John_Schwada's Blog

It slipped by all the media (except Fox 11 News) that the LA County Board of Supervisors quietly signaled on Monday that it would sharply beef up its little-known jailhouse immigration watchdog program that identifies inmates who are illegally in the U.S. and hands them over to federal agents for deportation.

The move was pushed by Mike Antonovich - who, in keeping with the board's unwritten rule to govern in starchy and sublime obscurity (if not secrecy), refused to comment on the matter before it was formally approved by the board on Tuesday (what is it with these guys?). We ran a story Monday night on the proposal anyway...here's the link to the video.

The measure is intended to increase from 8 to 13 the number of "custody assistants" (CA's) in the Sheriff's Dept. who are trained and deputized by U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) to conduct immigration investigations of inmates.

The Sheriff's Dept. tells us about 54.5 percent of the inmates investigated by its CA's are found to be in the U.S. illegally.

Still, it appears that many, many illegals will slip by the Sheriff's Dept. immigration watchdogs whether there are 8 or 13 of them - because these watchdogs are kept on a short leash.

Under a Board of Supervisors policy the sheriff's CA's are only allowed to investigate the immigration status of inmates who admit they are "foreign-born."

Perhaps this helps explains the controversial case of Pedro Espinosa, the illegal alien 18th St. gang member charged with killing high school football star Jamiel Shaw one day after Espinoza was released from county jail after serving time for his conviction on an assault-related charge out of Culver City. According to ICE, Espinosa claimed - after being arrested for the Shaw murder - that he was a U.S. citizen; it is presumed that in Espinosa's several previous brushes with the law, he also claimed he was a U.S. citizen.

In other words, the Board of Supervisors MAY have been responsible for the fact that the 19-year-old Espinoza was able to avoid detection, for so long, as an illegal alien even though he was almost continuously in jail or in county juvenile detention facilities from age 14....All Espinoza had to do to avoid any scrutiny by the county's jailhouse immigration watchdogs was lie and say he was born in the U.S.

The parents of Jamiel Shaw and others believe Shaw would be alive today if the authorities had done their job by identifying Espinosa as an illegal alien and deporting him. These folks are now focused on overturning limits on the LAPD's cooperation with ICE, imposed under the LAPD's Special Order 40.

Perhaps these critics should also be looking at the Board of Supervisors.

So, how come Espinosa - after being busted for the Shaw killing and claiming he was a U.S. citizen - was finally discovered to be in the U.S. illegally?

Because ICE agents are also embedded, sort of, in the LA county jail system - and there are no restrictions (that we know of) on which inmates they can screen, interview and investigate about their immigration status. In other words, just claiming you're a U.S. citizen does not give you a free pass with ICE....

In fact, it was ICE agents who identified Espinosa as an illegal alien. And here's my suspicion: that ICE screened Espinoza because he had been busted for the highly-publicized Shaw murder. (Likewise, it was ICE agents who last week identified Enedina Cardona-Rodriguez as an illegal alien only days after her highly-publicized arrest; the Long Beach mother of eight, who was on welfare, was arrested for dealing drugs out of her car while some of her kids were in the backseat).

But ICE is not always available to plug the gaps in the county's CA coverage.

ICE's presence in LA county jails is spotty. Sheriff' department officials say sometimes ICE has an agent or two conducting screenings - and sometimes it doesn't have any. ICE refuses to say what its staffing situation at LA County jail. "We do not talk about our allocation of agents," Virginia Kice of ICE public affairs told me.

Another loophole: the Board of Supervisors also prohibits its jailhouse immigration watchdogs from interviewing anyone until they have been convicted (again, ICE is not restricted in this regard).

In other words, if you're not found guilty of the crime for which you were arrested (murder, robbery, burglary etc.) or the charges are dropped by the District Attorney, then the LA County Board of Supervisors does NOT believe you should be questioned about your immigration status. Period.

Finally, even with the aforementioned restrictions on the CA's program, there's one more handicap: manpower.

According to the Sheriff department its current contingent of CA's only gets around to interviewing about 30 percent of the eligible inmates (those who are convicted and have identified themselves as foreign-born)....So adding 5 more CA's may reach about 50 percent of the eligible inmates (To put numbers on some of this: between Jan. 30, 2006 and Sept. 28, 2007, the county's CA's interviewed 14,880 inmates and began deportation proceedings against 8,114 of these - or 54.5 percent).

With LA county's jailhouse immigration watchdogs finding that more than 1/2 of the inmates they interview are in the U.S. illegally, it makes you wonder what more could be done if the Board of Supervisors took the gloves off this program.....

There's plenty of food for debate on this issue. For example, some would find it morally offensive if the county were to interview self-described foreign born inmates before they were convicted of a crime. "You talk funny and were born overseas? Let's see your papers buddy." Sound like racial profiling? Or bullying people who are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. (After someone is convicted of a separate crime the obnoxiousness of such an approach probably diminishes in many people's minds). What about a requirement that everyone convicted of a crime be interviewed about their immigration status - no matter where they say they were born? There are lots of permutations on this theme, and maybe it's time to air out this issue. In a public debate.

Jamiel Shaw. Those are fighting words these days. In Los Angeles, for sure.

In fact, I continue to get e-mails at my office address, schwada@fox11.com, from folks who believe, fervently believe, young Shaw - a star high school footballer killed outside his house, allegedly by a self-avowed member of 18th St gang - was no angel. That he was, in fact, a gangbanger.

Apparently some believe if Shaw's bona fides as an innocent victim are besmirched it will take the steam out of the Shaw family's high-profile campaign against illegal alien gangmembers.

