Welcome to the Candy Shop

Today is opening day of the Major League Baseball season. Don’t cry, Cub fans. There’s always next year.

Last week a poll was released indicating that 28% of Clinton supporters claim they will not support Obama if he gets the Democratic Party nomination, versus 19% of Obama supporters who claim they will not support Clinton if she wins the nomination. How did the Democratic Party go from claiming they have two candidates they were very happy with to having 47% of the Democratic primary electorate dissatisfied with their choices in a little less than ninety days? Anyone who thinks that a prolonged primary campaign does anything positive for the Democratic Party is smoking some pretty powerful stuff. Anybody seen President Clinton?

Continuing on the subject of polls, Gallup released a poll today showing Barack Obama with a 10-point lead over Hillary Clinton nationally, among Democratic voters, as of March 29 of this year. This is a complete reversal of Gallup’s early February polls which showed Clinton with an 11-point lead over Obama. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I consider myself a fairly intelligent individual. (Feel free to disagree if you are so inclined.) But considering the month Senator Obama has had, the beating he took for his association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and the strength of Clinton’s support among voters in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary, conventional wisdom would seem to dictate Obama should be scrambling up the tube slide trying to catch up to his opponent. But nothing about this campaign (except for the politics) is conventional, is it?

I wasted seven minutes of my life this evening watching CNN talking-head Lou Dobbs. The Sultan of Smug was discussing the “obvious, indisputable media bias” against Hillary Clinton. His reporter guest from the Washington Post was commenting on a study by some purportedly “unbiased” media research center saying that in the past 60 days, approximately 83% of the network news coverage and commentary on Senator Obama has been “positive”, versus about 53% positive coverage for Senator Clinton. Now I’m always a little suspicious of studies coming from “unbiased” sources. If someone has to tell you they are unbiased, they probably aren’t. Hearing this news the obligatory Clinton supporter proceeded to blame the media for not being hard enough on Obama, while the obligatory Obama supporter claimed the Clinton campaign - who has traditionally enjoyed what some might call favorable media coverage - more or less had a case of sour grapes. I realize it may be difficult to believe, but I think there was a lesson somewhere in this display of adolescence. First, I’m always wary of anyone who claims to be unbiased. If someone tells you they have no preference, they more than likely have a preference. (The same rule applies to people who claim that you can trust them.) But assuming the results of the study are accurate, it raises an interesting point of conversation. Critics of media bias point to anything short of a perfectly even distribution of positive and negative coverage between all the candidates is patently unfair and a threat to the democracy. But there is something else to consider. Not all ideas - or candidates - are created equal. Take the equal coverage argument to its absurd extreme conclusion. Would Joseph Stalin merit the same quantity of positive news coverage as Mahatma Gandhi? Obviously neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton is either Joseph Stalin or Mahatma Gandhi, but the underlying principle may still be applicable. Is it possible that some items or issues receive more favorable coverage because they simply merit more favorable coverage?

While we’re on the subject of issues, can I tell you how tired I am of hearing supporters of both Democratic candidates complain that the primary campaign is focusing too much on personality and not enough on “the issues.” It is somewhat of a dubious charge. There have been no less than twenty debates during the course of this campaign. If you don’t know where each senator stands on the issues you either haven’t been paying attention or you simply aren’t interested in finding out. But there is a a degree of truth to the statement. This Democratic primary race is a personality contest. And there is a very good reason for that. The actual policy differences between the candidates amount to little more than the difference between midnight and 12:03 am. Both want the same things for the country, each has a slightly different way of achieving those goals. And because the goals are so similar, the contest has turned to the areas in which the senators differ - style and personality. Which may offer an explanation for Obama’s 10-point national lead.

Late last week a chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan broke away from a Connecticut-sized ice-shelf in Antarctica and tumbled into the ocean. So much for those Emperor penguin water-front condos.

Some of you may have determined from statements made in previous posts that I am something of a car guy. So you can imagine my surprise when the Ford Motor Company sold luxury British automakers Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Motors of India. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something seems so very wrong with that sentence. Perhaps it’s the fact that two of the most durable symbols of automotive luxury are now owned by the manufacturer of the world’s cheapest car. But there’s a bit of irony here too, isn’t there? For 89 years India found itself under the thumb of the British Empire, exploited for its labor, spices and other commodities. Now two marquees of British capitalism are controlled by by the former colony. Like rain on your wedding day, right? The free ride, when you’ve already paid. The good advice that you just... well, you get the picture.

Zimbabwe is minting new $10 million paper notes. Why would someone need a $10 million bill you ask? Well, if $10 million nets you a grand total of two rolls of toilet paper, you can see how things like $100 bills could be considered completely and utterly useless. Keeping that in mind, President Robert Mugabe distributed cars to a group of about 45 doctors a few days prior to his country’s upcoming presidential elections in a shameless - if not at all admirable - attempt to buy votes for himself. No word or whether or not the rumors of the doctors burning the cars to cook whatever scraps of food they could find are true.

According to news reports, the hottest thing on YouTube right now is a Delta Airlines safety video. That’s right, a safety video. Why is it hot? I have no idea. I don’t understand YouTube, let alone anything on it. But I’m told the video’s popularity has something to do with its “star”, a thirty-something red-haired woman with cheekbones like oranges and lips the size of Florida. Of course, none of this explains the morbid fascination with this strange piece of film, but I guess everyone loves a freak show.

Finally tonight, rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has rescinded his support for Hillary Clinton and decided to support Barack Obama. Hmm. With friends like those....