hillary r. clinton, will you please go now?

(title apologies to theodore guisel)

the democratic primary race is over. someone please let hillary clinton know that she can't win. statistically, it's ovah. but up come people saying that obama is being elitist with comments that when government fails them, the people become bitter and turn to their guns and god. that this gas tax holiday supported by clinton (proposed byt john mccain, the REPUBLICAN) will do you no good is elitist. i hear those same arguements coming from the clinton campaign supporters rather than from the obama supporters. ever since the start of this long arduous primary season, the vibe that i have always gotten from barack obama is that he figures that he won't change the culture in washington by himself. he is asking that those who are with him ask the same of their local representation. when i hear him say "we", i literally think that he actually means "we" as in you, me, the guy down the street, everyday people.

the vibe that i get from the clinton campaign is that its her turn. she has the name association, she has the money, she has had more exposure to what life in the white house is, therefore the people should just usher her into the oval office. when i hear her say "we" i see her meaning the royal "we", meaning me. she really has had to ramp up the rhetoric to get people back to her side since the failure of clinching inevitability on super tuesday and that has really put the clamps on her.

the math is simply not in her favor.

pandering to the people for votes screams of insincerity to me, especially when its not going to do much for people. and clinton has to know that. when you are being outspent 3 to 1 saying anything and everything to garner a few votes that won't change much in the overall picture is not surprising, but to call out obama for making fun of this i think is just sour grapes on clinton supporters' part. clinton is the one who went to a private female school, an ivy league school, lived very well in illinois, but obama is the elitist. perhaps if more outlets would report clinton's background more frequently we can stop with this elitism arguement nonsense. i too would like to hear obama's expanded thoughts on issues that really matter, but because clinton is being selfish and poses to do some real long term damage to the democratic party, obama is essentially hamstrung into campaigning in primary mode than shifting to general election mode.

just so everyone knows, i did not decide to switch to obama until edwards dropped. i was for kucinich and then edwards after dennis dropped out. i also never got on the "hillary must go" bandwagon until it became a statistical impossibility for her to catch him in the remaining primaries. the process needs to <b>END</b> quickly, not be prolonged.

so what if people are disenfranchised because they played no major part in deciding their candidate. how many people were disenfranchised in the republican race this year when john mccain recieved enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee? how many people can<b>NOT</b> vote in the upcoming primaries because their state's primaries are closed (such as me in my state)? <b>how many people were disenfranchised because the people in michigan and florida knew their primaries did not count and did not vote who now because of clinton's ramroding to not represent the people, but to get those state's superdelegates, now have no voice in their primary?</b> clinton claiming disenfranchisement is also pandering, pandering to the poor, uneducated (part of her base) and to black people (obama's base) because of 2000 and 2004. and this also hurts party unity. it will be very hard to get all in the party to unite if it goes to denver, and anything that could be done to speed up the end of this race is a good thing.

i want to give the democrats my vote. people like clinton who are trying to turn the party into republican lite through their tactics and policies do your party more harm than good.

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are we sure dusty baker was nowhere near here?

School team hit for 66 runs in two innings

two things come to mind when i saw that headline

1. FAIL
2. PWM3D

sirius/xm radio merger. still waiting...

i have invested in satellite radio right when the department of justice had announced the new company would not constitute a monopoly and approved the merger which had been announced a year ago. the next step in the process would be for the fcc to approve the merger, a process that should have taken no more than a week tops.

this approval was 4 weeks ago.

now, i'm perfectly happy to continue to use sirius should merger fall apart. i mean, even though most of the talk stations are horrible to put it nicely (thank god for sirius 110 indie talk, otherwise i might lose my mind) the university of louisville airs its games on sirius. and uofl trumps any reason proposed. but come on. what's holding up this merger? for any of you out there who own a satellite radio or are looking to get into satellite radio and are just waiting for the fcc to approve the merger, go to siriusmerger.com or xmmerger.com (for each respective company's flavored website on the merger, it's all the same content) and send a letter to your congresspeople and the fcc. i don't know much about your congresspeople, but i can be assured that probably one of mine may take my letter seriously, and i know they won't be republicans.

here's a copy of my letter (with some personal info scrubbed out for obvious reasons)

