"One thing about superdelegates is that they can change their minds."

Yup. Which means that SDs who have previously expressed support for Hillary can change their minds and support Obama instead. Given the poll trends, that seems more likely than the reverse.

Say, for the sake of argument, that oil dips to $80 post-Labor Day. Then what will happen? My guess is we ditch the bikes, abandon the train and start the party all over again.

If that post-Labor Day dip happens, it won't be permanent. This has been the pattern for decades. Fuel prices surge, drop a little (but not back to where they started), more-or-less stabilize temporarily, surge again, drop a little, etc, etc. If and when this pattern breaks, it'll be when prices surge and keep surging.

Demand is soaring, production isn't. Things will change, the only choice we have is whether and to what extent we can control change or whether change will control us.

Some of Hillary Clinton's supporters -- as well as those posing as her supporters -- would argue vehemently against any deal. At what point should the party stop giving in to their demands?

Sorry, I meant:

Some of Hillary Clinton's supporters -- as well as those posing as her supporters -- would argue vehemently against any deal that doesn't give her the nomination.

Presumably they'd take that deal, however grudgingly.

Even as Obama seems poised to lay claim to the nomination after the final primaries this Tuesday and undecided supers to declare their support for one candidate or another, "17 million voters have cast their ballot for Hillary Clinton" and a sizable and growing percentage of them will not accept the legitimacy of an Obama nomination no matter how it comes about.

Do you have a basis for this claim? My impression is that the percentage of them who won't vote for Obama has started shrinking, and will drop dramatically as soon as Clinton suspends her campaign.

For the other 98% of you, lose your houses, turn your wives and children out onto the street to beg for some daily gruel.

Is there a source for that percentage, or is it part of the 85.7% of all statistics that are made up on the spot?

I have seen polls that suggest that some not-insignificant number of Clinton supporters -- at this time -- plan to either vote for McCain or not vote for President at all. But I suspect that number is very "soft".

Emotions are understandably high, and some folks probably haven't given a whole lot of thought to what a McCain presidency might mean. I figure most folks will change their minds before November.

(I speak somewhat from experience. There was a time when I wasn't sure if I'd vote for Hillary if she won the Dem nomination. Then I learned more about McCain. Even if Hillary somehow got the nomination -- which would at this point require either divine intervention or some really nasty politics on her part -- I'd still vote Dem.)

What to do about the GOP

The only proper thing to do would be to outlaw it.

Do you have any clue how stupid that sounds?

Do you want to make Repubs irrelevant without making a mockery of the Constitution? Then work to elect real Dems, who aren't afraid of sounding (eek!) liberal, and who'll stop enabling the worst of the Repubs.

We shred the constitution like clockwork.

You might want to take a look at The Sedition Act of 1918 and Executive Order 9066.

Sadly, that's a valid point. But as wrong-headed as those measures were, at least they were in the context of far more serious threats to the country.

The fact that politicians would use such relatively small threats as an excuse for such blatant power grabs -- and worse, that they got away with it -- is pathetic. I don't want to minimize the events of September 11th, but it is way, way past time for most people to stop flinching.

(People who were actually there and/or who lost loved ones excepted.)

BTW- Is Bin Laden ever gonna do a goddam thing else anymore, or is he retired. C'mon, Mr. Bin Laden, we are still being told your next attack is "inevitable".

Why should he bother? Thanks to Bush et al and their enablers, bin Laden's first shot had the intended effect. With the exception of an occasional well-timed goading, he can sit back and watch.

"I think if Senator Obama gets the number, I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee." -- Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, appearing on the "Today" show Tuesday morning.

Did someone ask him which number of what? Which goalposts does McAuliffe think Obama should be aiming at?

(Maybe I'm just a suspicious sort, but maybe McAuliffe was talking about the number of dels needed to lock it up without counting any superdels. Which IIRC is no longer possible, even for Obama.)

No one should be surprised; the GOP has clearly been bought and sold.

Indeed. So far, the Democratic party has only been rented.

As someone suffering from all-too-frequent "middle-aged moments", I'd like to offer up an "Amen" to the first part of that Atrios quote.

On the other hand, I would not "hope the reporters covering him who have all that access would tell us if he did" have a serious impairment. They are reporters (and stenographers), not medical professionals. Even serious mental impairment can be a tough thing to diagnose, even for experts. The situation is made even more complicated by the fact that stress and a shortage of good sleep can result in very similar symptoms.

Frankly, it's simply not worth raising age-related doubts about McCain. There's a whole pile of clearer and more worthwhile doubts to raise about him.