split among Hillary and Obama.

I’d expect a few more super delegates to come out the wood work in the next few days for Obama, which will only make the percentage needed by Clinton even more absurdly high. So unless Hillary Clinton is going to take the 6 million loan she gave her campaign and start directly bribing delegates, this race is over.

It’s bad enough the right wing expects people to blindly hate and fear Muslims, but they even expect us to be bad at math. Here is the Introduction to, “Ameriabia”. The second article I’ve read in a week discussing why we should be afraid of law abiding Muslims.

Even Americans knowledgeable about Europe’s growing accommodation to the totalitarian ideology known alternatively as Islamism, jihadism or Islamofascism tend smugly to believe the same thing can’t happen here. Think again.

As stupid as the efforts to convince us Europe is being taken over by Muslims are, there are in fact substantial number of Muslims in Europe. By contrast Muslims are a really small minority group in America. In fact they’re not even the majority of recent immigrants. I mean it’s one thing to take the Samuel Huntington route and get all bent out of shape about Mexican immigration into America. There in fact tons of Mexicans and a handful of national politicians of Mexican decent. I mean they had the 4th most viable Democratic Presidential candidate!

Of course I doubt the authors of this piece really expect liberals, moderates, and even conservatives with half a brain cell or no pre-existing bias against Muslims to believe there is some sort threat to America from Muslim culture. Rather this article is aimed at convincing the masses of anti-Muslim bigots to actively join the crusade against a small handful of Muslim-American organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who have committed such offenses as conducting sensitivity training for the FBI. Surely the FBI has no ability to investigate if an organization like CAIR has terrorist ties or not, and needs a Washington Times columnist to clear things up for them.

What if I’m wrong and law abiding Muslims, despite their small numbers and the whole law abiding thing, are really a threat to me and my beloved country? I’m not really worried because we’ll still be able to hire cheap Mexican day laborers to aid us in the struggle.

I noticed yesterday that Liberal blog types Matthew Ygelesias, Robert Farley, and Chris Bowers had all predicted that Hillary Clinton would do better then the pre-election polls suggested in North Carolina, and Indiana. This is odd because I believe all 3 of them wanted Obama to do well, and yet they picked against their bias.

I think Liberals are sort of like the opposite of hometown sports fans that always think their team will do better then people think. It’s worth remembering that just because the Democratic party has been disappointing for the last few decades that there isn’t any reason to think they’ll always be disappoint. The Supreme Court can only steal so many elections, etc, etc….

I read this over at Slate, it’s an article that draws parallels between British Socialism and modern day liberalism. Apparently we are supposed to believe the left has always been held back by cultural elitism. “What Orwell can teach Obama”

One key to the movement’s lack of popularity, Orwell argues, is its supporters. “As with the Christian religion,” he writes, “the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.” Then he wheels out the heavy rhetorical artillery. The typical socialist, according to Orwell, “is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism, or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaler, and often with vegetarian leanings … with a social position he has no intention of forfeiting. … One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England.” (Think “organic food lover,” “militant nonsmoker,” and “environmentalist with a private jet” for a more contemporary list.)

First I really doubt that Orwell was seriously suggesting the socialists were worse then the Tories at understanding the culture of the working classes.

Second Barack Obama, and this is true for almost all Democratic politicians, doesn’t go around America telling people to eat healthy, or stop smoking, or anything like that all. In fact Democratic politicians do shit like take shots, play sports they aren’t familiar with, eat local food and order it prepared the “right” way.

There are Liberals that tell you to eat organic food, or stop smoking, but it’s not really part of the Democratic party’s outreach efforts. Besides if the Democratic party really was crawling with “Nudist, Sandal-Wearering, Sex-maniacs” then I think it would be wildly popular with segments of the population they’ve lost touch with.

The Washington Post is reporting the Government of China and the Dalai Lama are meeting:

BEIJING, May 5 — Chinese officials and representatives of the Dalai Lama resumed talks Sunday for the first time in nearly a year and agreed to hold another round of discussions at a later date, sources told the New China News Agency.

Both sides “expressed their views on relevant matters,” the state-run news service said, and agreed to meet again “at an appropriate time.”

Good news! But ….

China has come under intense pressure from world leaders to resume talks with the Dalai Lama, whom it considers a separatist. But Beijing officials are loath to be seen as weak or caving in to foreign demands.

I swear you could add the second sentence to every article written about human rights in China for the last 20 years. Flip side is that China did in fact resume talks the Dalai Lama, and it would be a bit preposterous to suggest that “Beijing officials love to grant human right concessions so long as they are not seen caving into foreign demands.”

That said if anti-China protests pick up and the talks fall through I’m sure we’ll be subjected to another round of complaining about stupid protesters and spot light grubbing politicians.