Midday open thread

• While Georgia is making an altogether different point, I wonder if the examples she pulls out of McCain forgetting or not remembering comments he makes are a symptom of his 71 years of age. That's some serious memory loss in action.
• In this era of guilt by association, do Facebook "friends" count? Because if so, one of my "friends" (and I approve all requests) will eventually do something bad. And it'll be my fault.
• More evidence that Obama has weathered the Wright sequal: down 49-45 against Clinton in Gallup's daily tracking poll four days ago, Obama is back up 50-45.
• A desperate Clinton launches yet another negative ad.
• Tom Levinson (via John Cole):

  [B]roadly speaking, judging by the issues papers on her website, Clinton has maintained a fairly sophisticated approach to global warming and applied research, with the implication that the policies near and dear to scientists’ hearts — more money, and even more important, respect for the real knowledge developed within by scientific process, would flow under a Clinton presidency. What Clinton provided for public consumption may be boilerplate, but it has been good boilerplate.

  But now, what she said at the Indiana interview this morning changes the game. She said, in effect, if the smart boys and girls don’t agree with her, then to hell with them.

  That is, of course, precisely the anti-rational madness that has dominated the George Bush years. It is inimical to science or a scientific world view. If we are to pick and choose the facts we like, it is a very short step, quickly taken, to making them up. And that way lies an ever more rapid collapse of the American republic.

  Chalk this up as another casualty of Clinton's quixotic and hopeless quest.

• Early voting in North Carolina looks good for Obama:

  Based on the state maintained early voter database, of the Democratic ballots, 40.6 were cast by Black voters and 57.3% by whites.

  390,000 have voted. Before you get too excited, however, Obama did stellar in Texas' early voting, and then went on to narrowly lose the state. So election day matters.

• Unity ticket? Jesus, it's always about the Clintons, isn't it? She lost. Time for her to move on.
• The last two years, few new bloggers emerged outside of joining established group blogs (like this one). That's changed this year as the heated primaries have given a boost to several established players (like Taylor Marsh, Al Giordano, TalkLeft) and given rise to a few new ones like the Jed Report and Poblano.  Poblano, in particular, is a political junky's dream. Is there a cooler widget right now than his North Carolina predictor calculator? Not my official prediction (I'll do that tomorrow morning), but by my calculations, Obama wins by 11. Poblano has already put up his prediction however. Unlike mine, which really come out of you-know-where, his are back up by charts and statistics! All very cool. The verdict?

  Obama wins 58.6-41.4, with delegates going 66-49 for Obama. That would be fantastic, though the question is -- will Obama outperform the polling as he has in several other southern states? That's the big question mark.

• Poblano goes through that same exercise with Indiana. HIs verdict there -- a narrow 51-49 Clinton victory and an even delegate split -- 36-36.
• Clinton's nightmare -- more of her superdelegates wavering.
• Speaking of predictions, PsiFighter37 has his North Carolina one (58-42 Obama), and Indiana (53.2-46.8 Clinton).