A lot can hinge on the meaning of 'is'.  I think it was Bertrand Russell who said that most philosophical problems are confusions of the 'is' of predication, the 'is' of identity, and the 'is' of existential quantification.  The mining of such careful logical and grammatical distinctions that began with Frege and matured with Russell flourished in Wittgenstein's thinking with the idea that there are no real philosophical problems, only logico-grammatical confusion.

In most cases, however, the meaning is clear enough.  We even have different forms of 'is' to make the meaning clearer if we need to.  The plural form of 'is' is 'are'.  The future tense of that form is 'will be'.  When you say 'are' it means now not later.

So, outside of the philosophico-linguistic puzzles that vexed the likes of Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, there's very seldom any confusion about the meaning of 'is' and its conjugates.  That is why Bill Clinton's infamous utterance "it depends what the meaning of 'is' is" has come to symbolize Washington double-speak, because when someone wants to start parsing 'is' you know that you're either not getting straight talk or you're getting a Wittgensteinian deflation of a philosophical conceit.

So, I'm just wondering whether anyone else noticed that Mr Straight-Talk(tm)'s campaign invoked a defense that is emblematic of double talk today when they issued a missive threatening to parse the tenses of 'is' to explain McCain's ignorance about troop levels.  The McCain camp is saying that McCain didn't mean what he plainly said because he might have had a different meaning of 'is' in mind.  Gotta love that straight talk. . .  though it shouldn't take mastery of the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus to comprehend.

Rush Limbaugh and National Right to Life asked Republicans to vote for Hillary in IN.  Jedreport puts the Limbaugh line at %53:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/6/22211/59755/99/510429


How much does Hillary need to win by in order to obviate the widespread sense that Obama finished within the margin of loyal Limabaugh listeners and very loyal anti-choice activists gaming the Democratic primary with no intention of voting for the Dem nominee?

I say she needs to win by more than %2 to clearly put that to rest.  What say you?

Story on the rec list at kos right now from jedreport.

Between this and Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" I believe that the time is right for the remaining supers to step in and end this after tomorrow's primary.  I imagine that Hillary will get a considerable bump from the robocalls.  Anti-choice activists are well organized and will turn out.  The supers should make a point of mentioning NRL's interference when endorsing Obama.  It will help the healing with some of Hillary's key demographics to have it be clearly seen that we are being gamed by folks that want anti-choice McCain appointing SC justices.


Enough is enough.