The Shaw's crusade has been fueled by their belief that their son would be alive today if the authorities had done their job and deported his alleged shooter, 19-year-old Pedro Espinoza, who is an illegal alien.

The Shaw's have called on the LAPD to amend Special Order 40, the controversial measure that bars the LAPD from enforcing federal immigration laws. (Their efforts have gotten a lot of play on conservative talk-radio shows but gained little traction elsewhere, including the LA City Council, where they appear to be getting some support - perhaps only lip-service? - from Councilman Dennis Zine. This at a time when the New York Times reports on a trend of police agencies and local governments, in other parts of the U.S., hammering away at the illegal alien situation).

Authorities say not only is Espinoza in the U.S. illegally but also that he is a self-avowed member of the 18th Street gang. Records show Espinoza was in and out of youth authority detention facilities and county jail for several years prior to Shaw's murder. In fact, Espinoza had just been released from county jail 28 hours prior to Shaw's murder after serving time for an assault-related incident in a Culver City park.

So, does it detract from the Shaw's crusade against Special Order 40, against illegal alien gang members, if their son were himself a gangmember?

No question much of the outpouring of sympathy for the Shaw's upon their son's murder was based on the belief young Shaw was an upstanding kid, with a future.

But even if we granted Shaw was actually a below-the-radar gangmember (the LAPD has never said they had any record of him being a gangster) would it really diminish the Shaw's argument that if the authorities had done their job, their son would be alive today, that on March 2, Espinoza would have been in a deportation tank awaiting a trip back to Mexico, instead of gunning down Shaw less than 100 steps from his home?

Frankly, my view is that from a subjective standpoint, it probably does diminish Shaw's attractiveness as a "martyr" in the anti-illegal immigrant cause if he were a gangbanger.

On the other hand, logically, it makes no difference. The facts still remain: that Espinoza - if we are to believe the authorities - was here illegally, had been in and out of lockups for years and probably should have been collared by immigration authorities and deported as soon as he walked out of county jail on March 1.

We are still waiting to hear from LAPD chief Wm. Bratton about his promised report to clarify Special Order 40. It is a political hot-potato.

Here is the link to the website that argues Shaw was a gangbanger. It includes a photo that purports to show Shaw with a red bandana across his face, flashing a gang sign. Alex Alonso, a well-known local gang expert and a man who I have several times relied on to add his valuable insights to my own stories about gangs, is the source of much of the "debate" about Shaw's gang ties.

Click here to read the New York Times article I referenced about the local fight against illegal immigration that ran earlier this week.

Click here to read my first blog posting on the Shaw murder.

Click here to read my second blog posting on the Shaw murder.

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Does Barack Obama really want someone as his running mate who has fantasized about his assasination? Would you trust Hillary Clinton with your back after that?

All kidding aside, Hillary's remark, recalling the assasination of RFK, should not be held against her. But what she's doing now should be.

When she signaled Tuesday that was offering herself up as Obama's v-p, she crossed into a new realm of witchery......that finally puts her on the same footing as the conniving, power-hungry (and yes, murderous) Lady MacBeth.

What's Obama to do, now that she's thrown her hat, even tentatively, into the ring as his running mate?

Obama's got to hope, pray, that she somehow withdraws her offer. If she doesn't, then the nominee has got a very sticky situation on his hands. If he doesn't pick her, if he passes her over, she's a woman doubly scorned (once by voters, once by Obama). Can you imagine the blow-back on that one?

And if Obama does pick her? Dream ticket or nightmare ticket?

Some believe Obama, as the candidate of hope, of change, cannot let the tires on his bandwagon be flattened by bringing on board Hillary Clinton, with all her weighty history, and her husband with all his (arguably enough to bust the suspension on the best bandwagon). Asked about such a matchup, Gov. Bill Richardson told me Tuesday that he had some strong doubts about it's workability given the sometimes rancorous relations between the two camps during the primaries...

Those trying to nix a Clinton vice-presidential bid were probably gleeful about - if not responsible for - the lengthy report in ultra-liberal Vanity Fair by former Bill Clinton White House press secretary DeeDee Myers' husband, Todd Purdum, about Bill Clinton's health and rumors of more sex-capades by the Great Unzippered One. This journalistic piece surely was an attempt to sink any thoughts of an Obama-Hillary ticket.

Having Clinton on board would also mark Obama as a sign of weakness...Clinton would look like she's virtually barged onto the ticket, and that he wasn't man enough to say no. Is this the kind of guy we want negotiating with the tough guys around the world, if he can't say no to Hillary?

So, this is a no-win situation unless....unless Hillary retracts her interest in being #2 on the ticket.

It would seem Obama's self-described knack for being able to negotiate with hostile, obnoxious characters/nations will really be tested at this moment....can he get Hillary to stand down, disarm, pull back?

If he can't do that, how can we expect him to fare any better with Iran's Ahmadinejad, Russia's Putin or Hugo Chavez?

I received the attached blog-posting and instantly recognized its merit.
And now I am privileged to share this rare diamond in the rough with you,
my readers, in its entirety, unedited, unexpurgated (I’ve been infatuated with
that word ever since I first saw it on the cover of Lady Chatterly’s
Lover – the unexpurgated edition….). Okay, it’s not my cup of tea. The
ideas herein. But sometimes it’s okay to turn my blog-space over to someone
else – after all, I don’t get paid extra to crank out this blog so it’s
kind of like getting a vacation - having a guest-blogger do the heavy-lifting.

So today, here at the John Schwada Blog-Salon, we’re blessed to have as our inaugural
guest-contributor the bold, the original…..

