Texas State Rep. Betty Brown has some good advice for our friends of the Asian persuasion. Yglesias points out that South Asians are the real villains here—your Duraiswamies, your Ayyagaries, your Balasubramanians...

Whoops, missed a day somehow. (Even grad students get busy sometimes.) Here's a few links I've been saving; scroll all the way to the bottom for your daily dose of Watchmen panic.

* One of our most beloved blog denizens has started up a March Madness blog. Add it to your feeds immediately.

* Executing someone on their birthday may seem hilarious, but actually it's sort of cold. (via Srinivas)

* Same goes for trading your minor-league pitcher for ten bats. Via MeFi.

* All about experimental philosophy.

* The Daily Show's evisceration of CNBC was amazing last night. Also, incredibly well-deserved.

* Forget man-on-dog: will gay marriage start us down the slippery slope to human/robot marriages? It could happen right here in North Carolina. Only Steve Benen sees where this really leads: man/dog/robot/robot-dog polygamy.

* Two games: Linear RPG and Exploit, the second from amateur-game-creator of the moment, Gregory Weir, (The Majesty of Colors, Bars of Black and White).

* “You have to understand,” he told me, “Iceland is no longer a country. It is a hedge fund.” Vanity Fair has a huge feature on the Icelandic financial collapse that really makes for fascinating reading. More discussion at MetaFilter. (via my dad)

Global financial ambition turned out to have a downside. When their three brand-new global-size banks collapsed, last October, Iceland’s 300,000 citizens found that they bore some kind of responsibility for $100 billion of banking losses—which works out to roughly $330,000 for every Icelandic man, woman, and child. On top of that they had tens of billions of dollars in personal losses from their own bizarre private foreign-currency speculations, and even more from the 85 percent collapse in the Icelandic stock market. The exact dollar amount of Iceland’s financial hole was essentially unknowable, as it depended on the value of the generally stable Icelandic krona, which had also crashed and was removed from the market by the Icelandic government. But it was a lot.

Iceland instantly became the only nation on earth that Americans could point to and say, “Well, at least we didn’t do that.” In the end, Icelanders amassed debts amounting to 850 percent of their G.D.P. (The debt-drowned United States has reached just 350 percent.) As absurdly big and important as Wall Street became in the U.S. economy, it never grew so large that the rest of the population could not, in a pinch, bail it out. Any one of the three Icelandic banks suffered losses too large for the nation to bear; taken together they were so ridiculously out of proportion that, within weeks of the collapse, a third of the population told pollsters that they were considering emigration.

* When will voters start blaming Obama for the economy? Nate Silver has the numbers suggesting that will start in 18 or so months, though I bet that timeline could halve or worse that as people grow frustrated with prolonged economic hardship.

* What Obama could learn from Watchmen: Matt Yglesias reports on Ronald Reagan's own Ozymandian scheme for global unity.

* And Jacob sends along your hope-crushing Watchmen reviews for the day.

J. Hoberman in Village Voice: The philosopher Iain Thomson (who valiantly brought Heidegger's Being and Time to bear on his reading of Watchmen) maintained that Moore not only deconstructed the idea of comic book super-heroism but pulverized the very notion of the hero—and the hero-worship that comics traditionally sell. For all its superficial fidelity, Snyder's movie stands Moore's novel on its head, trying to reconstruct a conventional blockbuster out of those empty capes and scattered shards.

David Edelstein, New York Magazine: ...this kind of reverence kills what it seeks to preserve. The movie is embalmed.

Meanwhile, Steve Benen and Adam Serwer take a stand against Anthony Lane on behalf of geeks everywhere.

Fox News (yes, they still exist) is actually telling people that Barack Obama isn't president because John Roberts botched the oath of office. Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, though it must be noted that Shankar predicted this would happen during the inauguration itself.

UPDATE: TPM has the video, which makes it clear that this is a case of what the Honorable Al Franken (Sen-MN) used to call "kidding on the square." Via C&L.

Who is Eric Holder? Likely, he's your next attorney general.

A New York City native who graduated from Columbia University and Columbia Law School, Holder spent years as a federal prosecutor—a job in which he earned a reputation as tough and aggressive foe of public corruption. After serving in the public integrity section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and later a District of Columbia Superior Court judge, Holder was named by President Clinton as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. He became deputy attorney general in 1997 under Janet Reno and was viewed as a centrist on most law enforcement issues, though he has sharply criticized the secrecy and the expansive views of executive power advanced by the Bush Justice Department.

