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So, is that it? Another gunman walks into another classroom and kills another handful of students, and it manages to hold down the top spot on the headlines for about 18 hours. The blood hasn't even dried yet and we're already done with the whole incident. These spree killings have officially become so commonplace that we discuss (and the media report) them like the weather – it's just some thing that happens, beyond anyone's control. We scan the story, mutter a quick "Oh, how terrible" and move on, reassured by the math which tells us that the next mass shooting 6 months from now probably won't happen near us.

Last spring, President Bush went to Virginia Tech to lead the memorial service. For NIU he sent a message. Next time he'll probably ask his press secretary to send an FTD bouquet. Whereas the media gave us a solid week of wall-to-wall VA Tech coverage, it appears that mass murder (especially with a mere 6 victims) barely counts as news these days. It's a big story the first time. Thereafter it's old news.

What limited debate these incidents provoke feels like the bobbleheads are just going through the motions. There's a stock narrative: this is just something that happens. We can't agree on a culprit, so we simply throw up our hands, label it Sad or Unfortunate or Horrific, and note its inevitability. It amounts to "School shootings are sad. I sure wish there was something we could do about it." In the classic false equivalency style, the media seem to believe that as long as there are two sides to the debate there is no objective answer. Left-wing America says guns are to blame. Right-wing America disagrees. Oh well, I guess we'll never get to the bottom of it. The cause is officially Unknown. Since we cannot alleviate what we do not understand, our only recourse is to note how Sad and Unfortunate it is.

I posted something very similar last year in response to VA Tech. Maybe the more efficient course of action is simply to save this post and bump it 6 months from now when the next college lecture hall is painted with blood. Unless of course it's a class I happen to be teaching, in which case you can put "His death was such a Mystery" on my tombstone.

Back during the heady days of the Ginaissance, I used ginandtacos to share with the world a recipe for sizzurp – the gin and prescription cough syrup-based cocktail underlying such modern musical masterpieces as Three 6 Mafia's "Sippin on Some Sizzurp." So it is with sadness and a sense of social responsibility that I must note the passing of Pimp C, one of the performers on that track. To exactly no one's surprise, the coroner notes that he died from promethazine/codeine overdose. The man OD'd on cough syrup. Think about that for a second. How much goddamn cough syrup do you have to drink to end up dead?

While I can't answer that question it's only fair to note that partaking of the sizzurp is not all fun and games. Apparently it's possible to ride the Tussin Train straight into the afterlife. Dying from Robotripping….talk about disillusionment. I don't even recognize this world anymore.

A few days ago I talked about how conservatives have a habit of explaining the failures of their ideology through the shortcomings of individuals. In other words, it can't fail people but people often fail it. The moral is always the same: had only (insert name here) stayed truer to the Faith or been a more strident believer, he/she would not have failed so spectacularly. Thank god I only had to wait a few days to find an appropriate contemporary example. To that end, I firmly believe, based on the principle of going into a decision with one's eyes open, this op-ed by McCain's foreign policy advisor should be mandatory reading for every American of voting age.

When I make blanket statements about the mental age of the American public hovering around 13, this sort of reasoning is what sways me. From the title ("Go With the Tough Guy" – seriously) to the underlying concept of how people and nations interact (intimidation and alpha male chest beating; you know, like zoo animals) this reads like the manifesto of a pasty, Pringle-fattened junior high kid plotting his revenge for being picked on.

President Bush has not done enough to back up his threats against Iran and Syria…(he) has refused to authorize even limited special operations strikes on jihadist networks inside Syria or Iran.

This is part of a larger trend of Bush combining strong words with weak actions….This disconnect has done serious damage to American standing and credibility.

It is hard to see how Bush could reverse this decline in America's "fear factor" during the remaining year of his presidency. That will be the job of the next president. And who would be the most up to the task?

