Learning, Elections and Humor: F*ck the Earth Day Video

A bit of humor, and an interesting post on learning.

First: from LiberalsMustDie.

from www.break.com posted with vodpod

Election humor:

Next: an interesting post about the following problem: You got to a class and are taught something new. Of course, to really learn it, you need to study it. If you wait too long to study, you will have forgotten so much, you’d be relearning, almost from scratch. If you study right away, you’ve only had an extended lesson.

So, if you wish to have optimal retention of the material, at what time after the lesson should you begin your study session? (no, “the night before the quiz” usually doesn’t work! )

SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you’ve learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you’ve forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you’re about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they?

Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially. A graph of our likelihood of getting the correct answer on a quiz sweeps quickly downward over time and then levels off. This pattern has long been known to cognitive psychology, but it has been difficult to put to practical use. It’s too complex for us to employ with our naked brains.

Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting if he could discover the right algorithm. SuperMemo is the result of his research. [...]

Election
Dick Morris calls the Clinton win, “too little, too late”.

Hillary Clinton refuses to die. Having been given up for dead after losing Iowa, she rebounded in New Hampshire. Then a string of 11 straight consecutive losses — followed by a win in Ohio and a tie (in delegates) in Texas. Now, she’s won Pennsylvania.

Problem is, it doesn’t mean anything.

Because of the Democratic Party’s arcane proportional-representation rules, her win stands to give her a net gain of 10 to 15 delegates when all is counted. That means that Barack Obama will fall from a lead of 161 in elected delegates to about 145 or so. Big deal.

The primaries coming up in the next two weeks, Indiana and North Carolina, are likely to give Obama back a goodly portion of those delegates. By the time all the primaries have been held, after June 3, there is no doubt that Obama will lead by more than 100 elected delegates, and likely 150. From there, it will be an easy route to the nomination. [...]

Clinton won Pennsylvania for two key reasons: Only Democrats could vote in the primary, and the Keystone State electorate is dominated by the elderly, who are staunchly for Clinton.

Despite her claims of electability, Hillary has never done well among independent voters. And Obama usually loses the Democrats. Pennsylvania’s closed-primary rules gave her a key advantage.

Older voters are flocking to Clinton as fears mount of what Obama might do as president mount. But those under 45, less focused, perhaps, on race, are moving toward Obama. Here, that split helped her.

Of the 50 states, only Florida has a higher over-65 proportion of its population. But there’s a key difference: Florida’s elderly moved there — Pennsylvania’s elderly are the folks that are left after the young people moved away.

Pennsylvania Democrats, in other words, suffer from future shock. They welcome old, established ways and embrace dynasties happily because they are so familiar. (Look at the Bob Caseys: the dad was governor, the son is senator.)

But don’t expect the open primaries of Indiana and North Carolina to behave like Pennsylvania. Both states are younger, especially North Carolina, and independents can vote in each primary. (North Carolina is where a lot of the young people who fled Pennsylvania winters and job losses ended up.) [...]

But others weigh in as well.

Obama

Ollie –

Last night, Senator Clinton used up her last, best chance to cut appreciably into Barack Obama’s elected delegate lead.

She came up short.

In fact, she barely made a dent. At most, she picked up a net gain of 12 delegates — less than our gain, for example, in Colorado (where we gained 17) or Kansas (where we gained 14). Her gain in Pennsylvania was less than half of our gain in Virginia, where we added to our lead by 25 delegates.

But there is one measure by which her campaign’s gains are real.

The Clinton campaign claims they’ve raised $3.5 million dollars since the polls closed yesterday.

We can’t afford to let that go unanswered.

Your support allowed us to come this far, and we need your help to finish this. Please make a donation of xxx today to support this campaign:

https://donate.barackobama.com/facts

Your grassroots support has brought the Democratic nomination in our sights.

Here’s how it breaks out:

* After Pennsylvania, we have a lead of at least 159 elected delegates earned through all of the primaries and caucuses so far. We have a total of at least 1493 pledged delegates.

* Meanwhile, we’ve been rapidly gaining ground among the so-called superdelegates (elected leaders and party officials who get a vote to choose our nominee), cutting Senator Clinton’s lead from more than 100 early this year to less than 25. We have a total of 238 publicly committed superdelegates.

* The total number of delegates needed to secure the nomination is 2,024. That means we are only 293 delegates away from securing the nomination.

