News and news...

[lithera]

US actor George Takei is to wed his long-term partner after California lifted its ban on same-sex marriage. Yay! That makes me feel all squishy.

The reviews on the Indy movie are so so. There are some fanboys who went crazy for it and some who were very critical of it - I think both, some what, are suffering from Star Wars backlash syndrome. There are a handful of reviewers (most of the ones I tend to trust, nicely enough) who seem to think it is good fun and on par with Temple of Doom or Last Crusade, depending on which one you dislike more.

Napster has launched the world's largest online music store without digital rights management. Which, I can tell you, will have a lot of people aiming for them. Competition is good.

Oregon, a state that's likely to be in play in the general election, is expected to go for Obama. Kentucky, a state that's not likely to be in play in the general election, is expected to go for Clinton. After the polls close tonight, Obama is expected to have passed the milestone of having secured a majority of pledged delegates. It is an important day. C'mon Oregon! I love you, you crazy state, you.

There is a movie coming about the whole Waco thing. Wheeee?

The fact that JG Jones is drawing EVERYTHING on Final Crisis and they've announced that there may be a fill in artist has sparked the on going debate - Would you rather have your book all done by one artist and late or done by more than one and on time?

And believe it or not the plot of Supermax, the Green Arrow goes to prison movie, has sort of been talked about and... I have to admit... I'm interested. First in its favor - IT IS NOT AN ORIGIN STORY. You only get like 15 minutes of Ollie as Green Arrow before he ends up in jail anyway. There are a handful of B and C list villains in here and it sounds like a good time, actually. Lemme know if you want the link. It is a bit spoiler-y.

There might be a few more Galactica movies in the same way as Razor. NBC is reluctant to let Galactica just walk away after the season finale. Who can blame them, really? Still, you have to wonder about these. Are we looking for any sort of quality or are we just trying to milk it dry? Ooof.

Comments

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

"Oregon, a state that's likely to be in play in the general election, is expected to go for Obama. Kentucky, a state that's not likely to be in play in the general election, is expected to go for Clinton. After the polls close tonight, Obama is expected to have passed the milestone of having secured a majority of pledged delegates. It is an important day. C'mon Oregon! I love you, you crazy state, you."

Actually, amusingly enough, Kentucky will give Obama enough delegates to clinch the delegate lead before Oregon's polls even close.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

This is true but OREGON!

[m00t.livejournal.com]

I'm confused as to what people mean by 'majority' or 'delegate lead' in this context.

He already has a delegate lead 1613 vs 1442.

As for Majority, the democrats need 2025 of the 4049, and he's clearly no where near that until the Convention when the SuperDelegates actually cast their vote. Until then, you can't actually claim their votes (as is apparent with the defections from Clinton) and thus cannot declare a candidate.

And strictly speaking, even the delegates from the states don't have to vote for the person they were sent to represent... but that rarely happens so the counts from the states are effectively final.

So basically it call comes down to the Convention or for one or the other to drop out. I don't see the latter happening, so it'll have to be the former.

In previous primaries a candidate was determined almost entirely by the delegates from the states so the superdelegate (and they're effectively uncommitted status until the convention) didn't matter.

Even if we count the superdelegates in the candidate totals, the total number of pledged delegates from KY and OR is only 103 which itself is not even enough to give him the 2025 Majority...

Subtracting FL and MI (211, 157 though I'm not sure if that is just the pledged or both) we get to 1657 which he is near though Kentucky alone won't carry him over that. Though I haven't seen anything that stated that the goalposts moved due to FL/MI disqualifying themselves so as far as I know, he still needs 2025 which will only happen at the Convention.

This, of course, is assuming any of CNN's numbers are even vaguely correct. :)

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

DemConWatch is the best place for the results. There are 3253 pledged delegates, so half of that is 1626.5. There's no way that Obama doesn't get 14 delegates out of Kentucky.

