Supposedly, to be officially announced today, Jay-Z in conjunction with the equally entrepreneurial Steve Stoute will be opening an ad agency. Translation Advertising, as it will be known, will focus on "helping marketers reach multicultural consumers."

It makes sense he would do something like this. He considers this "part of the natural growth" of his career. I mean, come on, dude's resume includes just about everything: Hustlin', Grammy-Winning, Owning NJ Nets, Clothier, Budweiser Select Brand Manager, Def Jam CEO (a position he just resigned). He's a brand manager - more specifically a perception manager. Always has been. He gets it. "There are people who don’t understand the culture," Jay said, referencing a commercial for a wireless carrier “that shows guys break-dancing in the phone store...It’s just not something we do.”

Hillary Clinton is evidently running for the Republican nomination for president. Monday, she met with Richard Mellon Scaife -- yes, the very architect and financier of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, the man behind the Whitewater hoax, the man who spent millions of dollars promoting the story that Hillary Rodham Clinton had Vince Foster murdered -- now the publisher of a commercially non-viable far right-wing vanity newspaper, and used the occasion to denounce Barack Obama for being a member of Jermiah Wright's church.

Today, I read this in the Washington Post: "[Like John McCain] Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has also started slapping the L-word on Obama, warning that his appeal among moderate voters will diminish as they become more aware of liberal positions he has taken in the past, such as calling for single-payer health care . . . ."

It's not very surprising that a recent poll finds that 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for John McCain if Obama is the nominee, since it has been the Clinton strategy for several weeks now to endorse John McCain over Obama.

A Wall Street Journal columnist today suggests that “Obama’s ‘Identity’ Beat Hillary’s ‘Identity.’” His argument is that the Democratic party is dominated by identity politics, and Senator Clinton lost because the race card beat the sex card.

The columnist claims, furthermore, that Obama (influenced by legal theorists at Harvard) sees matters in terms of identity politics, regardless of his professed desire to move beyond it. The columnist writes:
After South Carolina, the campaigns accused each other of playing the race or gender card. Obama deflected this charge. "I don't want to deny the role of race and gender in our society," Obama said. "They're there, and they're powerful. But I don't think it's productive."

I'm not convinced. I think Barack Obama is more inclined to interpret American life in the formal categories of identity politics than is generally thought, or even than would older "conventional liberals" like Al Gore or John Kerry. Legal theorists have been a main source of its ideas; it's hard to imagine that Barack and Michelle Obama didn't hear a lot about "marginalized constituencies" at Harvard Law School. Sen. Obama may not be so conventional after all.

This is exciting. Tooble is a new program that allows you to download any of the content on YouTube to your computer with ease. No video editing or IT skills necessary. It's free and has a very slick and user friendly interface - it can even function as a standalone YouTube browser. Tooble downloads, converts and imports any YouTube video into MP4 format to play on your computer, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, etc., with just a few clicks. You can even take the MP4 video file and drop it into PPT - perfect for all of those times you wanted to drop that YouTube video into a deck.

Today's Washington Post has an article that discusses "The Downside of Obama Strategy," i.e., that he actually has the audacity to believe that every Democrat's (and, perhaps, every American's) vote should count equally. The article notes (accurately) that Clinton has done better in large, electoral-vote-rich states than has Obama, which has ostensibly provoked fears about the prospects of his winning in November. It doesn't matter that he has received more popular votes than Clinton in contested elections--which allows us to omit Michigan and Florida--and, of course, that he has won more delegates. All that matters, according to a number of quoted Clinton supporters, is the vote in large states. So what we have is an attempt to apply to the nominating process the Electoral College's effective disenfranchisement of those unlucky enough to live in states where they are the political minority and the insane emphasis on a relatively few "battleground" states . One gather that Clinton will lose to Obama in today's caucuses in Wyoming. But, hey, it doesn't matter what Wyoming Democrats think, because they live in a Republican state.