In less than two weeks, we’ll square off in the key battleground states of North Carolina and Indiana, when there will be more delegates at stake than there were last night in Pennsylvania.

To grow our significant lead and close out this race, we must remain competitive in these contests and the 7 others that will follow.

Barack needs your support again right now to finish this race:

https://donate.barackobama.com/facts

Pennsylvania was considered a state tailor-made for Senator Clinton — she was always expected to win, and we trailed by as much as 25 points in the weeks leading up to the election.

But thanks to you, Barack gained support among key voters in the face of long odds and unrelenting negativity from Senator Clinton, and kept the margin close enough that her delegate gain was insignificant.

Indeed, the only surprising result from Pennsylvania is how much Barack was able to improve his standing among key voter groups since the Ohio primary.

Among white voters, Obama narrowed the gap by 6 points. Among voters over 60, he nearly cut the gap in half, from 41 points to 24 points. Meanwhile, we continued to run strong where we have all along — for example, winning voters ages 18-24 with over 65% of the vote.

Barack campaigned hard in Pennsylvania. He talked about his plans to stand up to the special interests and bring people together so that we can change Washington to turn our economy around, make sure that every American has quality health care, and bring this misguided war to an end.

An additional donation of xxx can make sure we grow our lead and finish this race in the final 9 contests:

https://donate.barackobama.com/facts

Thank you for all your support,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Note: I got a phone call asking me to go to Indiana over the next couple of weekends, which I can’t do.

Clinton

Dear Ollie,

This campaign is your campaign, and the victory we celebrated last night is your victory.

Now, thanks to you, the tide is turning in this race. We never stopped believing in one another, never doubted that we could count on each other. You didn’t quit, and when I’m president, I promise I won’t quit on you.

Now with the next critical contests right around the corner, we need your immediate help to build on the hard-earned momentum of our Pennsylvania victory and continue our success all the way to the nomination.

Contribute today to help carry our momentum to Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, and beyond.

Even though the Obama campaign went for broke trying to knock us out of the race, the people of Pennsylvania had other ideas.

We connected with Pennsylvania families who know they need a strong leader who’s on their side to turn around the battered Bush economy and end President Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq. And as this redefined contest moves across the country, we’ll keep connecting.

I’m in this race to fight for you. And you know you can count on me to keep fighting for you every day. And as long as we keep working together, we’ll wrest control of the White House from the Republicans and defeat John McCain. I’m going to continue to rely on your heart and your spirit every step of the way.

Contribute now, and together, we can carry our winning message to victory.

Thanks to you, we’re on a roll. And with your immediate help, we’ll keep moving forward until we’ve won the Democratic nomination, won the November election, and earned the opportunity to lead America in a new, more promising direction.

Thanks so much for believing in me and believing in how much we can accomplish if we keep pulling together.

Sincerely,
Hillary
Hillary Rodham Clinton

Other Republicans (Morris is a Republican)

John McCain

My Friends,

This week I embarked on a trip to areas of the United States seldom-visited and all too often forgotten by our nation’s leaders. I am doing this because I want to learn from the people who live in these areas. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit Alabama. During my trip I spent time in the towns of Selma, Gee’s Bend, Camden and Thomasville.

It was an honor to visit Selma, a place that held great significance in the Civil Rights movement. I was also fortunate to visit the Gee’s Bend quilters, who gave me such a warm welcome – I thank them for their hospitality. I hope you will take the time today to follow this link to watch a video straight from the campaign trail.

My friends, I am traveling to these places because if I am to be President of the United States of America, I’m going to be the president of all the people. I will work for all people and I will listen to all people. By understanding the challenges – and they are enormous – that these Americans face today, I will be a far better president.

There must be no forgotten places in America. I have always believed in this country, in a good America, a great America. And I have always believed we can build a better America for all people. This week, I’m traveling to places where great Americans are still fighting for change to make us a better country. I am going to meet and learn from these patriots.

I am running for president as a different type of candidate and I ask that you join my campaign today.

Sincerely,

John McCain

P.S. My friends, I will continue to travel to places across our country that are too often forgotten to meet and learn from the Americans who live in these areas. I am doing this because if I am elected President of the United States, I want to be president of all people. Our campaign has put together a special video featuring highlights from yesterday’s stops in Alabama. I invite you to follow this link to watch this special video and, if you are able to, make a generous donation to our campaign so that we may continue our good work. Thank you.

