Charles in Japan

FISA and Obama

I haven't really kept up on the FISA stuff.  They were posting about it on a daily basis months and months ago and it just got too much to read.  I wish I kept up a little better now.  There is so much flying around it's a little hard to figure out what's true and what isn't.  Basically they say Obama changed his mind and is supporting retroactive immunity for telecoms with this 'compromise' on FISA.  It also still seems to support warrant-less wiretapping.  Some people seem to say the bill needed to be passed so we could continue surveillance, others say our current laws around enough.  I'm not 100% sure which is right and the truth is probably somewhere in between.  I don't support Obama's choice on this either (with the understanding I have), but I'll still support him for President.  I do think he'll do the investigations he talks about, but I'd still like to know why this bill needs to be passed now.

That isn't really what I wanted to talk about though.  There will always be policy disagreements.  The problem is people are taking this like it's a betrayal by their best friend.  Vows not to give any more money to Obama, attacks against his character, making him look weak by attacking him similar to how Kerry was attacked, but by his own supporters.  Comparing him to Bush, Cheney and McCain.  Many vowing not to vote for him, or vote for someone else.  We should be able to criticize policy of our candidates without trash talking their characters.  We are just doing the Republican's work for free.

I just don't think these people get the big picture.  Come November and McCain victory are these 'democrats' going to be saying 'Ha!  That's what Obama gets for supporting FISA.  We sure showed him!'?  Is that satisfaction worth four years of McCain?  People need to take a moment and think about who they really want to win this election.  Realistically it's only McCain and Obama and if you aren't going to support Obama you are helping McCain.  Critique his policy, but do it in a way that doesn't tear the man down.

The Election

The 2008 democratic primary explained in 8 minutes.

In cased you've missed the news here is everything you need to know about what happened until now.

ABC Hackjob!

OMG, is this possibly the worst debate ever?  ABC should be ashamed.  It's a nation disgrace.  The damn moderators are arguing with them.  It took them about an hour just to get to real policy questions, instead we get 60 minutes of flag pins, Wright and other old crap again.  American media FTL!

They are even tearing ABC a new one on their own boards.

Ugh, I'm depressed.

The coverage afterwards is even worse.  A little bit of democracy died tonight.

Yay! Valentines day!

I just realized it's Valentines Day today.  I need to make a note not to go out to eat tonight as probably every restaurant is probably going to have some V-Day course dinner going on.  On the good side, I wonder if chocolates go on sale here like the US.  I'm doubting it for some reason, but I'll check for sales tomorrow.

It's been a bit too cold out for me to go out much lately.  Fortunately the election has been taking most of my time.  The strategies behind the different campaigns is really interesting.  I think March 4th is either going to clear this up, or make it last a really long time.  Clinton has already said she plans on going for the super delegate win even if she doesn't have the majority of pledged delegates. 

Daily Kos had an excellent comparison of McCains and Obama's speeches the other night.  This is one reason Obama would beat him.  He also voted to continue waterboarding this morning and reversed his stance on tax cuts for the wealthly.  He's got a lot of holes.  poblano has been putting out some great articles on the election with some math and nice charts.  Hillary may not be in as much trouble as we thought, but wait until next week and some more polls.  Not that they've been very accurate.  The Obama Kid.  I don't think he was supposed to get in. 

Tonight I need to head back to Bic camera, I bought the wrong thingy for my camera.  I got the see the new Macbook Air yesterday though.  It's so sexy, I want to lick it.  I'm sure someplace has it, but I haven't figured out where to order English versions of software here.

Lastly, my master mind, Teflon Tyron, hit level 32 in City of Heroes last night!  Final upgrade baby!  He's kicking total ass now.

What an election

I guess I really haven't had too much to say about Japan recently.  I've spent less time going out lately and it's been rather cold and rainy/snowy so I haven't wanted to go out much recently.  I'm going out for French tonight though, and I still need to catch up on some reviews.  I've been at work later the last couple days since I spent some time keeping up with the election.

