Hillary Clinton compared herself to a movie icon today:

Recalling a famous scene on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Clinton said that ending her presidential campaign now would be as if "Rocky Balboa had gotten halfway up those art museum steps and said, 'Well, I guess that's about far enough.'"

"Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people," Clinton said.

And just like Rocky, Sen. Clinton loses at the end of the movie.

[Yahoo! News] Clinton likens herself to 'Rocky'

There's an interesting discussion going on right now at Newsvine concerning the possible lack of mathematical support for the media's depiction of the Democratic presidential race as a deadlock. The author of the initial post on the topic asserts that Sen. Barack Obama needs only to win a little more than 43% of the remaining delegates to secure the party's nomination and that he's already favored to win in most of the remaining states. It follows, then, that Sen. Obama is all but certain to be the nominee.

In the comments, however, there is some debate as to whether this calculation accurately reflects the party's superdelegates and the impact they could have in swinging the vote in Sen. Hillary Clinton's favor at the convention. In recent weeks there have been reports of superdelegates defecting from Clinton to Obama, though much of this occurred before Clinton's much-hyped primary victories on Ohio and Texas. In short, the consensus of the Newsvine commenters is that while Obama seems likely to have more regular delegates, the superdelegates will determine the race's outcome.

So what happens if the superdelegates give Clinton the victory? I would expect the party to receive a lot of criticism from voters and the media for allowing high ranking party officials to hijack the primary from ordinary citizens. This kind of pressure could result in the party opting to do away with its superdelegate system by the time the 2012 election cycle rolls around.

Perhaps the best way for the party to preserve its current system is to make sure the superdelegates vote accurately reflects popular opinion, asking them to vote for the candidate who wins the most regular delegates. If that ends up being the case, however, it pretty much renders superdelgates powerless and negates any purpose the system is alleged to serve.

This analysis, however, requires the belief that if a candidate ever won the popular vote but lost the election itself based upon an arcane system of delegates, then America would be forced to change its electoral system due to overwhelming pressure from the people.

Ask Al Gore if he believes that.

Perhaps my cynicism is making me a conspiracy theorist, but isn't it awfully convenient that, just a month after the Bush Administration was embarrassed by the revelation that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, Iran has seemingly handed President Bush a shiny new reason to threaten war against the Muslim nation?

I wonder, if Iranian naval ships were sitting just outside American waters in the Gulf of Mexico, would our Navy simply ignore them, or would there be a tense confrontation as our military sought to protect our waters from foreign invasion.

Three things are really bothering me about the "scandal" surrounding the arrest and subsequent guilty plea of Idaho senator Larry Craig...

First, nearly every Republican legislator in Washington has called upon Craig to resign. They all shroud these calls under the guise of his guilty plea and the idea that no sitting senator should be convicted of ANY crime and be allowed to keep his seat. In reality, given the generic and vague way that all of these legislators speak of the incident, I have little doubt that most of the GOP is calling on him to resign mainly because they all assume he's gay, and that no sitting senator should be homosexual and be allowed to keep his seat. After all, while 10% of the population is gay, there are no openly gay members of the Senate and only 2 in the House of Representatives. Not exactly a fair representation of America.

Second, while I have little doubt that having sex of any kind is illegal in an airport bathroom, last time I checked sexual activity NOT in an airport bathroom or other public place was still legal. Senator Craig didn't have sex with anyone in that bathroom. At "worst," he simply propositioned someone to have sex (with a hand gesture or foot tapping that the undercover police officer claims could ONLY have been a sexual proposition -- huh?). Given that he didn't actually provide verbal details prior to his arrest, it's entirely possible that the sexual activity Senator Craig had in mind (if he actually did) when he made the hand gesture or foot tapping was to occur in a private place. Thus, the activity would have been perfectly legal. Am I to assume from this incident that we all must now restrict all flirting to private residences or face arrest?

Third, I am now absolutely TERRIFIED of using airport bathrooms due to fear that there will be an undercover police officer there who will misconstrue some nervous hand gesture or foot tapping that I make while I'm minding my own business and arrest me for lewd conduct. I make hand gestures and tap my feet all the time. I don't intend them to be sexual propositions, but who knows what the anti-gay airport bathroom police think.

The most depressing question I've ever been asked:

"Who is Karl Rove?"

This was the response given by an attorney employed in state government last week when I asked her if she thought Rove should be fired for his involvement in the White House/CIA press leaks.