NewsMax

“President Barack Hussein Obama,” those have to be the scariest four words in the English language!

Ask yourself… do you really want the next President of the United States of America to be a man with ties to known Marxists such as Frank Marshall Davis and terrorists such as Bill Ayers and former PLO operative Rashid Khalidi?

Consider the fact that Barack Hussein Obama refuses to wear the flag on his lapel, or that he does not place his hand over his heart in the presence of the American flag.

Consider the fact that Barack Hussein Obama embraces Jeremiah Wright, a man who has preached the most vile racial hatred and anti-American sentiments from the pulpit for twenty years, while at the same time Barack Hussein Obama accuses decent hard-working Americans of bigotry when he says things like, “It’s not surprising that they get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them… .”

Consider the fact that Barack Hussein Obama’s wife Michelle said that her husband’s candidacy marked, “the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.”

But what really makes “President Barack Hussein Obama” the scariest four words in the English language is that fact that HE CAN BECOME THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!

While the media would love to extend the news cycle as far as humanly possible throughout the primary season, the truth of the matter is that unless Hillary Clinton pulls off some kind of mathematical miracle, Barack Hussein Obama will go to the Democratic National Convention with more delegates.

And, with the exception of the Jeremiah Wright story, the liberal media has basically given Barack Hussein Obama a free pass — and will continue to give him a free pass!

Moreover, Socialist billionaire George Soros of MoveOn.org fame, and some of his cronies, have already spent millions of dollars and recently pledged to spend millions more to put this obscure first term United States Senator from Chicago into the White House.

Make no mistake, there are people in the United States who despise America… hate America… and hate our way of life. Barack Hussein Obama is THEIR CANDIDATE and they will do everything in their power to make sure that patriotic Americans do not understand exactly how dangerous Barack Hussein Obama really is. They’ll hide his record and his past and they’ll tar-and-feather his opposition.

And the only thing that stands in their way is patriotic Americans like you!

George Soros and his friends may have millions and the liberal media may still control the information that most people see and hear, but patriotic Americans can still fight back. We have just launched ExposeObama.com — call it the Obama Truth Squad — and in the coming weeks and months, we will tell the American people the truth about Barack Obama.

We’ve just completed our first major television ad. And if you use this hyperlink you can see it right now! But we just don’t want you to view this ad, we want you to join us. We need to raise $300,000 in the next 72 hours to buy the ad time on television that will expose Barack Hussein Obama to the American people .

Please watch this ad and if you agree that all Americans should know the truth about Barack Hussein Obama please join us. Your financial assistance of $5000 or $1000 or even $100 or $50 or $25 is urgently needed right now.

Remember Willie Horton?

One of the key members of our team is Floyd Brown. You may remember Floyd as the man who created the Willie Horton ads which brought the truth about Mike Dukakis directly to the American people.

Before the Willie Horton ads came out, Dukakis had a healthy lead over George H.W. Bush in the polls, in part, because the liberal media glossed over Dukakis’ liberal record. And it looked like Dukakis’ march to the White House was unstoppable.

Willie Horton was a convicted killer serving a life-sentence without the possibility of parole. Horton callously stabbed a 17-year old gas station attendant 19 times and left him in a garbage can to die.

And yet, Horton was given a total of 10 weekend passes from prison.

During one of those weekend passes, Horton kidnapped a young couple, stabbed, beat and gagged the boyfriend and then repeatedly violated the girlfriend multiple times while the boyfriend watched — helpless to do anything.

Dukakis supported the furlough program that gave Willie Horton and so many others like him weekend passes — even after the Willie Horton affair came to light. Moreover, when the Massachusetts legislature attempted to close the furlough program, Dukakis vetoed the bill .

When the Willie Horton ad came out, the left-wing media went into spin mode and attacked Floyd. Twenty years later, fabrications and lies concerning the Willie Horton ad are still misreported by a biased media.

But when the Willie Horton ads were released, the American public saw the truth. There was no hiding the fact that Dukakis was soft on crime.

The media will attempt to elect the next President of the United States for you and that president may be Barrack Hussein Obama.

You can let that happen or you can join us as we expose the truth about Barack Hussein Obama!

