I had no intention of being up this late, but I simply can't go to sleep yet without having something concrete in my hands over the Indiana primary. There's 95% of the vote counted, mostly a single county remaining, and less than 17,000 votes separating them.

But as many, many people in the media are saying, this primary is essentially over. Most people have known for at least a couple of months now that the math couldn't work for Hillary Clinton, and now the math is something that she absolutely has to avoid. Not even if Michigan and Florida are counted at the convention can she pull off the nomination without absolute nuclear war within the Democratic party.

That's not going to happen, though. There is a legacy left for her here, and she doesn't want that legacy to be causing the loss of the general election after the disaster of the Bush presidency.

The most important observation I can make tonight, though, really has nothing to do with the actual vote count and how it ends up come sunrise. The most important thing that has come out tonight is that the media has shifted again, and they're openly saying that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee, and Hillary Clinton is done, whether she knows it or not.

It may not be right, and it's definitely not the way it should work. But if that's the message being printed in the morning papers and the message that hits talk radio, the blogs, and every other news outlet in the nation, then no matter what Hillary Clinton says or does, this race is over.

I honestly didn't think it would happen so soon, but I'm glad it did.

I'm in my hotel now watching the election returns and I'm quite literally stunned. For one, I did not expect a 14% win for Obama in North Carolina. 10% would have been about the top of my expectations, and at this point it looks like they're going to rack up a huge win down there.

As for Indiana, I'm holding my breath. I doubt Obama wins, but it doesn't really matter at this point because it's too close for Clinton to make up any ground. I simply didn't expect it to be this close, and apparently neither did any of the pundits.

The only big question I have is how much money does the Clinton campaign have? If what people are saying is true, then she's broke, again, and any continuation of her campaign is purely out of spite. I hope that's not why she chooses to continue her campaign. Then again, as I said earlier I hope this turns out to be the end of the primary contests so that we can get to work on the important stuff.

The rest of the results probably won't be known until after midnight, so I guess the real news will be made in the morning, when I hope to be moving my furniture into my new apartment.

I mostly like this ad from Friends of the Earth Action, released on Earth Day, slamming John McCain for what will certainly be a disastrous environmental policy should he be elected.

To be fair, I could support nuclear energy if we had a good way to dispose of nuclear waste. That's not a popular position to take, but I do feel that nuclear energy is a good option, but only after we figure out where to store the waste, or find a way to permanently neutralize it.

But that's not the point of the ad. The truth is, John McCain doesn't have a clue about the environment, and never will. Then again, John McCain doesn't have a clue about hardly anything, so what's new.

This is from the FoE Action press release:

“It is outrageous for Senator McCain to portray himself as tough on spending and as a friend of the environment, and then go out and push all this pork for corporate polluters. That’s not straight talk,” said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth Action. “Instead of adding more pork for the nuclear industry, Senator McCain should be trying to cut the fat that’s already there.”

Blackwelder noted that McCain’s opponents in the presidential campaign, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have voiced support for a different approach to global warming—a cap-and-trade system that makes polluters pay for their pollution via a 100 percent auction of pollution permits. When the Lieberman-Warner bill came before the Senate’s environment and public works committee in December, Clinton offered an amendment to eliminate many of its giveaways by adding 100 percent auctions to the bill. Obama has spoken of his support for 100 percent auctions as a key difference between himself and McCain.

McCain’s attempt to add more polluter pork to the global warming bill is hardly the only recent strike against his environmental record. He also failed to show up for two votes within the last six months that would have promoted clean energy solutions such as wind and solar power; each of those measures failed by a one-vote margin, and the other presidential candidates showed up to vote.

“There is a wide gulf between McCain and the Democratic candidates on environmental issues and global warming,” Blackwelder said. “These ads are calling attention to that gulf with the hope of persuading McCain to start taking the legislative actions that are logically required to erase it. Opposing polluter giveaways in the Lieberman-Warner bill would be a good first step.”