A few more superdelegates today. 3 for Obama, 1 for Clinton.

Updated stats:

Delegate count is: Obama 1984, Clinton 1783, Edwards 7

In percent terms that is: Obama 52.6%, Clinton 47.2%, Edwards 0.2%

2026 delegates are needed to win.

There are 276 delegates yet to be determined.

Obama needs 42 more delegates to win.

Clinton needs 243 more delegates to win.

In percentage terms, that means:

Obama needs 15.2% of the remaining delegates to win. (It was 28.3% before KY/OR.)

Clinton needs 88.0% of the remaining delegates to win. (It was 74.4% before KY/OR.)

Of course, as I type these words, the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the DNC is meeting to decide what to do with Florida and Michigan. Based on conversation so far, it seems clear that these states will be seated in some way or another, and the finish line will be moved back some. The question is just how much.

My charts, graphs and numbers will reflect any changes made by the RBC as soon as CNN’s Summary Page reflects the changes, which hopefully will be almost immediate after the RBC makes their decisions.

No new Democratic updates today, but CNN updates their Republican numbers to include some results for Idaho. Don’t know why they are doing this right now really, but whatever. McCain picks up 17 more delegates, Paul picks up 5.

New Republican totals: McCain 1517, Huckabee 275, Romney 255, Paul 35

There are actually 298 more Republican delegates that CNN has not yet accounted for.

The Michigan 36 – Obama gets 18
(Matt, 2008 Democratic Convention Watch)

Michigan selected 36 Uncommitted delegates at their District Conventions in April. The state of these 36 delegates, specifically whether they have officially endorsed Obama, has become important in advance of this weekend’s RBC meeting. Knowing how many of the 36 are committed to Obama could make the difference in what type of deal the Obama campaign is willing to accept. We asked our readers to help us out, and they did.

Information was hard to come by – We weren’t even able to find the names of 5 of the 36 delegates.

Of the remaining 31, 30 of them have been reported to support Obama, but there aren’t good sources for 12 of the 30. We will continue to look for verifiable sources for the rest of these delegates.

But we do have good sources for 18 delegates, and therefore we are moving 18 Uncommitted delegates into the Obama column in our Michigan/Florida sidebar counter, as well as in Scenario 5 in FL & MI By The Numbers.

I meant to blog about this back on the 18th, but I got busy and never did.

Since I was an Obama delegate, I got on a whole lot of mailing lists, both the national Obama mailing lists, and local ones. On the 18th I got an email from one of the local Obama coordinators for the 41st district here in Washington. I’ll refrain from actually calling him out by name. And I think it exemplifies everything that made the local Democratic events ones that turned me off so much and made me want to vote Republican instead. Here is the relevant quote:

It is likely that things will not be completed until after the DNC concludes its March 31st meeting regarding Michigan and Florida, but there is a truce of sorts in effect – the Obama campaign is not attacking Senator Clinton, and Senator Clinton has begun to focus her ire on Senator McCain. This allows her campaign and her supporters the dignity they desire for their campaign as they begin to wind down and we begin to learn to work together again against our real enemy.

This is the kind of thing that bothers me so so much. Republicans are NOT the “enemy”. Or at least they should not be. Even if you identify very strongly with the positions of the Democratic party, you SHOULD be viewing the Republicans as people who disagree with you on some issues, and on even more differ on the correct approach, but you should recognize that the vast majority of them are honorable people trying to do what they believe is right. The differences should be ones that one could discuss intelligently and calmly. You should be able to respect the person on the other side, even if you disagree.

But once you cross the line, and start thinking of those who differ with you politically as “enemies” then you have crossed a significant line. You are certainly no longer someone I want to associate with.

And the local Democratic events were full of these hyperpartisans, who view the Republicans as “enemies” and see no value in the views of those on the other side, no need to try to understand where they are coming from, no need to look for common ground.

These are the people who are dangerous. And the analogues exist in the Republican party as well of course. The people who truly KNOW that they are right and that their “enemies” are wrong. Who have no room in their worldview for doubt and shades of grey, and acknowledging that sometimes the other guy has a point.

And it is surprising to me that so many of them are Obama supporters. Have they not read his books? He speaks quite a bit about not dismissing people who disagree, and learning from them when they are right, etc. Anybody who truly believes that the Republicans are “enemies” should not be an Obama supporter.

Of course, there are many, including those on the right, who insist that the bipartisan centrist rhetoric of Obama is indeed only rheotric, and the reality of Obama is actually a hyperpartisan leftist. I certainly hope they are wrong.

But after all, in 2000 George W Bush sold himself as a centrist, a “compassionate conservative”, etc, etc, and we all see how that ended up.

All of this reminds me of my strong feelings that divided government is best. That regardless of who is in power in the White House, it is almost imperative that the congress should be held by the opposite party. Whenever both are controlled by the same party, you are just asking for trouble. (Or apparently, if you do have divided government, but the party running the congress is too gutless to exercise power, you also have no protection… the key is that there should always be significant tension between congress and the white house… with congress jealously guarding its powers and defending against the growth of executive power… so as to prevent most action other than that which truly has near universal support.)

I sent a long email to someone on that topic a couple months ago. I’ll have to dig it up sometime and post it.

This kind of stuff is BS, but it just keeps coming. It needs to stop.

Copyright Police may seize iPods, Macs under G8 trade deal
(Andy Space, 9 to 5 Mac)

iPods, iPhones, laptops and other digital devices could be seized by customs officials worldwide under a new top-secret copyright policing deal being worked out between the G8 nations, reports claim.

Nations including Canada, the US and various European states (including the UK, which sits on the G8) are secretly agreeing a new pan-global state police deal in which information held on iPods and other devices could be subject to investigation by customs officials tasked with a new role, as copyright police.

Dubbed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), signatory nations will form an international coalition against copyright infringement.

The deal’s up for discussion at the next G8 meeting in Tokyo in July, It creates rules and regulations to govern private copying and copyright laws, and posits the founding of an international regulator, “that would turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police,” reports Ottawa Citizen, the National Post and other Canadian media outlets.