If you agree that the American people need to know the real Barack Hussein Obama, then join us in the fight and in the coming weeks and months, we will tell the American people what the liberal media refuses to report when it comes to Barack Hussein Obama.

We’ve just completed our first major television ad. And if you use this hyperlink you can see it right now! But we just don’t want you to view this ad, we want you to join us. We need to raise $300,000 in the next 72 hours to buy the ad time on television that will expose Barack Hussein Obama to the American people .

Please watch this ad and if you agree that all Americans should know the truth about Barack Hussein Obama please join us. Your financial assistance of $5000 or $1000 or even $100 or $50 or $25 is urgently needed right now.

Obama and Racism…

Barack Hussein Obama slapped hard-working Americans in the face when he said that “bitter” people “cling to guns or religion.”

But how does Obama react when he actually encounters bigotry?

Do you remember what Jeremiah Wright, the man who preached to Obama for 20 years, married him to his wife, baptized his children and served as his spiritual advisor said about the United States?

Here’s what Wright said:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God Bless America? No, no, no! Not God bless America. God d*** America! It’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God d*** America…”

Wright actually said that when terrorists killed over 3,000 innocent people on September 11, 2001, “America had it coming!”

Wright once called the United States of America, “the U.S. of K.K.K.A”

Wright even accused the United States government of developing the AIDS virus to exterminate blacks.

For 20 years, Barack Hussein Obama listened to Jeremiah Wright preach hate and didn’t say a word. When confronted with Wright’s race-baiting he refused to disown the man… and yet he has no problem insinuating that hard-working, God-fearing Americans are bigots!

What does that tell you about Barack Hussein Obama?

George Soros and his friends may have millions and the liberal media may still control the information that most people see and hear, but we can fight back. We have just launched ExposeObama.com — call it the Obama Truth Squad — and in the coming weeks and months, we will tell the American people the truth about Barack Obama.

We’ve just completed our first major television ad. And if you use this hyperlink you can see it right now! But we just don’t want you to view this ad, we want you to join us. We need to raise $300,000 in the next 72 hours to buy the ad time on television that will expose Barack Hussein Obama to the American people .

Please watch this ad and if you agree that all Americans should know the truth about Barack Hussein Obama please join us. Your financial assistance of $5000 or $1000 or even $100 or $50 or $25 is urgently needed right now.

If He’s Weak On Crime, Will He Be Weak On The War On Terror And National Security?

When it comes to the issues, most people simply don’t know where Barack Hussein Obama stands. The liberal media won’t give you that information!

For example, when it comes to crime, Barack Hussein Obama seems to care for criminals more than victims:

In 2002, while gang related crime infected Chicago like an open, festering sore, Barack Hussein Obama voted NO on HB 1812, a bill designed to toughen penalties for crimes committed in furtherance of gang activities.

And the problem is only getting worse!

On Sunday, the CBS affiliate in Chicago issued the following report:

“A violent and deadly weekend continues in Chicago. At least 12 people have been shot, two of them killed, since Saturday morning. Two others were stabbed in a home invasion. This comes after at least 20 people were shot, four of them killed, from Friday night through early Saturday.”

Ironically so many of the victims of these gang-related crimes are, innocent African-Americans from Barack Hussein Obama’s hometown of Chicago!

Question: If Barack Hussein Obama REFUSED to vote in favor of tougher penalties for those who commit atrocious crimes against innocent people in his own hometown, how will he react when confronted with America’s enemies and those who want to harm innocent Americans?

When terrorists around the world, such as Osama bin-Laden, look at Barack Hussein Obama’s record on domestic crime, will they dance in the streets?

Our very first ad takes a hard, no-nonsense look at Barack Hussein Obama’s record on what the Chicago Sun Times called “urban terrorism” in Obama’s own backyard and asks:

“Can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?”

When the time comes to be tough, will Obama choose to be weak?

Of course, if you join us, this will only be the first of many nationwide commercials spotlighting Barack Hussein Obama’s record on the issues! You can help us make it happen!

If you haven’t done so already, view our very first ExposeObama.com television ad for all the gut-wrenching details.

If you agree that the American people need to know the real Barack Hussein Obama, then join us in the fight and in the coming weeks and months, we will tell the American people what the liberal media refuses to report when it comes to Barack Hussein Obama.

We’ve just completed our first major television ad. And if you use this hyperlink you can see it right now! But we just don’t want you to view this ad, we want you to join us. We need to raise $300,000 in the next 72 hours to buy the ad time on television that will expose Barack Hussein Obama to the American people .

