A page for randomness

On super Tuesday, Bush’s former brain, Karl Rove, debuted on Fox News Channel as a political analyst. Genteel, wry and armed with terabytes of political minutiae, he won critical raves. (”One of the best things in television news right now,” said the New York Times, the equivalent of a Westminster Dog Show hopeful getting endorsed by Cat Fancy.) But there was something poignantly valedictory about the old warrior playing referee: the lion, if not in winter, then in a petting zoo.

You could say the same thing lately for Fox News Channel itself. Fox hasn’t gone soft, but from watching its coverage lately, I get a sense that the haven for conservative hosts, and viewers alienated by liberal news, needs to figure out its next act. Fox News is not simply a mouthpiece for the Bush White House: it rose with Bush after 2000 and 9/11, was played on TVs in his White House and reflected the same surety and flag-lapel-pin confidence in its tone and star-spangled look. It was not just a hit; it was the network of the moment.

Now, with two Democrats locked in what seems like a general-election campaign and lame-duck Bush fading from the headlines, it has to figure out how not to seem like yesterday’s news. At times recently, the network has appeared uncertain about its focus. Its primary-night coverage has felt staid and listless. Sometimes it has gone tabloid with celebrity-news, true-crime and scandal stories (WEBSITES POSTING SEXY PICS LIFTED FROM FACEBOOK). At other times it has retreated into a kind of war-on-terrorism news-talgia, playing up threatening chatter and new missives from al-Qaeda leaders while its rivals are doing the election 24/7; flipping to Fox can feel like time-traveling to 2002.

Read more: Fox on the Run - TIME

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Attorney General Michael Mukasey warned Friday that the huge profits generated from piracy and counterfeiting are increasingly flowing into the coffers of terrorist groups.

In remarks to Silicon Valley executives at the Tech Museum of Innovation, Mukasey said the economy and national security of the United States are increasingly threatened by violations involving copyrighted software code, patented inventions and trademarked properties.

Terror groups are taking their cues from organized crime and increasingly funding their operations from counterfeiting and piracy, he said.

Read more: Mukasey: piracy funding terror - Yahoo! News

This has to be a joke!

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said last night that, among the 3 remaining candidates, he thought Barack Obama had the best chance of bringing the country together. While he did not dismiss McCain (he’s done that in the Senate) or Clinton (she’s had some success in the Senate, not as much as McCain), he said that he believed that Barack Obama, for generational reasons, could best bring the country together.

Hagel also stated that he believes the inventory of problems the next President will face is unprecedented and that that is why it is so important that the country be brought together so that it could really solve problems. Although Hagel did not endorse Obama, he did not rule out the possibility.

Hagel, who is retiring from the Senate and, for awhile, from public life, pointed to data showing 81% of the country believe we are on the “wrong-track”, that registration numbers show Republicans to be in the teens and Independents higher than Democrats, and that trust in Congress and the President is at all time lows.

“In a democracy”, said Hagel, “people push something else out there” to take the place or transform institutions. He believes that that is what this election will ultimately be about.

Source: Paul Abrams: Hagel: Barack Best to Unite Country - Politics on The Huffington Post

Source: Digg 2028 - Sharenator.com

If you were an early adopter of Windows Vista, there’s a pretty good chance you became familiar with one of Vista’s coolest new features: an automatic crash reporting utility that will recommend solutions if and when they become available. Or to put it another way, if you tried running Windows Vista on many machines, there was a good chance your computer crashed. A lot. Even if the manufacturer had slapped a shiny new label proclaiming the computer to be “Vista Capable.”

There’s a class action suit working its way through the courts to determine whether Microsoft changed the definition of “capable” to help Intel sell computers chips. But some of the documents released in the case (PDF link) are interesting in their own right. For example, Microsoft has a chart that lists identified causes of Windows Vista crashes during an unspecified period in 2007.

Read more: 29% of Windows Vista crashes caused by NVIDIA drivers - Download Squad

All the smear tactics aimed at Barack Obama appear to be working with key segments of the voters who support Hillary — no matter how false the charges. The Pew Foundation reports today, while noting that Obama is weathering the Rev. Wright storm: White Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.