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen links to the latest of the Howard Dean retrospectives.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean said at the National Press Club that President-elect Barack Obama “was right in 2004, when he said there are no red states and no blue states; there are only American states, and we all share the same values."

“You cannot be a national party if you are willing to write off entire parts of our country,” Dean stated. “Based on that pretty straightforward idea, we changed the way our party ran campaigns and reached out to voters.”

In a memo, the DNC touted Dean’s strategy, which was often maligned at its inception.

Like a lot of people my age, Dean was both the first candidate I ever gave money to ($50) and the first Democrat I ever really believed in. While I see more clearly now than then that he probably couldn't have beat Bush in '04—though I remember some pretty good arguments with Shankar on this point—in terms of both organizational strategy and campaign aesthetics he helped pave the way for the Obama movement. And while the fifty-state stategy he instituted as chairman of the DNC was certainly lucky in our choice of nominee—though we likely still would have won with Hillary, it would have been on a much more traditional playing field—it's fundamentally the right strategy, the winning strategy, as the increasingly regional Republicans are about to learn the hard way.

Larry Sabato writes the McCain campaign appears to have had a "death wish" in Virginia.

Of the two shifts, by far the most significant is VIRGINIA, which we are moving from pure toss-up to LEANS OBAMA. We have been very cautious about the Old Dominion, in part because it's been our home for the better part of six decades. More than most, we know how tough this state can be for a Democratic presidential candidate. But while we continue to disbelieve the national polls showing Obama winning Virginia by 10 percentage points, we now believe that Obama has built a small edge of two or three points in the state. The reasons are clear: Bush, the disastrous economy, the demographic growth of Northern Virginia and its strong Democratic tilt, the momentum built up by recent Democratic victories (Mark Warner in 2001 and soon 2008, Tim Kaine in 2005, and Jim Webb in 2006), and the remarkable voter registration and voter contact efforts of a literal army of Obama staffers and volunteers in the state for a full year.

But it is more than that. The McCain campaign and the state GOP appear to have had a death wish. McCain's staff refused to believe Virginia was truly competitive for too long, and the McCain-Palin visits were few. McCain's brother called Northern Virginians "Commies" and one of McCain's most prominent spokespersons said they were not the "real Virginia." Generally, it is difficult to win the votes of people you are insulting.

The Virginia Republican party is also completely outclassed by the state's Democrats in money and organization. The GOP is being run by a very young, fire-breathing chairman who publicly drew an absurd link between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden--drawing angry rebukes from the top echelon of the McCain campaign as well as virtually all the senior Republican elected officials in the state. Republicans in Virginia have simply not adapted to the new moderate reality of this Mid-Atlantic state, the twelfth largest in the nation. They insist on running too far to the right, as though this were the Virginia of the Old South. It's not selling anymore.

Sabato's crystal ball also moves North Dakota to "toss-up" this week.

Pollster.com moves Virginia to Strong Obama.

Politics Monday.

* A funny thing happened to Michele Bachmann: after her neo-McCarthyite rant on Hardball, her opponent raised almost $400K overnight, with her primary opponent re-entering the race as a write-in candidate in protest. Bachmann's now desperately trying to backpeddle.

* Republican arrested for voter-fraud registration. ACORN still exonerated.

* West Virginia electronic voting machines don't work, either: purely by accident, they keep switching votes to McCain.

* Indiana gave us Shankar D and it currently feeds my good friends Brent and Lisa. But will it give us President Obama?

* Memo to the McCain campaign: the hate isn't working and your Hail Marys bombed. Try something else.

* Or, you know, don't: John McCain doesn't really seem to mind losing. A lot of "moderate" conservatives, too, seem okay with it, most of them rightly blaming Sarah Palin. I tell you this, I sure hope the far right manages to make her the nominee in 2012.

* It turns out McCain's also made himself far less available to the press than even Palin, having not taken any questions since September.

* Early voting starts in Florida today, where the right-leaning RCP average puts the race at +3.2 Obama, who will spend the next three days there campaigning with Hillary Clinton.

* More early voting facts and figures at The Caucus and (especially) elections.gmu.edu. TPM reports that the numbers so far favor Obama.

* Encouraging signs: McCain has $47 million left to spend. Obama has much, much more.

* In the New York Times, Dr. Lawrence Altman has concerns about the candidates' health, McCain's in particular.

* Al Gore will host an election night webcast for the Obama campaign as part of its "Building the New Energy Economy" theme.

