Hillary's got Indiana

But earlier Obama was active with automated e-mails.

Colin --

We just won a decisive victory in North Carolina thanks to people like you.

Indiana remains too close to call. But what is clear is that we did much better than all the pundits predicted, despite Republicans changing parties to support Senator Clinton, believing she would be easier for Senator McCain to defeat.

Operation CHAOS.

Indiana: too close to call

Well, it's after midnight on the east coast, and nobody knows who's going to win Indiana. Based on the county-by-county breakdown, Hillary Clinton is making one hell of a Republican. She's already gotten blown out in North Carolina, and absolutely must win in Indiana to stay alive. Unfortunately, that might not even be enough. Blitzer is saying on CNN that HRC is going to move on to West Virginia next week. So I'll go with that for now. The past few weeks have been fun, though.

Operation CHAOS

Rush is going to get a kick out of this one, but it seems the media is finally beginning to acknowledge the impact of Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos on the Democratic primary.

How big of an impact did Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Operation Chaos’ have in Indiana? Did GOP voters really cross over to create havoc in the Democratic primary by voting for Hillary Clinton, as he’d asked his listeners to do?

Roughly one in ten of the state’s Democratic primary voters were Republican — and that group did vote for Hillary Clinton, 53 to 47 percent over Barack Obama. But hold on: registered Democrats, who made up two-thirds of Tuesday’s primary voters, gave roughly the same edge to Clinton, 53 to 45 percent. Only Independents — who made up about a quarter of the electorate — voted for Obama, 53 to 47 percent.

For whatever reason, self-identified conservative voters did overwhelmingly support Clinton – two out of three cast their votes for the New York senator.

Schneider is trying to minimize the statistical impact of Operation CHAOS, but you've got to consider the absolute disdain of many Republicans towards the Clintons. Without Operation CHAOS, would Senator Clinton even gotten 40% of the Republican vote?

I guess I should give some background on Operation CHAOS, before the media manipulates the goals some more. Essentially, what it boils down to is that since John McCain is already the Republican nominee, conservatives have no stake in that primary. Sooooooo, in comes Rush Limbaugh, urging "operatives" to strategically vote in order to keep the clusterfuck of a Democratic primary going. Since HRC is the apparent underdog, Rush is urging operatives to vote for her to prolong the process. Operation CHAOS has not favorite in the nomination process, but merely exists to prolong it enough to bloody up the two Democratic candidates before the November election.

Let's take a minute away from the presidential race

to look at the House. While I'm fairly confident the GOP nominee, John McCain will take the White House in November, the House and Senate don't look so good. This article on the Politico confirms it, in the way of a series of special election losses. (By the way, I really like stroking my tensions.)

House Republicans who hoped to be on a slow climb back to the majority by now are reeling from Democratic victories in special elections in Illinois and Louisiana, and sources say another loss in Mississippi next week would roil an already poisoned relationship between House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole.

Although there’s no love lost — and plenty of blame to share — between the two leaders, a well-connected Republican operative said that Boehner probably lacks the “muscle” to push Cole out.

But Boehner and other Republicans have already expressed a lack of confidence in Cole by raising money for GOP candidates and incumbents outside the NRCC’s purview, and they could further marginalize the NRCC chairman if he can’t keep now-Sen. Roger Wicker’s seat in the Republican column next Tuesday.

This is a trend that doesn't bode well for Republicans in November. The problem arises in the fact that McCain tends to draw a lot of Dems and independents who aren't likely to vote straight-ticket, whereas whoever the Democratic nominee is, they are likely to draw plenty of support for their local counterparts. Of course, with a Republican in the White House to scapegoat, I would be very surprised if the Dems didn't do all they could to impede any sort of national progress.

Obama grabs NC, HRC looking good in Indiana

The title says it all. What gets me about all the demographic breakdowns is that Barack is supposed to be the candidate who transcends race, yet when you compare white/black voting patterns, over 90% of black Democratic primary voters are going for Obama while somewhere in the ballpark of 60-70% of white voters are going for Hillary. On an unrelated though, I think Michelle Obama is going to do much more damage to the Obama campaign than Teresa Heinz-Kerry did 4 years ago.

