More Primary Time-Biding Digressions

Today is yet another primary day, as Oregon and Kentucky hit the polls and Democrats will choose between Hillary Clinton - who is expected to win Kentucky handily - and Barack Obama - who is expected to take Oregon by a goodly margin. Thereby not changing a thing in the current delegate situation and not resolving the issue of who will be the Democratic nominee against John McCain.

As it stands right now while voters in those two states vote, Obama is 110 delegates away from victory, while Clinton needs another 306 delegates. Today’s vote will diminish those “still-to-go” figures, but the ratio will remain essentially the same. And since Clinton still hasn’t figured out that America doesn’t believe it “owes” her the top job, she shows no signs of giving up on her desperate clinging to irrational hope that she can blackmail her way to the nomination via superdelegate coup d’etat. By now, of course, most Democrats are sick of the whole mess, as is just about everybody else in this wacky primary season that has lasted way, way too long.

So… what’s going on in the real world these days?

First, here’s a great photo of Myrtle Strong Enemy, a 101-year old Crow Indian (and oldest living Crow), waiting for Obama to speak in Crow Agency, Montana on Monday. When Obama was officially adopted into the Crow Nation. He was given the Crow name “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land,” which seems quite fitting. He is also the first presidential candidate ever who has visited the Crow reservation.

Another subject of interest is the 8 million Americans targeted for round-up in case of a declared National Emergency. You may ask, how can I make sure I get on that list? It’s really very easy. There’s this computer software algorithm that does all the hard work, making thinking human beings completely unnecessary to the project of designating enemies of the state. It makes judgments about targets’ behavior by tracking their associations via “social network analysis” and uses artificial intelligence tools.

The data collected includes information from banks, credit card companies and credit agencies, private data like ISPs, landline and cell phone records, your travel record, things you purchase, how much cash you withdraw from the ATM, etc. All that “domestic spying” data they say they don’t need a warrant to collect, which is collected anyway and fed into the “Main Core” database for analysis. Bragging rights all around!

Last but not least (for today), there’s the OOOH, SCARY statistic that 16% of high school science teachers neglect evolution or teach unapproved notions such as Creationism or Intelligent Design. Now, that might not be all that scary to people who recognize that public schools are such failures generally that more than 16% of American students don’t even attend at all (home schoolers plus the ~60% dropout rate in entire regions of the country), but there’s a strong scientific lobby that likes to play Chicken Little on the very idea that people are still allowed to believe things the lobby disapproves of in the US of A in the 21st century. Go figure.

At any rate, those are three items of interest and possible discussion value over dinner tonight as we all await the results of the primaries we already know the results of. Do try to avoid the temptation to throw up hands and start living in the real world. It’s an election year - we’ll have none of that! [/snark]

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Filed under Barack Obama, Party Primaries, Campaigns, Humor, Hillary Clinton, Presidential Candidates |