>> My friend Tom Bridge shared this email I sent around today over at DC Metblogs on the anniversary of George Washington’s oath of office.  You can read it there, if you have a moment.

>> I was in Puerto Rico for Draft Weekend, so I missed it.  And I didn’t get to see my normal load of college football this season, so I have few informed opinions about the Redskins’ picks.  But if I had watched, it’s a good thing I get NFL Network - it sounds like the ESPN coverage was just atrocious. Not that this should surprise anyone - Costas really should host his next town hall meeting on whether or not ESPN is ruining sports - but it’s clear that NFL Network really has gotten better when it comes to covering these big media events.  ESPN just puts their normal chemistry-lacking cast up to yell at each other in their Ron Jaworski-patented “I’m talking on Television” voices, while the NFLN actually talks about the draft picks for teams other than the Cowboys - and they’re funnier, too.  Well, maybe not funnier than Peyton Manning going nuts on his o-line.

Bill Clinton’s recent trip to Puerto Rico wasn’t just an excuse to tempt the recalcitrant would-be First Husband away from the mainland cameras with the island’s famous combination of dancing, music and Caribbean cuisine — politicking there being a far more enjoyable pursuit than in the craggy frigidity of the Keystone State in April. There was a real point to the ex-president’s visit, and that point is: this time, Puerto Rico matters.

The outcome in Pennsylvania will determine how large a role the island will play. While recent polls have shown movement toward Barack Obama — bolstered by an ad campaign of historic proportions — the likelihood is still that Hillary Clinton will carry the state by a firm margin. Obama knows that a loss in the state would end the slim hopes for a Clinton comeback, which is why he’s currently spending $2.2 million a week. As Democrat media consultant Neil Oxman recently told the Boston Globe’s website “Nobody has ever spent 2.2 million in this state: not Rendell, not Specter, not Casey, not Santorum, not Bush, not Kerry.” But Obama’s dollars are still up against Ed Rendell’s impressive machine, endorsements from several key political figures, and the desperation that comes from the expectation game. In such a scenario, as hard as the past few weeks were for them, it’s hard to see the Clinton campaign doing poorly.

A win in Pennsylvania and an expected loss in North Carolina would make Puerto Rico the last remaining opportunity for Clinton to make up significant ground in the popular vote — which she can still theoretically win, and could significantly bolster her argument for nomination in Denver.

It is the first time in American history that Puerto Rico has experienced a serious presidential campaign. Their June 1 Primary has no history with the political media, sending beltway reporters scrambling in search of connections and good contacts on the island in case it becomes the location for the last great smackdown of the 2008 primary season.

In this situation, by a fortunate coincidence, my own family has a stake in the game: my cousin Francisco Domenech, the Director of the Office of Legislative Services for the Puerto Rico Legislative Assembly and a leading member of the Democratic Party, happens to be a superdelegate for Hillary Clinton. He recently shared some of his insights into the political prognosis for the island’s role in this nomination cycle.

“It’s an amazing time for Puerto Rico,” Francisco told me. “We’ve participated, but we really haven’t mattered in the primary period — it’s been more symbolic than anything. It’s exciting, it’s historic — we’re witnessing history.”

“After Pennsylvania and North Carolina, we’re the biggest prize in terms of delegates. We have 4 million American citizens. That’s a big chunk of popular votes, and Puerto Rico can put Hillary Clinton over the top.” In Francisco’s Democratic view, Puerto Ricans will almost certainly decide who the next President will be, notwithstanding the fact that due to their territorial status, they will be unable to vote in November.

As a superdelegate and as a Puerto Rican, Francisco feels that it’s the whole resume that will matter for a candidate, not just their style. While Barack Obama may be a more moving figure on the campaign trail, that stylistic ability won’t be enough to win.

“Although Chicago has a huge population of Puerto Ricans, the third most of any mainland city, Senator Obama’s never cared or paid attention to our needs until he looked at the electoral calendar. The Clintons know us — they pay attention to us, they care about us, they know our issues,” Francisco says, particularly the divisive issues of determining Puerto Rico’s ultimate political status. “But when it comes to Puerto Rico, Obama is all talk. We know where Hillary has been, and where Obama has not.”