Further, some Dem babe on Fox News, while minimizing the impact of God-damnergate on Obama was asked what kind of catastrophic event could give the nomination to HRC, and she said some sort of economic/financing scandal. Tony Rezko much?

The cost of free health care

Awesome article here about how universal health care is much less economically viable than leaving it to the private sector.

Somehow they propose to offer and subsidize more health care without raising costs for the majority of Americans who already have it.

What next? Consume more calories, weigh less?

Both Democrats suggest that prevention will contain costs. But as the Washington Post reported last month, with a few exceptions like childhood vaccinations, health economist Louise B. Russell's 1986 work, "Is Prevention Better Than Cure?" found that "prevention activities tend to cost more than they save. Since the book's appearance, her observation has been borne out by studies of hundreds of interventions - everything from providing mammograms for all women and prescribing drugs to people with high cholesterol to requiring passenger-side air bags in cars and shortening the response time of ambulances."

Preventative medicine, on an individual basis, probably saves some money, but a government mandate for preventative measures is going to cost something. At least according to this source, a cost greater than that of leaving people to their own devices.

The McCain plan would provide an annual tax credit of $2,500 per individual or $5,000 per family. The idea is to encourage families to buy their own health care plans - preferably plans that save consumers money when they follow healthy lifestyles and make smart economic choices.

Unlike Clinton and Obama, McCain would not require that insurers cover people with chronic illnesses. Instead, McCain proposes state "guaranteed access plans" for those patients.

Politically, Plan McCain may be suicide. Clinton and Obama have kept to the current employer-based system - which gives workers the happy illusion of not paying for their health care, when in fact it comes out of their paychecks.

Like President Bush, however, McCain has concluded that the best way to curb health care costs is to return the incentive to save to patients. Because when you know a doctor's visit will cost only $25 and that you won't have to pay for a test you may not need, you have no incentive to economize. That's the problem with the status quo: The cheaper we make it look, the more it ends up costing.

It makes a lot of sense in a tragedy of the commons sense. If everyone has to pay for everyone else's health care, it only makes sense for people to utilize the available system to the greatest extent they can. If people were forced to pay for their tests/treatments, at least in part, it curbs the incentive for any unnecessary medical care.

Change I can believe in

I love the fact that Reuters has a special tab for news related to the environment, because everyone needs to laugh. Here's another great article.

The Arctic and Antarctica are poles apart when it comes to the effects of human-fueled climate change, scientists said on Friday: in the north, it is melting sea ice, but in the south, it powers winds that chill things down.

I'm really sick of the "climate change" moniker. Can we just start calling it, "global we-don't-know-what-the-fuck-is-going-on-but only-government-regulation-can-stop-it-ing" By the way, doesn't anyone else find it funny how difficult it is for certified meteorologists to predict the weather more than 48 hours in advance, yet Al Gore, with a BA in government, knows with a certainty that the world will end due to climate change?

John Edwards: Now with added irrelevance!

Since, according to this article, John Edwards has lost all his leeway in the Democratic Party, perhaps he should vie for influence in the Hair Club for Men.

For all the speculation surrounding John Edwards’ conspicuous silence on the eve of his home state’s primary, one important fact has been overlooked: According to North Carolina’s political class, the former Democratic presidential contender has virtually no clout at all in his home state.

John Edwards' post-Senatorial career has gone in a slightly more sophisticated "LOOK AT ME!!! I'M STILL IMPORTANT!!" direction. Although it would appear any semblance of popularity is waning.

The former senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, they say, was like a political comet. He seemingly appeared out of nowhere, inspired awe with the intensity of his talent, blazed through a single term in the Senate, then disappeared from the radar almost entirely.

Let's see here... Neo-liberal Senator/Prince Charming loses presidential bid to a Senator from the northeast with about as much charisma as a train, and completely drops off the political radar due to absolutely no depth. Barack-o-philes should be quaking in their boots, hoping HRC doesn't steal this from Obamessiah, because it could happen to him. Of course, Illinois is waaaaaay more liberal than North Carolina, so Barry should at least be a Democratic Senatorial bastion for decades. I just wonder if Illinois voters of today are going to finally see through all the "hope" and "change" bullshit 30 years from now, sitting on their deathbeds, realizing the only imminent promised land is post-euthanasia. I know I sound a tad bitter, so excuse me while I go cling to a gun.