NOTE: If you are looking for my hurricane coverage, that is now at my Pajamas Media-hosted hurricane-blog, “Weather Nerd.”

G’nite, all. See you on the other side.

Thanks for the memories, everybody.

Oh, and don’t be deceived by the title of this post. Much like The Return of the King, this blog will have more than one ending. :) One final “signing off” post will follow…

P.S. Since I’ll be signing off as the “Irish Trojan,” I should probably link one last time to the post that started it all, in regard to that name.

Well, the AFA has a problem with the word "gay" and so they auto-replace it with the word "homosexual".  (Any of you following the Olympic trials can see where this is going.)  Trouble is that "gay" isn’t always used to mean homosexual.  Not only can it mean happy, it also happens to be a not uncommon last name.  Such is the case with Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay.  Which of course leads us to the utterly hilarious headline that is the title of this post.

You can read more about this utterly pointless and unintentionally hillarious pseudo-censorship here.

The presumptive GOP nominee tells voters in an afternoon Pickersville,
Pennsylvania town hall that the state will pick the winner in November
— and he will be behind until right before the polls close.

McCain’s point seems to be simply that he’s the underdog, which is undoubtedly true. But, if the election is close, it’s quite possible that he’ll be literally right; indeed, he might seem to be behind even after some polls close… until the combined impact of the Bradley-Wilder Effect and the Exit-Poll Liberal Selection Bias Effect (see: the Seven-Hour Presidency of John Kerry) is revealed, when actual vote totals — as opposed to final opinion polls and leaked exit polls — reveal a narrow McCain victory.

I’m not predicting it. I’m just saying it’s a possibility.

The John McCain of 2000 and 2004 would have done it. Will the John McCain of 2008?

P.S. Incidentally, Obama also criticized MoveOn.org — specifically its "General Betray Us" ad — in the same speech.

UPDATE: It seems Obama’s answer on the Clark front isn’t good enough for the McCain campaign, which appears to be implicitly adopting the position that a candidate can be faulted for anything his supporters say, even after the candidate clearly and explicitly disavows it. I trust the McCain folks won’t mind when this same standard is applied to them.

McCain’s only hope in this election is to make the case that he is the true candidate of change, reform, "straight talk," etc. In short, he needs the "McCain brand" to both survive the collapse of the "Republican brand" and to trump the shininess of the "Obama brand." It’s a tough task, but Obama has recently opened the door for McCain with his reversals on several issues, particularly campaign financing. (For that matter, the MoveOn.org thing is something of a flip-flop; Obama pointedly did not vote on the resolution to condemn the ad, back when it was primary season and a "Yes" vote might have hurt him with the base.) McCain is obviously trying to take advantage of the opportunity he’s been handed. But, in this still-undecided voter’s view, he’s doing so in precisely the wrong way.

McCain needs to kill Obama with kindness, honesty and straightforwardness, not heavy-handedly twist and contort his words in a blatant political game that ultimately holds Obama’s statements and actions to a standard that McCain himself cannot possibly meet. The latter course might be enough to fool some low-information voters, but those folks aren’t paying attention yet anyway, and in the mean time, opinion leaders in the media and blogosphere — who are crucial to the survival of the McCain brand — are going to see right through McCain. You can’t become perceived as the candidate of the "high road" by taking a short cut on the low road. It just won’t work.

I suggest that McCain read Mark Halperin’s advice from last week, particularly:

14. Recognize that gimmicks … are seen as just that — gimmicks. …

17. Avoid personalizing your disdain for Obama. …

22. Protect the McCain Brand at all costs – it is the only thing that gives you a chance to win!!

Although I’ve focused on the weekly blog in discussing this issue, I’m actually replacing "Irish Trojan in Tennessee" with three separate blogs:

• a weekly blog, named "Hopefully Considered";
• a photoblog, named "Light and High Beauty";
• and a moblog, named "Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost."

Yes, the latter two titles are both Lord of the Rings references. :) As for "Hopefully Considered," it is, as I explained before, a reference to my Papa Loy’s old newspaper column. I appreciated all of your suggestions, some of which were quite good, but I ultimately decided that I liked my original idea best. (The subtitle is "Brendan Loy’s Weekly Musings," adapted from David K.’s suggestion. I decided to drop the "Irish Trojan" moniker altogether, though it’s still referenced, at least for now, in the new blogs’ sidebars.)