Okay, okay, okay…. so he’s really a half-wit with herpes – and
wrote his posting while sitting in 15 inches of lukewarm bath
water, surrounded by the flotsam of burnt-toast crumbs, coffee cups,
cigarette butts, Diet coke cans and yellow ducks – all of it
drifting aimlessly around in his little sudsy sea of despair. A pretty
picture, indeed. But I digress and I need to turn over the stage to our
guest blogger (please, please!!! be tolerant of his
idiosyncrasies, facial tics and nasty temper...after all some of our greatest
authors/bloggers have been covered with warts...)

But before you’re sucked into our guest's alternative universe,
let me warn you that his political views are hybrid, shaped by
Ezra Pound, Squeaky Fromm and Olaf the Swedish
Conscientious Objector.

But please excuse me - I’ve got to stop this self-centered babbling and let our
guest-writer do his thing. So, without further introduction, I give you
our distinguished person-manque…the wonderfully self-absorbed,
incredibly illiterate, Joe ----- whose blog, I might add, was actually
inscribed on a Nabisco wheat thin, written in Cyrillic with a fine-point
Scripto pen (did I tell you about his Russian ancestry?). This little
bit of edible bloggery has been re-typed – at my expense (it really is a
small matter to be a midwife to such an astonishing bit of insightful
bloviation) - into standard blog format and is now available for your
consideration….

But …but not to delay the moment of truth (as a former bull-fighter, our
guest writer, earned a brief living in Tijuana wrestling with bull) or
prolong your ecstatic anticipation of the EVENT for much longer, I would
like to offer up a sidebar tale about our
guest-speaker-author-sufferer’s exotic story; he’s a sui generis
performance artist-phenom who has made a name for himself in venues like
the Place de la Concorde (yes, of course, it’s the same place where they
beheaded the French aristocracy) and Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley for
his daring experiments in body-piercing. What makes his self-inflicted
art-wounds so visually satisfying is that they’re done with antique
safety pins, engraved with very tiny little portraits of saints (St.
Christopher crossing a stream with a baby on his shoulders is one of my
personal favorites).

Anyway, our guest-blogger, who has been waiting patiently for his debut
on this blog (he is now drinking his third shot of Wild Turkey in the
green room of his mind), is actually held together by various gymnastic
leaps of faith and the aforementioned safety pins (there’s not really
much earthly matter, molecular glue or whathaveyou involved in his makeup).

Finally, after all this waiting, let us read, hear, listen to his
original prose, written – must I repeat myself? - on a wheat thin wafer,
in Russian (actually an obscure form of Russian only spoken by the
survivors of the Stalin-era gulags, a prison patois if you will)….

So, at this time, I have the great pleasure to introduce – whatever is
his name? It’s slipped my mind, but let’s get on with it – just one last
observation: the popcorn that’s available in the back of the room was
made by my deceased aunt in 1978 and was used originally to decorate a
Christmas tree in Sturgeon, Missouri (one string of this popcorn was
festooned around her head, in her casket, and made for a lovely
send-off). That was a long time ago but the decorations are heirlooms
and there are numerous references to them in the family Bible, under the
heading: “Crazy Auntics.”

So, unless there are any questions, I’d like to close out this
installment of the “John Schwada Guest Writers Blog” and applaud our
author du jour who has so extravagantly graced our website. I thought
the Tanqueray was quite good – even without the olives.

No questions? Oh! Yes! I am so sorry!!! I almost forgot – our guest
editorialist, an exquisitely Unterrified Man of Insight (his brain was
once found inside a bowling pin set-up machine)…Joe – I’ll spell his
last name (it is impossible to pronounce because it has no
vowels)…B-L-Z-T-K….

And here, finally – drum roll please - is Joe's unexpurgated and unplugged
blog offering:

"Lying polit8icains - Repbublicans and Demodorats! wwho's gtoo vote for a thrid wright parrty canddiate. how's bt barr or nadir.. bettr thn silly hilly, obma husei or mcSAme....damnn4et. by tghe illegal wqay, anyone out there no a good frackin' pizza in azusa? "

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After a couple of hours hanging around LA school district headquarters on Tuesday I came away with a deep sadness....but confident that ex-U.S. Navy admiral David Brewer's career as superintendent at LA Unified is taking on water faster than the Titanic.

Unlike the Titanic tale/legend, however, in which Capt. Edw. Smith went down with his ship, Brewer is unlikely to go down with LAUSD. No. He'll probably get a bail-out package. As he sails into the sunset, in his taxpayer-funded lifeboat, we will - if we're lucky - get one last picture-perfect view of him waving amiably to us and the children on board...the Titanic.

It's easy to bag on LA Unified...consider the following exhibits gathered while cruising the school district hallways.

Exhibit #1:
A woman, nearly tearful, approaches me outside the locked doors of the LA School Board meeting room. She's holding a drawing of a horse, part of an assignment given to her daughter, a kindergarten student. Her daughter's assignment, the woman told me, was to color the horse. The child colored the body of the horse brown, the mane, tail and hooves blue. Next to the brightly-colored horse (the child dutifully did not color outside the lines) was the teacher's comment in red ink. "Use realistic colors."

Apparently there's a problem in LA Unified-Land with five-year-old girls coloring the tails, manes and hooves of their horses blue. A problem with imagination? With having fun?

The mother was livid over the teacher's remark. It was, she told me, thoughtless, unhelpful, even cruel. But there's more. When she confronted the teacher about this, she was escorted out to the playground for a little heart-to-heart. 'You're not going to win this one,' the veteran teacher told the mother. And, by the way, the teacher advised, 'If I were in your shoes I wouldn't have my own children in any school in LA Unified unless it's a magnet school.'

