loquacious

Finally, It's Here. Not that Super Tuesday will decide anything, as it turns out

Well, it's finally here. The big (no-deciding, as it turns out) moment. From the latest polls, here is my final estimated delegate count for today:

Clinton: 687
Obama: 657
[this is of the 1347 delegates in 17 states we have polls for]

As in my prior post, the other 125 delegates I expect Clinton and Obama to more or less split, with a likely advantage to Obama (they are mainly caucuses, and western states, where he tends to do better).

So, in watching the news, I've been noting that the media seems to be getting things entirely wrong. They are reporting that  over 2000 delegates will be awarded, but that is wrong. The 24 states voting do have over 2000 delegates, but many of those are superdelegates, which are not awarded through today's voting, as far as I can tell.

CNN (I think) even ran a ticker saying that 80% of all delegates nationwide would be awarded today... which is just false by any stretch of the imagination. That kind of hype only serves to make it seem like it's going to get decided today, which it's not.

In fact, the media has so far concentrated on who 'wins' the state (in terms of popular vote, for those states with primaries rather than caucuses), which is fairly irrelevant in the whole delegate-based system. Still, expect some big hype based on who wins how many states. It's really been a challenge to find a network with the least incorrect coverage.

Anyway, in terms of state 'wins', the polls are largely in the margin of error. So we really don't know, at this point, who will win the most states. Of the states where we have polls, Obama seems to have a lock on IL, GA, UT (I think he'll also take the caucuses in ID and AK). Clinton has NY, OK and TN (and most likely AR, duh). The rest of the states are a statistical dead heat, all within the margin of error currently, especially if you look at the most recent polls, where Obama has caught up to (in some cases passed) what had previously been a healthy Clinton lead.

And finally, there is a new Washington State poll out, it has Obama leading Clinton 50% to 43%.

Book 27: An Army of Davids

An Army of Davids
Glenn Reynolds
2006
289 pp.
Rating: 1 of 5

Mr. Reynolds gets my lowest rating of the year! Why? His optimistic treatise on how technology was going to empower us all and create a better future for everyone just stuck in my craw. I found it fascinating that not one page of his book was devoted to those who lack access to these technologies. Perhaps it's because I've spent the past 4 years of my life trying to level the technology playing field, but I was dumbstruck by his chipper tone and his apparent complete ignorance of exactly how non-pervasive these life changing technologies are -- and how this non-pervasiveness is not equally distributed throughout the population.

However, having to admit that technology is just for the educated and those with disposable income would have negated the main message of his book, so I guess I can understand why he willingly avoids this 'little problem.'

All his ideas and theses spring from a conservative/libertarian view of the world: government bad; individuals good!  The market is of course going to save us, and all corporations are good, except for large media corporations. Hmmm, I wonder why? Could it be that as a small time blogger, he's annoyed  that those media giants control more eyeballs than he does? Funny how the market works great in every area except the one he's trying to compete in.

If you are rich white college law professor living in urban America  like Mr. Reynolds, I guess one might be quite delighted by the digital revolution: technology makes it easier for him to express his thoughts, capture his ideas, increases time with his family, increases his knowledge, and makes it easier for him to shop.   It's a technology Nirvana for him, but what about everyone else? Reynolds just assumes that everyone has the skills and access to gadgets that he does (as well as the time to learn and use them) or if they don't it's their own damn fault for not pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps (see Lakoff for more on this basic conservative frame).

The reasons why people do not use technology are myriad and complex, and mainly have nothing to do with their ability or desire to use it. I imagine some of the people I've worked with over the past years reading this book. I think they'd find it insulting, condescending, naive and ridiculous. Reynolds really seems to have no grasp on the lives of ordinary people. 

Book 19: Johnny Got His Gun

Johnny Got His Gun
Dalton Trumbo (1939)
243 pp.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Johnny Got His Gun. How did I not ever read this in high school? It’s the perfect teaching book. And weirdly timelessly eerie in its statement of the effects of war, of young life lost. Although written theoretically about WWI, it’s a kind of timeless book that could be about the physical and psychological impacts of war on any young person. It also got the author (who was also a screenwriter) blacklisted in the McCarthy era, so it’s worth reading for that alone.

What is interesting to me, and how this relates to other reading I’ve been doing lately (though I didn’t know it when I picked it up) is that (warning: spoiler coming!) the only character in the book is blast victim who is a quadruple amputee who has lost his ability to see, hear, smell and talk.  The book is really his interior monologue as he figures out how to live life in this new state – the moat frustrating part of which is that he can not communicate with anyone. Nor does anyone caring for him know whether he is conscious or not.

Similar to Mind Wide Open and Rattling the Cage, the book makes you think for a moment about what it means to be human and to be conscious.   Or rather, Johnny Got His Gun becomes interesting in light of having read these two other books because not for a moment do you wonder if the protagonist is human or conscious, even though he can not longer perform any function that one would associate with human-ness or consciousness, typically.

Book 13: The Prize

The Prize
Daniel Yergin (1991)
788 pp.
Rating: 5 out of 5

This is a brilliant history of oil and the oil industry (and really, much more interesting than that might make it sound!). Where it leads to, of course, is globalization. Where it starts from is American capitalistic imperialism. Oil seems like it might well have been one of the first truly multi-national businesses. It’s certainly at the core of several world and regional wars, and one might justifiably place a lot of current global tensions at its doorstep.

The book is extremely thorough. Perhaps a bit too much at the beginning for my taste, but it does all build up to a centry and a half overview. It certainly starts to get good around 1910 and the build up to WWI. In fact, Yegin does an amazing job detailing how oil figured prominently in WWi, WWII, then the cold war and the geopolitical struggle, especially in the Mideast, that occured after that. I certainly have a much much clearer idea of why the US (and other countries) have gone to war, made the 'friends' they have, snuggled up to dictators, and much much else. One of the major turning points was when both the US and Brittain made the choice to convert their Navies from coal to oil, knowing full well that their domestic production of oil was insufficient to meet their military needs. This set the stage for a prolonged military, diplomatic and/or economic relationship (aka as a stranglehold) on the Middle East.

Growing up in the late 70's, i never did understand what was behind the Iranian hostage 'crisis'. Now I do. In the 90's and more recently, I never could figure out why the US had/has such a close relationship with the Saudi Arabians. Now I do. Buying gas, I never did know who was behind all those different gas stations. No I do.

I think most remarkable, and perhaps most pertinent is the work this book does uncovering US private interests (private industry) and their role in collaborating with the US government, to accomplish geopolical aims. The US government and the oil industry have been in bed together a long long time. I know realize that G.W. Bush is just the logical extension of 150 years of history.