All three new blogs are powered by Blogger and hosted on Blogspot’s servers, but with domain redirection to make them look like they’re on my server. Thus, the URLs — which are already active, though the blogs are still works-in-progress — are weekly.brendanloy.com, photo.brendanloy.com, and moblog.brendanloy.com. (Regular readers may want to bookmark those.)

The major change tonight, aside from some final tweaks to make the blogs ready for prime time, will be that www.brendanloy.com, blog.brendanloy.com, and www.irishtrojan.com — all of which currently point here — will instead redirect to weekly.brendanloy.com.

You may be wondering why on earth I’m replacing one blog with three blogs (or four, if you count the Linklog, which is a "companion" to the weekly blog; or five, if you count my Pajamas Media hurricane blogging), when the whole purpose of this switch is to cut back on the time I spend blogging. I know it’s a bit counterintuitive. But I actually think it’ll work well, when you consider my twin goals of: 1) spending less time blogging, while 2) continuing to have outlets for the types of blogging that I can do without eating up all my free time.

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[During his speech introducing Clinton,] Buffenbarger derisively dismissed Obama as a mere "wunderkind," a
"man in love with the microphone," and "a poet, not a fighter." He
repeatedly and pointedly called him "the junior senator from Illinois"
(as if Hillary isn’t the junior senator from New York?). He compared
Obama to "Janus, the two-faced Roman god of ancient times." And then he
really got going:

"The Barack Show is playing to rave reviews, sold out on
college campus after college campus, standing-room-only crowds to hear
his silver-tongued oration. Hope! Change! Yes, we can! Give me a
break! I’ve got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving,
Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won’t last a round against the Republican attack machine!"

… Buffenbarger [also made the] blatantly anti-intellectual argument — repeated twice
– that Obama can’t "fight" for the working class because he was "the
editor of the Harvard Law Review." I guess Hillary’s stint as an editor
of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action establishes her credentials
as a real union stiff?

Buffenbarger blustered so buffoonishly that I proposed a new verb to describe his actions: "to buffenbarger," meaning "to engage in an inappropriately vitriolic attack on a member of one’s own political party." (TPM Cafe contributor David Schlitt had a similar idea.)

Well, it turns out ol’ Tom is still buffenbargering after all these months:

Now is not the right
time for the [International Association of Machinists] to endorse Senator Barack Obama… Our members feel
the economy squeezing their family finances for every last dime, every
single week … But those meat and potato issues have not found a place
in the message frame developed by Senator Obama’s campaign. To us, hope
and change are not antidotes to the economic pressures blue-collar
families face… In the Machinists Union, a predominately blue-collar
union, the impression continues to grow that Senator Barack Obama could
care less about folks like us.

McCain-Buffenbarger ‘08! ;)

Thank you too, for the honor of having been Included on your suspicious auspiscious roster of usual suspects distinguished Guestbloggers ;]. The opportunity to Ventilate my odd opinions (and in my Own peculiar diction, unpasteurized! :) has been Important to me. Seriously, it has.

You’re a Good one, old Kiddoe. / And now (as Nana Loy would say:) ~ Onward & Upward!

Love,
~ Dad

So I think, as guest blogs, we all need to make sure we get any and all picking on Brendan take care of and wrapped up before he shuts us all down for good. Like recalling the guy that for months kept calling him Brenda… Or the fact that he still, yes still, wears Velcro shoes (well, last I knew anyway, please Becky, tell me you’ve fixed this?)… I imagine his daughter will be lacing up her own shoes properly long before Brendan… (Update: In comments, Brendan tells us he is now wearing proper lace up trainers, so I suppose we can’t tease him about that anymore.) Anyway, it appears it is last call, so I say we get on with it for a nice good showing these last 20 ish hours.

Really, I’m thinking a good and proper roast for a nice send off…

Update: Or just, you know, say fair thee well and thank you, if that’s more your fancy. (Just remember, odd sentence constructions are encouraged.)