To answer that question, ask yourself which presidential candidate an Ahmadinejad, Assad or Kim would fear the most. I submit it is not Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee. I submit it is not Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, the leading candidate to scare the snot out of our enemies is a certain former aviator who has been noted for his pugnacity and his unwavering support of the American war effort in Iraq. Ironically, John McCain's bellicose aura could allow us to achieve more of our objectives peacefully because other countries would be more afraid to mess with him than with most other potential occupants of the Oval Office — or the current one.

I want to emphasize two things here. First of all, if anyone tries to pretend that a vote for McCain is not a vote for a couple additional wars in the next few years, print this article and jam it in the speaker's eye. Second, it is obvious why George Bush's foreign policy failed – he isn't neoconservative enough. Too much of a pussy. He strayed from the ideology. He only started wars in two measly countries, whereas a neocon with some hair on his taint would already be indiscriminately raining ordinance on Syria and Iran as well.

The fact that so many Americans think this way makes me want to get into the casino business. When your strategy has brought you to the brink of ruin, the proper strategy is clearly to go deep into debt and double down. Let me know how that works out, OK?

This is going to be very strange as I try to explain a ridiculous (and ridiculously intricate) inside joke shared with a friend many years ago. But I am going to try because it pops into my head so often as I watch political news. I feel it must be shared with the world, like how I am trying to popularize the phrase "trying out for cheerleading" as slang for forcing oneself to vomit. At the very least I would like to use these neologisms on ginandtacos, in which case it would be nice if anyone knew what the fuck I was talking about.

My dear friend Pauline V., with whom I have regrettably not spoken in ages, helped me coin the term I am going to discuss here: "wagonhalt." It is pronounced as though it is a German word, and I will explain its bullshitted etymology in a moment.

Wagonhalt ('vəg – in – hȯlt) noun: the intense discomfort and embarassment one feels upon watching another person humiliate himself unwittingly

It is a German word for several reasons, notably that the Germans always seem to be on top of coming up with words for crap like this. As for the term itself, a simple portmanteau of "wagon" and "halt", we imagined it as something that German settlers of the American west would shout when someone in their wagon train made a grievous error in judgment or a severe social faux pas (i.e. "stopping the wagons" to evict or properly ostracize the offender). We decided to use the term slightly out of its (made-up) original context – as a noun describing a spectacle so humiliating to watch that an uninvolved third-party can be overwhelmed. Our stock example? Wagonhalt is what you would feel watching a room full of retarded children sing "Me So Horny." It is not only the exclamation you would use but also the noun describing your feelings and reaction.

I told you this was more detailed than it needed to be, and this is the kind of crap that comes out of me while drinking. Let me try to explain why this is useful in politics, if it is not already obvious.

It is not hard to find examples from everyday life – like watching a man propose to a girl at halfcourt of a packed stadium and get rejected) or American tourists in other countries watching "cultural exhibitions" during cruise ship stops. But the world of politics is a goldmine. Take, for example, Mitt "Who Let the Dogs Out" Romney trying to show how well he understands the colored folks. Pure wagonhalt. Physically hurts to watch. Dukakis in the tank? Wagonhalt. Our Leader trying to answer a question that isn't a plant? Also wagonhalt.

I am constantly yelling this in my head, so I felt like sharing it. It would please me to no end for you to offer up some of your favorite examples, either in narrative form or with video.

As John Steinbeck illustrated in his most widely recognized novel, there is something simultaneously compelling and pitiful about watching an entire group of people and way of life become obsolete. Despite what your more reactionary high school classmates (or possibly the teacher) said, the novel isn't an anti-progress luddite manifesto or a blueprint for communism. It's simply a document of what happens when change renders people unnecessary. Some lose everything, but everyone loses something. We, as a society, lose something in the march of progress. If you are unconvinced I can arrange a blind taste-test between factory farmed and free-range organic meat.