Please watch this ad and if you agree that all Americans should know the truth about Barack Hussein Obama please join us. Your financial assistance of $5000 or $1000 or even $100 or $50 or $25 is urgently needed right now.

Bruce Hawkins
Executive Director
ExposeObama.com

P.S. Even if you can not join us in this effort right now, you can still help us expose Barack Hussein Obama by sending this e-mail to at least 10 of your friends.

Here is the ad

It doesn’t get any lamer than that.

Post Pennsylvania

Workout notes I am planning 10 miles after the coffee does its work. Later tonight, I’ll do some super slow miles with the group at Building Steam.

Update: pretty day (but windy, as usual) and I walked my Columbia-Forrest Hill-Glen Oak-River trail-Kumpf-Moss course in 2:15:46, or about 4 minutes faster than before (2:20). It seemed as if I timed it to reach each intersection at its busiest time! Still, I was happy with my 33:08 return leg; my pace was about 12:50 mpm. I didn’t push the pace, nor did I stroll easily either.

The day was breathtakingly beautiful; rabbits were out, and the birds and the frogs were singing away.

Election: It ended up 55-45 (when rounded) or 54.7 to 45.3 (9.4 percent). A nice analysis of the break-down by region is here (with county map)

Keith Olberman posted this video:

What I don’t like about this is: in the film, Rocky lost at the end.

Here is what the exit polls had to show. Among men it was Obama 53% to 46% but among women it was the reverse, Clinton by 56% to 44%. However, breaking that down by race gives a different picture. She won white men 53% to 46% and white women 64% to 36%. Obama won black men 96% to 4% and white women 89% to 11%. We’ve seen that before only never so starkly. Black women identify enormously by race and hardly at all by gender. By income we again see the usual pattern, with Clinton winning by about 10% in households making under $75,000 a year and Obama winning those making $150,000. Also following the usual pattern: among high school graduates, Clinton won by 28% while Obama won the people who have done postgraduate study by 4%. Clinton won among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Obama won voters under 44 and Clinton won voters 45 and older.

These demographics have held for pretty much all the big industrial states in the rust belt all year. What is new is the partisanship. 98% of the Clinton voters said they would be satisfied only if Clinton were the nominee and 97% of the Obama voters said it’s Obama or nothing. Also, 94% of the Clinton voters thought she will be the nominee, despite most outside experts having serious doubts about that.

The news isn’t all bad for Obama though.

NBC News has projected Clinton to win Pennsylvania, but if Obama keeps it closer than the margin in Ohio, there are some signs in the exit polling that would show why.

Obama fared better in the largest voting bloc by age, the 50-64 group. In Ohio, that group made up 32% of the electorate, and Clinton won it 60%-37%. This time, the group made up 36% of the electorate, and Clinton won it by a slighter margin, 56%-44%.

The electorate in Pennsylvania is older (second oldest in the country behind Florida). The +65 category was 23% of the vote vs. just 14% in Ohio. But Obama did better with this group in Pennsylvania (63%-37% for Clinton) than in Ohio (72%-26% for Clinton).

Education was another factor. Among those without a college degree, Clinton won 58%-42%, similar to her victory in Ohio, 58%-40%, but more voters in Pennsylvania reported having a college degree (47% vs. 32% in Ohio). And Obama won those voters 51%-49%, a similar margin to Ohio (51%-47%).

Obama also scraped around the margins with every racial demographic, but not enough to pull off the victory. Clinton won white women 66%-34% (47% of the electorate); she won that group 67%-31% in Ohio (44% of the electorate). With the overall white vote, Clinton won it 64%-34% in Ohio and 62%-38% in Pennsylvania. Among white men, Clinton won 58%-39% in Ohio and 56%-44% in Pennsylvania.

Among black voters (13% of the electorate; was 18% in Ohio), Obama won by similar margins in Pennsylvania (89%-11%) as in Ohio (87%-13%).

Hillary Clinton picked up about 10 delegates (that is, 10 delegates more), which does little to change the overall race.

