Funny to hear that a Republican who was born in North Dakota and held office in Texas thinks that Sidney Crosby’s endorsement would wrap up the state for Hillary Clinton. And he’s the only one on the panel who knows who Sidney Crosby is! From CNN’s Situation Room:

ARMEY: I think she would get Sidney Crosby to come out strong for her, he could sew up the whole state. Right now, he’s probably the most popular person in the entire state.

But I also believe that Mrs. Clinton, Senator Clinton, will stay in this. She understands her obligation to the superdelegates. That’s the elite of her party. Their judgment should prevail. She understands the importance of that. And I, for one, believe she owes it to the Democratic Party to stay in until the convention.

BLITZER: Sidney Crosby, are you saying — who is Sidney Crosby?

ARMEY: He’s the most important hockey player in…

BLITZER: Oh, OK.

ARMEY: … in…

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: You knew that? Did you know that?

BRAZILE: No.

(CROSSTALK) BLITZER: I didn’t know that.

(CROSSTALK)

ARMEY: They don’t have hockey in New Orleans.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: I thought he was talking about Bill Cosby for a second, who went to Temple University.

BRAZILE: Well, Bill Cosby is also very popular.

BLITZER: He’s a popular guy in Pennsylvania, too.

Shame I can’t find the video. Brazille’s response is priceless.

Something tells me that Crosby’s endorsement wouldn’t go over so well in eastern PA.

As for Crosby’s thoughts on the matter:

Crosby isn’t interested in following Armey’s suggestion.

“I wouldn’t endorse anyone,” he said yesterday. “People have to decide for themselves.”

Crosby has been following the high-profile race between the two Democrats.

“Every channel you turn to, it’s so big and it’s been going on forever,” he said. “I have my own opinions, but I’ll keep them to myself.”

Something tells me Crosby is an Obama man.

This story is hard to stomach, literally:

In what is being called an unprecedented move, the federal government will pay Canadian pork producers $50 million to kill off 150,000 of their pigs by the fall as the industry teeters on the brink of economic collapse.

The animals are being destroyed at slaughter plants and on pig farms in a bid to cull the swine breeding herd by 10 per cent.

Most of the meat is to be used for pet food or otherwise disposed of, but up to 25 per cent of it will be made available to Canadian food banks.

“The value that the market is providing to hog farmers for their breeding animals has fallen to virtually nothing,” said Martin Rice, executive director of the Canadian Pork Council on Monday.

We have food riots around the world as the price for rice and wheat and soy skyrockets and Canada is going to slaughter animals and throw away the majority of the meat to help their domestic pork market?

Needless to say, the excess pork meat can’t be sent to Egypt or any other muslim nation. But c’mon, there’s got to be a better solution than this. How about Haiti?

As people go more and more vegetarian for ethical and economic reasons, we will see more and more stories of livestock being slaughtered for the sake of market dynamics.

Jarko Ruutu beat out Chris Simon for dirtiest player in the NHL?

Man, they really must hate the guy. Glad he’s on my team.

To get the true dirt on the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, the Philadelphia City Paper sent two reporters undercover posing as volunteers for their respective campaigns. The articles can be found here:

• I Was An Obama Volunteer
• I Was A Clinton Volunteer

The two articles show stark contrasts between the two campaigns, and in the end, clearly illustrate my own reasons for supporting Obama over Clinton. Analysis below.

(All quotes are from the respective articles)

The reporter working on the Clinton campaign describes an organization that is extremely hierarchical and tightly controlled. Hillary and her campaign operatives know best and the rest should just follow direction:

During her races to become a New York senator, Hillary embraced the focused, tight messages that cable stations allowed her to broadcast. She and her influential consultants managed the public’s perception of her from the campaigns’ highest levels, ensuring that the candidate remained likeable, and more importantly, electable, to everyday Joes like you and me. The tactics were executed in television studios and carefully scripted campaign stops across the country.
…
This became evident before I finished my first week at the headquarters. We volunteers were on our own as the staffers struggled to learn the city, get the computers online, and essentially wait for more staffers to show up. No one paid us much mind.