------- Forwarded message -------
From: "SIRIUSmerger.com" [personal e-mail addy]
To: "SIRIUSmerger.com" [personal e-mail addy]
Cc:
Subject: Please allow this merger
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:00:58 -0400

Thank you for using SIRIUSmerger.com Mail System

Message sent to the following recipients:
FCC
Representative Yarmuth
Senator Bunning
Senator McConnell
Message text follows:

C. Artis
[address]

April 16, 2008

[recipient address was inserted here]

Dear [recipient name was inserted here],

I am a person that has just become involved in this satellite radio
industry because of the allowance of the DoJ for the companies to merge.
I purchased a radio the very next day because finally the companies were
going to jointly offer what I have been missing in my market. There are
no progressive stations in Louisville, KY. International news is only
offered for a few hours at night. Most of the music offered on the radio
here is music I do not listen to. Satellite radio has given me the
options that I wanted and I am willing to pay for it because it is another
option that I have not, nor will not be offered because the major radio
companies that broadcast in Louisville will not run that content or will
run it for a short time and then change it because the content does not
rate well.

There are many more people like me who have only just now invested in some
manner in satellite radio because of this merger that is pending and is
very close to becoming a reality. To deny this merger because of a feared
"monopoly" is ludicrous on its face and is easily debunked. When XM Radio
first launched there was a time period where it was the only satellite
radio option. Did the FCC or the Department of Justice deny XM from
operating because Sirius had not launched its satelites yet? Also, the
reason that satellite radio exists is because the consumer, or radio
listener, was given the choice of station A or station B with no recourse
to go to station C because there was no station in the market offering
that content. Satellite radio gives the consumer a choice of offerings in
the local market or offerings from a satellite provider. Just because
there were two satellite radio companies in existance does not mean that
they were in direct competition with each other. They are also in direct
competition with the local radio markets. Both companies were losing
money competing with each other and with the local radio markets. If this
merger is not approved and one company files for bankruptcy, would the FCC
allow this to happen because there will only be one company offering a
satellite option instead of two? It is for this reason why the logic of a
merger being denied seems flawed. If the satellite companies are
competing against themselves and one fails, isn't this a merger almost by
default because there is now one company where there were two? And what
would happen to those who would have invested into their respective
companies by way of equipment and subscriptions? At least with this
merger proposal there is a guarantee that all equipment will continue to
function as it is now.

A combination of companies will allow satellite radio to better compete
with the local markets. A stronger satellite radio company will force the
local radio markets and the so-called terrestrial radio companies to
improve their products, which would in turn force the combined company to
improve their offerings.

Satellite radio is a great technology that serves a specific market of
those radio listeners who are unsatisfied by what their local markets
offer and now finally have a device that delivers the content that they
want. To take it away by not allowing both companies to survive as one
does not serve the people who actively use it does not serve the common
good, but the interests of special lobbyist interests, such as the NAB who
have an active interest in seeing satellite radio fail because the NAB
serves the interests of the local radio markets and terrestrial radio
companies who wish to maintain the status quo.

Please allow this merger to be completed. We the radio listeners have no
other recourse to express to the radio industry in our local markets what
content we want. By denying the merger you deny the will of the people to
express their opinions.

Sincerely,

C. Artis

those of you interested in this venture, please write your congresspeople and the fcc to get some movement on this issue.

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hey folks, demonoid is back. guess what? it could have been back sooner than you thought.

it seems like (to my eyes anyway) that the main roadblock in the site coming back was the site admin himself. deimos was his handle. if these "real world issues" were so encompassing that running a torrent website was simply out of the question, then why the hell didn't he turn over the site months ago? the moderation team at the subdemon(oid) forums were childish to put it mildly, and the fanbois were that much worse. you know how sad it is to see multiple threads titled "WHEN WILL DEMONOID BE
BACK??????????" or similar in tne subdemon forums over and over ad nauseam ad infinitum? i had posted in the forums there and i'll say it here- ALL of this could have been alleviated if deimos had just made one post in the announcements section at the subdemon forums, the content of said section was really an list of rules. these "real world issues" i guess must have been really important for deimos to never have said anything at all ever in that fourm. wonder how he found time to make posts in other threads of non-importance...