More exit poll stuff (for stats geeks)

UPDATE: Even more exit poll data, highlighting gender, race, education and income:

race and age:

white 18-29 53-47 clinton
white 30-44 53-47 clinton
white 45-59 59-41 clinton
blacks 92-8 obama

education:
high school 65-35 clinton
some college 50-49 obama
college grad 55-45 obama
postgrad 54-46 obama

family income
under 15K 51-49 obama
15-30k 56-44 clinton
30-50 57-43 clinton
50-75 53-47 clinton
75-100 54-46 obama
100-150 59-39 obama
200 plus 68-32 obama

Note: “blacks” evidently was “black men”.

Obama also won 89 percent of African-Americans. But at 14 percent, their turnout was lower than the Pennsylvania primary record, 17 percent in 1988 and 1984.

Interestingly enough, we keep hearing: “Obama can’t close the deal with white working class voters”. Well, we don’t hear “Clinton can’t close the deal with African Americans”. Reason: my guess is that she (and others) are taking the African American vote for granted.

Now, we do hear a bit of “she isn’t going to get many of these newly energized young voters.”

While we get pounded…

First, this aired in February 22, 2008, but it is just as relevant today:

Note how Letty goes on about entitlement. I found myself flipping her off as she spoke; she does come off better in the longer version. “Waiting his turn”. I write more on this later in this post.

Note: the longer version is actually better; go to this link and scroll down.

Ok, right now we are getting pounded in Pennsylvania (as I predicted); it has gone between 54-46 and 53-47 for most of the evening. (54-46 with 74% reporting) But not all of the news is bad:

Hillary Rodham Clinton survived yet another day.

There will be little time for celebration, though. Time and money are running out.

Her win Tuesday in the large and important swing state of Pennsylvania was hard-fought. Barack Obama’s well-funded effort to shut her down did not reach its ultimate goal of a surprise upset.

But Clinton now faces a dwindling number of contests, and she’s at a steep financial disadvantage.
[...]
Underscoring the race’s excitement, more than one in 10 voters Tuesday had registered with the state’s Democratic party since the beginning of the year. And about six in 10 of them were voting for Obama.

Some voters had a hard time making up their minds. About a quarter of the day’s voters reported having made their minds up within the past week, and about six in 10 of them backed Clinton.

Of the states left, the biggest prize is North Carolina, a state that both sides are predicting Obama will win. Clinton dispatched one of her top state organizers, California and Texas veteran Ace Smith, to North Carolina in an effort to get every vote she can. Smith told reporters last week that getting the percentage spread within single digits would be a victory for Clinton. Obama’s also expected to win Oregon and South Dakota.

So where can she look for victory? West Virginia and Kentucky are likely Clinton wins, but they offer less than 100 delegates combined. She also has a chance in Guam, Puerto Rico, Montana and Indiana. But none of them are likely to give her a big enough margin to put her over Obama.

To win, she needs to convince voters that Obama is not electable in November even though he’s ahead in the delegate race.

She needs a big influx of cash.

She needs a shocking change of fortune.

Or as put out by MSNBC:

So, just who is voting for Hillary Clinton?
Here is a nice analysis. This article shows the kind of arguments a non-politician can make; if a politician said this, they would be dead.

Here is part of what I am talking about:

Who are the people listening to Hillary Clinton now in Pennsylvania? For the most part, they are indeed working class and middle class folk who live worlds apart from the wealthy Californians and New Yorkers trying to figure out how to package money to keep Hillary Clinton’s campaign afloat. Many places Hillary Clinton has been in Pennsylvania, she’s chosen the meaner streets, the humbler, poorer parts of town. She has a long history with some of these neighborhoods. Women in Scranton talk about her returning to a family christening just last spring. Mayfair, a close-knit northeast Philly neighborhood, where families have lived on the same block for three generations, remembers Bill Clinton campaigning in the rain in ‘92 outside the Mayfair Diner. Friday night, when Hillary Clinton returned to the Mayfair Diner for a block party, at least half the crowd, the largest ever at a political rally in northeast Philly, remembered that rainy night sixteen years before. Clintonism is part of neighborhood identity in many Pennsylvania towns and cities. This is why Hillary Clinton will win Pennsylvania. But winning here–it’s too late.