There are often practical reasons to adhere to "outdated" technologies. In the previous example, using slow and inefficient farming techniques yields a product superior in some ways (health, taste, nutrition) and inferior in others (price, quantity, production time). People have the option to choose which set of characteristics they prefer. I respect both arguments because they are based on practical concerns, the relative values of which depend on the individual. What are dangerous, on the other hand, are sentimental attachments to the outmoded. Arguments based on nostalgia or vested interest are illogical and usually pretty pathetic to watch. You'd just feel sad, for example, listening to someone who made horse-drawn carriages or telegraph equipment lambasting the evils of motorized transport or the telephone.

That's exactly how I feel reading this rant against Salon's Glen Greenwald from the (metaphorical) pen of CNN's John King. Go ahead, read his whole pathetic, witless email. What do you see? Aside from a bunch of unsupported claims, ad hominems, appeals to authority, and other faulty logic, I see a teenage-caliber temper tantrum from someone who practices a craft that simply isn't relevant anymore.

All of the stock footage is there, most notably the claims that Big Important Media Types don't condescend to interact with amateur bloggers (note: we're not talking about fuckin' ginandtacos here – it's Salon, which has about 5 million daily readers) while doing exactly that. Bloggers simply don't understand the High Standards and Secret Knowledge utilized by the mainstream media. How dare we criticize Journalism, about which we know nothing?

While I don't subscribe to the popular = valid ideology, perhaps Mr. King should think about why viewership of traditional media is plummeting at the hands of the Blogging Fifth Estate. Newspaper readership is through the floor, with surviving papers consolidating and overwhelmingly shifting content to "lifestyle", sports, and entertainment. More Americans get their news from the internet than television. There are dozens of politics-oriented websites whose daily hits are counted in six or seven figures. Why? Because the TV news aren't good for anything other than simple facts (at least a small portion of the relevant ones). The "analysis" provided by television and newspaper editorials amounts to idiotic noise.

I don't see John King making an argument – I see an entire industry in its death throes, and it's death by suicide. When they decided that "reporting" means accuretly writing down what public officials say and repackaging press releases as stories, they opened the door for someone to do their job for them. King's response is a combination of namecalling, generalizations, and desperate appeals to the Status and Exclusivity of Big Corporate Media. The bunker mentality is only hastening the process of people like King going the way of the steam engine.

John McCain crashing and burning in the process of sucking up to the chronic malcontent wing of his party (better known as CPAC) last week fits a developing pattern. We've already seen Ann Coulter, James Dobson, all of Fox News (a.k.a. Giuliani 08 Public Relations), Rick Santorum, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of Talk Radio Land tear him a new sphincter, vowing instead to support Hillary Clinton – now those are some outlandish, ratings-grabbing, controversial remarks! Very insightful. What is starting to bother me is the enthusiasm with which the right seems to want to lose this race.

I know they think they're being very clever ("I'd rather maintain my rigid, borderline-fascist devotion to The Cause than bend them to support a faux-Believer like McCain!") but it is really a transparent ploy to pawn the consequences, damage, and mortgaged costs of the Bush presidency onto a Democrat who can subsequently be blamed for all of it. I doubt, in all honesty, that they really have this much of a problem with McCain. True, he does deviate from the Faith to some degree, but these people are trying to make him sound like Chomsky. Do you think that might be, oh, a bit much?

No, it's not too much – as long as we keep the ultimate goal in mind. That is of course to lose the 2008 election. Think of how satisfying that will be for right-wing America. They'll have a Clinton presidency over which to vent years worth of red-faced, choking-on-bile histrionics. It's talk radio ratings gold! They'll also have a patsy to blame for the mess that the Dear Leader has created. The sad thing is that most Americans' attention spans are so short, their analytical skills so linear, and their attitudes so biased that it will not be hard to convince them that whoever is in office when the house of cards collapses is to blame. Then again, this scenario doesn't change much if McCain wins despite their efforts to torpedo him. They'll simply insist, as they always do, that he failed because he wasn't conservative enough.

