My Walk Score is 54/100

Not so great.

What's yours?

Clinton just blew her chance at the VP slot

Whether her comment about assassination was stupidity or perfidity, her mention of the topic has effectively killed any hope she had of being Obama's Veep.

I was already hearing concern expressed by caller's to Thom Hartmann's show this morning that if she were the VP that that would open Obama up to additional threats of assassination. Whether you consider that paranoia or not, it is a real concern of a significant minority of Obama supporters. Putting Clinton in the VP slot after today's stupidity would just exacerbate that concern.

It used to be, early in the Republic, that the Vice President position went to the second place finisher in the election. That's how Thomas Jefferson became John Adams VP, even though they hated each other. That race quickly highlighted the danger of using the VP position as a consolation prize: it created an environment which might encourage a hated political enemy to take the expeditious route to the presidency.

I honestly do not believe that Obama would have anything to fear from a VP Clinton. But others will and that should be reason enough to rule this idea out.

There's a history

I disagree with John Aravosis' setiment that Clinton was invoking Bobby Kennedy's assassination as a reason to stay in. But he points out that Clinton made a similar comment back in March:

TIME: Can you envision a point at which--if the race stays this close--Democratic Party elders would step in and say, "This is now hurting the party and whoever will be the nominee in the fall"? CLINTON: No, I really can't. I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual.

What this demonstrates is that this latest incident is not a simple case of temporary in artfulness. Instead it is a case of several months of cluelessness about just how sensitive people are about this topic.

Not Good Enough

Clinton regrets Kennedy assassination remark

"I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever," the former first lady said.

This apology is not good enough Sen. Clinton. It doesn't demonstrate that you understand why the comment was so offensive. It's not that it was an insult to the Kennedy family. It's that it was a stick in the eye to a significant number of Obama supporters who seriously worry about just this possibility. You should acknowledge that your comment could be seen as using a potential assassination as justification for staying in the race. You should say that you did not in anyway intend that, but that you can understand why some might interpret it that way and that you are sorry for the pain your careless words caused.

And then you should drop out.

Update: Video statement from Clinton:

I'd actually forgotten that Clinton holds RFK's seat. Just a sad footnote to this stupid comment.

Clinton Stupidity

After watching the following video I've come to the conclusion that Clinton was being more stupid than conniving in her comments about Robert Kennedy's assassination. I do not for a minute believe that she was actually suggesting that a potential assassination was a good reason to stay in the race. She was making the argument that the '68 campaign lasted until June (as did her husbands) and thus there was no reason to get out now before it was over. The reference to the assassination was clearly (to me at least) an unfortunate bit off superfluous commentary.

Having said that, it was an incredibly stupid thing to do even if it was not intentional. Assassination of a political leader is never something to talk casually about and certainly not by a leading opponent in an historic election like the present one.

Now, a lot of people, behind the scenes, are talking about this very thing. Just last night I was with a group where this subject came up. Why then is it okay for us to talk about it but not Clinton?

Because we're just a bunch of plebes sitting in a pub shooting the bull. Lots of things get said in that environment that are not ready for prime-time. But when you are running for the most powerful office in the world you should, at least, approach it with a more cautious decorum than Clinton demonstrates here.

(Aside: McCain demonstrates the same carelessness in his bizarre comments about 100 years in Iraq and singing about bombing Iran. Leading presidential candidates can rock the world when making casual comments like that.)

Judge for yourself.

Only in our fevered dreams

But it would be nice if something even close to this were to happen.

Something to ponder

"This is not a meme" is a meme.

Weezer does web videos

Pretty cool Weezer video. At first I thought they were just showing some of the more famous viral web videos, then I realized the people in them were mouthing the words of the song. They managed to go out and get all these people to come together to make this video.

A Question of Age and Judgement

Now, I happen to think that making an issue out of McCain's age is problematical. Senior citizens vote more than any other demographic and you don't want to piss them off by making jokes about old people. But, having said that, it is amazing how much McCain sounds like Grampa Simpson in this response to Obama's criticism of McCain's failure to show up to vote on the new G.I. Bill.

There's a reason why public statements tend to be only a few lines long. It's because anything longer starts to sound like a rant regardless of how reasonable it is.

R.I.P. Electability

Chris Bowers argues (with statistics to back him up) that electability has died as an issue in the Democratic race.

If so, all i can say is it's about f*cking time. Nothing frustrated me more during the 2004 race than hearing democrat after democrat say some variation of, "I like Dean but I think Kerry has a better chance of beating Bush."

We all know how well that worked out.

The simple truth is that electability is a criteria that is credible only as a triage method of weeding out the candidates who have fuck-all chance of actually winning from those who have a reasonable shot at it. Beyond that, anyone who says they know which of any number of top-tier candidates has the best chance of winning in the Fall is simply blowing smoke out their ass.

Besides which, why the hell do voters waste any time thinking about electability anyway? Electability is the kind of thing self-inflated political prognosticators (you know, bloggers like me) allow to consume an inordinate amount of their precious neural processing power. Voters aren't pundits. They aren't politicians. Voters hate politicians.

So why waste time trying to think like them?

Once you've decided that a particular candidate has a reasonable chance of winning in the finals then stop fretting about the possibility of losing and start advocating for the guy or gal that you like. Leave the chart making to aforesaid prognosticators and just get out there and win one for the Gipper <cue college fight theme>.

Having Fun

Okay, this just made me giggle.

(ScribeFire is cool)

A Fish In Every Port

(context)

Firefox

I've upgraded to the new Firefox (1st release candidate). The main improvement in this release, as I understand it, is a completely reworked memory management system. I've already noticed that this release loads faster and just seems faster.

Unfortunately, a large number of add-ons for Firefox have not been upgraded to this version. Including the one I rely the most on: SwiftTabs. This simple add-on adds the ability to cycle forward and backward through active tabs with a single hot-key. It makes my browsing experience so much better and I wonder why this kind of functionality isn't standard. SwiftTabs has not been upgraded since October of 2006 and the web page for the developer doesn't exist anymore. Not a good sign.

I hope someone takes on the task of re-implementing this functionality in Firefox 3. If the source was available I might consider tackling it myself.

In the process of upgrading I did some browsing through Firefox add-ons and found ScribeFire. This add-on provides a very nice interface for publishing blog posts so I just might get back into blogging. Before I actually did a lot of hand-editing of posts. Very tedious. This is so much better.

Bzzzzzzzt

Electric Bath Duck

Don't Worry, Be Happy

The concerns of some about the impact the contested Democratic primary would have on the general election are unfounded. Yes, previous polling has shown McCain drawing even with both Obama and Clinton. But I have always suspected that, once the "presumptive" nominee is selected, we would see a 10 point bounce in the polls.

Zogby International

UTICA, New York – Democrat Barack Obama has sprinted out to a 10-point lead over Republican John McCain in a four-way presidential contest including Libertarian Bob Barr and Liberal Ralph Nader, the latest Reuters/Zogby telephone poll of likely voters nationwide shows.

People like winners. When someone wins they get an instant popularity boost.

It remains to be seen whether this boost will last, but we should really stop worrying so much.