Great. Let's hire this teacher 1) to do sensitivity-training and 2) to handle district public relations. On the other hand, should we really expect more from teachers who are basically caste-less creatures in our society, looked down upon and ill-paid, battered by mandates....we could go on forever playing this screeching violin of misery, of pity....of bathos?

Exhibit #2:
Also while loitering at the school board headquarters, I ran into a hundred plus folks protesting...their leader Caprice Young, a former school board member who is now trying to reform LA Unified from the outside (perhaps after having despaired of being able to accomplish much working inside the "belly of the beast" to quote Jose Marti). Young is now the president of the California Charter Schools Assn., a group hell-bent on "subverting" our traditional public school system by setting up charter schools organized around the principle of self-governance....

This group of protesters - according to Young - was upset that the school district had reneged on an agreement to provide classroom space to a half-dozen charter schools in existing, unusedLA Unified facilities.

"These are teachers, parents and some students who are protesting because they have been refused facilities," Caprice said. "The law is that LA Unified is required to provide facilities for all public school students - and charter students are public school students. So we're here today to remind the board that they agreed to provide us with facilities, they offered them to us on April 1 (2008), and now these offers were rescinded. We know they have the space. Our (charter school) principals have walked the space, seen the classrooms. And now our kids are told they have to stay on the street. That's not fair."

On the street?

"Well," Young continued, "several hundred (of 2000 affected, 'homeless' charter school students) have no space and the ones that do have had to lease space (at something approaching market rate rents), paying for it out of the money that's supposed to go for books, instruction and teachers."

To add insult to injury, Young said, the school board was NOT going to let the charter school community tell its story at the board meeting.

Exhibit #3:
I asked Brewer, as he walked into the board meeting, if he still believed the school district was manageable after a year and half at the helm. Brewer insisted he is getting a grip on things now that he has finally hired Ray Cortines, the septugenarian educational Duracell Bunny Rabbit. Cortines was brought on board a month ago as Brewer's top lieutenant, apparently to keep the Visigoths from the school district's doors, plug up the sex scandals, tamp down the interracial riots, fix the screw-ups, foul-ups and missteps...perhaps even educate the kids.

Here's what Brewer told me, on camera:

"I was struggling trying to get results, and so I brought in Ray Cortines as my number two - and a strong number two to get results. And he's shaking things up and I'm sure he's making some people mad, because that's what I want...."

Should we be relieved to learn that t's taken Brewer, by his own admission, nearly a year and half to figure out that he wasn't in control of the district? That Cortines has now got us covered, got our back, that we can all breath a sigh of relief? Why do we need Brewer if that's the case?

And really what evidence is there - after a mere month of Cortin-ization - that Cortines is going to turn this giant district around, pump out the seawater that's rushing in, plug the holes, fix leaks, repair the shattered bulkhead, etc.? Who says Cortines is a miracle-worker?

Doesn't everyone know by now that just about the only miracles happening in LA Unified are the hopeful five-year-old girls who color their horses' tails, manes and hooves blue?

Is it possible our nation's longest running political soap-opera is over? Tell me it ain't so!

What are we going to do with our lives if the Barack and Hillary show is really over. Take up knitting, kick-boxing? Join the ladies auxiliary club or an Irish drinking society? Stop e-mailing the latest dish on Hillary or Barack? Go cold turkey on surfing the web for the latest You-Tube video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Noooooo! We want our conflict, deceit, explosive revelations, videos from the past, constant do-or-die moments, hail-Mary passes, the possibilities for endless speculation and rumination, blogging and flogging the blogs!

But let's face it. The time for kindly fortune or hoary providence to come sailing in from the sky to save the day for Hillary is over...North Carolina and Indiana ended it. It's been great folks - now it's time to return to earth. There is no saving deus ex machina to pull her irons out of the fire.

Even Democrats, after all this agony, excitement, ecstasy must be having post-partum blues after Tuesday's results that left the cyborg Hillary with an impossible mission of trying to patch her political fortunes back together again.

Of course, you must guess my secret ploy here.

Every time the pundits, the bloggers, the guy slumped at the bar, the editorialist and the guy next door have pronounced this contest over, it has acted like a contrarian tonic, an elixir of life, that has caused the dying patient, the flagging contest, to sit up and amaze us with his, her or its latest irrepressible, miraculous sign of vigor...or flirtation with disaster. And how much better is this than Lindsey and Brittney, Oprah and Mylie? How much better is this food - for our brains, our civic muscles?

So let us all join hands and pronounce our dearly beloved dead, with a wink, knowing it will only jinx the inevitable, humiliate our predictions, confound the gods.

Urban legend or what? A friend tells me the word around the water-cooler is that taxpayers are getting automated, telemarketing phone calls from President Bush. About the tax rebates. It’s a pretty sophisticated campaign. According to my sources, you get a recorded message from Bush that goes something like this:

“Hey pardner. How’s it hanging. Hehehe. So listen, I just wanted to have a word with you about that tax rebate that’s headed you way, comin’ in the mail any day now. Now, I know you’re not over in Iraq, fighting the Taliban – or is that Afghanistan? Whatever.

“But you too can be a soldier of sorts – fighting the economic slow-down - by taking that rebate check right down to the mall and going on a little buying spree. You know, if your wife is anything like Laura, my little first lady, she could probably use a few more useless gadgets and dust-gatherers – made of shoddy materials built by child-labor in some third world country.