So when Hillary Clinton said in an interview that Barack Obama was a Christian…”as far as I know,” that signal gave indirect credence to the Barack-as-Muslim smears circulating on the Web and elsewhere during this campaign season. It’s also naive, as some progressives claim, or flatly disingenuous, to insist that such false allegations shouldn’t be seen as smears at all, just because there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim.

Read more:

Art Levine: 25% of Anti-Obama Dems Think He’s a Muslim - Politics on The Huffington Post

On Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton re-stoked the flames of the controversy surrounding Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor, saying she would have long ago distanced herself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright if she had attended his church.

“He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton told a gathering of the campaign press corps, repeating a line she used earlier in the day on a Pittsburgh radio program. “You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.”

But the pastor at the church that Clinton did once attend has recently expressed public support for Wright. He’s even proclaimed it a “grave injustice” to make a judgment on Wright based off of “two or three sound bites,” and criticized those who would “use a few of [Wright's] quotes to polarize.”

Last week, Dean Snyder, the senior minister at the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C. — which the Clintons famously attended while in the White House — released a little noticed statement offering a sympathetic defense of the totality of Wright’s work.

“The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding church leader whom I have heard speak a number of times,” Snyder wrote. “He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize.”

Read more: Pastor Of Clinton’s Former Church: Don’t Use Wright To Polarize - Politics on The Huffington Post

Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign.

First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.

Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.

Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.

In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Read more: The Long Defeat - New York Times

Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat. This kind of strategic voting often backfires (think Ralph Nader). The Texas crossovers are winners. By helping to prolong the Democratic race, they can claim credit for weakening the eventual nominee, whoever it turns out to be.

Obama has had a terrible time since Hillary sprang back to life after winning the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4. The speech he delivered on race relations in Philadelphia was a valiant effort to address the story about his former pastor’s inflammatory rhetoric. Having resisted for so long being typecast as the black candidate, Obama could no longer hold off plunging into the debate that still divides so much of America.

By most accounts, Obama did a masterful job aligning the promise of his candidacy with the grievances expressed by both blacks and whites, noting in particular how the anger of working-class whites over affirmative action and welfare formed the Reagan coalition. But the cable-news noise machine doesn’t easily let go of something so juicy as the anti-American rhetoric served up by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The now-retired pastor did what the Clinton campaign had been unable to do–put Obama in a box he doesn’t need to be in, one that brands him as a candidate primarily of black aspirations. The cable commentators kept pounding away, but in another universe, the one inhabited by Obama’s base–the millennial generation–his Philadelphia speech became the most-viewed video on YouTube this week with almost 2.5 million hits so far. Maybe, just maybe, the cable critics and conservative pundits are talking to themselves.

At an election-watch panel Thursday morning organized by the American Enterprise Institute, a questioner using journalistic shorthand asked if the uproar over Reverend Wright “has legs.” The consensus among the panelists was that Obama might have stanched the bleeding among Democratic primary voters but that the issue will continue to dog him in a more virulent form with questions about where his true loyalties lie. Is he American enough? He’s new on the national stage, and people are prone to believe the negative campaign already underway on the Internet alleging various falsehoods. This belated scrutiny of Obama bolsters Clinton’s argument that she’s been vetted and there are no shoes to drop. You can almost hear her aides, sotto voce, saying “we told you so.” Hillary’s comment that it’s “un-American” for Obama not to endorse a do-over vote in Michigan builds on the narrative that he’s not one of us. She’s got a point. The Republicans made John Kerry French; imagine what they can do with Obama.

Read more:  Is He American Enough?

Taking a page out of the Hulu playbook, but awesomer, the South Park guys are streaming every single South Park episode in full at their official site, South Park Studios. What they get right: Streams are fast and vid quality is solid; every episode, from first to most recent is available (with one exception); and newer ones are uncensored. Yep, you actually get to hear your favorite childrens scream “What the fuck is going on?” in the Britney ep. Major point of suck: ads.

Source: South Park: Every South Park Ever Online for Free (Legally!)

