What is strange here is that Hillary has been putting on a macho act ever since Texas, with all sorts of violent metaphors (what was with all those boxing gloves at her rally recently?), and belittling and taunting Obama like a schoolyard bully. Olbermann simply made a comment of the type you would make about a male schoolyard bully, completely appropriate considering the macho, tough guy image she has been trying to cultivate recently.

If anything Olbermann's comment should be taken as a compliment (in the sense that Olbermann has bought into the image that Hillary has been crafting) and a strong feminist statement. To put it crudely (and perhaps men can see this more readily than women since they tend to engage in this kind of behavior more) Hillary has been trying to prove her D@#$ is bigger than Obama's D@#$, and Olbermann made a comment in response to her stereotypically male behavior as if she were male, completely blind to her sex.

Which is about as non-sexist as you can get. And, regardless of what many people would like you to believe, it is the intent of the speaker rather than the impression by the hearer that matters, since no one can know how any statement will be received by anyone, one can only know what one intended to say. Anything can be taken to offend, if one really wants to be offended.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/23/organized.crime.threats/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Is it just me, or did Mukasey just try to lay the groundwork for blaming high gas prices and the collapse of Bear Sterans and other financial service types on organized crime? Any bets on whether this will be used as yet another reason they will need unlimited wiretapping and telecon immunity?

Does anybody else immediately go "bullshit" whenever this crackpot opens his mouth nowadays?

Hillary, quoted in the CNN article at http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/23/democrats.race/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

"I won that double-digit victory that everybody on TV said I had to win"

and thus, a 9.2% lead becomes a "double digit victory" even though, simply put, it wasn't.

But this was a case where inappropriate rounding was used to create the impression of a double digit win, which many pundits quoted on CNN et al. were saying Hillary needed to show that she was still a viable candidate. Proper rounding makes it 9% by either the CNN or PA DOS numbers, but the choice of using whole percentages means that changes of 2% are needed to make a difference in the reported difference. I.e., only 8% or 10% differences were allowed by CNN., not 9%. And, in this case where the arbitrary psychologically compelling (but mathematically unimportant) distinction between single and double digits was used to distinguish success or failure,their choosing to round in that way is just another small example of how the MSM doesn't mind fudging a bit to keep a horse race going if they think that makes for a more exciting story.

Of course, if they really wanted to help us understand the real significance of this result, they could have a running prediction of the final delegate count based on current polls taking into account proper uncertainty distributions and show how the probability of Hillary or Obama gaining a majority of pledged delegates is changed by these results, something anyone with a bachelors degree in statistics should be able to do (there is something called Bayes rule which allows you to do this rigorously) but they would rather spend their time and energy on flashy graphics and the mindless mouthings of talking heads than have any sort of real discussion of the results, which would require MATH.

I tend to agree that the extended primary process should be good for the Democrats, if both candidates were trying to outdo each other in attacking McCain and the Bush legacy and showing how the Clinton/Obama policy stances are very similar to each other but very different and far superior to McCain's. This would, due to the numbers, be Hillary essentially giving up on any chance of winning (as if it were really possible anyway at this point) but would do three things.... get Obama and Hillary to campaign on the ground in the remaining states, keep the media attention squarely on the Democrats' message but also on their attacks on McCain, and let them use those vast fundraising machines to spend in the primaries so they can spend a fortune essentially on the general election but have it count as money spent in the primaries, so Obama could even keep his pledge to accept federal matching funds if his opponent (McCain) does.

Heck, they could even demand decent debate moderators who would focus on issues and get them if worked together.

the numbers I reported were based on the numbers at the PA DOS site at the time I wrote the post, which had 99.09% of precincts reporting. Now, with 99.44% of the precincts reporting the difference is 9.2% and CNN et al. are STILL reporting raw numbers GREATER than the PA DOS totals. So, don't say idiotic and misleading things about who can and can't do math, but if you do have an explanation as to where CNN gets its numbers which they haven't changed since late last night even though they claim to have updated them 10 minutes ago, please do tell...

the 9.4% difference (which the MSM erroneously rounded to 10%) is based on the CNN raw numbers, while the 8.5% difference is based on the PA numbers (which, is the MSM made the same mistakes in math they did when they say 10%, they would call it 8%)

But, the real question is, why are the raw number totals being reported not consistent with the PA DOS?