Obama started his public career as a grassroots organizer in Chicago and was determined to run his national campaign in the same manner: Instead of telling people what to do, he wanted to get people involved and say, “Let’s see what you can do.”

Much has been written about how Obama’s campaign represents the future of presidential politics. By marrying the classic neighborhood grassroots tactics of Obama’s community organizing days with simple online social networking tools, the Obama operation has, as Rolling Stone put it, “evolved into the mother of all get-out-the-vote campaigns.” It’s succeeded in registering and wooing into action millions of previously disengaged and disenchanted voters.

The Pennsylvania campaign started long ago for the Obama camp:

The Obama campaign had an army of Philadelphia ground troops organizing on its behalf way before it became clear that Pennsylvania would be a decisive battleground. Independent groups, such as Philadelphia for Obama and Students for Barack Obama, were busy planning campaign events and voter registration drives as early as last spring.

So when the time came to actually organize for the primary, the campaign was ready:

To advertise the March 1 opening of Obama’s Philadelphia headquarters, the campaign posted a notice on mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s popular social-networking site. Three hundred people poured into the office that first Saturday morning, and were asked to line up under whichever of the 19 maps posted corresponded with their neighborhood.

The contrast in energy and local involvement is stark as each reporter describes their first day of volunteering. For the Obama reporter:

The elevator doors slide open into what feels like an adult kindergarten class. Campaign staffers pinball around the room like dizzied Duck Duck Goose contestants, stopping only to answer questions or direct traffic while volunteers leap for ringing phones, pound away at laptops, and huddle around tables covered with mounds of charted maps and voter scrolls. The carpet is a sea of crumpled paper and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups, and the walls are plastered with magic marker Obama portraits and finger-painted campaign banners — the artwork of college students who have descended on the office en masse. There’s a crowd in the kitchen chomping down on soft pretzels and tuna-fish hoagies, and the scene at the merchandise table resembles something you’d see on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Plus, everyone’s wearing name tags.
…
I figured the place would be busy, but it’s a Monday morning in early March, six full weeks before the primary, and there must be a hundred people here. The line at the volunteer registration table is 10 deep.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign showed a real lack of early organization and enthusiasm:

My first task as a Hillary Clinton volunteer was to get past the campaign’s dead-bolted front door. I began with a hearty knock, the kind you hear when a political canvasser is on your stoop. No answer. I dropped to two knees and peered into the space between the door and the thin rug. No lights. I put my ear to the door, and dialed the general number. Ring. Ring. Ring. “Hi, you’ve reached the Philadelphia office of Pennsylvanians for Hillary, our office is located at five two zero, North Delaware Avenue. … “

At 9:20 a.m., I’d been at it for 25 minutes, walking the halls, making sure the door with the blue Hillary Clinton for President sign was actually the Hillary Clinton for President office. It was.
….
But by 9:30 a.m., just a week after this office opened, my desire for knowing became much simpler: Where the hell were these people?

Ten minutes later, Marc*, a recent college grad and paid field organizer, showed up and took a seat across from me on the floor. “Maybe they’re in a meeting in the back?” he said. Seven other staffers eventually trickled in. “The mayor’s office would like a memo, detailing all of the appearances we’d like Mayor Nutter to do,” a young guy in a gray blazer said into a cell phone. “You know, like what black radio stations to go on, what neighborhoods to appear in. Like two pages, OK?” We all stood in a circle around the door, staring at it. No one asked who I was. Someone eventually showed up with a key. “We gave out 20 of them yesterday,” he said to no one in particular. “Where’d they all go?”

Keep in mind, at this point, Hillary only had one field office, so this reporter didn’t go to the “unorganized” one. He went to the only field office in the city. For the Obama reporter, he chose 1 of nearly a dozen that existed in Philadelphia.

Another anecdote showing the lack of effective organization in the Clinton campaign comes from the reporter’s job of transcribing voicemails for the field office:

I was to write down messages that came in the night before to the answering service.

