04 | June | 2008 | Robot Pirate Ninja

Obama Clinches Nomination, Capping Historic, Bitter Contest – WSJ.com

The Democratic presidential nomination his, Barack Obama reached out Wednesday to mend fences with his defeated rival as Republican opponent John McCain tried to frame the fall campaign on his own terms. “I think he has exercised very bad judgment on national security issues and others,” Sen. McCain said.

Sen. Obama captured enough convention delegates Tuesday to make a historic claim to the Democratic presidential nomination, the first African-American to earn a major party’s nod.

Hillary Clinton was angling to become Sen. Obama’s running mate and her aides ramped up the speculation on that matter Wednesday. “I think a lot of her supporters would like to see her on the ticket,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said. But Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs cautioned “there is no deal in the works.”
A clip from Sen. Obama’s speech after he has secured enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination. (June 3)

It’s official, Obama gets the nod. Very good work, sir. Madam, madam, please…Madam, please! Step back…

—-

Oh, and I think it’s hillaryious that McCain thinks saying that Obama is dumb on national security while at the same time defending the war in Iraq is going to work for him.

Still, the nomination marked a remarkable accomplishment for the son of a Kenyan immigrant who spent part of his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia.

“Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America,” Sen. Obama told an estimated 32,000 people gathered in St. Paul, Minn., late Tuesday.

The venue symbolized his start of the general-election campaign against the likely Republican nominee, Sen. McCain: In September, Republicans hold their presidential convention in the same city. And Sen. Obama’s huge audience, compared with Sen. McCain’s less than 1,000 supporters for his speech Tuesday night in New Orleans, dramatizes the Democrats’ big edge in voter excitement, evident all year in record turnout for the party’s primaries and caucuses.

Sen. McCain, his own nomination locked up months ago, defined the distinction he will draw with the less-experienced 46-year-old Sen. Obama, who is 25 years his junior: “Both Sen. Obama and I promise we will end Washington’s stagnant, unproductive partisanship,” he said. “But one of us has a record of working to do that, and one of us doesn’t.”

Yea…McCain has been working on changing Washington for what…25 years now. How’s that going for ya, buddy? What hasn’t that fixed in 25 years? How many lobbyists do you meet in 25 year in Washington, BTW? Many of the really hot ones weren’t even born when you got there, ifyouknowwhatI’msayin’…

It was the longest nomination race ever. Early returns were in keeping with the closeness of the Obama-Clinton race — a split decision, with Sen. Obama winning in Montana Tuesday and Sen. Clinton in South Dakota.

Once the polls closed Tuesday night, the Obama campaign released the names of 26.5 superdelegates — those from Michigan and Florida get half-votes, in punishment for holding their primaries too early. With others that came in through the day, and Sen. Obama’s share of Montana’s and South Dakota’s 31 pledged delegates, he could claim the 2,118-delegate majority needed for nomination.

Sen. Obama started Tuesday roughly 40 delegates shy of the number needed. But he exceeded that with the night’s final group endorsement from party leaders. In addition, 10 delegates pledged to former candidate and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards switched to him, besides the pledged delegates he’d get from Tuesday’s primaries.

So it looks like this thing was oven when I said it was, which is to say when Edwards said it was. That with the 3/5 votes from Michigan and Florida (haw-haw) and the thing was o.v.e.r.

Oh wait….you mean…Madam, please, please step back.. Madam!!!

And Sen. Clinton brushed aside calls for her to end her campaign last night, telling a crowd of cheering supporters in New York: “I will be making no decisions tonight.” That raised the prospects of days of wrangling and negotiating.

aaargh. And she keeps winning friends like this too. Riiight.

So it ends much the same as it dragged on, with Obama as the presumptive nominee and Clinton nipping at his heels.

It is quite a day for the the U.S. as someone who is the same color as a bunch of people we used for slaves is now, finally, one of the two people with a chance to be The President of the United States of America.

Pretty nifty, these united states (from thirteen original colonies).

—-

UPDATE: Longer version of the 16-month campaign.

There are no more great writers, says V S Naipaul – News, Books – The Independent

The novelist V S Naipaul has damned the achievements of his literary contemporaries by declaring that there are “no more great writers”.

Naipaul, 75, who won the Booker in 1971 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, is said to have called this year’s Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival “unimportant and meaningless”.

He made his outspoken comments while at a launch of a new magazine at the Wallace Collection, in London. “Publishing has gone down in quality so much in recent years and the problem is that there is no literary life any more because there are quite simply no more great writers,” he said.

He added that he had also noticed the people who go to Hay were “incredibly ugly”.

Unfortunately for the old, they don’t realize the great writers of the day aren’t writing books. Some write movies. Some write blogs. Many write code. Some write these things wonderfully, some horridly, but trust me, old man, there are most certainly great writers out there, and many of us enjoy their work tremendously.