Everyone has had it happen to them: a “friend” sends you a link in IM or over IRC that purports to be something like a cat in an awkward position with a hilarious caption. Soon, however, you discover that the link wasn’t to a lolcat at all; instead, you’ve been Rick Rolled—or even worse, sent to 2girls1cup (find it on your own, but be warned: it may scar you for life). These pranks are commonplace now, but be careful of what you click on and from whom. If that link points to anything even pretending to be child porn, that’s enough evidence for the FBI of intent to download it. The authorities could then raid your home and possibly throw you in jail. No joke, it just takes one click and you’re under intense suspicion.

Such is the case with Temple University doctoral student Roderick Vosburgh, who apparently clicked on an FBI-planted hyperlink somewhere on the Internet. The link pointed to a file on an FBI server that contained no porn, but logged the IP addresses of everyone attempting to access it. Vosburgh’s IP was one of those, and the FBI came knockin’ on his door early one morning, arrested him, and searched his home.

In fact, this didn’t just happen to Vosburgh—the FBI has been using this click-and-be-owned tactic for a few years now, using logged IP addresses as a way to get warrants and charge people with intent to download child porn (a federal crime). The FBI has been planting links to these bogus files on message boards that are known to attract child predators, but even the log files don’t take into account the referrer—any IP address that shows up is automatically assumed to be guilty, and assumed to be coming in from one of the FBI’s planted links. This means that if your drunk friends think it’s funny to IM you a link to something that turns out to be to the FBI’s planted link, you could be in trouble.

Read more: Rick Rolled to child porn = you’re a pedophile, says FBI

For at least six years, as I’ve become increasingly frustrated by the Bush administration’s repeated betrayal of constitutional — and conservative — principles, I have defended Vice President Cheney, a man I’ve known for decades and with whom I served and made common cause in Congress. No longer.

I do not blame Dick Cheney for George W. Bush’s transgressions; the president needs no prompting to wrap himself in the cloak of a modern-day king. Nor do I believe that the vice president so enthusiastically supports the Iraq war out of a loyalty to the oil industry that his former employer serves. By all accounts, Cheney’s belief in “the military option” and the principle of president-as-decider predates his affiliation with Halliburton.

What, then, is the straw that causes me to finally consign a man I served with in the House Republican leadership to the category of “those about whom we should be greatly concerned”?

It is Cheney’s all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public’s disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: “So?”

“So,” Mr. Vice President?

Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration’s Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.

Read more: Mickey Edwards - Dick Cheney’s Error - washingtonpost.com

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the nation’s only Hispanic governor, is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president, calling him a “once-in-a- lifetime leader” who can unite the nation and restore America’s international leadership.

Richardson, who dropped out of the Democratic race in January, is to appear with Obama on Friday at a campaign event in Portland, Ore., The Associated Press has learned.

The governor’s endorsement comes as Obama leads among delegates selected at primaries and caucuses but with national public opinion polling showing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton pulling ahead of him amid controversy over statements by his former pastor.

Richardson has been relentlessly wooed by Obama and Clinton for his endorsement. As a Democratic superdelegate, the governor plays a part in the tight race for nominating votes and could bring other superdelegates to Obama’s side. He also has been mentioned as a potential running mate for either candidate.

No primaries are scheduled until Pennsylvania’s on April 22, a gap in time Obama hopes to use for such announcements to assert that he is the front-runner for the nomination.

“I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world,” Richardson said in a statement obtained by the AP. “As a presidential candidate, I know full well Sen. Obama’s unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.”

Read more: The Associated Press: NM Gov. Bill Richardson Endorsing Obama

“In July 2007, Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group (BD Standards Board) declared: ‘BD , unlike AACS which suffered a partial hack last year, won’t likely be breached for 10 years.’ Only eight months have passed since that bold statement, and Slysoft has done it again. According to the press release, the latest version of their flagship product AnyDVD HD can automatically remove BD protection and allows you to back-up any Blu-ray title on the market.”

Source: Slashdot | Blu-ray BD+ Cracked

LOL.

Barack Obama’s March 18th speech on race in America was game-changing, and very likely will be remembered as historic. Here’s why.