Ahh, hardcore neoconservatism: the ideology that is often failed but never fails.

(For no apparent reason beyond love, I am going to write "The Scenarios" in the style of Kafka's "The Sons." This is the kind of thing one needs to expect/endure from a man with a Kafka tattoo.)

I have three scenarios.

My first scenario is my favorite, and yet I have so little faith in it. While my heart supports it I fear that it is simply too impractical to survive in this world. This scenario insists that John McCain, who obviously has the GOP nomination in the bag now, is simply not something that the all-important Bible Thumping Inbred Nutcase wing of his party can accept. Said faction will instead create and promote their own independent/third party candidate, perhaps Huckabee. Or Fred Phelps. Or Jimmy Swaggart. Who knows. But thanks to the "brilliance" of Karl Rove, the GOP is now so heavily dependent on that portion of the electorate that their loss is not survivable. In this scenario, either Democratic nominee will coast to victory over a divided Republican Party. I wish this scenario all the best.

My second scenario is an ill-tempered and ungrateful one. It believes that there is nothing wrong with the GOP coalition, and its extremists will learn to love McCain as an arranged bride must learn to love the husband to whom she was sold for livestock. While this scenario does not include a third-party challenger from the far right, it does not believe that McCain can extend his support much beyond the hardcore GOP base. Too many Republicans and independents are disillusioned by 8 years of Bush to vote for another right-wing war hawk. The Democratic nominee wins, albeit not comfortably, over a united but weakened GOP.

My third scenario terrifies me. I loathe it but I realize that it is often the most immoral and horrific things that succeed in this world. It will be almost statistically impossible for either Obama or Hillary to put the other away now, as only ~1700 delegates remain and each candidate needs about 1000 more to win the nomination. As their fight drags on into the late summer, McCain – now essentially unopposed – will use the time to convince all of the "disaffected" suburban Republicans what a "maverick" and "independent" he is. Look!, he says, Ann Coulter and James Dobson hate me! The tens of thousands of Republicans will slowly realize that they really only care about getting tax cuts every 18 months, and they will tell themselves that It's OK to Vote For McCain – He's Different!^tm Of course they are right. He is different than Bush, which is to say he is more tolerable on a handful of issues and much, much worse on others. Like foreign policy. They will sweep their It's OK Because He's Different, Therefore We Still Voted For Change candidate into the White House, and after 4 years of St. McCain (and VP Lieberman) we'll be drafting people to man the wars in Iran, Syria, North Korea, Lebanon, and so on. I would be ashamed of this scenario if my experience with the selfishness, lability, and powers of self-delusion among the electorate did not so clearly suggest that it is correct.

These are my three scenarios.

I was going to post something trenchant today but I've had a couple students and a commenter ask me what in the flying hell a "Superdelegate" is and why they are suddenly important. If you really want to know, let's take a tour into the grimy fine print of the Democratic Party's internal rules governing nominations. Superdelegates (that's a media term; they're actually called uncommitted or unpledged delegates) have been in place for 40 years but have never mattered. Now they might. So I suspect a lot of America, media and candidates included, are suddenly scrambling to learn the rules. Believe it or not, what you are about to read is the short version.

First, some history.

Prior to 1970 the presidential nominees were chosen by delegates at the national conventions. And by "chosen by delegates" I mean they were chosen by the delegates. At the convention. Not in primaries. A few states held primaries but they were simply popularity contests – the candidates tried to show off their electability to the delegates. So who were these delegates? Insiders. Party insiders. Each state chose a delegation to attend the convention composed entirely of local party bosses, state party chairmen, and so on.

Then the debacle of 1968 came along and America got to watch the Democratic Party douse itself in gas and light a match. On national television. Despite the fact that the 1968 primaries were contested among Eugene McCarthy, RFK (until he was shot, of course), and in the late stages, George McGoven, the convention delegates' infinite wisdom saw fit to nominate incumbent VP Hubert Humphrey. In short, the "insider" system highlighted how removed from reality the delegates could be and how little grasp they had on which candidates the party faithful supported.

