Isn't that a wonderful bit of numerical synchronicity?

According to "the math" box at the top of the page, Clinton needs to win 309 out of 429 remaining delegates.  That is 72.03%.

Meanwhile WV, Clinton won a whopping 69% of the popular vote, but an even more whopping 20 out of 28 delegates.  20 out of 28 is ... 71.43%.  Just a hair under that crucial number.

See, this is why WV is so important and so relevant:  it shows you just what Clinton needs to achieve in every remaining primary contest, including the superdelegates, in order to just barely lose to Barack Obama.

Dear Galactic Citizen,

It has come to my attention that you are under the impression that black people have an unfair advantage when running for president of the United States, Western Hemisphere, Earth.

I am assuming one of three possibilities here:

•  You have been transported to our planet last week in a sealed bag and kept in relative isolation since then;
•  You have never visited our fair planet, and get most of your information from television shows;
•  The cameras you use to view Earthling society from wherever the fuck you are may be miscalibrated for hue.

If none of these are the case, I apologize.  Regardless, it  might be helpful to dispel some common misconceptions that visitors have about our rapidly developing civilization.

A CNN article today (originally titled "Invalid Votes leave Clinton, Obama stuck") made the following claim:
 

Now, neither Illinois Sen. Barack Obama nor Clinton will be able to attain the 2,024 delegates needed to clinch the nomination without delegates from Florida and Michigan.

 
Snuh?  Muh?  Quh?  If I am not mistaken, there are 4048 delegates without FL or MI.  2024 is half of that number.  If all the other delegates are assigned to either Obama or Clinton, then one of them must have at least 2024, even if nobody from FL or MI are seated.

So what is the basis for CNN's claim here?  Also, shouldn't the threshold be 2025, not 2024?

I just got a letter in my faculty mailbox from a PO box in La Jolla, CA, asking me to sign a petition denying global warming and opposing the Kyoto protocols.  
       
It came with a journal article, "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide," and a letter inviting me to "consider these materials carefully" and to mail back a signed petition card to "PETITION PROJECT."
   
The petition card has a space to indicate my academic degree, which they would no doubt prominently display on the petition.  After all, that's probably why they're sending it to university faculty around the country.  Faculty in random departments like computer science, with no expertise whatsoever in climatology.  But we all have PhDs, right, so a big list of us would sure impress the unwary.

Princeton, NJ (CAJ)  The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab at Princeton University has accidentally created an exact clone of George W. Bush, in a freak accident involving a random number generator and the vending machine in the A-C-E wing of the Engineering Quad.
 
"Dubya dubya," as the clone calls himself, is identical to Bush physically, mentally, and even ideologically, with one exception:  he is anti-Bush, and thinks the "other W" should be impeached.
 
Invited by antiwar activists to speak to a packed audience at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson school of International Affairs, W2 made his case for banning gay marriage, teaching creationism in public schools, extending tax breaks for the rich, fighting two more wars, and removing the barrier between church and state---and added that W1 should be imprisoned for "crimes against humanity."

The speech was strongly opposed by republicans for its anti-Bush stance, but vigorously defended by progressive activists as a 1st amendment issue.

Let's face it, this recommended diary about Ohio election servers is just embarrassing.  If not unethical.

The actual story:  repub-friendly hosting provider (the same provider for the RNC) is hired to serve election-day traffic for OH secretary of state web site.  Presumably, Ken Blackwell needed bandwidth and gave a contract to his RNC buddies.
 
But a recommended diary falsely portrayed this as rigging the election itself.  According to the diary, these guys "took over Ohio Election Servers."  A sensational and misleading way to state a boring fact.  
 
The diarist then quotes:  "Basically, the same company that hosts the RNC email server was hosting the server that counted the votes in OH in 2004."  This part is completely false:  the frickin' web site was not doing the vote counting.  And to top it all off, the diarist isn't quoting any article here, but a comment within the diary.  Shades of the right wing echo chamber---I can just hear Homer Simpson saying, "yes!  we have confirmation."  
 

The recent testimony of Lurita Doan brought to mind an unsettling thought about the public perception of intelligence.

Consider for a second the First Two Rules of surviving any scandal:

1. Feign a profound and impossible ignorance.  You must swear under oath that you don't remember something illegal that happened in your office, right in front of your face, last week.

2. Lose all cognitive faculties. When an investigator shows you an email you wrote soliciting bribes, you have to look right at it and say:  "I see a paper with letters of the alphabet on it.  I can't say what it means.  I don't know if your interpretation of it is accurate.  I don't have my glasses with me.  Oh these things?  I don't know if they are glasses or how to wear them, now that I took them off."

You must suddenly become unable to read, unable to add, unable to interpret the meaning of basic things, you must have a memory so bad that just showing up for the hearing with your clothes on the right way and wearing underpants casts doubt on your testimony.

You already know Ed Felten as the Princeton professor who, with his students, broke the Diebold Accu-vote TS touch-screen voting system.  It's Prof. Felten's voice you hear on the Youtube video illustrating the break.