i have no idea what the timeline of events was, but the way the message on the front page reads, it seems like it was a short time ago. like in the past week. the few times i checked the subdemon forums, i did not see any announcement of a site admin change. when you add in the reports that the pirate bay offering up server space for demonoid, plus another tracker relocating to canada after demonoid went down and the turnaround time of it coming back up when it has gone down in the past, i think you in the end have a story of an absent admin who was negligent in their duties. deimos failed as an admin at his site's most crucial time in its existence. if life somehow became overwhelming so that he couldn't have run his site, turn it over to someone who could, a lesson learned months later. if he saw these issues coming up in the horizon, he should have turned the site over to someone who could run it in his absence. i can't speak for anyone else, but if i had a tight team of people i trusted and i had to go away for an undetermined time, i would have turned things over a long time ago.

i have used and will use the site, mainly because it is one of the best audiobook torrent sites on the internet (and someone please develop an audiobook dedicated site in the future please. there is a big audiobook community out there, i have a very large collection of such) so i'm glad the site is back. being grateful its back is one thing. essentially taking a dump on your users by having no announcements and then finding out it could have been back months ago is another. it should be a lesson
to other bittorrent users on the intarwebs- don't rely so heavily on one site to get your pirated goods.
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edit: about that timeline? i may have been a bit off. instead of being something that happened in a week, it looks like it may have happened in a day. demonoid kool-aid drinkers, hear this and know this- YOU WERE PLAYED. the site could have easily come back quickly, but because of the site admin whom you loved, fawned over and protected so diligently decided to take a crap on you and pretty much walk out on you all without turning things over, the interwebs is treating deimos with kid gloves. screw that. be remorseful about his personal life, but his life as an admin deserves and needs intense scrutiny and criticism.

so randi rhodes got suspended

randi rhodes spoke at an air america affiliate function over the weekend and let loose some pretty incindiary stuff about geraldine ferraro and hillary clinton. she was on her show monday, off it on tuesday and today comes a press release from the grand poobahs of air america that she has been suspended. my guess it will be a week or two. and then this too shall pass.

only reason i'm writing about this is because the reactions from the randifans, especially on her website's forum ranges from rediculous to hilarious. their general bane of contention is this: air america has NO RIGHT to suspend randi because she was speaking:
a)the truth
b)her opinion
c)not on company time
d)not as a representative of aar

wrong on all four counts. all four points can be debunked with a few facts:
1)reguardless of whether or not she was representing air america radio at the time, the fact is that she is employed by aar and can be seen as representing aar if she is or is not simply because they employ her.
2)she was speaking at an air america affiliate's function. even if it was on her own time, those who may not have known could still think that she represented the views of air america.
3)one can express their views without using the language that she did. even if she felt that way, its not good for a radio personality to use that language when talking about public figures.

although what she said i believe to be true, she shouldn't have said that in the way she did.

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random thoughts

superdelegates are getting tired of shrill hillary's act. about damn time is all i have to say

speaking of shrill, i jumped in and bought a satellite radio after merger between xm and sirius finally passed the department of justice's smell test. i have been listening to sirius's liberal station sirius left for less than a week and other than thom hartmann and stephanie miller, my gawd these hosts suck. especially this crazy shrill sounding woman lynn samuels who sounds like a combination of gilbert gottfried, randi rhodes (whom i like) and tony kornheiser (who i don't). she has the unfortunate radio slot of running from 1-4 pm, meaning that we get hartmann (who's decent) for an hour live and then this crazy bitch for three. the mornings aren't any better. the morning host bill press hates barack obama essentially for the same reasons joe elliot doesn't like obama- mostly words and no experience.

oh, by the way, samuels hates obama too. wonder what they'll be talking about in august after the democratic convention and obama takes the nomination.

and about the best radio on radio, i'm sure it is, but right now, i can't hear it most of the time. i bought a stiletto 100. it can connect to sirius through the air and by wifi. most of my listening has been at home where i connect through wifi. reception through the air is nearly impossible, even with these uncomfortable antenna headphones that came with it. and there is a ground based repeater tower in town. no reception when there is a reception tower in your city. not good. after seeing the reviews of the next generation stiletto, i may think about going that route as soon as the price comes down a bit more. i paid nearly $180 for it including 1 day shipping, so if i can find a deal online or otherwise that's cheaper than that (including shipping online) i'll go for that and turn around and sell this unit.

