Turn out Barack Obama is just as indefensibly ignorant as John McCain of the science surrounding vaccines and autism. Ugh. He should read Mike’s comment from a few weeks back. Or, you know, anything written by anyone with the remotest idea of what they’re talking about — which would not include Jenny McCarthy, CNN’s unfortunate editorial judgment to the contrary.

P.S. I sympathize with McCarthy’s parental plight, and I’m sure she genuinely believes the provably false (indeed, proven false) things that she says. The same is probably true, in most cases, of 9/11 Truthers, Flat Earth Society members, etc. But genuine emotional grief and honest-but-discredited beliefs are no excuse for using a national platform to ignorantly spout nonsense.

And as for Obama and McCain? They have even less of an excuse.

UPDATE: Clinton, too!

(Hat tip: Aaron, who quips, "all tremble before the mighty Israel gun union defense autism lobby." Indeed. *sigh*)

As I mentioned earlier, Hillary Clinton released a TV ad yesterday implying that Barack Obama isn’t "ready" to deal with such unpredictable events as a stock market crash, a world war, a cold war, a gas shortage crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall (wait, wasn’t that a good thing?), or a devastating hurricane, nor to contend with such unsavory characters as Fidel Castro and Osama bin Laden.

It’s an interesting argument, but Senator Clinton is clearly leaving some things out. For instance, as I wrote this morning, the appearance of unexplained light formations over Florida and Arizona obviously leaves Obama vulnerable to the charge that he’s not ready to protect Americans from UFOs. (Alas, if only Kucinich were still in the race! This could be his moment!)

But that’s not all. Jimmy Kimmel, apparently taking a brief break from f***ing Ben Affleck, helpfully points out some other possible calamities that could befall America:

Is Barack Obama READY to protect Cleveland from Bigfoot???

I, for one, welcome our new unexplained light formation overlords. (See also here.)

As does Matt Drudge, apparently:

Heh. EVERYBODY PANIC!!!

P.S. Suggested new Hillary Clinton attack ad: "Is Barack Obama READY to protect us from UFOs???"

[UPDATE, 8:12 PM: Welcome, new readers! The scenario I predicted in this post is now happening. Some leaked exit poll numbers show Obama winning, others Clinton leading by a slight margin. Regardless, it’s all meaningless. Likewise, CNN’s statement that the race is “competitive based on the exit polls” should be not taken as predictive of the final outcome. CNN initially said Ohio was “competitive,” too.

Anyway, I’m liveblogging the results on my homepage.]

Following up on a point I made yesterday — in a post that just got Instalanched — as we political junkies giddily await the first hints of what’s happening in Pennsylvania today (finally, another primary!! election results tonight!! exit polls!!! colorful maps!!! whee!!!!), it’s very important for us, and even moreso the media, to remember that Obama almost always does well in the leaked, unweighted exit polls, and almost always does less well in the final results. For instance:

• In New Hampshire, the "first wave" showed Obama leading by 4; he lost by 3.
• On Super Tuesday,
  the "first wave" had Obama winning New Mexico by 6 (he lost by 1) and
  losing California by just 3 (actual margin: 8). The "second wave"
  wasn’t any more accurate: it had Obama winning Georgia by 50 (actual
  margin: 35), Illinois by 40 (actual margin: 32), Alabama by 22 (actual
  margin: 14), Delaware by 14 (actual margin: 9), Connecticut by 7
  (actual margin: 4), Arizona by 6 (lost by 8), New Jersey by 5 (lost by
  10), Missouri by 4 (actual margin: 1), Massachusetts by 2 (lost by
  15), and losing Tennessee by 10 (actual margin: 13), New York by 14
  (actual margin: 17), Oklahoma by 30 (actual margin: 23) and Arkansas by
  46 (actual margin: 44). So Oklahoma and Arkansas were the only states on Super Tuesday where Obama did better than the leaked, unweighted exit polls suggested.
• On March 4,
  the "second wave" showed Obama winning Vermont by 34 (actual margin:
  21), Texas by 2 (lost by 4), Ohio by 2 (lost by 10), and tied in Rhode
  Island (lost by 18).

Averaging all those numbers together — and I recognize that this is very unscientific — you get an average discrepancy of 7 to 8 points. That is to say, Obama generally does 7-8 points worse in the actual results than he did in the leaked, unweighted exit polls.