“We routinely have over 80% turnout for elections in Puerto Rico. We are a highly educated electorate - people understand politics down here. We understand that we pay 100% into Medicare and we get back 70%. We’re about getting things done. We understand who has paid attention to Puerto Rico, and we understand who has not. If Obama thinks he’s just going to get away with talk in Puerto Rico, it’s not going to happen.”

In terms of the issues that matter, just as on the mainland, the economy will be of great significance for Puerto Rican voters. The old maxim was that “when the mainland sneezes, we get a cold.” But now, Puerto Ricans are facing their first true island-born recession in a generation: tourism is underperforming, citizens are experiencing huge costs from the island’s government-owned utilities, and federal tax incentives have been very limited since the 936 phaseout in the 1990s. The recent passage of a 7% Sales Tax only hurt the Puerto Rican economy more, as the burden of a heavy income tax and the stacked sales taxes pushed more people into the thriving underground economy. To top it off, the Puerto Rican government is still running a $500 million deficit, without lowering income tax rates for anyone or any significant spending cuts.

Many of the problems the island faces are systemic in nature, and involve more fundamental changes than either Democratic candidate is likely to endorse. The Puerto Rican government accounts for nearly 1/3rd of all jobs — a gargantuan number for any economy. There are no short-term fixes for such things, and if any group of citizens needed leadership from a get-things-done business-minded technocrat who understands the power of the free market as an agent for change, Puerto Rico does. They are unlikely to find such perspective in the 2008 versions of Clinton or Obama, who respond to most economic questions by playing class warfare instead of advocating real solutions.

The Democratic Puerto Rican political base feels that Bill Clinton’s visit was a good start. They expect he’ll visit again, and anticipate Hillary Clinton will come down in the last two weeks of May. They are gearing up for a real battle as the campaigns navigate unfamiliar political territory and deal with the complex alliances and entanglements of a place where status is the defining issue. And ultimately, these voters expect to speak with a strong voice, aimed squarely at the decisions made by superdelegates in Denver. But what if Clinton underperforms, and her backers are forced to make difficult choices?

“Barack Obama may have a 100 delegate lead by the convention. But that’s nothing going into Denver when you haven’t proven you can win the important states in November,” Francisco says. “Kerry lost in 2004 in Ohio. Gore lost in 2000 in Florida. Hillary Clinton has won by such wide margins in so many critical states, and we have to gamble on the possibility of Obama winning in Ohio, in Florida, and in Pennsylvania – as a Democrat, I just don’t feel safe about that.”

“That’s why I tell my superdelegate colleagues and fellow citizens: when its’ time for us to cast our votes, we should be looking at a lot more than just a small pledged delegate lead. We should be looking to win in November.”

In a cycle where so many pieces of conventional wisdom have gone out the window, it’s only fitting that Puerto Rico should play a decisive role.

originally published at human events

>> Last year was the first year since I could afford a console that I didn’t buy a single version of Madden Football - I settled for NCAA Football on the PS3, and I remain quite happy with it.  Turns out that last year was also the first year in a long time that sales of EA’s cash cow declined.  But next year?  Yeah, I’m gonna have to put up the coin for this. A jam-packed 20th Anniversary version with #4 on the cover?  Nice.  I just hope the Madden Curse of old doesn’t mean that Favre falls off his riding mower and breaks his leg the week it comes out.

>> Robert Bauer responds to my post on Tibet with some thoughtful analysis.  This portion is certainly a valid point: “Yes, the idealists would say that we should declare an official boycott, not to mention skipping out on the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. I wish we could, but with all that’s going on we don’t need the a billion screaming Chinese ticked off at us as well. They know that they can physically appropriate any of the countries/regions around them if they put their mind to it and we’re in no position to expel or even stop them short of maybe South Korea.”

>> The Scouts Inc folks have offered up their team grades for the past eight years of AFC and NFC first round draft picks.  The surprising part is how poorly most NFC teams have done - if I had to hand out a crown, it would be the Carolina Panthers.  Assuming DeAngelo Williams delivers, they won’t have missed on a first rounder since 2000.