* And Obama is your marketer of the year. Seems about right.

A Selzer poll of Indiana, proud birthplace of Kurt Vonnegut, Orville Redenbacher, and our own Shankar D, puts Obama three points ahead in the state. I wouldn't give it any credibility at all if it were anyone but Ann Selzer, who is widely considered the gold standard of polling in the Midwest. (You might remember Selzer & Co. from the Des Moines Register poll that was the first to predict Obama's big win in Iowa.)

More than anything else this reflects the change in momentum I've been talking about all week, arising from five or so factors:

* the evaporation of the convention bounce in general and the Palin bounce in particular;
* the continued stunning collapse of the banking system;
* the widening perception that McCain has been running an unusually dishonest, throw-shit-at-the-wall campaign;
* self-inflicted wounds from the McCain camp, most importantly the "fundamentals" line;
* and Obama (finally) taking a tougher line.

Marc Ambinder has a post up talking about the different approaches McCain and Obama take to a state like Indiana. McCain is right that if Obama wins Indiana, he probaby already won the election somewhere else. But by the same token McCain is playing on such a limited field that he can't allow Indiana to go uncontested, which if nothing else will be a nice drain on his resources and time. As has been said here time and time again, on a state-by-state level McCain is pretty clearly on defense, which bodes well; an unexpectedly successful GOTV operation anywhere in NV, CO, VA, IN, OH, FL, or even NC could be enough to put Obama over the top.

With the map above, even an unexpectedly strong showing in Montana (vote Ron Paul) would do the job. And don't think Obama's strategy people aren't on this; they've even put resources in Omaha, Nebraska, to try to win the city's lone electoral vote.

In terms of how-we'll-actually-win, the eight-point lead in New Mexico from Survey USA is much more promising. I think McCain will probably retain Indiana, when it comes down to it, unless it's the sort of blowout that's already cost him Ohio; putting New Mexico in the Obama column is a strong sign for us even if we're trying to win by just one EV.

Shankar D: "This Is What A Culture War Looks Like."

After Wednesday night’s RNC proceedings, the contrast between Senator Obama’s calls to unity and the GOP’s calls to cultural warfare couldn’t be clearer.

Big ups to Shankar: Rudy's speaking tonight. I'm breaking the embargo on this excerpt:

...but I know another person who was mayor on 9/11, and that's Sarah Palin. [applause]

There's been a whole lot of talk the last few days about Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, with the pundits finally catching up to the renowned wisdom of my good friend Shankar D. And if the Shankaristas are right, at least I was half-right—I picked Virginia two months ago, but after cycling through Webb, Kaine, and Warner a few times I settled on Warner for pragmatic reasons. The Virginia statehouse and Webb's Senate seat are birds in the hand, while Warner's likely Senate seat is still off there in the bush. (That, and also the fact that Kaine's nominal pro-life stance makes a lot of progressive activists very nervous.)

The only question is: is this chatter a genuine leak, is it a trial balloon, or is it a courtesy because Kaine's not being picked? We'll find out soon, I guess.

There's more discussion at Raising Kaine, where the response from the commenters is surprisingly tepid.

Okay, this is funny. In preparing that last post I had occasion to click on a link to my old 2004 election blog, Three Guys, where I'd blogged electoral politics with my good friend Shankar D. and my longtime nemesis Srinivas A. I haven't clicked on any link to Three Guys in a few years because the blog has long since been deleted, ever since someone decided it might be a good idea for him to have a "career" as a "successful lawyer." (Whatever.)

So threeguys.blogspot.com is gone, and has been for a while.

This is what happens when you click on a Three Guys link now:



You're about to be redirected

The blog that used to be here is now at http://girls-sex-toys.hellarity.com/.
Do you wish to be redirected?

Forget academia. I'm never getting hired anywhere.

I'm hoping to write something short for the Indy about Bruce this week, so I'm outsourcing my morning-after report entirely to the very good people at backstreets.com:

Charging out of the gate, they set the tone for a high-energy performance, the best of this Southern swing so far.