This is crucially important, because it has the potential to significantly affect the post-primary "spin." That’s exactly what happened on Super Tuesday, when Clinton was able to initially spin a "victory" out of her lukewarm performance, largely because the media was expecting Obama to win some "big states" based on those early, favorable numbers. Likewise on March 4, Hillary was able to claim "success" for her Texas and Ohio "firewall," even though she really needed much larger margins to make meaningful delegate progress, in part because the leaked exit polls again conned the punditry into expecting better showings by Obama, possibly including a win in one or both states.

It’ll be a travesty and a farce if that happens again. Hillary Clinton needs to win big — like, double digits big — and make significant delegate gains in order to claim any kind of a meaningful victory in Pennsylvania tonight. That basic fact will not change one iota if Drudge and The Corner and Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post (and, er, the Irish Trojan) publish initial, meaningless numbers this afternoon that show a "OMG A DEAD HEAT IN PENNSYLVANIA!!1!" and then Hillary "pulls away" and wins by 6 or 8 points or whatever.

It’s important to remember that these leaked exit polls do not actually represent any version of reality; they are not something that a candidate can "come back" from. In those instances where they differ from the actual numbers, they are, and always were, simply wrong. The exit-poll-fueled "seven-hour presidency of John Kerry," for instance, was always an illusion; Kerry was never "ahead," and Bush never mounted a "comeback." That’s all pure perception, and has nothing whatsoever to do with reality. Same thing here. If Hillary, yet again, does substantially better than the exit polls suggest, nobody should be surprised, and still less should she get favorable, "expectations"-based spin as a result. Obama’s early "lead," in that event, will have been (again) a complete chimera. So please, for heaven’s sake, let’s not get all excited if history repeats itself again.

As I said yesterday: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 21 times, shame on me.

P.S. Politico adds an additional cautionary note, referring to actual returns rather than exit polls:

Don’t be fooled by early results. The cities and
suburbs usually report their returns first, which gives the candidate
favored in those areas a quick – and sometimes fleeting – lead. The
conservative-leaning small towns through the center of the state
usually filter in much later in the evening.

This tendency has wreaked havoc in past elections: A Democrat goes to
bed thinking he or she is the winner, but wakes up the loser. The last
time it happened was 2004, when the Associated Press called the state
attorney general race for Democrat James Eisenhower and retracted it
later in the night as the numbers closed. Some newspapers went to print
with the wrong results.

So Obama could show a lead in the early results, but it might be
short-lived. If Clinton is ahead at the start, she may never lose it.

When I wrote last week about a possible backlash among late-deciding Pennsylvania voters against Hillary Clinton’s all-negative-all-the-time "kitchen sink" strategy, it occurred to me — although I didn’t say it — that a possible flaw in my theory was that Hillary would probably stop blanketing the state with negative ads in the final few days before the primary, precisely to prevent any such backlash.

Well, so much for that idea:

Admittedly, the ad doesn’t explicitly mention Obama’s name. But the implicit attack is pretty damn clear, and very much in keeping with the central argument of her campaign: that he isn’t "ready from day one," whereas she is. The Obama camp’s response:

When Senator Clinton voted with President Bush to authorize the war in Iraq, she made a tragically bad decision that diverted our military from the terrorists who attacked us, and allowed Osama bin Laden to escape and regenerate his terrorist network. It’s ironic that she would borrow the President’s tactics in her own campaign and invoke bin Laden to score political points.  We already have a President who plays the politics of fear, and we don’t need another.

And then this:

I honestly don’t know whether Hillary’s endlessly negative frontal assault on her Democratic opponent’s basic fitness for office will create a backlash. (Well, I know it’s apparently created at least a backlash of one. But will Marty’s feelings be mirrored by broad swaths of the electorate? That’s the question.)

But one thing that’s clear is that Hillary’s people are not worried about a backlash. If they were, they wouldn’t be running this ad now. They clearly believe their relentless negativity will have no adverse consequences for them whatsoever — or at least that any such impact will be outweighed by the benefits in tearing down Obama. And they may very well be right.

(more…)

Mark Halperin calls today "The Last Monday Before the First Tuesday of the Rest of Our Lives." He is referring, of course, to tomorrow’s Pennsylvania primary. The latest polls show Clinton with a lead in the high single digits to low double digits. I maintain that a double-digit win is necessary for Clinton to really claim an unalloyed "victory"; Obama "wins" if he can hold her margin under 5 points; and a Clinton margin of between 5 and 10 points is a murky gray area. Though, the state of the race at around 10:00 or 11:00 PM Eastern time probably matters at least as much as the actual final numbers, since the media usually decides its transitory "winners" and "losers" before bedtime on the East Coast.