In electoral politics — particularly presidential politics — people don’t vote based on the issues or positions of the candidates. They vote based on their assessment of the qualities of the candidate. Their votes have much more to do with their assessment of candidate character than on 10 point programs.

The videos of the sermons delivered by Barack Obama’s former pastor, Reverend Wright, presented problems for his candidacy because they caused voters to question three key candidate qualities that are central to Obama’s narrative as to why he should be president.

Most profoundly they caused doubt among white voters as to whether Obama was “on their side” — the threshold question of all politics. Ironically, the potential that he might completely disown Reverend Wright, raised the same question among African Americans.

Second, voters want leaders who have strongly-held core values. They don’t want leaders who tell them one thing but believe something else — or even worse, have no core values except their own desire to be elected. The Wright videos caused voters to question whether, as they believed, Obama was indeed committed to the core values of unity and hope that have been the central themes of his candidacy.

Third, voters want leaders who are strong, effective leaders — leaders who can respond to crisis with cool, decisive, effective action. The videos had put Obama on the defensive for days. In politics, when you’re on the defensive, you’re losing. The crisis put Obama to the test. How, they wondered, would he respond?

With his speech in Philadelphia, Obama passed all of these tests of character — and more.

Read more: Robert Creamer: Why Obama’s Speech on Race Was Such a Political Home Run - Politics on The Huffington Post

“War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much.” President Bush March 19, 2008

Read that again. Hes saying it today, the fifth anniversary of a war that in his own words means we were losing four out of those five years.

“War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq…”

He now admits that those who questioned what he and his cronies had been touting for at least the first four years - that things in Iraq were going swimmingly - were right. Those who talk show Lords of Loud had called Defeatocrats and underminers of the military were, in fact, “credible.”

WE WERE LOSING.

The President says so…now

For those who, like Bill OReilly, who ask for proof that the President had lied, now have it. From his own mouth.

For the first four years, he was LYING.

Read more: Steve Young: Is This President Fcking Crazy? Or Is He Finally Being Truthful? - Politics on The Huffington Post

Fox Attacks! - Obama (part II)

Fox Attacks! - Obama

An apparently scientific argument is said to be not even wrong if it is based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, or alternatively theories which cannot possibly be falsified or used to predict anything. The phrase was coined by the early quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colourful objections to incorrect or sloppy thinking. Peierls (1960) writes of Pauli, “… a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly ‘That’s not right. It’s not even wrong’”.

Statements that are not even wrong may be well-formed but not refer to anything physical (as in “Souls are immortal”, because the noun “soul” is not well-defined in terms of experimental results), or may be mere word salad that appears to be devoid of meaning (as in some of the Time Cube writings).

The phrase “not even wrong” is often used to describe pseudoscience or bad science. It is considered mildly derogatory.

The phrase has also come to mean science that is well-meaning and based on the current scientific knowledge, but that cannot be used for prediction and cannot be falsified. Such theories are non-scientific, even when they are speaking in scientific language. The phrase has been applied to aspects of the super string theory of physics on the grounds that, although elegant mathematically, it does not provide predictions or tests.

Source: Not even wrong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.

Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won’t be posted on the Internet.

The reversal highlighted the politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were first reported Monday by McClatchy.

In making their case for invading Iraq in 2002 and 2003, President Bush and his top national security aides claimed that Saddam’s regime had ties to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

But the study, based on more than 600,000 captured documents, including audio and video files, found that while Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al Qaida link.

Read more: Firedoglake » Come Saturday Morning: While Our Newsreaders Drooled Over Pictures of Call Girls…

It’s fairly easy to crack a WEP encrypted wireless network. Infact the WEP encryption has some serious flaws in its design, flaws that make it easy and fast to crack or hack.Install aircrack-ng - on Debian Etch by:

• sudo apt-get install aircrack-ng

Then start aircrack-ng to look for wireless networks:

• sudo airodump-ng eth1

Then notice the channel number of the wireless network you want to crack.