Well, all right! If I'd had my druthers, I might have been to the Charlotte show on Sunday night instead, if only to have seen that encore: Thunder Road, Kitty's Back, Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark. But still, our setlist was pretty crazy awesome itself:

Roulette
Don't Look Back
Radio Nowhere
Out in the Street
The Promised Land
Magic
Gypsy Biker
It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
Trapped
Because the Night
Darkness on the Edge of Town
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
Mary's Place
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
Devil's Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands

ENCORE:
Backstreets
Bobby Jean
Born to Run
Ramrod
American Land

I don't see any video yet, but there's some video from Charlotte up at YouTube. If you say your prayers and eat your vitamins and squint your eyes you can just make out my buddy Shankar in the Pit losing his mind and saving his soul (keep your eyes above the YouTube logo):

He's right at the right edge of the screen—a woman bumps into him at the 2:40 mark, but you can see it doesn't faze him a bit.

Monday!

* Which imaginary animals are kosher? Via Boing Boing.

* Plan59.com is a great site for retro and nostalgia art.

* MetaFilter has now apparently set about translating all of Pulp Fiction into Shakespearease, following the lead of this link.

* Cogitamus has a question for the class, via Cynical-C.

Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the “Keating Five,” had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with a man who denounced the Catholic Church as a whore, and stated that he knew next to nothing about economics — do you think it’s possible that Obama would have been treated differently by the media than John McCain has been? Possible?

* The New York Times says Harold and Kumar 2 creates a whole new genre: the stoner protest film. The legendary Randolph High School debate squad of the 1990s even gets a veiled shout-out...

* The Catcher in the Retirement Home.

* A people's history of the banana.

Very good news from Iowa tonight for Obama supporters as Barack takes Iowa by a solid margin (at the moment it's just about 7%). The turnout is the other huge story tonight—the Obama campaign is claiming over 200,000 people turned out, which if true is approximately twice the participation in 2004.

That the Republicans decided to go with Hucklebee is just the icing on the cake.

I already spoke a little bit today about the reasons why I support Obama, reasons I find echoed in this piece Bill Simmon sent me from the Carpetbagger Report.

So in honor of this historic occasion, let's just skip all that and go back in time instead to the moment that started it all:





The site is long gone now, but I just checked my personal archives for the post I wrote on Three Guys after the speech in 2004. Here's what I had to say back then:

BARACK OBAMA: GODDAMN.

That man really is going to be president.

But as usual it's my good friend Shankar D who's worth listening to:

Obama gave a simply great speech that will, I believe, be remembered for a very long time. Like Clinton, he evoked a belief in the essential unity of the American people, but with much more powerful rhetoric and moving imagery. It was a much-needed clarion call at a time when ideologues on both sides of the aisle seem to relish and cherish the cultural boundaries that separate us from each other. A call that had no more fitting author than a man whose very existence bridges that gap.

But for progressives, it should be remembered for more than that. In those powerful final paragraphs, Obama premised his call for unity on the fundamentally liberal ideals of brotherhood and compassion.

For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

Martin Luther King Jr. is smiling from above, I suspect, at this young black man giving life to the abstract notion that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

By weaving this old-fashioned liberalism together with an embrace of the principles and people of "the other side" – individualism, a pragmatic view of government’s role, and an embrace of our Red State brethren – Obama fused the promise of the left with the promise of America.

The drunken reverie of the moment will undoubtedly wear off. But tonight, I feel a renewed sense of hope about the possibility of a New Liberalism that accounts for the poor, the isolated, and the marginalized in a way that brings us together, rather than pushes us apart. Idealism will always have to confront the reality of politics and life itself, but great leadership is its surest steward. And if nothing else, I am hopeful tonight about the future leadership of this country. Such is, I suppose, the audacity of hope.

Out-Raj-ous. I'm offended less by the transparently cynical attempt to "diversify" Riverdale High by adding token characters like Raj Patel, Chuck Clayton, and "Veronica's friend Ginger Lopez" and more by the idea that there's anyone anywhere buying Archie Comics in 2007.

According to Ruiz, Raj has just moved into Riverdale High and likes sci-fi movies, building models and making films. And, he’s just as impulsive as Archie.

Coming up with Raj’s look was one of the biggest challenges of creating the whole character. I wanted a character that reflected his background without looking like a caricature and still fit in seamlessly with the other characters.

...

Ruiz has given Raj a perky appearance. He’s a bit smaller than most of Riverdale’s males. His lively, optimistic personality is portrayed as much through his wardrobe, bedroom and expressive face, as it is through his words.

...

As for the rest of the family, there aren’t much background details but they do look good. Raj’s father Ravi Patel is a doctor and his character is along the lines of Mr Lodge, only younger and Indian.

Thank God they aren't caricatures. Via MeFi.

I couldn't decide whether a Simpsons or Clone High clip was more appropriate here, so you'll excuse me for going with both.