“And if your really strapped for ideas – check out the Sky-Mall catalogue, you know the ones on the airplanes. They got some great products: you know that device that translates your dog’s barks into English, or that radio that works in the shower. Or how about that tool for zapping spiders with an electric beam? Jesus H. Christ, son. Get out there and buy.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have enough room in your house to squeeze in one more flat-screen TV. And I sure as hell don’t want to hear you bellyaching that you can’t fit any more gadgets in your bathroom. It don’t matter! That hasn’t stopped millions and gazillions of good solid, law-abiding, God-fearing Americans from going the public storage route. Hell, Laura and I own a whole damned public storage facility to hold our junk. On a rainy winter afternoon, the two of us go over to public storage and visit our stuff – it’s all in numbered boxes. I mean, it’s heartwarming to sit there and pull out, say, box 410, and find six ceramic cows that the Malaysian ambassador gave us or a ceremonial sword or two that I picked up on a trip to Moldovia. Kind of like Christmas. A surprise in every storage box.

“Think of it this way, pardner. You’re being an Al Quada suck-up if you put that treasury check in a sock and hide it under your bed. Spend it for God’s sakes! It’s your patriotic duty.

“And listen if you like what I’ve been doin’ over the last eight years then here’s another little idea – invest in John McCain! Buy a little piece of a good Republican. Send him a contribution. I understand he’s having trouble raising money. Unlike those Democrats, Obama and Hillary. He could sure use your help.

“Well, that’s about it from me. I’ll let you go. I know you’re probably working ten-hour days to pay for $4 gas, the kid’s kidney bypass operation and your subprime house loan from Countrywide…So carry on and enjoy. God bless you.”

Now I haven't got that call yet from the President but I have been thinking about his message and trying to figure out what to do with my rebate.

So what are you going to spend yours on?

More ulcers for the Democratic Party’s superdelegates. A new calculation shows that Clinton, after Pennsylvania’s primary results, has received more votes (as opposed to delegates) than Barack Obama in both the caucuses and primaries. So much for Obama’s popular vote bragging rights – at least for the time being (he still leads Clinton by about 125 delegates). 

According to veteran political analyst Michael Barone, reporting Saturday in his Rasmussen Reports column, Clinton now has:

“won the votes, in primaries and caucuses, of 15,112,000 Americans, compared to 14,993,000 for Obama (Schwada’s note: roughly a lead of 120,000 votes, or 4/10ths of one percent of all votes cast). If you add in the votes, as estimated by the folks at realclearpolitics.com, in the Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine caucuses, where state Democratic parties did not count the number of caucus-attenders, Clinton still has a lead of 12,000 votes (Schwada’s note: or a lead of 4/100ths of one percent)."

News like this only prolongs the agony for undecided Democratic superdelegates, desperately looking for some sign, fact, index, trend (have they tried chicken entrails and tarot cards?) to guide them out of the party’s political maze. Imagine the soul-searching too among any Democrats, from the Obama camp, who might have claimed George Bush’s 2000 election victory was a joke – in part because he lost the popular vote. What are they to say now? That the popular vote doesn’t matter?

The super-delegates must also be keeping an eye on the polls….in fact, the pollsters could become the 800-lb gorillas in the Democratic Party’s nomination-kitchen.

For example, what if the polls started to consistently show that one candidate would do a much better job in a matchup against McCain? That’s an electability question that the super-delegates have got to consider.

At this time, by this measure, Obama and McCain are running neck-and-neck. When realpolitics.com looked at six separate polls, the average showed showed Obama doing BETTER against McCain than Clinton - at this point in time. Obama, on average, is currently enjoying a 1.6 percentage point advantage over McCain. In a Clinton vs. McCain matchup, the spread is 1.2 percentage points, in favor of Clinton. But the differences here are unremarkable, statistically insignificant. These kinds of numbers don't provide much help tor the super-delegates.

Another polling measure for the super-delegates to consider: how Democrats nationwide view the two candidatesl, Over time, these polls have seen Obama overcome and then surpass Clinton. Currently, by this measure (again I’m relying on realpolitics.com’s average of six polls), the spread between Obama and Clinton is 6.2% - advantage Obama.. But the latest numbers also hint at a closing of the gap; the spread was nearly 10% a few weeks ago.

There are plenty of other factors to consider – but the polls, delegate totals and popular vote are key to the nomination math, and as of today, the lead changed hands in the popular vote totals. Advantage Clinton.

John McCain’s got a problem: No one knows he exists. No media. No attention. No debates. No one to talk to but blue-haired ladies in Dubuque. It's like the old philosophy puzzle: If a McCain falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?

Do you really think the Fourth Estate’s sharpest, toughest newshounds are dogging McCain’s footsteps, double-checking his every claim, mussing up his hair, poking him in the ribs? No way. That’s a JV-media job – at least for now. So McCain is playing against the second team, in the wilderness.

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad. After all, McCain’s poll numbers are holding up, in a one-on-one with either Democrat. But what’s going to happen when the Dems finally settle their family feud?

McCain will be facing a very battle-tested rival – whether it’s Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. The Arizona senator is going to be fumbling over his notes or reading a script, badly, while his Democratic opponent will be looking right in the camera eye and smoothly delivering a rap – on just about any topic, in neat digestible sound-bites.

Practice makes perfect. Playing against the varsity-media helps. Obama and Clinton are getting a huge amount of practice selling themselves, defending themselves, getting their message across, in all sorts of formats. After 21 debates and countless news conferences, interviews and rallies, they’ve got it together.

