Category: Moblog

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This primary season update brought to you via mobile post, because I’ve been sitting at another dorm for two and a half hours trying to collect clothes for a community service project.

Republicans

Anyway, the big news of the night is the apparent end of the GOP primary race. According to CNN (can’t link to it from my current location but you can’t miss it), Huckabee’s campaign manager says the candidate will drop out from the race.

The reports are saying the McCain has swept up Texas, Ohio, and Vermont, which puts him past the 1,191 delegate count needed to clinch the nomination.

The writing has been on the wall for some time, but for some reason, Huckabee continued to wait. This baffles me somewhat. It was mathematically impossible for him to get the required delegates on his own. It would have likely taken the combined efforts of the unpledged delegates (all of whom usually vote for the state winner for the Republicans, unlike the Democrats) and the remaining delegates from Romney (who already has urged them to vote for McCain), and even then, I don’t think he would have gotten past the marker. So, even if he had gotten every other single pledged delegate in this race, it wouldn’t have gotten him past 1,191. Then there’s the whole thing about McCain’s huge lead in general, but even that’s not a marker of success, as I’ll get to next. Regardless, it just wasn’t happening for Huckabee.

Democrats

On to Clinton and Obama. Since I started writing this post at 9pm or so, Clinton has won Ohio and Rhode Island, and is currently doing so in Texas. Obama has won Vermont o far tonight.

You know, for the past two weeks, the stories in the media and blogosphere seem to have been on the inevitability of an end for Clinton’s run. After 11 wins in a row, it would seem to make some sense. Obama’s unbeatable, isn’t he?

Wrong! Did nobody learn their lesson on Super Tuesday with Mike Huckabee? He was destined to have become a nobody after winning no states after Iowa, and then made that huge comeback that is probably what make Romney decide to leave. Then there’s John McCain. Last Summer, he was dead in the water. No money, staff leaving left and right, no momentum at all, and no chance in hell. Heck, everyone was rooting for Rudy. Now look what’s happened. The man’s the nominee.

In the last two weeks, Clinton has shaken things up in her campaign staff and given herself a loan. Then there was that picture of Obama in Somali garb and her fit over that brochure (which I think may have actually helped her despite the media portrayal of it). Yet, here she is, with a big comeback. She’s won Rhode Island, Ohio, and by my projection, will probably slimly win Texas.

Things have switched up so much on both sides in this primary season, that it is nearly impossible to tell what will happen. I think the media and blogosphere need to take a step back and consider what has happened tonight. Then perhaps they’ll be a little more analytical and a little less knee-jerk when talking about what will happen.

The fact is, I think, you need to consider a few things that have happened in the past couple days. To keep things simple, I’ll do the “-gate” prefix thing. He’s had brochuregate and NAFTAgate. Those are the two big ones I can think of. Maybe there’s some others.

I think the Democrats in Ohio, very touchy about NAFTA, saw the second one in particular, especially after the lack of response to NAFTAgate, and decided he wasn’t worthy of their vote. They didn’t like how he handled that debacle, and he paid for it there.

Look, it’s been shown before several times that bloggers and the media can say it’s over for one candidate or another, and then the people will take things into their own hands. Prove them wrong.

I’ve said it too many times already, and I know I’ll be saying it again before it’s all over. We cannot call the game for the Democrats before all the cards are counted. Votes are proportional, and they often are too close to count. If you think you know what’s going to happen, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

Independents Week

Unfortunately, I’ve got a lot more going on than I intended on this week.  So, I’m going to have to take time this weekend, do a little planning, then hopefully on Sunday, I will finally be able to start this segment.

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Man, I’m losing traction here, just like Rudy Giuliani. The other day I said Dennis Kucinich would probably hold out until at least Super Tuesday. Now I just found out he’s going to drop out of the race.

Believe it or not, I don’t want him to drop right now. Why? Because I have an assignment to do for my class that includes looking up information on Kucunich. Now that he’s going to drop out…what’s the point in researching him? The point of the assignment was to learn about the relevant candidates, and now he’s no longer relevant.

Come on dude…you couldn’t have waited until Tuesday? At least then my group would have given our presentation on you!

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I must say, that for the most part, I’m impressed. At least, in the area of diaster response, FEMA has seemed to have learned a few things. The response time, as well as the level of services and their quality, seems to have improved dramatically over Katrina. Areas of refuge were setup, food and drink were provided, activities were setup, and best of all, no pointed fingers.

However, we can all always learn from things like this. Clearly, FEMA needs to work on their media presence. That staged press conference, with FEMA employees asking soft questions? Not so good. If you can’t get one setup in time, release a press release for God sakes. Or, better yet, let the call-in reporters ask questions. And allow more time for people to show up before starting the show, not 15 minutes.

I’m an optimistic guy, and I think FEMA will learn from this time’s mistakes. If not, what’s one more blot on their record, right? In any case, Bush better hope it doesn’t happen under his term. See, if it happens with the new (likely) Democrat President, the Republicans can blame it on them.

Hopefully FEMA gets better, but knowing the government and its response to events, there seems likely to be some screw up in the future.

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I think most people know by now that AOL is pretty much a POS. Yet the fact that so many still use it is a bit baffling.

Yet, even though I’ve always known that it sucks, I never truely realized how much until this Summer, when I worked at my dad’s computer repair business pretty much every week day I wasn’t doing my internship.

I’ve never used AOL as my ISP, so I never knew just how bad it was. I knew it was bloated, but not so much (at least these days) that it makes it painful for any of AOL’s remaining dial-up users. I had an idea that AOL often made difficulties whenever it got corrupted, but did not know how difficult until a computer I worked on this week.

Finally, don’t like the fact they are so tied to Internet Explorer, so that if things like images are off in IE, they will be in AOL.

There’s more I could say about AOL, but it’d take all night. AOL just needs to die a quick death.