I’ll save the details of the new blog(s) for later, but I wanted to mention this now so you’re all aware. Guestbloggers, if you have anything you’ve been itching to say, today would be the day. :) And readers, if things are a little screwy in this space Monday night, you know why. Hopefully everything will be humming along smoothly by Tuesday morning, albeit in a brave new world wherein I’m no longer a hyperactive blogger.

P.S. Incidentally, I’ve decided, upon reflection, to drop the “Irish Trojan” moniker from both the titles and subtitles of the new blogs. The sidebar of the weekly blog will still mention my USC and Notre Dame affiliations, and that I used to blog as the “Irish Trojan,” but officially speaking, these are my final 24 hours blogging as the “Irish Trojan.”

The first half hour of “WALL-E” is essentially wordless, and left me speechless. This magnificent animated feature from Pixar starts on such a high plane of aspiration, and achievement, that you wonder whether the wonder can be sustained. But yes, it can. …

[T]he film stands as a stunning tour de force. The director has described it as his love letter to the golden era of sci-fi films that enchanted him as a kid in the 1970s. It is certainly that, in hearts and spades. Beyond that, though, it’s a love letter to the possibilities of the movie medium, and a dazzling demonstration of how computers can create a photorealistic world — in this case a ruined world of mysterious majesty — that leaves literal reality in the dust. … I must drop my inhibitions about dropping the M word — especially since I’ve already used magnificent — and call “WALL-E” the masterpiece that it is.

See also TNR’s Christopher Orr:

For over a dozen years now, the best name in American film has been Pixar. No movie star, no director, no writer, producer, or studio approaches its level of consistent excellence. Even Pixar’s weaker offerings (A Bug’s Life, Cars, and–in my moderately heretical view–Finding Nemo) have exceptional depth and texture, moral as well as visual. And its best efforts (Toy Story, The Incredibles) are simply transcendent, rivaling the finest live-action films in sophistication and sentiment.

Pixar’s newest movie, WALL·E, is firmly in the latter tier, and quite possibly at the top of it. It is, in a word, a marvel, a film that recalls in equal measure Hollywood’s most evocative future visions–Blade Runner and Brazil, E.T. and 2001–and the silent intimacies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. It is a story about love and loneliness, perseverance and triumph, the possibilities and pitfalls of human existence. That this story is told by way of the exploits of a tiny, faceless robot only makes it more extraordinary.

Wow. I guess I’ll have to go see it.

Incidentally, speaking of movies, I finally saw Charlie Wilson’s War; Becky and I watched it Friday night on DVD, having rented it from Blockbuster. It’s really good, mostly because Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman freakin’ rock. Watching their witty banter — fueled also by great screenwriting, by the way — was just an absolute joy. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in a movie, with apparent effortlessness, when you’ve got great actors playing the key roles. For a film that didn’t exactly have an elaborate or involved plot, it never seemed to drag at all. It was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. (Becky, who hates Julia Roberts, thought she was poorly cast and outclassed by her co-stars, and that she brought the movie down a notch. I agree that she was the weakest link, but I don’t think she particularly hurt the movie.) If you haven’t seen it, you should; it’s a great film.

He will be buried alongside his predecessors, Uga I through V, in a vault inside the football stadium. And he will of course be replaced by Uga VII.

I’m not a Georgia fan, obviously, but Uga (pronounced "uh-guh") is pretty freakin’ cool. Not as cool as Traveler, of course, but cool nonetheless. R.I.P., Uga VI.

It seems that DMV officials “learned last year the common acronym stands for a vulgar phrase in e-mail and cell phone text messages.” Heh. No word on whether the initial discovery of this fact was met with an expression of incredulous disbelief — for instance, “STFU!”

Coming soon: the N.C. DMV discovers the hidden meaning of “POS” and various other three-letter combinations, and decides to stop making such a BFD out of this sort of BS.

Powder blue, of course, used to be a UCLA school color, back when I was at USC. But the Bruins switched in 2003 to a different shade of blue, so I guess I can forgive the Dems for their use of what I’ve always considered a rather distasteful shade of an otherwise fine color. Still… for future reference, I’d recommend either Notre Dame blue or Newington blue. :)

Anyway, here are some more photos from the Obama-Clinton rally in Unity.