The first was a hang-up. The second was someone who wanted to know if there was a field office in Pittsburgh. (Not yet.) The third was a hang-up. This was easy.
…
The 16th came from a woman obviously calling from downstairs. She was trying to get into the building the night before for the first Philly 4 Hillary meeting, but the door was locked. “Um, yes, we’re downstairs, trying to get in to the meeting tonight,” she said, calmly. “Can someone come in to open the door? Thank you.”
…
No. 19 was the locked-out woman again, sounding a bit more desperate: “Hello? We’re still downstairs. Can someone come open the door? Hello? We’re here for the meeting.” Click.
…
And finally, the 23rd call:
“Hello? We’re standing outside. Is someone there? Is the meeting here? Hellooo? Helloooooooooo?”

So you have eager Clinton supporters running up against locked doors and unanswered phone calls. The message is clear: “Sorry, we’re not ready for you. Come back tomorrow.”

On the other hand, the Obama campaign was ready because it’s “uncontrolled” but eager volunteers made themselves ready, and this trust and inclusiveness showed immediate results:

To advertise the March 1 opening of Obama’s Philadelphia headquarters, the campaign posted a notice on mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s popular social-networking site. Three hundred people poured into the office that first Saturday morning, and were asked to line up under whichever of the 19 maps posted corresponded with their neighborhood.

Empowered with the challenge to make something happen, the Obama volunteers brought a degree of creativity to the task of registering and wooing voters that never could have come from a top-down organization:

Later that day, there was a neighborhood sweep-up event organized by Obama Works, a grassroots public service organization inspired by Obama’s community activism background. The event was held at the trash-strewn Chew Park at 19th and Washington. Brooms and garbage bags and plastic gloves were supplied and there was a voter registration table. More than two hundred people showed up, and the park was swept clean.

The Clinton volunteers were left with frustration and not being able to do more:

[Watching Obama volunteers organize] was frustrating, and soon led to a semi-revolt at a Wednesday night Philly 4 Hillary meeting. A hodgepodge group arrived to talk about voter registration — the primary registration deadline was five days away — and meet a paid organizer.

The staffer talked about the importance of signing people up to vote. The volunteers said they’d heard enough of this, and wanted to actually do so.

“The other candidate’s people are knocking at my door,” said an older South Philadelphia woman who eventually just set up her own voter registration effort outside her local ShopRite. “When do we do that?”

The Clinton campaign disparages Obama supporters as “cult-like” or “brainwashed”. But in the bottom line is,

“They gave us a degree of ownership,” says [Obama volunteer Emma] Tramble of the campaign, “and we went full steam ahead with it.”

This difference is not lost on the Hillary volunteers:

There’s also an undercurrent of envy. Obama supporters were everywhere in Philadelphia, and in March and the first days of April, we were not. Tales came in from friends of friends: Obama’s people get to organize their own rallies; they have local offices all over the city.

When it comes down to it, this is the real difference in the two campaigns. Hillary’s attitude is that she knows best and she’ll tell everyone what to do. Obama is challenging everyone to join him in trying to fix what ails our country. One is hierarchical and the other is inclusive. One knows the secret and the other says that the answer in inside of every one of us.

There may not be much sunlight between the two candidates when it comes to policy issues but judging from their campaigns, there is a huge difference in how they will run the country.

This is the choice before the Pennsylvania voters. Here’s hoping that they pull the lever for Barack.

I got an email today about a deal on Tivo HD, something we absolutely plan on buying before going to Canada. There was a link for a video that discussed the new boxes features, so I clicked on it.

Cool thing: Tivo is hosting the video on YouTube. I love when established companies take a chance to use Web 2.0 sites to promote their product.

But I have a feeling this will be one time experiment. Notice what is considered more relevant than “Tivo HD Review” or “How to hook up Tivo HD”. (click for larger image)

Now this is class. Marc Savard got wind of Don Cherry’s psychological analysis of him and decided to thank him.

I love the fact that Don looks like he’s really touched by the gesture.

What is with this man?

Here’s the latest bit of nonsense to come out of Bill’s mouth. From ABC News:

“When I watched that debate last night, I got kinda tickled,” the former President said at an American Legion Hall event in St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania, “After the [debate], her opponents’, oh, the people working were saying, ‘Oh this is so negative, why are they doing this.’ Well they’ve been beatin’ up on her for 15 months. I didn’t hear her whining when he said she was untruthful in Iowa or called her the senator from Punjab.”

