Presidential Candidates: "Screw Science! I wanna talk about Pixies!"

So I did a bit of talking about ScienceDebate2008, anyone remember that? It was going to be a public forum debate in Philadelphia concerning the science policies and knowledge of the Presidential candidates. Remember how all the idiots running for President turned it down? They were just 'too busy' or 'washing their hair' or something?

Amazingly though, both Obama and McCain found the time to participate in this shit-fest:

The Rev. Rick Warren, author of the best-seller "The Purpose-Driven
Life," will spend an hour interviewing each candidate at his
20,000-member Saddleback mega-church in Southern California.

Yes, good idea guys, turn down the request of the most brilliant fucking minds on this planet and every major science organization, but accept the opportunity to be questioned by RICK FUCKING WARREN IN A FUCKING MEGA CHURCH. Seriously guys, what the fuck?!?!?

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March 4th Primary Results

Big night last night at the polls. The Republican nominee looks to be locked up, with McCain taking all 4 primaries last night and mathematically eliminating the Huckster. I'm a little sad. I would have loved to see the GOP attempt to justify running a candidate, like Huckabee, who denies almost every established scientific truth in the name of Gawd, and who believes we need to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage and a few other equally crazy positions. It would have been fun to see GW's vision of a unified GOP/Christocrat ticket cause the Republican Party to go down forever in a ball of flames, scandal, and shame. Alas, it is not to be. But fear not, Lovers of Truth and Sanity, McBush is still more than capable of destroying his party, and it remains a near certainty that no candidate running as the Second Coming of Bush, on a platform of No More Jobs and Tons More War, will ever win a spelling bee, much less the highest office in the land.

On to the news that matters, the Dems. Ok, so I am an admitted Obama supporter, just for the sake of full disclosure. So last night was a little tough for me to take. Obama looked poised to sweep Texas, which would have made it extremely difficult for Clinton to justify staying in the race. Yet, results via cnn.com:

Ohio: Clinton 54%(62 delegates) - Obama 44%(46 delegates)
Rhode Island: Clinton 58%(12) - Obama 40%(8)
Texas: Clinton 51%(16) - Obama 48%(10) ***Caucus Results Still Pending***
Vermont: Clinton 39%(6) - Obama 59%(9)

Not quite the Obama hammer-blow most folks were looking for. Clinton is a tough ol' gal, and she's not going anywhere without a fight. Obviously, Ohio was a big win for her, and RI was an unexpected windfall. That state was going to Obama, according to the ever-fallible Conventional Wisdom. Obama dominated VT, as was expected.

Texas is the big story. An incredibly close race, and the full results are still in the works. From my amateur understanding, Hillary took the overall majority in TX, but Obama may have "won" the state. We're still waiting on the results of the caucus to determine the final delegate allocation, but the talk is that Obama might actually walk away with more delegates, as he won the more populated precincts with more delegates to offer. This is still an unclear point as of now, as the results of delegate assignments are still coming in. In either case, Obama led the race before March 4th by 150 delegates, and after Clinton's wins last night, he still leads by something around 140 delegates. And there are only few hundred left to assign, so if the split continues to be 50/50, it will be extremely difficult for Clinton to close the gap. Hillary won some big states last night, but states don't get you the nomination, delegates do, and right now, Obama is flush.

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Happy Primary Day!

Get your butts out and vote if you're in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, or Rhode Island.

Gig' Em Obama!

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The Beat of the Nation...Candidates

Continuing on with my super-informal and completely unscientific polling of the nation here we look at the presidential candidates and what the public really thinks of them.

First to see how affiliated everyone is with their party this fun little question was thrown out: "If your political party loses, you believe." 6% believe it will have minimal impact, 14% believe we'll be somewhat worse off, and a whopping 80% of the 894 participants said we would be in big trouble. So obviously the party lines are drawn pretty hard and the candidates can expect to tow as close to the line as possible to pick up those partyline voters.

John McCain has a few issues to deal with as a candidate. McCain is 71 years old and 57% believe that his age will be a problem while the other 43% believed that age will not be an issue with the McCain presidency. Another issue McCain is going to have to elaborate on is the use of torture and specifically waterboarding (which he voted to keep legal after years of preaching the other way). The nation overall sees waterboarding as an illegal tactic with 51% believing it should never be an option while 35% believe it should be used in extreme situations and the rest of respondents believing it should always be available.

So what does America think is the biggest issue heading into the election? Lets find out:

The economy is obviously on everyone's mind with the Iraq war becoming a distant second.

