"Over"

Everybody -- and by "everybody" I mean "Tim Russert and his friends" -- says yesterday's NC and IN results basically end the campaign, whether Hillary knows it or not. That's the big narrative of the day, and Obama supporters are predictably jubilant. But the best commentary comes, as usual, from Chris Bowers:

I am finding myself resistant to the way this nomination campaign appears to be ending, mainly because there is no logic to it. All of the arguments that could be used by the punditry to declare the nomination campaign over could have been used really at any point since Wisconsin. For some reason, those arguments appear to be sticking tonight, whereas they weren't earlier. According to the logic that ends the campaign tonight, there was no reason to torture us for the past two months, except to damage Democrats for the sake of damaging Democrats. I guess I should have learned by now that that is reason enough.

The Clinton campaign will probably slog on in some form, as Ben Smith indicates. After all, she is going to win West Virginia, and maybe Michigan really won't have a single delegate for Obama. Or something else absurd that won't happen. However, the truth is that the Clinton campaign has been kept alive by inaccurate and arbitrary media rules that now seem to have arbitrarily shifted against her. Survival in that environment will prove extremely difficult indeed. Live by the arbitrary media narrative, become irrelevant by it. The nomination campaign seems to have outlived its usefulness to the national media.

Absolutely right. This whole thing is just a joke.

Mini-Roundup: I'm Going To Die

No full-length roundup today, because it's the hottest week of the summer down here in North Carolina and my skin is slowly melting off my face. However, read:

--TEACHERS' UNIONS: THREAT, OR MENACE? Kevin Carey and our boy Ezra Klein look at the peculiar tendency of liberal elites to blame teachers' unions for everything, including the weather. In rebuttal, Tim Lee at the newly redesigned American Scene thinks Kevin and Ezra are peculiar.

--NOT ACTUALLY A SQUARE-DANCE CALL: Open Left, Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers' new project (as well as some guy named Mike I've never heard of), kicks off with a bang. Read Chris with a long, possibly definitive study of the condition of the netroots.

--I PREFER THE FRENCH "EUH": Language Log, which is always worth your time, looks at differences in pausing between gender and age groups. Check this out:

Turns out "um" and "uh" are pretty reliable identifiers of gender. ...There is a moment in "Clue" that has bothered me for years, where Wadsworth the butler (played by Tim Curry) is talking very quickly and says "the uh, um, uh, library." I had wondered why that phrase stuck in my brain. Now I know: it was essentially androgynous! (Of course for Tim Curry that's hardly a stretch.)

--SENTENCE OF THE DAY: Roy Edroso channels Dylan:

How long can a man scream epithets in a cemetery before he loses the status of outrage and devolves into a figure of fun?

--AND: You may know that "musician" Avril Lavigne has been accused of plagiarism by 70s bubblegum-rockers The Rubinoos. But you probably do not know that The Rubinoos also recorded the seminal theme to 1984's "Revenge of the Nerds." Yes! In honor of their reappearance, I present the wonderful first ten minutes of that godawful movie:

A tip to our incoming freshmen: that is exactly what's in store for you this fall.

That's all I got. Stay indoors, everyone.