“And, you know, they said some pretty rough things about me, too. But you know, this is a contact sport. If you don’t want to play, keep your uniform off,” Clinton told a loudly cheering crowd.

Whining? Bill has the gall to accuse Barack of whining about last nights excuse for a debate after Hillary complained about her treatment in the media during a debate:

Well, can I just point out that in the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time. And I don’t mind. I — you know, I’ll be happy to field them, but I do find it curious, and if anybody saw “Saturday Night Live,” you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow. (Laughter, boos.) I just find it kind of curious that I keep getting the first question on all of these issues. But I’m happy to answer it.

I tell you, the Clintons and their ilk have no shame. I never understood why Republicans hated Bill Clinton so much. It always seemed out of proportion with them having won the White House.

I wasn’t as political astute back then. But I’m starting to get it now. I’m understanding where the antipathy comes from: The slash and burn politics, the bending of the truth, the willingness to say anything to win. It’s just sad.

They justified all of it by chalking it up to triangulation, like it’s just a function of being clever. But in the end, it just means doing what you need to win, regardless of what the cost is.

I really used to like Bill Clinton. A lot. But from my viewpoint, the man has irreparably tarnished his legacy in a failed bid to establish a Clinton dynasty.

Read this rundown of the various food shortages and riots occurring around the world. For people making one or two dollars a day, the price of food is becoming more than they can afford and they are responding with protests and violence.

This isn’t some Sally Struthers commercial talking about starving kids in Africa. This isn’t some obscure leftist anti-globalization doomsday diatribe. This is happening today, all across the world. We’re talking about increases of 50, 60, 180% in one year in places like Haiti, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan. Even Italy has had protests over the cost of pasta.

The chart below shows the change in the price of rice in the past three and a half years:

Rice is a staple for a large part of the world’s human population, especially in East, South and Southeast Asia. At these prices, people who are already living at subsistence levels will fall below that level. They will begin to starve, they will begin to riot, they will tear down the fabric of their society in order to try to survive.

And it will only get worse.

The price of food is going up for two reasons. The easy-to-demonize reason is the advent of biofuels. While I agree that biofuels are an absurd use of farmland given the pressing demands on the world’s food supply, it’s not the main culprit.

The real culprit is the increased worldwide demand for food. Not only is the population growing, but people in emerging economies are becoming more affluent. When that happens, they start to eat a higher quality diet and that invariably includes meat.

The problem is, meat is horribly inefficient as compared to any crop. It takes up a huge amount of farmland to raise cattle and the cattle themselves eat a huge amount of feed: 7 kilograms and a great deal of water for each kilogram of beef.

In addition, methane from cows may contribute up to 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas problem.

I tried going vegetarian a few months ago, partly because of these reasons, mostly to just eat a more healthy diet. I started to eat a lot of salads, skipped the chicken in burritos and started ordering tofu with my chinese food. Even discovered tempai and quinoa.

At first it was easy. I didn’t miss meat at all and proudly provoked shock from my friends when I told them I went vegetarian. But eventually, I started being constantly hungry. Even while I was eating, I was thinking about what I would eat next. On top of that, I found myself eating far more fish than I normally eat. And to be honest, I trust fish even less than meat.

So, I decided to become mostly vegetarian. I still go for a vegetarian option at every opportunity. But if I’m really craving a hamburger, I’ll have it. If I’m at dinner with friends with an American menu, I’ll order meat without an ounce of guilt.

Is it perfect? No. Am I a true vegetarian? No. But I eat 90% less meat than I used to, probably just once a month, which is a huge improvement over where I used to be.

But if everyone just became a 50% vegetarian, it would have an enormous effect on both the global economy and global warming.

You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Come on, give me a 39!

You Canadians might have grown up with this man and his antics, but I only discovered him since subscribing to NHL Center Ice back in 2003. So I still find him hilarious and can’t get enough of him.

This bit about how Marc Savard feels about his stick is just too much:

I can’t wait to get to Canada.