Oh yeah, and, um, delegates. Those matter too.

One cautionary note to those who, like me, are hoping for a strong Obama showing. Don’t put any stock in the leaked exit poll numbers. I’ll publish the details tomorrow, but bottom line, when you look at New Hampshire, Super Tuesday and March 4, Obama does, on average, roughly 7 to 8 points worse in the actual, final results than in the leaked, unweighted exit polls. (And sometimes the discrepancy is 15 points or more!) So when Drudge announces the inevitable "SHOCK EXIT POLL" numbers late tomorrow afternoon that show a "DEAD HEAT" in Pennsylvania, you shouldn’t get all excited — and neither should the media. When Hillary ultimately trudges to an 8-point win, nobody should be surprised, nor should it be considered some sort of Clinton "comeback," for heaven’s sake. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 21 times, shame on me.

UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers!

Here are the exit-poll details that I promised above.

P.S. Noam Scheiber writes:

Ben Smith makes a great point here.
He says Obama’s had such a rough stretch lately that it’ll be almost
impossible for Hillary to spin a single-digit win…into a victory. Expectations for Obama have fallen through the floor.

I certainly hope that’s right, and from what I’ve read, the MSM seems to be sticking to its "Hillary must win big" guns for once (see, e.g., this AP article), rather than allowing the yea scenario to repeat itself.

(more…)

Back in 2002, I griped in print that the Daily Trojan was ignoring the SoCal VoCals’ newsworthy march to musical glory. (For the uninitiated, the VoCals are USC’s premier a capella group, and I am a proud ex-groupie.) That year, alas, they fell just short of the International Championship of Collegiate A Capella finals. But six years and a world championship later, the VoCals are finally getting some front-page DT love.

Here’s the article. Money quote: "It was absolutely beyond any of our wildest dreams," baritone Adam Hutchison said of the group’s performance Saturday in New York City, which earned them the ICCA title (and a live appearance on the Today show Sunday morning).

The DT notes that the VoCals’ winning set included Michael
Buble’s "Feeling Good," Singers Unlimited’s "All the Things You Are"
and Queen’s "Somebody to Love." The A Capella Blog described it as "probably the best competition set I’ve ever seen," and the judges seemed to agree, giving it a whopping 454 out of a possible 465 points. For comparison purposes, the ICCA champs in 2007, 2006 and 2005 won with scores of 431, 422 and 372, respectively. Moreover, 454 points is the second-highest score of this entire ICCA season — second only to the VoCals’ own near-perfect 463 performing the same set in the semifinals. The 437 earned by Florida State University All-Night Yahtzee at the South semifinal is a distant third. (All-Night Yahtzee finished a very distant second at Saturday’s final, with a 384.)

No cameras were allowed in the Lincoln Center for Saturday’s final, but YouTube has video of the entire Western Regional semifinal, including the VoCals’ 463-point set. So here, without further ado, are the three songs that brought home an ICCA world championship to USC:

Fight on, VoCals!

P.S. And speaking of "Fight on," here, in the interest of school spirit, is a video from this past fall of the VoCals performing their signature medley of the Alma Mater, Tusk, and Fight On, with a SoCal Spellout and some "UCLA SUCKS" thrown in good measure:

“I condemn remarks that are, in any way, viewed as anti-anything.” –John McCain

Will the third time be the charm for the power of the Pontiff? Pope Benedict XVI will attempt to purify the most unholy ground in all of America tomorrow when he says mass at Yankee Stadium. Two previous Popes, John Paul II in 1979 and Paul VI in 1965, have said masses in Yankee Stadium, but sadly neither was able to dispel the evil aura surrounding the field. Perhaps Benedict will have more luck, and come Monday, George Steinbrenner will announce his bold plans for an MLB revenue sharing agreement, or Alex Rodriguez will donate half his monolithic salary to build new ballparks across America. Despite his holy powers, I think the Pope will fail and the Yankees will continue their diabolical ways, but hey, a guy can dream can’t he??

The International Championship of Collegiate A Capella was tonight in New York City. I don’t know yet how the SoCal VoCals did. I assume The A Cappella Blog will have results up soon. Go VoCals!!!

UPDATE: THE SOCAL VOCALS WON!!! WOOOHOOO!!!!!!!!

Congratulations, VoCals!!!