Quit aircrack-ng and start it again with med specific channel number to collect packages faster:

• sudo airodump-ng -c 4 -w dump eth1

Then wait and let it collect about 500K IVS and the try the do the actual crack:

• sudo aircrack-ng -b 0a:0b:0c:0d:0e:0f dump-01.cap

The MAC after the -b option is the BSSID of the target and dump-01.cap the file containing the captured packets.

Source: Hack Wireless WEP Network

See also: Tom’s Guide to cracking WEP

The IV count is the important number to watch for since you will need to capture around 50,000 to 200,000 IVs in order to crack a 64 bit WEP key and for a 128 bit key, you will need around 200,000 to 700,000 IVs!

Lucas offered a glimpse into the latest creation in his sci-fi universe at the theater-owners convention ShoWest on Thursday, showing a sequence from “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” a computer-animated movie due in theaters August 15. It will be followed by a TV series of the same name, to air on the Cartoon Network and TNT this fall.

The movie came about as an afterthought while Lucas was developing an animated TV show of the same name. That show debuts this fall, but Lucas figured it was ripe for big-screen treatment, too.

“You’ve got the whole assembly line built, and then you say, ‘Hey, we can make up something,”‘ Lucas said in an interview. “It was like old-time movie making. What I love about television, it’s like Monogram Pictures or the old studio system, where a couple guys come to work and they sit and have some coffee and go, ‘Why don’t we make a movie about such and such? OK, fine.’ And at the end of the day, it’s pretty much on its way.”

Set in the years between episodes II and III — “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith” — of the big-screen “Star Wars” chronicle, the movie and series present fresh adventures of Jedi warrior Anakin Skywalker, his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and other colleagues.

The movie introduces a female Jedi, Ahsoki, who is Anakin’s young apprentice.

“It’s like ‘Band of Brothers’ in space, with Jedi,” Lucas, 63, said. “You can tell lots of stories. They come up all the time.”

Lucas said he plans to produce at least 100 hours worth of TV episodes of “Clone Wars.”

He also is moving forward with a live-action “Star Wars” TV show focusing largely on new characters removed from the Skywalker family. That show will be set in the decades between “Revenge of the Sith” and the period when the original film, 1977’s “Star Wars,” takes place.

So can fans ever get enough of “Star Wars”?

“I don’t know,” Lucas said. “I’m thankful every year that it keeps going.”

Source: Fans await return of Star Wars - CNN.com

The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He’s drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright are so contrary to my own life and beliefs, a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright and my membership in the church. Let me therefore provide some context.

As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It’s a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.

Read more: Barack Obama: On My Faith and My Church - Politics on The Huffington Post

As you may or may not know, today is PI day. So go out and have some fun!

Wednesday morning, the Clinton campaign sent reporters and bloggers covering the campaign a statement that consisted of questions and comments under the title of “Keystone Test: Obama Losing Ground.”The Obama campaign’s communications department decided to annotate those questions and comments with some comments of their own… and boy, they held nothing back.

Below you’ll find the annotated e-mail that has been making the rounds of the media. The Obama campaign’s comments are in bold.

To: Interested Parties
From: Clinton Campaign
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Re: Keystone Test: Obama Losing Ground [Get ready for a good one.]
The path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue goes through Pennsylvania so if Barack Obama can’t win there, how will he win the general election?

[Answer: I suppose by holding obviously Democratic states like California and New York, and beating McCain in swing states like Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin where Clinton lost to Obama by mostly crushing margins. But good question.]

After setbacks in Ohio and Texas, Barack Obama needs to demonstrate that he can win the state of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the last state with more than 15 electoral votes on the primary calendar and Barack Obama has lost six of the seven other largest states so far — every state except his home state of Illinois.

[If you define "setback" as netting enough delegates out of our 20-plus-point wins in Mississippi and Wyoming to completely erase any delegate advantage the Clinton campaign earned out of March 4th, then yeah, we feel pretty setback.]

Pennsylvania is of particular importance, along with Ohio, Florida and Michigan, because it is dominated by the swing voters who are critical to a Democratic victory in November. No Democrat has won the presidency without winning Pennsylvania since 1948. And no candidate has won the Democratic nomination without winning Pennsylvania since 1972.