I am sure you have all seen the headlines – the big Democratic turn out, the big Obama win, the big Clinton loss, and the religious right’s single-handed miracle of a Huckabee win – but what happened in Iowa last night holds far more secrets about what is to come than those headlines.

I caucused with the Democrats so I will have to limit my comments to what I saw there, although from my understanding, the Republicans go, pledge, pray, vote, and go again -- home to watch the Orange Bowl (Kansas was playing after all). The Democratic caucus procedure is much more involved, but more on that later.

I'm like, scratching my head. Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for president, correct? The nomination will be awarded officially by delegates to the Democratic National Convention, the delegate selection process is over, and the majority of the delegate votes at the convention belong to people who will vote for Obama. Ergo, QED, therefore, ipso facto, a fortiori and you can take it to the bank, Senator Obama will be the nominee.

So Hillary Clinton takes the occasion to announce:

She is the candidate who will be the best president;
She is asking people to continue to donate to her campaign;
She will decide on the future of her campaign in the coming days, based on what the people who voted for her want her to do;
That the voters of South Dakota have had the last word in the primaries, even though the polls in Montana were still open at that very moment;
That more people voted for her than had ever voted for a candidate in a primary -- even though more people voted for Obama than for Hillary Clinton.

According to the Obama campaign, he won 845 of the 1671 pledged delegates last night, to Senator Clinton's 836. This appears to be roughly consistent, give or take a few delegates, with others' estimates, as well -- see here and here. When added to his previous 63-48 lead, that would give Obama a 908 to 884 lead in pledged delegates. (There are seven more delegates to be chosen from Democrats abroad who voted yesterday.)

Only 1428 pledged delegates are still to be chosen in the remaining primaries and caucuses. Thus, in order to enter the convention with a majority (2025 delegates), Senator Obama would need to win 1117 of those remaining delegates, or over 78 percent. Senator Clinton would need to win 1141 delegates, or 80 percent. Obviously, neither of the candidates is going to secure anywhere close to a majority before the August convention. It is more likely that each will end up with between 1500 and 1700 pledged delegates, i.e., at least 300 delegates short of what they need to win.

Without endorsing either of the three Presidential candidates in the US, and without suggesting any underhanded shenanigans, let me propose a thought about USA '08.

It occurred to me last week while having drinks with a dozen or so industry peers - almost all democrats, mind you. The subject of the conversation somehow shifted to politics and the candidates... and I fully expected the group to be happy about Sen. Obama's advantage over Sen. Clinton. That, however, wasn't the case: No one at the table endorsed Obama.

People keep asking me who I'm planning to vote for Tuesday and I didn't have an answer -- it was a very tough call. Then I saw an ad last night in which Robert Kennedy Jr. endorses Hillary, and that sealed the deal.

I'm voting for Obama.

Nike is dropping the 'golden' pair of Jordans on Jan 25. Golden, if you will, as they are the Air Jordan XX3 – which means they are the 23rd version of the Air Jordan – and Jordan wore #23 for much of his career.

Unless Barack Obama wins both Texas and Ohio (and adds Pennsylvania a couple of weeks later for good measure), the race will go on, and the controversy about counting delegates from Florida and Michigan will become ever more heated. The Clinton position that the results of the primaries held there in January, in patent defiance of the Democratic National Committee, should be honored, is preposterous. The candidates had pledged to honor the ban by not campaigning there. Obama wasn't even on the ballot in one of those states and certainly didn't campaign. But if Clinton and Obama remain more-or-less tied after the next string of primaries, there will, I suspect, be great pressure to rehold the primaries in a context where both candidates can campaign. This appears fair on the surface, but there is a real paradox in adopting this solution.

YouTube Video of Obama Speech Today.
Transcripts of Speech

Today Obama gave an impassioned speech on race and responded to the comments from the media asserting that that he agrees with his pastor Wright's inflammatory views on the U.S. and racism. He reminds us all that there is hope in a better tomorrow, but also tells us how we can get there. Even if he isn't the candidate for you, I think his message is very important for everyone to hear.