As for the superdelegates, they are a huge weight in the process. I ran the numbers the other day and a candidate could receive over 60% of the pledged delegates and still lose the nomination to someone who received only 40%.

[m00t.livejournal.com]

Okay, even that site on the left has:

Without Michigan and Florida
(includes add-ons)

	Pledged (GP)	Super	Total	Need to Win
Obama	1612.5	304.5	1917	108
Clinton	1442.5	276.5	1719	306
Edwards	9	--	9
Remains	189	215	404
Updated 5/20/2008	Delegates Needed: 2025

Which states the 2025 needed. Even with FL and MI not seated, the goal is still 2025. They don't stop existing, they just stop being counted for anyone.

As for Superdelegates, I agree but unfortunately until we change that we have to deal with them. :/

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Correct, Obama will not clinch the nomination today. However, he will clinch the pledged delegate lead which is non a trivial accomplishment.

FL/MI has nothing to do with the 2025. If they end up being counted, that number will go up. I crunched the numbers on some Democratic sites, and Obama will be able to reach 2025 without getting any more SD endorsements with assumptions favorable to Clinton.

Clinton has two choices. She can drop out in early June and end the contest or she can press on until the convention, which would have the effect of pissing off the party instead of bringing SD's over to her side. OK, she technically has the 3rd choice of suspending her campaign so she can reclaim the delegates if Obama falls apart in August, but he'd have to REALLY fall apart.

[m00t.livejournal.com]

He already had the pledged delegate lead and the probability of Clinton regaining it was indistinguishable from 0 once she required more than 70% of the remaining delegates...

Still, he doesn't reach 2025 (majority) until the DNC because the superdelegates aren't counted until then. They might endorse but an endorsement is not a vote. Yes it is as strong argument for his nomination as we can get but it is far from final.

As for my confusion re: FL/MI's contribution to the total delegate #, I've had a lot of trouble finding any sites that have some sort of authority that gave an accurate accounting of the state delegate totals. You'd think democrats.org would have it posted somewhere easy to find... The only numbers I could ever find for the total delegates were 4049 and they didn't state that FL/MI's count was excluded from that.

I think she'll press on to the detriment of herself and the party. From what I've seen she feels she deserves the nomination, that it's her right to be there over anyone else.

While I feel the superdelegate system is burdensome I'm hoping that those who are unpledged or currently in the Clinton camp would join Obama if only to hint to Hillary that she's doing no one any favors by thrashing around in her campaign's death throes.

She had good campaign at the start but it really feels like she'd rather hurt Obama any way she can than drop out (or suspend either way) to keep the party as strong and stable as possible heading for Nov.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

He had the lead, but tonight clinches it. That's the distinction; the chances of Obama losing it goes from highly unlikely to arithmetically impossible.

As for Clinton, the problem with pressing on is that she has no money. If Obama gets to 2025 (or whatever the new number is) even with SD's that could in theory flip, the press will start focusing on McCain/Obama to the exclusion of everything else. With no money to buy ads and no press coverage, it's unclear what Clinton could really do. I hope we don't find out.

[m00t.livejournal.com]

As far as I was concerned it already was impossible in spite of the media grossly playing up her chances simply because the ratios she needed to win by were not seated in even the same dimension as reality.

I agree, I hope we don't. But she's already loaned a significant amount of money to the campaign. Given how much she's invested I'm not sure she'll let go even when she's running against a brick wall, and might loan herself more money if she can.

As for 2026( CNN ) / 2025 (everyone else), it's largely academic at this point.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

She's actually just about at the legal limit of what she can donate to herself. I forget what it is - it's a percentage of their income in the last fiscal year - but she can't just keep throwing money down the pit.

The 2026 is probably due to one of these special elections leading to an extra SD.

[m00t.livejournal.com]

Well, here's to seeing a Clinton towel some time soon.

Yeah, not sure. A bit inconsistent as CNN still shows 2025 depending on what you're looking at. Either way, Obama will be above it at some point.