Like it or not, if you can’t hold the public’s attention or the media’s then you slip into the Bob Dole syndrome…you may be likeable but who wants to listen to your tired legislative gobbledygook?

And that situation is particularly troublesome for McCain, who has admitted he can’t come anywhere near matching the fund-raising prowess of Clinton or Obama. Without a competitive paid-advertizing strategy, the McCain team is talking about having to get its message across through the news media – that means standing on a stage somewhere, making news….Good luck.

Did you hear the one about the Democratic Party suicide bomber who walked into a bar to have a final drink with his fellow Democrats, got so drunk he forgot to turn off the timer?

Sounds like Jimmy Carter, our former president.

A lot of people see Carter as a ticking time bomb of incompetence and gullibility, masquerading as idealism. Kind of a Neville “Hitler’s Not-so-bad” Chamberlain, without the bowler hat and umbrella.

And that’s exactly why both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were trying Monday to keep their distance from Carter’s latest, awkward peace-making foray in the Middle East - this being his meetings with Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza strip, is allied with Iran and has pledged to destroy Israel.

Carter, who helped grease the skids for the rise of Aytollah Khomeni in Iran and oversaw the U.S. humiliation over the Iranian hostage crisis, returned from his meetings with Hamas full of optimism about the group’s reasonableness. Hamas, Carter asserted, was ready to accept a Palestinian state, with pre-1967 borders, if the deal were approved by Palestinian voters, in a referendum.

One problem: the same people who Carter found to be so reasonable, only hours later disavowed much of what they allegedly told the former president. Were they just humoring Carter, playing him for an old fool?

You’ve got to hand it to Carter – his timing is impeccable for reminding some key voting blocs why they are suspicious of Democrats, especially Obama-style Democrats.

Obama was quick to spot Carter as an unexploded bomb and told reporters Monday he did NOT approve of the ex-president’s talks with Hamas, saying instead he favored talks – like those now endorsed by the Bush administration – between Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president, and Israel.

For her part, Clinton feigned not to know anything about Carter’s trip.

It would not be surprising for Clinton to soon draw some cheap parallels between Carter and Obama, a comparison made easier because Obama once said he wanted to sit down and reason with the leaders of nations like Iran, Korea, Cuba, etc. about their differences with the U.S. Clinton has already condemned Obama’s ideas as soft-headed.

In her election night victory speech in Pennsylvania, one of Clinton’s biggest applause lines was that Americans aren’t quitters and they deserve a president who is not a quitter – but a fighter. Her final TV ad also hammered home the point that she had what it takes to deal with Osama bin Laden and other national security threats.

Obama Democrats continue to be surprised Clinton is still not only standing but also moving – forward.

But what they forget is that Clinton, in her pursuit of voters and superdelegates, is playing a strong card when she lets everyone know she’s not going to be a Democrat who can be pushed around by tough guys, whether they’re Republican presumptive nominee John McCain or Hamas.

Clinton is on to something when she distances herself from Michael “Milquetoast” Dukakis, John Kerry or Jimmy Carter. These three failed to bond with blue-collar, lunch-pail Democrats, the Reagan Democrats, who were – and are - looking for a candidate with spine.

It was just those voters that exit polls showed gave Clinton her double-digit victory Tuesday in Pennsylvania. Now the questions are: will these same voters continue to make their voices heard in the remaining half-dozen primaries and will the superdelegates be listening?

What’s John McCain smoking? Let’s give everyone a federal gas-tax holiday this summer? What’s that all about?

What we need is a presidential candidate driving a moped, to and from the White House, up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. A president who rides a bike, walks. A presidential candidate who waters his or her own lawn, cleans up after their kids, takes out the trash (that would include, big boy, separating the banana peels from the beer bottles ) spends less time hobnobbing with hedge fund campaign contributors and oil industry executives…

I’m doing the math on how to pick a candidate for president. It’s called Schwada algebra. The first formula is this: 4 minus 3 = 1. Four is the number of people who will be hot-bedding in our house this summer: my wife, myself (if I’m lucky after writing this blog) and two strapping boys – each capable of knocking off a small steer for dinner each evening (both wrestling it to the ground and eating it). Each of them, hopefully, will be employed this summer and out of the house for at least ten hours a day.

Okay, now three is the number of cars in the house. So we got this deficit of one car.

The consensus among the voters in my household is that I should buy a 4th car.

Good luck! I’m getting a Vespa – you know one of those little motor scooters so popular with Euro-bohemian-wanna-be’s. No more large hunks of metal in my driveway.

Every time I look at my rather modest Passat VW 2005 (is this ruining your image of high-flying TV newscasters racing around in little Porsches and do you think I really give a damn?) and I see large numbers of half-naked third-world men (don’t get any ideas!) clambering around in a mining pit digging steel out of the earth with their bare-hands, breaking their fingernails in the effort….(sorry that last clause was meant to be sarcastic). Anyway, the whole scene is like something out of Pieter Breughels (the Elder of course), Hieronymus Bosch or a photo by Sebastio Salgado Jr. (see below - Breughels painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels).
Anyway, the whole damned image is very exotic and interesting but morally depressing. It makes you want to start eating your own flesh.

So it’s a Vespa for me. My wife says I’m crazy. She has evidence too, and it’s not Joe McCarthy-Swiss cheese evidence. It’s Irrefutable. Perry Mason couldn’t bust her case. The last time I road a two-wheeled vehicle was on an island off the Washington coast. That was like two years ago. Within minutes, I was pinned under this defiant little machine, looking sheepish and sullen. The time before that was on Jimmy Fields’ Yamaha. Again the outcome lacked grace and finesse. But it made up for these missing ingredients with hilarity. Like how funny is it to crash-land in your girl-friend’s front-yard when you’re trying to convince her mom you’re a safe 16-year-old driver?