[What the Clinton campaign secretly means: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT WE'VE LOST 14 OF THE LAST 17 CONTESTS AND SAID THAT MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA WOULDN'T COUNT FOR ANYTHING. Also, we're still trying to wrap our minds around the amazing coincidence that the only "important" states in the nominating process are the ones that Clinton won.]

But the Obama campaign has just announced that it is turning its attention away from Pennsylvania.

[Huh?]

This is not a strategy that can beat John McCain in November.

[I don't think Clinton's strategy of losing in state after state after promising more of the same politics is working all that well either.]

In the last two weeks, Barack Obama has lost ground among men, women, Democrats, independents and Republicans — all of which point to a candidacy past its prime.

["A candidacy past its prime." These guys kill me.]

For example, just a few weeks ago, Barack Obama won 68% of men in Virginia, 67% in Wisconsin and 62% in Maryland. He won 60% of Virginia women and 55% of Maryland women. He won 62% of independents in Maryland, 64% in Wisconsin and 69% in Virginia. Obama won 59% of Democrats in Maryland, 53% in Wisconsin and 62% in Virginia. And among Republicans, Obama won 72% in both Virginia and Wisconsin.

But now Obama’s support has dropped among all these groups.

[That's true, if you don't count all the winning we've been up to. As it turns out, it's difficult to maintain 40-point demographic advantages, even over Clinton]

In Mississippi, he won only 25% of Republicans and barely half of independents. In Ohio, he won only 48% of men, 41% of women and 42% of Democrats. In Texas, he won only 49% of independents and 46% of Democrats. And in Rhode Island, Obama won just 33% of women and 37% of Democrats.

[I'm sympathetic to their attempt to parse crushing defeats. And I'm sure Rush Limbaugh's full-throated endorsement of Clinton didn't make any difference. Right]

Why are so many voters turning away from Barack Obama in state after state?

[You mean besides the fact that we're ahead in votes, states won and delegates?]

In the last few weeks, questions have arisen about Obama’s readiness to be president. In Virginia, 56% of Democratic primary voters said Obama was most qualified to be commander-in-chief. That number fell to 37% in Ohio, 35% in Rhode Island and 39% in Texas.

[Only the Clinton campaign could cherry pick states like this. But in contrast to their logic, in the most recent contest of Mississippi, voters said that Obama was more qualified to be commander in chief than Clinton by a margin of 55-42.]

So the late deciders — those making up their minds in the last days before the election — have been shifting to Hillary Clinton. Among those who made their decision in the last three days, Obama won 55% in Virginia and 53% in Wisconsin, but only 43% in Mississippi, 40% in Ohio, 39% in Texas and 37% in Rhode Island.

[If only there were enough late deciders for the Clinton campaign to actually be ahead, they would really be on to something.]

If Barack Obama cannot reverse his downward spiral with a big win in Pennsylvania, he cannot possibly be competitive against John McCain in November.

[If they are defining downward spiral as a series of events in which the Clinton campaign has lost more votes, lost more contests and lost more delegates to us ... I guess we will have to suffer this horribly painful slide all the way to the nomination and then on to the White House.]

[Thanks for the laughs guys. This was great.]

Source: NPR: Obama Campaign Skewers Clinton E-mail Statement
See also: Clinton Memo on Pennsylvania

Lately, Linux has been receiving quite a bit of notice. Between the ASUS EeePC, the One Laptop Per Child project, Dell’s new Ubuntu line, Intel’s Classmate PC, and Everex’s Green PC, Linux has been getting a lot of attention from computer manufacturers. It seems every new computer in the last year has had Linux, but to most people that doesn’t mean anything. It probably leaves you wondering, “what’s this Linux thing everyone’s talking about?”
So, what is this Linux thing?

Read more: What’s This “Linux” Thing and Why Should I Try It? | MakeUseOf.com

The Daily Telegraph has learnt that in the “open” Democratic primary in Texas last week Republicans turned out in numbers to back Hillary Clinton - their favoured opponent in November for the Republican candidate John McCain.

Republican votes skew Democrat primaries
Republicans think Clinton would be an easier opponent for Mr McCain

Some primaries are open to all voters, regardless of their party allegiance, and this is being used as a tactical weapon by Republican activists.