the racing season has started. i really don't care. the league fucking sucks, champcar sold out to anton and now is trying this "combined series" shit off as being the end of the war (memo to those who still care, nothing fixed. the product sucks, the management still sucks, the problems are still there, but now magnified), nascar still sucks even with the new "car of tomorrow", i can't catch alms because i work when they are on and f1 runs way too early in the morning.

and by the way, this should never, ever be seen on a college campus or anywhere else for that reason.

anti abortionists are about as unamerican as you can get. forcing your millenialist religiofascist anti woman views down the throats of everyone when you don't also protest the poor healthcare system in this country or the war that is going on in the middle east and the piss poor treatment of our veterans from that war hurts your cause significantly. i may change my views on them. but they have to make some changes too. shocking people to your side hurts your cause greatly. these people need to realize that pro-choice is NOT pro-abortion. pro-choice means exactly that- that a person is for the woman to choose whether or not she should have an abortion without any means of guilting the women into proceeding with the pregnancy. when are these people going to adopt these children that the mothers don't want to take care of? don't see too many of them around do you?

nice to see the media doing due-dilligence in researching obama. due-dilligence meaning none at all.

i woke up today with my radio set to the formerly great WHAS this morning. i may change that now. i have pretty much given up on WHAS after 1)dumping ABC news for fox news as their main news affiliate (cbs as a secondary) 2 years ago, 2)dumping uofl for kentucky as the primary team after louisville had a more successful football AND basketball season, 3)removing nearly all of their news department and going with an exclusive feed at the top of the hour with fox news and doing a badly produced local news segment afterwards and 4)dumping a local show host based on numbers. not the numbers the show was doing, but how much the host was making compared to the size of the market, and replacing the host with a TAPED syndicated program, who also happens to be one of the most inflammatory hosts on the airwaves now. he makes imus's "nappy headed hos" comments look average to the normal person. the host who was replaced was joe elliot. and it's him that i have a major problem with.

normally joe does a good job. he's a republican who tries to be neutral. most of the time he pulls it off. today he failed at that totally and utterly.

i'm not sure if he's wanting john mccain to win or hillary clinton. i do know fordamnsure he's not for barack obama, even though clinton canNOT win the nomination mathematically without using democratic superdelegates to overturn the nearly 150 (by most counts) delegate lead obama has from the primaries and caucases held. is he for clinton's nomination so that it rips the party in half leading for an easy republican victory in the white house and all downticket elections? clearly joe sees in obama nothing but words and no action.

funny, one could say the same thing about dubya (whom joe was pretty high on up until the midterm elections in 2006. its pretty obvious now that gore would have been a much better decision, but i doubt that joe would ever admit that). or about john kennedy. they offered up nothing but words. joe doesn't like the fact that barack talks a good game, but doesn't back it up with much. the difference is that kennedy actually inspired people to do great things. obama IS inspiring people to get involved in the process. words matter. the elusive young vote is turning out in record numbers to support him. he's pulling in independents (which i am proudly) and republicans to support his side. i would rather someone take obama's words and use them to do great things. he doesn't have to do much but change the attitudes of the american people and reinspire them to greatness. dubya, eh not so much. epic failure is how i would describe his words. there is truely someone who is all words and no action. epic failure to the people he is supposed to serve, the people at large and not the rich elites, epic failure to the country leaving it worse off since bush's first term in office; bush 41 his daddy, epic failure to the world community not taking the lead in new alternative energies, or scientific developments, or, hell, humanitarian developments, epic failure at even speaking. the world thinks highly of the american PEOPLE, just not its leaders. i would just like to say to the world at large, have scorn for those americans who enabled corrupt leaders in our government to trash our name. i'll take responsibility for putting mitch mcconnell back in office in 2002 in my first ever national election, but everyone else is not my fault.

so how does that above get around to what joe was talking about this morning? he was talking bad about obama because he (get this) was a member of the trinity united church of christ, pastored by reverend jeremiah wright. and much has been made of what wright has pastored about by the media.

inflammatory things.

controvercial things.

things taken way out of context.