Unfortunately, I shared this mishap misadventure story with my wife, and women, as you know, are like elephants - they never forget.

But I’m ready for the naysayers. Ready to take a few lessons on two-wheeled driving. Ready to take a DMV test to get the M2 license, get another insurance policy, a helmet…maybe a suit made of bubble wrap.

Now all I need are presidential candidates who’ll get out of their Lincoln Towncars, their Cadillac Escalades, stop talking about gas-tax holidays and start preaching two-wheelers, self-denial, self-reliance…conservation? Who'll get my family off my back - make my Vespa decision look politically-inspired not hare-brained. Am I crazy?

Gosh, I just don't know how to vote. Hillary, Barack, maybe McCain. I can barely get to sleep thinking about it.

Last night, I was tossing and turning as I tried to review their respective positions on Iraq and doing a little mental calculus on super-delegate strategies. And then I thought about Obama girl. Anyway, I couldn't get to sleep so I got up, and nearly broke my neck stumbling over the duvet.

What's wrong," my wife muttered from under the covers. Can't sleep, I mumbled. "Just don't wake Jack. Or the dog," she mumbled back. Yes, dear. Too late, the dog growled at me as I tiptoed past his cozy little bed, custom-made for him at Le Canny-Canine Shoppe there on Montana Avenue. Oh well, maybe he's still a little cranky after that $1,500 operation to have his bladder stones removed.

In the family room, the youngest son was watching Spike TV. Uh, couldn't sleep, I said by way of announcing my presence to #2 son who was sprawled across the sofa, baggy jeans and no shirt. He looked up from taking a swig from a soda, and said: "Don't just stand there, you're making me nervous." Okay, okay. I thought I'd try to catch up on my reading, maybe watch a little news. "Hey," #2 son said. "I got dibs on the TV - you got to see Suspenders Man (editor's note: that would be the venerable Larry King) interview that antique (editor's note: Harrison Ford, a fellow Boomer) so don't get any ideas."

Don't you have some studying to do, I ask. "Nahh," says #2. "Got community service tomorrow. Going to make phone calls for Obama during my free periods. By the way, did you pay my cell phone bill? I'm getting text messages from Sprint saying I'm overdue. Get on it will you, Dad." I thought I paid the bill last week, I said, as I poked around in the bookcase looking for a "sleeper" novel.

That's when the phone rang: I rushed to pick it up before it awakened my wife or the dog (both are very temperamental sleepers).

"Dad, glad you're up." It was son #1 calling from school. Everything alright, I ask. "Yeah," he said. "I was just up talking to friends about the election. We're going to Philly tomorrow - hook up with some girls from Bryn Mawr and protest a Hillary event." Hmmmm. "Did you see the latest Obama You-Tube spot?" No.

"Take a look," said #1 son. "He's so cool. Like a movie-star or something. And the war sucks, and so does Hillary. She's like a librarian or something. A lying librarian. Me and Brent and Greg are going to the multi-media lab Thursday and work on our own You-Tube ad for Obama. It'd be like "Family Guy" with Stewie going to the library to check out a book on sex and Hillary is the librarian. You know what I mean?" Hmmmm. I have no idea what he means. Isn't Stewie that guy that looks like a Frisbee with legs? "Uhhh, you got it Dad."

"Dad, get on board with Obama," son #1 continues. "Don't be an old fogy. He's young, he's cool, he's not bi-partisan." Not partisan, I correct him. (Is this what I get after paying a fortune for this kid to go to an elite private school back East?). "Right. But Dad, grammar, punctuation and syntax aside, the guy's going to end the war and clean up that sewer in Washington. He's got integrity. Don't be old school, Dad." Okay, I promise. I'll think about it.

"It'd be cool to have a black man in the White House, instead of that stupid Texan or the dinosaur from Arizona. Sort of like Miles Davis." Miles Davis? "Hey, gotta go. A couple guys coming over now." But isn't it 2 in the morning there? "Yeah, and your point is?" Nothing, I sighed. "We're just so up for this Obama thing, can't sleep. So long." Click.

Anyway, I did get to sleep last night. Awakened at 3:17 am, in the armchair, the TV still going. I picked up the empty soda cans, potato chip bags, fluffed the pillows on the couch and stumbled back to bed. Now the dog was curled up on the bed. He growled as I tried to ease myself under the covers.

The next morning there's a front-page story in the New York Times. It says young Obama-ites are successfully lobbying their Boomer-Parents to vote for Obama. "Obama's Young Backers Get Chance to Twist Parents' Arms" is the headline. There's a photo of Sen. Bob Casey's four daughters with Obama on the jump page. Casey, from Pennsylvania, last week endorsed Obama, virtually saying his kids made him do it. This United States senator was unashamed that he bowed to the kids-lobby. I guess, I thought, I'll be in good company if I join the Obama Children's Crusade. Maybe pick up a few "cool merit badge" from my kids...

Gee, who said picking a president is so hard?

"You can't get to Pennsylvania Avenue without going through Pennsylvania." That's from Hillary Clinton, on the tarmac at Burbank Airport this morning, where the only bullets she was dodging were the incoming questions from reporters.

One of the media refrains during the Q and A: How can you, Ms. Clinton, possibly win the nomination even if you win Pennsylvania?

Clinton's answer: the situation is extremely fluid and everything is on the table; that the loyalty and affiliation of all the Democratic delegates are mutable and changeable, not just the loyalties and affiliations of the superdelegates but also those of the pledged delegates - who are commonly believed to have been elected to simply rubberstamp the results of a primary or a caucus.