>> It’s odd to think that people like Paul “Basic Instinct” Verhoeven and Anne “Queen of the Damned” Rice put such efforts into writing about the life of Christ - and odder still to find that there is such a wide gap in truth between the two.  Verhoeven’s trashy take seems more suitable for a Showtime miniseries, while Rice has created one of the most awesome acts of literary worship seen since the days of Pilgrim’s Progress.  There is nothing new under the sun, but that truth in no way eliminates the unexpected.

>> Salvador Dali’s Pinball and other beauty from the Atari Age.

“Fame,” Rilke wrote, “is the sum total of all the misunderstandings that can gather around a new name.”

I bet Barack Obama can quote Rilke when he’s in front of the right audience. He had a good line or two about bitterness. Smart people like to quote Rilke.

Read on.

Do you remember the first professor who made an impression on you? The cool one. You’re thinking about him now. Freshman semester. He was maybe the first cool adult you met in college, or maybe ever. He knew stuff, stuff that mattered. He had it in his gigantic brain. He made the boring parts interesting. And every day, he would share a bit more of that nougaty goodness for everyone in class to lap up excitedly. You never slept through any classes. He quoted people who you hadn’t heard of. He quoted the French in French. He was divorced, but with a hilarious mountain of self-deprecating stories drawn from the experience. He watched the shows you watched, but didn’t pretend to like your music. After hours, you’d see him not at the sketchy hardwood-and-lascivious-old-man faculty bar, but the student deli, where he would say things like Richard Dawkins would say if he was cool. He’d bum a cigarette off you without any hesitation. He’d invite whole classes to play cards or just hang out at his pad and talk about things that were important, which was sweet. He was a fantastic cook. He knew the best bars. He was awesome.

In sophomore year, you’d hear about how he slept with a couple of your friends, one per semester, that blonde from the dorm near his house and that redhead from downstairs. But he didn’t talk to them any more, and he wasn’t all that interested in you. If you saw him around, he was sitting at different tables now. He had moved on to the next year’s crop.

The girls all had the same reaction: yuck. Sometimes jealousy-tinged yuck, but: yuck. The guys all had the same reaction, too, whether they admitted it or not: cool.

I care for you deeply, my misguided liberal friends. I concede it was beautiful while it lasted. Yeah, it was. But this is what it feels like to wake up from the dream. Say goodbye to “I am the Adonis who turns winter into spring.” Say hello to the honest truth.

Barack Obama is Your Coolest Professor.

”There is this Obama-mania, where these young men get glassy eyes and start spitting out vague things about how Barack Obama is going to save humanity. Really, have you seen their eyes? It’s this faraway look. It’s scary.”

“I was confused by the saucer-eyed, unquestioning devotion shown by my formerly cynical cohorts” to Obama

“One of my closest girlfriends, an Obama voter, told me of a drink she’d had with a politically progressive man who made a series of legitimate complaints about Clinton’s policies before adding that when he hears the senator’s voice, he’s overcome by an urge to punch her in the face.”

“some described the suspicion that their politically progressive partners were actually uncomfortable with powerful women.”

“You already see this idealistic longing projected on Obama,” Bruch said. “People talk about him as a secular messiah who will bring us political salvation. There’s no sense of what is plausible.”

“The whole ‘Hillary Clinton is a monster’ theme is so virulent.”

“I spoke to a guy friend who said, ‘You’re being ridiculous. I’m not not voting for her because she’s a woman; I’m not voting for her because she’s a bitch!’

“Obama loyalty, like white masculinity itself, has become normative -– if you’re not for him, you’d best be prepared to explain your deviation.”

“Why don’t you like the Prof?” you’d ask your friends. “What’s your problem with him? You say he’s manipulative, anti-woman, living out some Professor of Desire fantasy? Nah, nah – you don’t get it! He’s the coolest guy around. He teaches you, he guides you, he’s changing the world one student at a time. He’s not like our parents.”

“Plus I once heard he totally has this phenomenal bong at his house, you should try it some time. He’ll expand your mind. He’ll make your whole world wide open up. Just think of the possibilities.”

It can change your whole way of viewing things, this new man with a new name. He’ll tell you about the corporations.