Around midday today, the former Democratic rivals will make their first joint public appearance since she dropped out of the race — and the event will be held in Unity, a tiny town in western New Hampshire where Obama and Clinton each received exactly 107 votes* in the January 8 primary.

Here’s a quick primer on Unity, from Wikipedia:

Unity
is a town in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, United States. The
population was 1,530 at the 2000 census and an estimated 1,715 six
years later. The town includes the villages of East Unity, Quaker City,
and West Unity. … The racial makeup of the town
was 99.35% White, 0.07% African American, 0.13% Asian, and 0.46% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.72% of the population.

The percentages from the 2000 census indicate that Unity had literally one black person, two Asians, seven mixed-race individuals, and eleven Latinos. Oh, and 1,509 non-Hispanic whites. Heh.

Anyway, here’s an AP article about how Unity is gearing up for today’s big event. It opens with the obligatory quote from a local old lady: "I don’t remember having any presidential candidates here in my time," says 84-year-old Roberta Callum. And then there’s this, regarding the expected crowd of 2,500: "Locals say the last time there was a crowd that big was for a 1970s performance by folk singer Arlo Guthrie." Heh.

The Concord Monitor is unimpressed with the meta-pun that today’s event represents:

[N]o one would have mistaken these two policy wonks for the jokesters of the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Nonetheless, nearly six months after the local vote, Obama and Clinton return today, going to extreme lengths for a corny gag.

They’re coming to Unity, N.H. - get it? Unity? It’s a place where they
split the local Democratic vote, 107-107. It’s a place so far out in
the boondocks that voters and reporters will require shuttle buses from
Sunapee, for Pete’s sake.

Ah yes, the bustling metropolis of Sunapee — population 3,055! And it’s only 31 minutes away! Heh.

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SCOTUSblog is liveblogging.

UPDATE: By a 5-4 vote, with no plurality or concurrences — i.e., the five justices in the majority all agreed on the same rationale — the "Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm." (That quote is from SCOTUSblog, not from the opinion.)

UPDATE 2: Here’s the opinion and the dissents (PDF). Scalia wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by the other four conservative justices. There were two separate dissents, one by Stevens and one by Breyer; each dissent was joined by the other three liberal justices. So, like I said, a clear 5-4 split, with no muddying of the waters by multiple plurality opinions and such.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, some relevant quotes from the majority opinion can be found here. And here’s an initial analysis from SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston — although, as the Volokh Conspiracy’s Orin Kerr says, "the details of the opinion are critical; it will take a bit of time to read the decision to get a sense of what it means."

However, the timing of the switch may change, depending on how much free time I have this weekend. There’s a lot of back-end stuff that I need to do, both to close down this blog and to set up the new blog. If I don’t make the switch on Tuesday, it probably won’t happen until July 14 or thereabouts, because Becky and I will be traveling over July 4 weekend, so I won’t have much free time again until the weekend of the 12th-13th.

Anyway, I need help from y’all on something. In switching from this "hyperactive" blog to a new, weekly blog, I want to make a clear, clean break by giving the blog a new name. I figure the subtitle could include the phrase "Irish Trojan," in order to maintain some semblance of "brand" continuity, but I want the title of the blog to be something different — and a more drastic difference than my switch last year from "The Irish Trojan’s Blog" to "Irish Trojan in Tennessee." I want a real new name.

Ideally, the new name would in some way emphasize the blog’s weekly/occasional nature. But at the same time, I don’t want it to be something totally pedestrian, like "Brendan’s Weekly Blog" or whatever. The problem is, I’m terrible at coming up with good, non-pedestrian ideas for things like blog names (as the "Ably Nerd On" fiasco demonstrated). So, I need your help. I need some suggestions for what I should call the new blog!

So far, the only decent idea I’ve had is to call it "Hopefully Considered," which was the name of my Papa Loy’s old weekly newspaper column. (The subtitle, I think, would be "The Irish Trojan’s Weekly Blog." So, in toto, the title and subtitle would read "Hopefully Considered: The Irish Trojan’s Weekly Blog.") But although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I’m not sure I like the idea of simply copying exactly the name of Papa’s column. Something that alludes to "Hopefully Considered," without being precisely the same name, would be great… but I can’t think of anything good.