In Burbank, Clinton - without skipping a beat or blinking an eye - reminded reporters: "There is no such thing as a pledged delegate. That is a misnomer.....The whole point is delegates, however they are chosen, really need to ask themselves who would be the best president and who would be our best nominee against Senator McCain, and I think that process goes all the way to the convention."

In fact, she's right: the "elected" delegates are not bound by law to vote for the candidate they initially pledged to support...

Getting back to reality: there is no evidence any of Obama's pledged delegates have deserted him or, for that matter, are waffling...Now that would be an extraordinary story.

The arguments Hillary Clinton probably would make to an Obama pledged delegate (or to an uncommitted superdelegate) to get them to switch loyalties or simply join the Clinton team:

- Clinton has won the big, electoral-vote rich states (including New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Ohio, California and, arguably Florida) that are important to winning the general election;
- WHAT IF Clinton wins Pennsylvania and Indiana, picks up a few more states downstream and generally shows she has momentum on her side as the election season progresses;
- WHAT IF polls were to show Hillary doing a better job in a matchup against John McCain than Obama;
- And WHAT IF the polls were to show Obama supporters in earlier primaries, for whatever reason, were having "buyer remorse"?

That's a lot of WHAT IF's. But the Democratic convention is five long months away. Remember: who was the inevitable candidate five months ago, in December, 2007?

On the other hand, the question I would have liked to have asked Clinton if I had been on the tarmac in Burbank this morning (traffic conspired to prevent that): How many superdelegates have committed to your candidacy since your victories in Ohio and Texas and wouldn't you expect those hallmark victories to have already produced some movement toward you?

Undoubtedly her answer would've been: It's still too early. Let the process continue, up to the convention, and then let all the delegates make up their minds based on their best judgment of who would have the best chance of defeating McCain. (I'm still trying to find out how many - if any - superdelegates have joined the Clinton team since the March 4 Ohio-Texas primaries.)

Obviously, Hillary's fortunes could go south (for example, Clinton could lose Pennsylvania) and that would probably deliver the coup de grace to her campaign. But don't count on it. The Clinton's are like the cyborgs in the Terminator series - they are relentless and virtually indestructible.

What do you think:

- Can Clinton still pull it off?
- Can Democrats bury their axes and unite around one candidate (some polls suggest that Obama-ites are loathe to vote for Clinton if she's the nominee and vice-versa)?
- Will disappointed Democrats sit out the election?
- Doesn't this whole situation lend itself to deals in "smoke-filled rooms"?

Pennsylvania is the center of the political universe now, and I'm here, totally preoccupied with a college tour for son #2. How's that for timing? But in between campus visits, I've watched a little TV and the striking thing is how Obama is outspending Hillary in political ads. Nearly 3:1. And Obama's ads emphasize his ability to stretch across the aisle and, in at least one of them, the Illinois senator chastises Republicans and Democrats for failing to get the nation off its addiction to foreign oil. Obama has also been trying to get independents to join the Democratic party and vote for him (Pennsylvania's Democratic primary is a club; you gotta be a Dem to vote in it).

With his pitch to independents and posturing to show that he's an aisle crosser (which is, by the way, very debatable), it would seem that Obama is Mr. Reasonable.

But wait until the Clinton's get going in this race. Remember it's still 3 weeks from April 22, the primary election day, and we haven't heard a peep from the Clinton folks on the TV or radio airwaves regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. With Obama creeping up in the polls (some show him narrowing Hillary's lead to five or six points) and Pennsylvania being a do-or-die state for Hillary, you can bet your bottom dollar we'll hear a lot about Jeremiah's intemperate rantings in the coming days.

Hillary is just waiting until she can see the white's of Obama's eyes before she pulls the trigger or has her surrogates do it for her.

Will the Democratic party be able to survive any more torture in this regard? Who knows. There are polls here in Pennsylvania of local Democrats that show that waters are so poisoned already that very sizeable numbers of Hillary voters would not vote for Obama if he were the nominee and vice versa.

If you're a Democrat, supporting one of the candidates, could you vote for the other one? Do you see a way out of this mess?

Hillary Clinton is like the relentless, indestructible cyborg in the Terminator movies. Just when it seems she's been totally pulverized, she picks herself up, sticks a new eyeball in her head, re-wires her robotic arm, reassembles her molecules, and plunges forward, hale, healthy and lethal.

Now, it looks like her case for the super-delegates to de-value and disregard Barack Obama's lead in delegates/popular vote is getting better and better every day.

Look at the polls: Gallup and Reuters/Zogby this week show she's opened up a lead on Obama, among Democrats nationally.

What if the polls start showing Clinton NOW would beat Obama in states that Obama previously won - like Missouri or Connecticut or Iowa? That Democrats in those states were having buyer's remorse? What if the polls consistently showed Clinton would do better against the GOP's John McCain than Obama?

You better believe Clinton would seize on such developments to persuasively argue that Obama's super-delegates should reconsider. You can hear Clinton saying: "Yes, your constituents voted for Obama in February - but what about NOW, after Obama has been beat up by controversies about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, NAFTA-Canada, commander-in-chief doubts? Are your constituents still backing Obama? Does it make sense to back Obama if the polls NOW show I have a better chance of beating McCain than Obama does? Are you guys ready to commit political hari-kari?"

No wonder, Hillary's hanging on, not conceding defeat. It's a long way to the Democratic convention, plenty of time for multiple political lightening strikes.