Democrats in Texas say that a campaign by the talk show host Rush Limbaugh urging fellow Republicans to vote for Mrs Clinton helped to keep her in the presidential race.

Exit polls support the contention that thousands of Republicans contributed to the former first lady’s narrow victory over Barack Obama in the state.

Coupled with her triumph in Ohio, Texas saved Mrs Clinton’s White House bid after 11 straight losses and guaranteed the battle for the party’s presidential nomination will last several more weeks if not months.

Although Mrs Clinton is a hate figure for Right-wingers, Mr Limbaugh agrees with most opinion polls that she would be an easier opponent for Mr McCain. Even if Mr Obama eventually wins the nomination, the broadcaster hopes a prolonged struggle will weaken him and his party.

Read more: Republican votes skew Democrat primaries - Telegraph

The Texas Secretary of State is set to certify the official election results for the Democratic primary. As predicted, Barack Obama has beaten Hillary Clinton. While Clinton won the state’s popular vote, Obama racked up more caucus support, so that, now that the final tally is in, the Lone Star state’s delegate total reads:

Obama: 61 delegates from the popular vote 38 delegates from caucuses = 99 delegates.

Clinton: 65 delegates from the popular vote 30 delegates from Caucuses = 95 delegates.

So news people can now stop saying “two big wins in Ohio and Texas.” Big win in Ohio, sure, but not Texas.

A further analysis of the delegate race over at DailyKos reveals that Clinton’s supposedly big week has actually resulted in a net loss of 15 delegates to the front-runner. That’s right, Obama continued to widen his delegate lead, and will certainly add to that margin (as well as to his lead in the popular vote) after today’s contest in Mississippi.

Source: It’s Official: Clinton Lost Texas - Political Machine

Former top Bush aide Karl Rove didn’t get the friendliest of receptions at the University of Iowa Sunday, CNN affiliate KCRG reports.

Rove, who was paid $40,000 to speak at the University, was confronted with an at-times hostile crowd of 1,000, and was interrupted on several occasions.

At one point during the speech, Rove reportedly lashed out at some of the students, saying, “You got a chance to ask your questions later and make your stupid statements, let me make mine.”

Police also were forced to remove two people after they tried to perform a citizen’s arrest on Rove for what they said were his crimes while a member of the Bush Administration.

At one point, a person asked Rove if he has ever shed a tear over the war in Iraq.

“I shed a lot of tears and I have been inspired by many of the people who feel their son or daughter should not have to die in vain,” he replied.

Toward the end of the speech a member of the crowd yelled, “Can we have our $40,000 back?”

Rove replied, “No, you cant.”

Source: CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Rove taunted at University of Iowa

For a long time, I have been disquieted by the fact that many people want to give patently ridiculous ideas as much standing as reality. One problem with this is that once you open the door to fantasy, any and all flavors of it can walk on through, as in the example above. But it also elevates fantasy to the same level as reality, and that is simply wrong.

I taught a few classes back when I was a grad student. If someone had answered a question on a test saying the Earth was 6000 years old, I would have marked it as incorrect. That’s because — and sit down for this breaking news — that answer is wrong. The student could complain, they could take it to the dean, the president, the Supreme Court for all I care — I wouldn’t have backed down. Wrong is wrong.

I don’t care what your religious belief is, there are some things that are simple facts. An object with mass has gravity. A lump of lithium dropped into water will create heat and hydrogen gas. An accelerating charged particle will emit radiation. These are facts. It doesn’t matter what you believe: reality is that which, when you go to sleep, doesn’t go away.

What I find most ironic about this legislation — and there is a rich, rich field of irony to choose from — is that it was passed by conservatives, people who no doubt would rail against political correctness and relativism (for example, the bill’s primary author, Sally Kern, has spoken clearly about her being against “the gay lifestyle” — she even compares being gay to cancer), yet this is exactly what this legislation is all about. The problem here is that they are trying to legislate relativistic reality. And that’s simply wrong.

Read more: Bad Astronomy Blog » Oklahoma: One Step from Doom