Don’t limit yourself to spin-offs of "Hopefully Considered," though. That’s just one idea. Any and all other ideas are welcome! Please, submit ‘em in comments, and please feel free to comment on other people’s ideas as well. This isn’t a democracy, exactly, but at the same time, I’m definitely curious to know what my "regulars" think. 

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Bob Beckel managed Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign.

LOL! And Obama should take this guy’s advice on political strategy, why exactly? ;)

Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Dan Balz argues that, so far, McCain vs. Obama is politics as usual:

Whatever substance they may contain has been buried in negative counterattacks from the opposing camp, designed to turn ideas into stereotypes and candidates into caricatures. In the hands of Obama’s advisers, McCain is nothing more than the third coming of President Bush. To McCain’s staff, Obama is merely a liberal, naive, arrogant extension of what Democrats have been offering for years.

Gone in the early stages of this campaign is any sense of the uniqueness of the two nominees. McCain is certainly no garden-variety Republican and the historic possibilities of Obama’s candidacy cannot be overstated. But those realities have been submerged beneath a tactical shouting match that feeds the cable culture of contemporary politics.

Don’t blame the media for this. The campaigns have deliberately adopted postures of hyper-aggressiveness to set the early tone. The testosterone levels appear extremely high. No charge however small or incidental can go unanswered. No proposal, no matter how innocuous or provocative, can be discussed calmly or intelligently.

That led a McCain surrogate to respond to Obama’s comments on the rights of terrorist detainees, a topic on which reasonable people can differ, as “delusional.” It led to an Obama surrogate to describe as “stupid” the positions McCain has taken on the Iraq war, though it is clearly arguable that the surge strategy has helped to reduce violence and U.S. casualties. …

Of all the candidates who sought the presidency this year, McCain and Obama seemed the least likely to fall so quickly into old habits. The question is whether the opening weeks are a true reflection of their characters and the kind of campaigns they intended to run or a temporary departure.

(Hat tip: Halperin.)

I haven’t followed this at all, so I have no idea whether it’s a big deal; I just saw the link on InstaPundit, and since it involves Connecticut’s, er, other senator, I figured it deserved a post.

Meanwhile, in other Connecticut news — and speaking of the Courant — the Nutmeg State’s paper of record is eliminating 60 newsroom staffers and reducing the number of news pages in the paper per week from 273 to 206. Here’s the memo to staff. (Hat tip: my dad.)

It’s times like these I’m really happy I went into law instead of journalism.

What’s particularly intriguing is that, although Nader does slightly better than Barr, their combined effect hurts McCain far more than Obama. When only two candidates are mentioned, it’s Obama 49%, McCain 37%. Another 4% volunteer their intention to vote for "someone else," while 10% remain undecided. The poll write-up explains:

Eighty-seven percent of McCain’s voters would stay with him [in a four-way race featuring Nader and Barr], but 11% would vote for another candidate, with 2% undecided.  Almost all of Obama’s voters (95%) would still stay with him even when the race opened up to include more candidates.

More specifically, when the two-way race becomes a four-way race, 5% of McCain voters switch to Barr, and 6% switch to Nader, while 2% say they "don’t know" how they’d vote. By contrast, just 2% of Obama supporters switch to Nader, 0% switch to Barr, 2% "don’t know," and — just to prove that you can always find a tiny segment of poll respondents who’ll say things that don’t make any sense whatsoever — 1% switch to McCain! (Remember, he’s an option in both scenarios; why anyone would vote for Obama in a two-way race, but McCain in a four-way race, is beyond me.)

Other interesting findings:

• "More than 80% of Obama voters said they were enthusiastic about their candidate, including 47% who are very enthusiastic.  It’s another matter for McCain.  Just under half (45%) of McCain voters said they were enthusiastic about voting for him, but 51% were not enthused about the prospect."

• "While almost a fifth of moderate Republicans would support Obama, just 7% of moderate Democrats would support the Republican candidate.  Overall, almost four out of five liberals support Obama, just 58% of conservatives support McCain."

• "[M]en are somewhat divided — 40% for Obama to 37% for McCain — but women give the Democratic candidate a 25 point lead (54% to 29%)."