Obama himself has some voter issues to quell. After false reports that he was a Muslim and studied at a known extremist school Obama has had to deflect much of that attention. But what does the public think?


Although a majority of respondents were of the opinion that this isn't true, 38% is a huge number of people who doubt the credibility of his response to false propaganda. Along with these numbers this poll may show how important it is for Obama to rectify the truth with all voters before the elections come around in November.


Again the American biased against Islam shows through in the response and is something Obama may have to go on the attack against if he is to win crucial swing voters.

And Obama has screamed from the loudest podiums about Change for this election cycle and what a new culture he would bring to the White House, but public opinion shows that confidence may be waning. When asked "which candidate do you trust least to make good on promises," Obama "won" with 42% questioning his ability to change the capitol culture.

Even with this doubt 47% percent of those polled believe that Obama has the most trustworthy foreign policy with Clinton coming in with 23% and McCain with 17%.

Hillary Clinton may be fighting an uphill battle also it seems as 67% of 375 people polled showed that they do not agree with Clinton's mandatory health insurance plan. Obama's health plan calls for lowered cost insurance that all American's will be able to afford. So will Americans buy it? 72% of respondents said yes that is true for most uninsured while the remaining 29% believe many would not buy it.

Another problem for Clinton is that she is a very polarizing figure, when asked who would be the least polarizing candidate Obama crushed the competition with 60% of the responses. Hillary fared very badly with this question ranking even lower than John McCain with only 11% stating she is the least polarizing figure.

So putting all of this together, who would America vote for? Out of 888 votes 74% answer Democratic when asked which political party will win the presidency. Out of Democrats 69% of respondents said that Obama has a greater chance of winning the election. Given this information poll participants were asked which candidate they would vote for if McCain and Obama are the nominees. Here's the response:


Given these responses I have to believe that the participant pool is rather slanted toward the Democratic view, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility that the population in general is more heavily slanted toward the Democratic side. These are just some numbers for fun and again are not conducted in a rigorous scientifically sampled study, so take what you want from them.

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Dem Debate 2/26/08

Last debate before the March 4th primaries last night. General consensus seems to be that Obama carried the day. Barack was calm and precise, very issue-focused. He has seemed much more comfortable and confident as these debates have progressed. It seemed to me that Hillary was on the offensive last night, frequently clashing with not only her opponent, but BW and Timmeh as well. Admittedly, I have a bit of a Obama prejudice, but Clinton's attacks did not sit well with me, and they don't seem to be gaining any traction in the general population either.

Underdogs attack, Frontrunners deflect. I think the shift has officially occurred, if it hadn't already.

Remember folks, whoever you support, get out and vote next week. Texas primary on March 4th. Say you're an American? Act like it. Vote.



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What the F&%K were they thinking?!? (updated)

News emerged yesterday of a rather unsettling occurrence at Obama's rally in Dallas on Wednesday, 2/20/08. Apparently, the Secret Service decided that after an hour of checking bags and purses of those entering the arena, they would stop screening the crowd of over 17,000 for weapons. They literally took down the metal detectors at the doorways and began waving people through "without even a cursory inspection."

The Secret Service was in charge of security at the event, but Dallas police officers were present, and apparently voiced some concern about this lapse in security. It is unclear at this time whether the campaign ordered the stop in order to fill seats quickly, or if the Secret Service made the call. If the campaign did order officers to allow people inside without inspections, it can be attributed to poor judgment, valuing filled seats for the TV cameras over the security of their candidate. Yet if it was the Secret Service who decided to expose Barack Obama to potentially armed crazies hiding behind an Obama t-shirt, that is a whole different issue. The insinuations and implications could run rampant, and I don't want to accuse that agency of intentionally putting a candidate in danger, but let just say I am definitely suspicious.

Obama is far from unpopular, and public threats towards his candidacy are rare, but images of incidents in LA in 1968, and in that very city, Dallas, in 1963, are brought to mind. No one wants to see those horrors replayed, and whoever is responsible for this reprehensible lapse in security and judgment needs to take note.

Update: So the Secret Service has released a statement, courtesy of the Dallas Star-Telegram. From that article,

"There were no security lapses at that venue," said Eric Zahren, a spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington. He added there was "no deviation" from the "comprehensive and layered" security plan, implemented in "very close cooperation with our law enforcement partners."

Sounds good, glad to hear ya'll had it covered. So why didn't those last few thousand folks get searched?

"We would not want, by providing those details, to have people trying to derive ways in which they could defeat the security at any particular venue," Zahren said.

Oh, yeah, thats right, I forgot the plot for a second there. "State Secrets." The Usual. Gotcha.




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