A surprising aspect of the Pennsylvania race has been the obliviousness of many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters to the media. These supporters have not heard the pronouncement that the race is all but over. Every Hillary event has had its share of Republicans (Obama is not the only candidate with “kins”) who have come out to hear her, the better to decide whether or not to vote for her in November. But most of the people who stand in line for several hours to get into a Hillary event are loyalists. Indeed the tenor of a Clinton rally, from Bristol to Bethlehem, is fierce loyalty. On some level, these believers must know that they are backing the losing candidate; that they will not be returning for her in November. But by and large these are people who are accustomed to losing–it’s something they deeply understand because it’s been their own experience–and that recognition makes their support stronger. In a powerful way, Hillary Clinton’s losing validates her working class supporters’ lives. This is the kind of bond that can forge a candidacy. But for Hillary Clinton it’s too late.

Now I’ll have to take issue with what I highlighted. Here: “losing” means “coming out on the short end of the stick for reasons mostly beyond your control”; e. g., the person who works for 29 years and becomes too sick to work 1 year prior to being eligible for their pension, or the person who worked hard, did the job but got laid off. It doesn’t mean “incompetent” or “lazy” or any of that sort of negative stuff.

You see, in one sense, I back Obama in part, because I have accepted my losses in life! If that doesn’t seem to make sense, I’ll put it this way: I am used to being overlooked because some young hotshot graduates from MIT and proves big, important theorems. Heck, I can accept that he/she is simply smarter and more talented than I am. I don’t resent it, though I acknowledge feelings of envy.

So, I don’t see it as “unfair” that this young upstart Obama runs against and, up to now (tonight excepted), beats the so-called “experienced”, “established”, “it is her turn” Hillary Clinton.

In my opinion, he is smarter, more creative, and in anyone’s opinion, he has run his campaign in a far more physically responsible manner.

True, he faces stiff opposition, and the creators of the Willie Horton ads are not fixing their sights on him.

And, of course, he is still learning, and the “bitter” remark has cost him some. Of course, many of us think that, while he shouldn’t have said this so openly, that he was basically correct:

But the amazing thing about it to me is that in the many, many comments I’ve seen, be they in the oral, written, or blogged press, no one seems willing to accept this reality. [...]

Obama is not an elitist for daring to suggest that underpaid, overworked, high school dropout country bumpkins might be a bit pissed off about their lot in life, and lacking the necessary cognitive skills to reason out why, pray to their gods while they shoot at targets with Mexicans painted on them.

If recognizing that makes one an elitist, so be it. Obama should watch his language, but I don’t have to, so let’s get this out in the open right now. Ever spend much time in the country? I have. You ever see those movie and TV plots where the city guy goes into the country and finds that the people there are a lot more intelligent than he thought they were? They just had a different kind of intelligence, kind of folksy and down to earth? Well, it’s a load of crap.

Oh sure, country folks have their virtues. [...]

But intellect? Sorry, there’s a reason the smart country kids end up migrating to the city when they don’t inherit the family business. There’s little for them in the sticks, where the biggest building in town is the church, and society stops on Friday nights in the fall to watch a little controlled teen violence on the gridiron. They think prayer counts as action and don’t think they came from no monkeys. They know America is the greatest country in the world, except for all those damned foreigners coming here who don’t even speak American good. Of course, they’ve never been anywhere, but rest assured, they know all about the rest of the world, or so they bullshit themselves.

Let’s not bullshit each other. A big reason this country is going down the crapper is because our politics revolve around pleasing this immense population of hayseeds whose bullets are bigger than their brains and who get their morality from 2,000 year old sheepherders. [...]

And you think that I am harsh?

I have to admit, though while I laughed out loud, if someone were to say similar things about, say, black or brown skinned folks who live in the poverty stricken urban areas, well, they would be skewered, at least in liberal intellectual circles.

Much of how intellectual a group of people are depends on the kind of educational opportunities that they have had, and, well, the educational opportunities that their parents have had.

For example, I don’t think that my daughter has a significantly higher IQ than I have (I know, all kids are smart, just ask their (helicopter) parents…though you probably shouldn’t ask their professors).

Nevertheless, in terms of understanding the world, evolution, etc., my daughter is much more advanced at her age than I was. Up until college, I thought that creationism was a real, viable option, and that scientists believed what they did because “they HAD to think that way to be good scientists” (though I thought that my god would forgive them for that)

It was about exposure! My parents could (and often did) take me to the museum, but they couldn’t explain those things to me. Why? Well, when they were my age at the time, they weren’t in school. Instead, they were hustling 24/7 just to scrape up enough to make ends meet and to eat another day. It is hard to be intellectual in such an atmosphere.