• Among whites, it’s McCain 39%, Obama 39%, Nader 5%, Barr 4%, someone else 2%, undecided 11%. (If Bradley/Wilder holds, McCain will get the bulk of those undecideds in the end.) Among blacks, Obama gets "nine out of 10" or thereabouts, while McCain gets just 2%, and 2% are undecided. Obama wins 61-23 among "other ethnic groups."

State-by-state polls, it should be noted, have been trending in the same direction. Five Thirty Eight, which was projecting an extremely close race as recently as a few weeks ago, now has Obama winning 344 to 194 in the Electoral College, with a map that roughly resembles Clinton’s win over Dole in 1996.

Caveat: It’s still very early, and polls at this point can be extremely misleading, arguably to the point of meaninglessness. It’s clear that Obama is doing very well right now; it’s not at all clear what, if anything, that means for November.

P.S. It should also be noted that, although some pre-election polls in 2000 showed him in the high single digits, Nader ultimately got just 2.73% that year, and in 2004 he managed a paltry 0.38%. It seems highly unlikely, then, that in a high-stakes election offering such a stark issue-based contrast as Obama vs. McCain, he’ll ultimately get anywhere near 4% of the vote. In fact, given that Obama is practically a liberal’s dream candidate (at least as plausible Democratic nominees go), I find it hard to believe that Nader will do better than the 0.38% he got in ‘04, when he was running against the far less dreamy John Kerry. (On the other hand, I suppose Nader’s numbers could be boosted by the "racist liberal" vote — folks who won’t vote for McCain because he’s a Republican, but won’t vote for Obama because he’s black.)

The only way I can see Nader breaking 1% is if he truly does pick up a whole bunch of erstwhile McCain voters — and that itself seems highly unlikely, given how anathema his views are to anyone who is remotely conservative or libertarian-ish. My guess is that those 6% of McCain voters who currently gravitate to Nader in a four-way race are simply disaffected with their candidate, and are casting a "protest vote" for the third-party candidate whose name they recognize, namely Nader. But once they start paying more attention, I’d imagine that most of ‘em will realize Nader is really not their kind of guy. Nader is a liberal candidate; it’s hard to believe he can build a sizable support base that’s based fundamentally on anything other than liberal voters.

In the end, most of the disaffected conservatives/Republicans will either stay home, vote for Barr, or hold their noses and vote for McCain. The "conservatives for Nader" movement is about as plausible as the "elderly Jews for Buchanan" movement in Palm Beach County eight years ago. ;)

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the
Movement for Democratic Change, is the legitimately elected president
of Zimbabwe. Or at least he should be. He won that country’s
presidential election (and his party won its parliamentary election) on
March 29th, a victory that has been denied to him and his colleagues
over the past three months as Robert Mugabe has murdered nearly 100
opposition supporters, tortured many more, and driven thousands from
their homes. A week after the election, the Zimbabwean junta announced
that Tsvangirai did not win an outright majority, thus forcing a
runoff scheduled for this Friday. On Sunday, however, Tsvangirai announced
that he was dropping out of the election, stating that "we cannot stand
there and watch people being killed for the sake of power."

So here’s a question for
Senators Obama and McCain. Back in April, Assistant Secretary of State
for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer declared
Tsvangirai the winner of the March 29th election, and certified that he
won over 50% of the vote. Recognition of him as the duly elected
president of Zimbabwe — with all of the diplomatic measures that would
imply, specifically spelled out today in a New York Sun editorial — should have been forthcoming, yet the State Department has been reluctant to go that far. With Tsvangirai hiding in
the Dutch Embassy for fear of his life, will either of you call upon
the United States to recognize him as the elected president of
Zimbabwe?

Sounds good to me. But wouldn’t that constitute "regime change"?

P.S. Meanwhile, on an unrelated note, the Obama campaign takes some MSM heat for its less than entirely progressive attitude toward the American Muslim community. Money quote from Congressman Keith Ellison (he’s the guy who was actually photographed being sworn in with his hand on the Koran), regarding Obama’s aggressive denials of those pesky "smears" alleging that he’s a Muslim: "A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way." More here and here.