It appears that John McCain is the anointed (at least by the press) nominee of the Republican Party, not least becasue he carried a number of Northeastern states in which he basically stands no chance of winning in November and because he won 33% of the vote in Missouri and, apparently, 44% of the Republican vote in California. As to the former, the winner-take-all feature had been engineered to slingshot Rudy Giuliani into the lead. Obviously, things changed. (California is not winner-take-all for the Republicans.) Missouri is also a winner-take-all state, which means, by definition, that a candidate rejected by 67% of the relevant electorate can nonetheless "win" because of being first-past-the-post. Perhaps McCain might have won in a run-off or alternative transferrable vote, but there is certainly reason to doubt this in Missouri.

Rachael Ray recently profiled Barack and Michelle Obama for a segment on her talk show. The media is all worked up about the fact ath Barack said that his daughters think his candidacy is boring. Rachael and the Obamas discuss how they make time for their family during the campaign and how their two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, feel about the race.

Check out some video from the interview:

The headlines -- most of them, anyway -- are saying that Senator Clinton beat Senator Obama 51% to 45% in the Nevada caucus contest today. Except that some reports say Senator Obama "won," 13 delegates to 12. What's up? There's a debate going on over at Matt Yglesias's blog (and elsewhere, too, I venture to guess -- especially among the spinners).

Well, there are at least three different metrics by which today's contests could be evaluated.

Over at the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson gets what is at stake in the 2008 election-- a reconstructive presidency:

Obama's candidacy not only threatens to obliterate the dream of a Clinton Restoration. It also fundamentally calls into question Bill Clinton's legacy by making it seem . . . not really such a big deal.

That, I believe, is the unforgivable insult. The Clintons picked up on this slight well before Obama made it explicit with his observation that Ronald Reagan had "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."

As many of you who regularly read my blog know, I'm not big into politics here. (It's a fascinating, but dirty business.) I've written the rare column about it, but I watched the returns on Thursday's Iowa caucuses with some interest, and I thought I'd write something about it, as the 2008 presidential campaigns got officially underway.

As you all know, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee were the winners on the Democratic and Republican sides, respectively. Obviously both candidates got a huge boost from winning the first major political contest of the 2008 presidential campaign. But I thought some pundits went a little overboard with the pronounciations they were making, especially about Obama.

Hillary Clinton (pictured wearing the hat of her "favorite" MLB team) is expected to announce on Saturday that she is giving up her Democratic presidential ambition and will support expected nominee Barack Obama. (Not a surprise she is waiting until Saturday, as today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.)

I would bet that she will NOT be Obama's choice to be his vice presidential running mate, as the Obamas don't want the baggage that comes with her (aka Bill), and she doesn't want to be vice president anyway. (Obama needs a running mate who appeals to the two most important groups he still needs to win over from John McCain: Independents and Conservative Democrats. That's not Hillary.) I would bet in the long run she's hoping that Obama loses in November so she could run again in 2012.

Almost assuredly not. In fact, neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama is likely to be even halfway to the required total of 2023 delegates by then, and the delegate difference between them on February 6th is likely to be quite small.

Last July, I published a piece in the Boston Globe, entitled "No Vice," arguing that we would be better off either without a Vice President at all--we got along without one for 45 of our first 180 years)--or, perhaps more plausibly, waiting until after the election and having the winner, a la the 25th Amendment, nominate a vice president, subject to congressional confirmation. I would, incidentally, also allow the President or Congress to fire the Vice President, but that's another matter for another thread.