In the wake of this disaster the Democratic Party instituted the reforms of the McGovern-Fraser commission, empaneled to fix the nominating process. The major reform was, obviously, the decision to award delegates to candidates based on the result of state-by-state primaries and caucuses. These are referred to as committed delegates. They are awarded proportionally. So, in a simplified example, if Iowa has 10 delegates and the results are Clinton 50%, Obama 30%, and Edwards 20%, they get 5, 3, and 2 delegates respectively. These delegate MUST vote for said candidate at the convention (unless, as usually happens, the losing candidates quit and ask their delegates to support the frontrunner).

BUT. McGovern-Fraser reforms didn't totally eliminate the privileged position enjoyed by DNC members and other party honchos. They created a separate category of delegates who are uncommitted. Their votes at the convention do not in any way have to relate to the primaries – just like in the old days. Approximately 18% of the ~4000 delegates (changes regularly but is always in this ballpark) are uncommitted delegates, a.k.a. Superdelegates.

Who in the hell cooked up this arcane system and why? Simple – avoid at all costs the televised meltdown/free-for-all of 1968. By making 1 in 5 delegates uncommitted, they are absolutely guaranteeing that someone will get a decisive majority at the convention. The Superdelegates were originally intended to act in unison to break ties or create a majority when none exists. Of course, being uncommitted they don't have to do so. They can do whatever they damn well please.

So. Where does this leave us for 2008? Assume that Obama and Clinton will continue to essentially split things in the primaries. In theory, that will leave it to the Superdelegates. Advantage? Clinton. These people are the inside-iest of insiders. DNC folks. Fund raisers. In other words, the kind of people who'd have personal connections to and favor someone with decades of deep roots in the Party. While Obama was a nobody state senator 6 years ago, HRC has been one of the five heaviest hitters in the Democratic apparatus for two decades.

Why does Ed think it won't come to this? Obama is not stupid, and he knows which direction the winds blow with the Superdelegates. And both candidates are bright enough to realize how much of an advantage the GOP will have if Obama and Clinton continue to grind away at each other until the very end of the primary season (May). The insiders will sit down with Obama for the Here's Reality speech. He'll realize that the overwhelming balance of the uncommitted delegates are essentially Clinton delegates, and he will yield from the race in return for some sort of concession. VP? I doubt it. Obama loathes the Clintons and vice-versa. But one never knows.

If you want to see who the Superdelegates are, look here. I can guarantee you that you've not heard of more than a handful of them (the ex-presidents, for example). Note that the nomination rules are set by the parties and none of what you've just read is true of the GOP. They voluntarily adopted some McGovern-Fraser reforms and instituted primaries/caucuses in place of the old convention system, but they did not adopt all of the proposed changes. They do have a small number of unpledged delegates but their purpose and manner of selection are different.

So that's a Superdelegate. With wicked mad skills like this, I can't imagine why women do not flock to me.

Severe weather knocked out the power in Bloomington until very early Wednesday morning. I was not only unable to post but also unable to follow the election night action. Boo.

This primary season is going to force us to change the way we teach about primary seasons. I struggle to think of the last election in which the nominations were not decided by or immediately after Super Tuesday. Unbelievably, the parity between Hillary and Obama is such that this really may go down to the wire for the first time since the institution of the McGovern-Fraser reforms of 1969-70, which turned the primaries/caucuses into actual nominating vehicles as opposed to simple popularity contests. While I suspect that about 0.0001% of Americans understand how things like Superdelegates and convention politics work, the nation may be about to get a crash course-style introduction.

On the GOP side, McCain's resurrection appears complete, a fact that speaks to both the pathetic field and the overwhelming tendency of this system to produce the lamest / least threatening nominees in each party.