Speaking of the election, what a night, or day this has been.  The most recent news is that Obama has won more delegates on Super Tuesday, won the popular vote, won more states 13 vs 8 with 1 still TBD and has money left over.  Clinton donated 5 million to herself, but according to some that money is already gone!  Some Clinton staffers are working without pay.  According to the most recent numbers on Obama's site, he's already raised 4 million dollars since the polls closed and it hasn't even been 24 hours yet.  According to another page only 3% of Obama's donors have given the maxium of $2300. 

Some other interesting statistics that show Obama's momentum.  He won 8 states with over 60% of the vote compared to 1 for Clinton.  This article on The Field talks about how much Obama has gained with Hispanic voters since since Nevada.  24 to 44% and that doesn't look like it's going to stop.  He got a majority of the Hispanic votes in his home state. 

Here is a view of Obama's and Clinton's chances in the upcoming states.  It doesn't paint and pleasant story for Clinton and in a few days we'll start to see how that plays out.  March 4th appears to be the next big date.  For those of you in Kansas you might find this article interesting.  I've seen a few other articles about Kansas. (why Kansas?)  Seems like the turnout was huge and true in other states too.  Here is one for Minnesota.  I'm curious how what will compare to the Republican caucus this weekend.  Overall Democrats seem to be bringing in more voters then the republicans.

There are still lots of questions left though, and some people feel Obama failed to paint Clinton as the status quo and may be losing out on that.  As optimistic as I'd like to be, I don't think things will go easily or either of them.  Obama has already sent out groups and some of his best people to Ohio and Texas.  Although a month a way, if he can win those it should put him ahead of Clinton and help cinch his nomination.

Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday results are underway.  It's still really early, but Huckabee is doing well and that really scares me.  Obama seems further behind then you'd expect from the polls, but with only 1% or less reporting so far it's hard to tell.  Still, he's doing well in some states and capturing a large number of male white voters which is good.

Update 10:52am: Well, looks like sanity is starting to set in.  Huckabee is down to a lead in 3 states, oops make that four.  AL, AR, GA, WV you should be ashamed, especially WV.  (^_^)  Looks like McCain is going to get it.  Romney will probably do better then Huckabee on delegates, but only being ahead in one state isn't going to get him the press or momentum he needs.  Obama and Clinton are much more even now, Obama with 5 states and Clinton with 6 so far.  Most are under 10% reporting so far so things can and probably will change.  In some of the states he leads in Obama is leading by a larger margin, but others are really close.

Update 11:30am:  How things change.  Obama and Clinton look tied for the number of states.  Delegates still up in the air.  I'm watching an updating map on Google and has twitter comments from people all over the world.  It's interesting how many people are following this in other languages.  I see a lot of updates from people over in Europe.  Maybe they are Americans, but seeing updates in Spanish among others is cool.  Still too early to see how the delegate counts come out and California could change so much.

Update 2:30pm:  Wow, what a night.  Obama has to be happy with how things went.  It looks like he'll win 13 of the 22 states available.  A complete blowout in Idaho, and great in Kansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, Georgia, and it looks like Alaska.  Clinton really only took Arkansas by a large margin.  Obama also managed to steal Missouri after NBC declared Clinton the winner.  He's not doing as well as hoped in CA though, so delegates are likely to be close (I think).  Most were saying he needed to be within 200 of Clinton at the end of today and that looks easy right now.  Clinton on the other hand seems to have only really won the states she was strong with and lost several she had been leading in by double digits only a week before. 

The republicans are interesting too.  I had basically written off Huckabee, but it looks like he's won 5 states.  Ah, Romney improved since I last checked and looks like he has 6 with McCain getting the rest.  I believe a number of the Republican primaries are winner take all, so were the democrats split close states, the republican winner may take all.  I'll check it out later when the actual results are in.  It's probably worst for Romney though. 

Now it's just time to wait for the final delegate counts, especially for the democrats since their method is more complicated.  I wonder how far off Obama will be after the dust settles.  Except for maybe Maine, the remaining states this month are expected to be Obama wins.