I can't help but wonder if John McCain might not find some real merit in the suggestion. Consider his dilemma. It is clear that Mike Huckabee isn't going to be the nominee for president, but his followers might (legitimately?) feel dissed if he isn't chosen for Veep. At best, they might stay home; at worst, they might vote for Obama and actually put some of the Red States in play, especially if Obama chooses, say, James Webb or Wesley Clark as his Veep. On the other hand,

Yes, another political post. Tomorrow is the Super Tuesday to end all Super Tuesdays, so I don't feel too bad about it. For a political junkie, this has been the most fascinating 6 weeks I've ever seen. Results wildly out of line with the polls, huge lead changes, the death of "momentum" as a meaningful gauge of a candidate's chances, debates more wonkish than I've ever seen, and two candidates I'm super enthusiastic about...

And that's just on the Democratic side. With the Republicans we've got Giuliani's 50 million dollar delegate, Huckabee's shock win in Iowa and all-too-predictable collapse, Romney remembering too late that he had a far better case as a smart business guy than he ever did as the cultural warrior, and the resurgence of McCain (which I'm not enthusiastic about in a strategic sense, but which does make me feel smart for predicting that he would win the nomination way back in November when he looked DOA).

Anyways, I got an e-mail today from a friend in California leaning toward Hillary asking me to make the case for Obama. I ended up with a fairly lengthy response and figured it wouldn't hurt to post it here. Yesterday I made the emotional case. This is the strategic one:

For the past couple of weeks I've been blogging about how, regardless of how many states Senators Clinton and Obama each "win" tonight, the Democratic primary system is not like the electoral college -- winner does not take all -- and therefore neither one of them is likely to emerge from today as a prohibitive favorite in terms of actually securing a majority of delegates. Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers has now run some numbers, and he calculates that the largest possible delegate spread between the two candidates after this evening is likely to be no more than 75 delegates, and that as of tomorrow morning both candidates will need to win over 1000 more delegates for a majority -- probably more than 1100 -- with only 1428 pledged delegates remaining to be chosen in primaries and caucuses. Thus, in order to win the nomination without the aid of "superdelegates," either candidate would need to win more than three-quarters of the remaining pledged delegates, something that is virtually inconceivable.

It has recently been suggested, in the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, that Barack Obama would have profound difficulties in dealing with the Islamic world if he is elected president because he was born to a Muslim father and then raised as a Christian, making him an apostate. This, the stories claimed, make him eligible for the death penalty or assassination under Islamic law.

The spectacular ignorance of Islam in these stories has now been documented and refuted here by Abdullahi Ahmed an’Naim, one of the smartest Moslem intellectuals working today. He notes:

If there is one thing that is clear about contemporary America, it is that "democracy" scarcely describes our approach to politics. No, I'm not going to do another attack on our Constitution. Instead, I continue to be interested in the widespread belief that the Democratic primary has gone on "too long" and that something needs to be done to wrap it all up (and, in fact, that it should have been wrapped up weeks ago). As a committed Obamaite, I've not been above such thoughts, but as a slightly more detached analyst, I wonder what exactly is wrong about the current imbroglio, at least if one believes in democracy.

Consider the following: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama actually have had to visit states like Texas, Wyoming, and Mississippi, which they will certainly not do for the general election. They will also find themselves in North Carolina and South Dakota before too very long. This means, among other things, that they are actually forced to become familiar with issues that might matter to people in those states and address them as, gasp, the equal of Democrats in safe states or the fabled swing voters in the few "battleground states." I'm opposed, of course,

Carrying on the political theme...

Is this a spoof or did it actually run? Either way, I love it.

Spotted here

For all you undecided voters out there who have yet to join the Obama camp, here's some more of the inspiration you need.

Hate it or love it, it's still pretty amazing to me that something which started as a joke has managed to maintain attention for such a prolonged period of time.

And for those who missed it, peep the return of Obama Girl just before the Iowa Caucus (1.3 million hits on YouTube and counting), when she received a pep talk from none other than Truman Girl.

Hillary Clinton luego de que inhalara dosis de “soplo de vida” experimentando "la mejoría del que va a morir” con la adjudicación de la mitad de los delegados de Michigan y Florida , y su triunfo en Puerto Rico…