And, looking at things in a cold blooded manner, if intelligence is indeed part genetic (and I believe that it is), well, where did I get my genes from? My advantages were educational and having good well child care.

Some intellectual fun

Anthropology.net has some good stuff, as usual:

Evolutionary “cost of complexity”

Amongst people who do not fully understand evolutionary biology, there’s this big misconstrued concept that human evolution has slowed down or even that humans have stopped evolving. [...]

Some think that evolution has stopped because humans, and other higher organisms, are so complex, that the shear number pleiotropic interactions impedes on the rate evolution change. In a new Nature paper, Günter Wagner and crew have studied pleiotropy in mice. They investigated the quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that affect skeletal characters. They conclude that,

“most QTLs affect a relatively small subset of traits and that a substitution at a QTL has an effect on each trait that increases with the total number of traits affected. This suggests that evolution of higher organisms does not suffer a ‘cost of complexity’ because most mutations affect few traits and the size of the effects does not decrease with pleiotropy.”

In short, complicated animals can continue to evolve.

A group of early humans: with clown feet?

Some time ago I linked to an article about early tiny humans that were found on a Pacific island; it was conjectured that they evolved from us! (see the above story)

So it turns out that these tiny relatives had big, flat feet. So the question is: were these humans a different species than us? Anthropology.net thinks not; that is, these humans were of the same species as us.

Bill Clinton….so sad…

Of course, I don’t know the Pennsylvania results, but I still think 56-44 Clinton sounds about right.

But it is Bill Clinton that I am going to talk about. In my last post, I lamented what he has become. Before you cynics say that “he was always this way…the difference is that he is being this way against your candidate” remember that this guy survived being impeached and mostly kept his cool. Now, he frequently loses it over petty matters.

In fact, it reminds me a bit of when this (Mohammed Ali in his prime)

Eventually became this:

So, what is up with WJC???

Granny Doc at the Daily Kos has an idea:

John McDougall, MD, would seem to be the first medical person to step up. In an article which appeared on his McDougall Wellness Center web site he lays out an issue that I have raised, and which a number of other’s have confirmed on this site.

We Need to Understand and Show Some Compassion

One of the savviest politicians of our generation, known for his wit, charm, and calm under extreme pressure, Bill Clinton appears out of character in the speeches and interviews televised since his bypass surgery September 6, 2004—and his mental deterioration may be accelerating. Remember, this is the president who withstood public impeachment before the entire world for his relationship with Monica Lewinski without once losing control. Now, he is easily angered by hecklers, and makes factual mistakes and racial slurs while aggressively defending his wife’s campaign for presidency. Everyone sees his mental and emotional decline, yet to date, no medical professionals have spoken out about the cause or offered help.

As the paragraph below shows, this is a genuine concern, and deeply felt anger at the failure of the profession to be honest with the public.

Not a single one—not one bypass surgeon, cardiologist or psychiatrist—has stepped forward in his defense; even though all of them are trained to recognize “post bypass surgery cognitive dysfunction.” One of the best-kept secrets in medicine is the brain damage caused during bypass surgery. During my 40 years of medical practice I have never heard a doctor warn a patient before bypass surgery that an expected complication is memory loss. After surgery when the family complains of dad’s fits of anger, I have never heard a doctor admit that personality change is a common consequence of surgery. Yet these well-recognized side effects have been reported in medical journals since 1969.

Brain damage during bypass surgery is so common that hospital personnel refer to it as “pump head.” The primary cause is emboli produced during surgery from clamping the aorta and from the “heart-lung machine.” This machine pumps blood to keep the patient alive while the heart is stopped during the operation. Unfortunately, this pump also introduces toxic gases, fat globules, and bits of plastic debris into the bloodstream of the patient under anesthesia.

The Wellness Center is heavily invested in dietary and life-style changes to address health issues, occasionally engaging in non-mainstream curatives and proposals. There is nothing in this piece, however, which is not a part of the CW among cognitive and medical professionals

In 2001, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 5-years after bypass surgery 42% of patients showed decline in mental function of approximately 20 percent or more.2 A study published this year (2008) in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery using MRI testing just after bypass surgery found brain damage in 51% of patients.3 Three years after their time on the bypass pump, significant permanent reduction in mental capacity was identified in 31% of patients.

Sad, really sad, at least from my point of view.