Can someone please write a Monty Python parody in which John Cleese walks into a Change Shop, and proprietor Sarah Palin responds to each request for new policies with "...No."

Today, August 29, is the third anniversary of Cake Day!

    http://tinyurl.com/5satgo

(the day we learned about two people who'd rather eat cake than deal with other things)

I'm not sure I get John McCain's sense of humor... if that's even what he thought this was when he said it, early in his interview with Jon Stewart tonight:

"By the way, [the Daily Show studio's] dog wasn't there--Chloe!  I wanted to kick it!"

There'll doubtless be a better-quality video on the actual Daily Show site in the morning, but for right now it's here.

I'm not sure I get John McCain's sense of humor... if that's even what he  this was when he said it early in his interview with Jon Stewart tonight:

"By the way, [the Daily Show studio's] dog wasn't there--Chloe!  I wanted to kick it!"

There'll doubtless be a better-quality video on the actual Daily Show site in the morning, but for right now it's here.

I've seen lots of discussion about John Edwards' current silence, from people who argue that he needs to make an endorsement, immediately, of either Obama or Clinton. The claim is that giving his delegates and supporters to one or the other of the remaining candidates will bring an end to the long slow struggle now playing out from state to state.

I think Edwards' endorsement has a much more important role to play later on, and that he's smart not to make it now.
It's going to be crucial once a nominee is chosen, whether before or at the convention in August, for supporters of the defeated candidate to accept the winner. And that's when Edwards' endorsement could be the most powerful. A statement from John Edwards that the nominee had been duly chosen, that he would abide by that choice, and that his delegates and supporters should now go to ____, would be a strong reminder to those in the camp of the non-winning candidate. It would remind them that coming together around the eventual winner, by supporters of all candidates, was the next, vital, step in the process of electing a Democrat to the White House in November.

Currently the pledged-delegate counts (i.e. not the superdelegates) are around 1100 to 1000, with Obama in the lead.  The number required to become the Democratic nominee is 2025.

Now I realize that the amount of noise and uncertainty in the delegate-information system is pretty high, which has accounted for the different numbers you can get from various sources.  But unless I'm not just off but wildly off in my reasoning, it's impossible for either Clinton or Obama to win the nomination on pledged delegates alone at this point; they're going to need superdelegates to do it:

There are 19 states left to go in the Democratic primaries. According to
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_delegate_count.html
they account for 963 total delegates. That source doesn't state how many of those are pledged and how many are superdelegates, but it does say that 796 of all the delegates are superdelegates. Well, there are 4049 delegates total (which is why the winning threshold is 2025), so that means superdelegates are a little less than 20% of all delegates.  If we assume that also holds true for the 19 states left to go, then of their 963 delegates, 193 are supers and 770 are pledged.  

Even if every pledged delegate remaining went for Obama, or for Clinton, that still wouldn't put them at 2025. So I can't see how this race isn't going to come down to who the supers vote for, and since they're allowed to change their minds as much as they want between now and the convention in August there's no way to be sure what the outcome will be, unless one of the two candidates withdraws from the race... and I have my doubts that either would be willing to do that.

See you in August?