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Pittsburgh was really cool, I was really impressed as it was much nicer than I was expecting. I've put up some photos of some of the stuff I did.
Everyone's favorite animal rights organization, PETA, announced a contest to spur the development of test tube meat. Using the same process that scientists hope to grow hearts and lungs for human transplants, this would be used to grow food to eat instead of slaughtering cows and chickens. Despite the Frankfood connotation that this invokes, it's actually the same exact same meat that you would eat coming for a chicken, it just doesn't grow on an actual chicken. Apparently there was quite a bit of debate within PETA about offering a cash prize to develop this technology, with many members being repulsed by the mere act of eating flesh, but I have to agree with PETA in this one. While I'll never be a vegetarian and have no moral issue with eating other animals, I also think we could do a lot more to treat cows and chickens better, and think it would be a great opportunity to be able to eat meat without killing something. Plus this could be another gigantic leap in food technology that we can use to help feed our ever growing world, much like the Green Revolution in the 60's enabled us to feed the 6.6 billion people alive today (and hopefully with less of the drawbacks).
Hillary won in Pennsylvania, with the pretty much the exact margin most polls were predicting (and with a MUCH smaller margin than polling a month ago). So after 6 weeks of kitchen sink strategy, she gains a net total of 14 delegates from PA, and thus cuts Obama's lead from 168 pledged delegates to 154 pledged delegates. Which means she still has absolutely no shot at winning the nomination. She would have to win every single remaining contest by more than 30 points, which she has only beat him by that margin exactly once, in Arkansas. Meanwhile Obama has beaten her by more than 30 points in 13 contests.
The most annoying thing that the media has tried to play up is how Obama just can't seem to get that white blue collar vote, which not only ignores all the white blue-collar states he's won, but also that this is a primary, not the actual election. It's more a question of if they will refuse to vote for Obama versus if they just prefer Hillary. Secondly there is no talk about how Hillary can't seem to get the young, black, or well, basically any other demographic that Obama doesn't do as well in. Using her same logic she would have no shot at winning in November either then. What keeps getting lost is that this is not a zero sum game!
There is also the constant criticism that Obama can't deliver the knockout punch to get Hillary to drop out. But yet he did this back in February when he won 11 contests in a row and made it impossible for her to catch up! You can't make someone quit, but this race was essentially over after Super Tuesday back in February when she didn't get a big enough of a push to overcome Obama. One of the more interesting facts that most people don't know is that at no point during this entire process did Obama trail in pledged delegates. He's been winning the entire time. And as this blog pointed out, why has the candidate with far more name recognition, with a popular ex-president as a husband, and who was winning by 30 points back in the Fall not put away Obama? This was her race to lose, and she managed to lose it. Yet no one in the mass media seems to pick up on that little fact. Instead it's just more stories about why Obama can't get her to drop out. But as long as the media can get great ratings by keeping the primary going, they don't really report on the reality of the situation, and that's how we get so many voters who don't even realize she has no chance anymore.
Of course if Obama wanted to play it safe, he'd drop out now and be basically assured the presidency in 2012. Or well assuming that the conspiracy theories aren't right and Hillary isn't staying in just to damage Obama enough so he'll lose and she can run in 2012 herself.
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