Stan: Hello, we are selling magazine subscriptions for our community youth program. Would you like to help young people like us by purchasing a subscription of your choice?

Hippie 1: Oh wow, you guys shouldn’t be doing that. Don’t you know what you’re doing to the world?

Kyle: Wha- whataya mean?

Hippie 2: You’re playing into the corporate game! See, the corporations are trying to turn you into little Eichmanns so that they can make money.

Stan: Who are the corporations?

Hippie 3: The corporations run the entire world. And now they fooled you into working for them.

Stan: Are you serious?? We never heard that.

Hippie 1: We just spent our first semester at college. Our professors opened our eyes. The government is using its corporate ties to make you sell magazines so they can get rich.

Kyle: Ugh! Those dirty liars!

Hippie 3: This is a really nice town you have here. That’s why the corporations are trying to use you to take it down.

Stan: Well… Well what do we do?

Hippie 1: Just hang with us for a bit. We’ll fill you in on everything you haven’t been told.

The funny thing about the coolest professor is that, as you get older, most people outgrow him. They realize what his shtick was all along. Or they go back for a 10th anniversary reunion and see that same prof, a little older, a little slower, but still drooling for the youngsters who don’t realize his message is as deep as a drainage puddle. It has a way of shocking you straight.

But some people don’t. Michael Barone’s Academics vs. Jacksonians thesis shows us that Obama’s support comes exactly from the people who never outgrow his personality type - in fact, many of them try to adopt it:

Academics’ adulation of Obama and Jacksonians’ disdain for him comes out vividly from the election data starting back in January. Why do academics love Obama while Jacksonians reject him? Probably for the same reasons. Because Obama is not at all a warrior and is something of an academic. He is all college campus and not at all boot camp. Indeed, his campaign has claimed he was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, while he was actually just a senior lecturer; but all the evidence is that he was very much at home there and indeed was offered a tenure-track professorship. He grew up in a state—Hawaii—with a large military presence, but like most men with his academic aptitude, he seems never to have seriously considered military service. He has campaigned consistently as an opponent of military action in Iraq (though, as Peter Wehner has shown, his record is rather more complicated than that). His standard campaign statements on Iraq seem to suggest that all honor should go to the opponents of the war and none to the brave men and women who have waged it. His latest statements about leaving a “strike force” in Iraq suggest a certain insouciance or even indifference about what happens in a theater in which 4,000 Americans have died. He clearly lacks the military expertise of John McCain or Hillary Clinton, both diligent members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Like another eloquent little-known Illinois politician who emerged suddenly as an attractive presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson, he seems more comfortable with the language of diplomacy and negotiation than with the words of war. Like Stevenson, he speaks fluently and often eloquently but does not exude a sense of command. He is an interlocutor, not a fighter.

Later in the Salon article, Jessica Valenti of Feministing (bet you didn’t know about that blog, you damn patriarchs) laments “the Oppression Olympics,”and that it just makes everyone look bad to pit racism vs. sexism (FTW!). Yeah, I agree, that just ain’t sporting. But don’t worry. It’ll be over soon.

Sharpen your pencils. The cool new Professor of Desire – chock full of all our hopes and dreams – is teaching class. He’s going to make it all better. He’ll sit back on his desk, roll up his sleeves, and share his wonderful, fluid, detail-free wisdom, and you will believe it.

You want him to like you. Forget what those silly girls are saying. They’re just jealous of his latest freshman muse, the brunette with the boots. Yeah. He’s the coolest guy ever.

You don’t want to be like him. You want to be him.

crossposted at redstate

>> Now this is interesting - the latest research from Barna on tithing: “Not surprisingly, some population groups were more likely than others to have given away at least ten percent of their income. Among the most generous segments were evangelicals (24% of whom tithed); conservatives (12%); people who had prayed, read the Bible and attended a church service during the past week (12%); charismatic or Pentecostal Christians (11%); and registered Republicans (10%). Several groups also stood out as highly unlikely to tithe: people under the age of 25, atheists and agnostics, single adults who have never been married, liberals, and downscale adults. One percent or less of the people in each of those segments tithed in 2007.”