UPDATE 2: The A Capella Blog writes: “The SoCal VoCals’ winning set gave them perhaps the best-deserved victory I’ve ever seen at an ICCA show. This is the sort of set that needs to be seen to be believed and I am proud to have been a witness to something truly fantastic. Believe the hype — this was probably the best competition set I’ve ever seen.”

…who needs P.R. hacks?

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. …

[C]ollectively, the…several dozen…military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. …

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

(Hat tip: copndor.)

The Shirt 2008 is out. It was unveiled yesterday. (Hat tip: Lisa.) The money quote is “NOTRE DAME WILL RISE AGAIN,” which seems appropriate.

Domersphere reactions? Her Loyal Sons hates it. Rakes of Mallow likes it, although he wishes it was green. Blue-Gray Sky thinks it’s “pretty good.” Of course, it features the famous quote about “the blue, gray October sky” that BGS is named after, so they would like it. ;)

The green flash.

Via Brian Neudorff, here’s a YouTube clip of an Evansville meteorologist live on the air during the earthquake this morning:

Heh. Cool.

He remains calm, but you can tell he was flustered by the quake from the way he just reads the numbers without in any way indicating what they mean: "We’re at 73 and 50, 68 and 44 here, 87 and 26." Huh? I also like how he keeps saying the word "here." Sort of like Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer, except with a better excuse. :) All in all, though, a pretty good job of keeping his cool.

Anyway, catching the earthquake live on camera reminds me of the time, freshman year at USC, when I was awakened around 3:00 AM by the Hector Mine Earthquake, whereupon I promptly jumped out of bed and called Hillary Clinton rushed over to my camcorder in hopes of getting it started while the room was still shaking. I didn’t quite succeed, but I did get footage of the lights flickering while I, looking rather wide-eyed, announced to the camera, "Earthquake! Earthquake!"

Hector Mine was a strong but distant quake; it had a magnitude of 7.1, but was centered out in the desert and caused little damage, none to speak of in the Los Angeles area. My scarier earthquake experience came two years later, with a much smaller tremor that was much nearer by: a magnitude 4.2 quake centered in Beverly Hills on September 9, 2001. (Yeah - far worse things were less than 48 hours away.) It was a Sunday afternoon, the second week of the semester, and I was all alone in the library (!), two floors below ground level. To be precise, I was in the stacks of Doheny Library — which, coincidentally enough, had just reopened after being earthquake-retrofitted — sitting near the far wall, with several long, tall rows of books between me and the exit. All of a sudden, everything, including the overhead lights and the bookstacks, started to shake.

Having taken a geology class about earthquakes the previous semester, I knew this was either a) a weak (or distant) earthquake, or b) the weaker P-waves of a strong earthquake, whose destructive S-waves would arrive shortly thereafter. When the shaking stopped (after maybe 15 seconds), I was momentarily paralyzed by indecision: should I make a dash for the door, in hopes of escaping before the S-waves arrive and potentially knock the bookstacks over, but putting myself in greater danger if the S-waves hit while I’m running directly past the stacks? Or should I wait it out and hope those weren’t just P-waves (and/or that the building’s earthquake retrofit was really good)? I chose the latter course, and after a couple of minutes, I concluded correctly that there would be no more shaking. I then promptly got the hell out of there. Being alone in an underground room surrounded by heavy objects during an earthquake is creepy.

I’m pretty sure I never studied in the Doheny stacks again.

P.S. I also sorta kinda experienced the 1988 Saguenay earthquake. I was seven years old, bounding around the house — as was my wont at seven years old — on a Friday evening (~6:46 PM), while my mom was sitting on a chair in the living room. (My dad was, I think, at work. It was the day after Thanksgiving, but that had been a presidential election year, so he would have been super busy working on the Statement of Vote.) We were dog-sitting for my aunt and uncle’s old dog, Rusty, at the time, which is significant because Rusty was sleeping under or behind the chair that my mom was sitting on. Suddenly my mom felt a slight but distinct shaking. At first, she figured that Rusty must be shaking the chair somehow, but then she looked and saw that he was sound asleep. (So much for animals anticipating earthquakes!) A minute or two later, one of our neighbors knocked on the door to ask if we’d felt it, too. It was then that my mom realized it was probably an earthquake. 

Alas, the reason I say "my mom felt" and "my mom realized" is because I didn’t feel a darn thing. I was so busy bounding around the house, making a ground-shaking ruckus in my own right by being a rambunctious seven-year-old boy, that I didn’t even notice the slight shaking from the earthquake. Needless to say, I was sorely disappointed when I realized that I’d missed the earthquake. Harumph.