So, it's worth asking:  what does a security expert like Prof. Felten think of mail-in ballots?  On his blog, Freedom to Tinker, he writes an article called "Erosion of the Secret Ballot," discussing the secret ballot property, and how mail-in absentee ballots affect this.

This is mostly an excuse to try out the new diary system, but honestly, this particular conundrum has been bothering me for years.
 
If 9 out of 10 economists voted for Bush, you can bet that Republicans would let the whole world know about it.  If true, it would be widely disseminated, and considered an endorsement of the administration's policies.
   
On the flip side you have "liberal bias" in the academic world and the media.  Scientists, academics, Nobel laureates; career journalists, Washington correspondents, all these people who are either highly educated or deeply informed on world events.  They're predominantly liberal.  It must be true, I hear all about it all the time---from conservatives!  

I never hear about this stunning endorsement of liberalism from liberals themselves.  Instead, conservatives are there to warn me about it.  Could someone explain this to me?

There has been a lot of arguing about vote-by-mail these past few days, and I think the main objection to VBM has not been completely understood.  

For clarity's sake here it is again, before I back it up:

We should never accept a voting system that lets a woman's husband watch as she fills out her ballot.

People have belittled this objection by exaggerating it.  They picture some psycho controlling husband who will force his wife to vote (R)---and then they argue that this problem is minor in terms of raw numbers.  How many psycho controlling husbands are there?

But this is a big fat straw man.  The problem here is not confined to abusive relationships.  Even in a perfectly "normal" marriage, of which there are tens of millions, people will defect from (R) to (D) one year and keep that secret from their spouses.  This is a widespread phenomenon, large enough to swing elections.

Below the fold, some evidence that yes this is a huge problem.  Plus some counter-arguments dismantled.

Having acquired a copy and some of the Scholastic Books supplementary materials, I have put together a timeline suggested by The Path to 9-11.

Below are the more significant claims of the film, in chronological order.  Be nice to me, I spent all night frantically typing this up so that we in the blogosphere can exercise our collective fact-checking power.

Check it out, man.  Dude's a badass.

Pat Robertson Says he Leg-Pressed 2000 Pounds

 VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) -- Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says he has leg-pressed 2,000 pounds, but some say he'd be in a pretty tough spot if he tried.

The "700 Club" host's feat of strength is recounted on the Web site of his Christian Broadcasting Network, in a posting headlined "How Pat Robertson Leg Pressed 2,000 Pounds."

[...]

Clay Travis of CBS SportsLine.com called the 2,000-pound assertion impossible in a column this week, writing that the leg-press record for football players at Florida State University is 665 pounds less.

"Where in the world did Robertson even find a machine that could hold 2,000 pounds at one time?" Travis asked.

Andy Zucker, a strength-training coach at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, said leg presses of more than 1,000 pounds represent "a Herculean effort, and 2,000 pounds is a whole other story."

Now that an operation in Iran is becoming a growing concern, I wonder:  did they ever catch the guy in the WH who told Ahmed Chalabi that we broke Iranian codes?

It is much harder for critics to deny that this leak had very bad and very obvious consequences, especially now that Iran is taking ever more limelight.  Nobody is going to deny that it hurt us when Iranian surveillance went black one day.

I fear that by focusing on Plame alone we make it seem like a one-leak scandal, which the average joe may see as somewhat abstract.  But if Iran is going to be the next bad guy, it is fair game to ask:  who gave national secrets to the next bad guy?  Who seriously screwed our surveillance gathering of this country, and is that person in prison yet?

Pardon my own ignorance, because I don't know:  what is the current verdict on this leak?  Did they ever catch who did it, or was it just hanged on OZ, the Overzealous staffer?

Caj

Today is the extended deadline for the release of the remaining images.  Any word what happened?

I am amazed at how easily this one thing drops off my own radar.  I guess this has something to do with how little I see mentioned of it online or in the media, and it illustrates how powerful the media's affect is on us.

But I'm just rehashing my last diary, from the last deadline.  And this has the same purpose:  as an open thread for people who have any information about what happened today.

November 1st, today, is the deadline for the government to release the remaining photos and footage from Abu Ghraib.

It disturbs me that I have heard so little about this.  Not in the media, and barely a peep even here in Daily Kos.  There is an occasional post on an open thread.  I think the matter deserves more attention.

The problem is that until now the release has been delayed by various legal efforts by the Gov't, who will surely use any available tactic to keep the footage locked up.  If we don't even pay attention to this process, how are we to be effective watchdogs?  Should we trust the outcome of this process to be fair in the absence of public pressure?  What's going to happen while we're not looking?

Anyways, it was today.  Does anyone have any word at all about what happened?

Get thee to www.stpatricksfour.org for details.

These four protesters, who last year were acquitted in state court after pouring their own blood in protest at a recruiting center, have been re-tried in federal court in Binghamton NY, charged with the very vague "conspiracy to impede an officer of the US" (presumably, the recruiter.)  This charge carried a maximum sentence of ... wait for it ... six years in prison and a quarter million dollar fine for each person.

You may not have been aware of this trial, but today's decision has a major impact on the legality of organized dissent--at least, when it involves any sort of federal office or property.  Imagine facing six years in prison because your protest disrupted the daily schedule of federal employees in DC.