...

wha, what's that? the media not thoroughly researching things before they go on the air with it? surely that _never_ happens.

but as it turns out, it's true. pravda usa fox news bought tapes of pastor wright to try to bring obama back to hillary so she could either beat him up more or take the nomination so that either clinton wins (highly unlikely as she has major negatives that would bring independants and republicans solidly for mccain) or mccain wins (which is good for fox because it _is_ the media wing for conservative idiocracy) but either way NOTHING changes in washington. they picked out some of the most inflammatory items in a selection of those sermons to get obama to trip up. one of the items they picked out was a line wright used, that "america's chickens were coming home to roost" after the september 11 terrorist attacks. as it turns out (and as i e-mailed to joe), wright did NOT say those things. yes he may have said them in his sermon, but HE did not put that thought to paper. it was a part of a line from ambassador edward peck, a REAGAN deputy antiterrorism director. what wright said what director peck said in its unedited context when he spoke to FOX NEWS of all people:

"I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost."

"We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

"We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

"We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

"We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

"We bombed Qaddafi's home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children's head against the rock.

"We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they'd never get back home.

"We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

"Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
(begin media clip)
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.
(end media clip)
"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y'all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that."

you see that? wright did say those words, but they weren't HIS words. that's one sermon that i have heard. there are several more hack jobs that the media has distorted and is trying to push as wright being a racist and because obama spent 22 years in his church, and that it was wright who brought him into christianity, officiated his wedding, baptised his two daughters, and that obama treats wright as close family, that the two share views. and those same people are trying to say that if obama finds that these words were that highly offensive, he should have either walked out of church or that he should have said something to wright about it afterwards.

i'm not religious. i find the practice without merit and logic and counterproductive. but i have been inside black churches for 18 years and spent a day at utcc, obamas church. in the black church, it is highly disrespectful for anyone to walk out during sermons or to even directly question the sermon. it would be like a basketball player to directly question his coach during a timeout in a close game late. you just don't do it. if i can figure that out, why can't some of these other knuckleheads?

what irks me to the point of dissatisfaction with elliot is that he is/should be/was better than this to go there with his questioning of obama. he may not like barack. that's fine. i don't care about that. but to blatantly try to use the words of someone who is not in this campaign to try to chop the legs from someone who is in the campaign is wrong, petty and something well below the standards of what joe elliot had during his 10 year run on the air at WHAS. he claims that it matters because "he chose him (wright)" and has been associated with him for 22 years, all the while completely ignoring what john hagee who just recently endorced john mccain has had to say for quite a while directly disparaging catholics, jews, and muslims.

he also glosses over the fact that mccain asked hagee for his endorcement. isn't that kinda the same as what obama has done?

the backwards thinking defeatists known as kentucky democrats who ruined a genuine shot of ousting obstructionist mitch mcconnell by rejecting a grassroots iraq war veteran retired marine colonel in favor of a multimillionaire "democrat" who has contributed to democrats and republicans (including mcconnell) and has won as many statewide elections as me just because he's rich and can self finance leaving more money for the democratic senate campaign committee to spend elsewhere. they're going to vote for clinton because she's white and he's black (unfortunately racisim still runs deep in the state and our three main urban areas aren't going to be enough to turn aside clinton) instead of using real reasons to decide. sadly people are going to use wright as a reason to not vote for obama. people should decide how to vote on their own, and the media pushing out false information does a disservice to not only themselves, but to the electorate. not listening to WHAS used to be unthinkable. however with their recent heavy conservative skew, that is a decision that is becoming easier with each passing day.

in the end, it is a self defeating cycle- the media does a lazy job reporting the news to a lazy populace that elects their leaders not on issues but trivial matters such as skin color, religious beliefs, gender, etc. and those bad leaders do not do the work of the people which does not get reported by the lazy media to a lazy populace who elects their leaders not on issues but trivial matters...

obama is truely the candidate who can change the toxic atmosphere of washington. why nobody in the media except for randi rhodes (explictly) and keith olbermann (implicitly) will get behind him is a very sad thing indeed.

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Florida and Michigan won't have revotes? GOOD. FUCK 'EM. There shouldn't BE a revote.

Anyone who thinks that Florida and Michigan should get a revote is either stupid or intellectually dishonest. There are two big reasons why this vote should not happen:

1. They broke the rules. Period. The DNC set down rules that other than Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina (which had been granted exemptions from the party), no other state was to move their primaries ahead of Feburary 5, Super Tuesday. If the DNC cannot enforce its own rules to show that actions have consequences, then the primaries for the 2012 campaign will officially kick off on January 21, 2009. This rediculousness of moving primary dates has to stop NOW and this is the best way to do it. Ironically enough, if neither state moved ahead their primaries, they would have been plenty relevant and had a say in this primary season. And speaking of having a say in the primary season...

2. People in each of those states who want a say in the primaries should suck it up and pay for the revotes themselves. This is the dirty little secret that some in the Clinton campaign don't want out there since she wants those primaries to count (surprisingly enough because she won them by big margins and she is woefully behind in states won, delegates won and popular vote). I'm not a Democrat. I did not send the DNC any of my money. But if I did, I don't want to pay for something that could have been preventable. Also one of those dirty little secrets that people don't want to release is that both states had 60 days to change their primaries after the DNC warned both states what their actions would cause. Both states proceeded without changing their dates. The individual states could have changed the dates that the Democrats elected their convention delegates back to where they were. I'm sure that the DNC would have chipped in to help pay for them. But don't try to get the money donated from millions of people to help run the DNC to fix both of those self-induced screwups caused by Florida and Michigan themselves.

Clinton is also calling on Barack Obama to push for re-votes in both states, when the only thing he can do is to suggest it. NEITHER of them have the power to call for a revote, the STATE LEGISLATURES do and BOTH legislatures have decided to pass on the option. I also don't buy the arguement that Florida should be seated as is because all names were on the ballot. Bullshit. Florida law states that names cannot be removed from the ballot unless the candidate drops out. Had that law not been in place, Obama and Edwards and Dodd and Biden definitely would not have been on that ballot and possibly Kucinich and Gravel as well. All of the Democrats agreed to not campaign in Florida and Michigan and as a part of solidarity voluntarily pull their names from the ballots in Michigan. Strangely enough, Clinton refused to do so in Michigan. She also held a fundraiser in Florida and the night of the unsanctioned Florida primary, had a non-victory victory celebration.

Oh yeah, by the way, Clinton said herself in an interview on New Hampshire Public Radio on October 11, 2007 (that is when she was running as the inevitable Democratic candidate) that the votes would not count and also the only states that had a higher Republican turnout than Democratic turnout were Florida and Michigan. By a lot. Seems like to me that the ones who disenfranchised the voters of Michigan and Florida are the state legislatures of Michigan and Florida and the governors who signed that legislation into law. Both states have a Republican majority in one state house, draw your own conclusions.

But looking at exit polling data, many people up until that point did not decide who to vote for until the last days before the primary. Obama may have had a few ads run as part of a regional ad buy in a package (which was inevitable that would run in Florida in the border markets and on national television, I can recall seeing some Obama ads on MSNBC) but he did not campaign there. Clinton actually was there pressing the flesh. Clinton only won big there based on name recognition and nothing more. And any Democrat who is still undecided or favors Clinton as the Democratic nominee, consider this- Clinton has and will do anything to win the nomination. This includes endorsing her Republican opponent over her Democratic one, calling her Democratic opponent inexperienced, but wanting him as her running mate who would have to assume the presidency should something happen to her. This includes trying to sanction and legitimize elections that the Democratic National Convention ruled as illegitimate and unsanctioned and that SHE, HERSELF AGREED TO ABIDE BY THAT DECISION.

Clinton needs to do the Democratic party a huge favor- drop out now while her party still has a viable chance at the White House. But if she is not going to do that, then she needs to accept a compromise fair to all parties- cut the delegates down to say a low number, say 10 for both states. Award half to Clinton, award half to Obama. That way, both states are seated, both candidates get their supporters heard, but both states are sufficiently punished and have no factor in the nomination process.