12:30 a.m. — Oops. Took a longer nap than anticipated.

Looks like the spin will probably be the “big” win in NC for Obama and the narrow escape for Hillary in IN (with Obama still having an outside shot of winning in a photo-finish).

Fair enough on IN. But the real question in North Carolina should be, “How did Obama get only 35% of the non-African-American vote?” I’m not kidding:

Take the items in yellow as “givens,” and the item in orange is the forced result.

Obama won every demographic group except white females in South Carolina.

If it turns out that African-Americans cast half of the votes, Obama’s percentage of the vote from all other groups drops to 24.1%.

They’ll spin at will, but the reality is that NC represents quite a deterioration in Obama’s support from 3-1/2 months ago.

10:05 p.m. — Going to get away from watching paint dry. Will be back at about 11:30 p.m.

9:50 p.m. — Obama’s lead at ABC’s link is 14% in NC with 56% counted, while Hillary’s is down to 4% in Indiana. I don’t think either candidate can claim an impressive win tonight. Obama needed to win by 20% to get back to a semblance of where he was in demographically similar South Carolina, which he won by 28%. If I’m right that the rural and small-town white-dominated vote comes in later, then Obama hasn’t done that. Hillary, though, should have done better in Indiana, though there may have been a previously undetected next-door neighbor effect that broke for Obama.

9:35 p.m. — The drama remains in the margins, as Obama wins NC and Clinton wins IN (there seems to be a sliver of doubt about IN). It looks like the 90% or so African-American vote for Obama held in NC. Obama is up 20% in NC, Clinton up 4% - 6% in IN.

___________________________________________

All right, the two “biggies” are tonight.

As with Pennsylvania, it’s a near-dead thread because the results are provisional at best, irrelevant at worst. That’s because even pledged delegates are NOT bound to vote as they have pledged when the Democratic convention is held in late August.

In NC — The point I speculated about this morning stands. The North Carolina Dem electorate today will be 40%-plus African-American. That’s not far from their proportion in the South Carolina primary, which the presidential candidate I irreverently refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) won by a whopping 28% in January.

Surely, if he wins by less than 20% tonight in NC, Old Media will say that Obama underperformed. Wright Right? Unfortunately, no.

I think the thing to watch for in the Tar Heel state is whether there is a signficant erosion in African-American support below the 90% we saw in almost every state until Super Tuesday for sure, and probably in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania after that. Any erosion that goes in the direction of the candidate I irreverently refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton) — or even a lower-than-expected African-American turnout — should definitely get the attention of the Dem superdelegates, even more than the blue-collar white vote swinging, as many expect they will, to Hillary.

Indiana is supposedly a Hillary lock. If that indeed occurs, and especially if the margin approaches double-digits, someone should ask why Obama’s popularity in Illinois doesn’t cross state lines. Probably no one will.

Because of other commitments, I won’t be checking in until about 9:30, and will then, unless one of the two contests is dramtically cose, only comment briefly.

From the Youngstown Vindicator — “Valley party leaders urge attorney general to stand firm; legislators want Marc Dann to resign now.”

Ohio’s AG is getting love from the locals, who want Gunga Dann to intrepidly soldier on.

I just realized that I have neglected to heed the “Name That Party” criticisms that I have so frequently thrown at Old Media reporters. Accordingly, I have retroactively modified all related posts with my new Marc Dann graphic:

Unintentionally Funniest Headline of the Day — from a the Wall Street Journal’s Law blog:

With or Without Dann, Ohio’s Subprime Work Likely to Continue

There’s a lot of subprime work being done by the State of Ohio — and it has noting to do with mortgages.

In a remarkable example of “Name that Party,” the Associated Press, in an unbylined report about the beginning of his divorce trial appearing in USA Today, failed to name the party of former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, who resigned in 2005, or of his former “male staffer.”

Beyond that, AP did not accurately describe the circumstances that triggered McGreevey’s resignation.

Here’s how the report began (bold is mine; HT to an e-mailer):

After two tell-all books, tawdry sex claims and 3½ years of living apart, New Jersey’s gay ex-governor and his estranged wife showed up for court Tuesday morning to begin the process of ending their marriage.

….. The issues to be decided in the divorce settlement involve custody, alimony and child support, and whether McGreevey, now openly gay, committed fraud by marrying a woman.

Matos McGreevey, 41, is seeking $600,000 for time she would have spent at the governor’s mansion had her husband not resigned in disgrace. McGreevey stepped down during his first term after a nationally televised speech in which he acknowledged being “a gay American” and having an affair with a male staffer. The staffer has denied the affair and said he was sexually harassed by McGreevey.

Since his resignation in the fall of 2004, both he and his soon-to-be-ex wrote books about their time together, including their sex lives. She claims she never knew he was gay until just before he told the rest of the world. He claims their marriage was “a contrivance on both our parts,” but that he fulfilled the marriage contract by providing companionship and a child.

The AP report gives the reader the impression that the only reason McGreevey resigned was because of the affair (or harassment) and his sexual “preference”/”orientation.”

But AP left out other details behind McGreevey’s resignation that would have informed readers that it was not “all about sex.”

The former “male staffer” AP refered to is Golan Cipel, whom AP inexplicably chose not to name. Cipel’s Wikipedia entry, which on balance appears to correctly represent events that occurred during the time involved, says this (New York Times link within excerpt added by me):

McGreevey eventually appointed Cipel as a Counselor to the Governor. Investigations by the news media into Cipel’s history revealed few notable qualifications related to intelligence or security. Additionally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would not grant him the necessary security clearances for the job because he was a foreign national. He was retained on the government payroll as a “counselor” at the same salary and with undefined job responsibilities. Documents show that he helped plan foreign trips for the governor, and that he continued his liaison role with the Jewish community. He ultimately resigned in August 2002, taking a position at the Trenton lobbying firm State Street Partners.

Reports that Cipel would file a sexual harassment suit against McGreevey in Mercer County Court led to McGreevey’s decision to out himself as “a gay American” on August 12, 2004, and announce that he had engaged in an adulterous relationship with Cipel and would be resigning as governor.

Golan Cipel dropped the suit after McGreevey resigned, stating that justice had been served.

(in 2004) Cipel claims he was one of many victims of McGreevey’s sexual harassment, that he had “no romantic affair” with the governor, but rather was taken advantage of. He also describes the former governor’s behavior as egotistical, unprofessional, immoral and immature, as well as having received threats from McGreevey’s “friends” should he come forward and speak.

The resignation thus was strongly related to McGreevey’s laxness in assigning properly qualified Homeland Security personnel, as well as to the (take your pick) the affair the former Governor claims he had, or the sexual harassment Cipel claims to have endured.

AP’s failure to name to party of a scandal-plagued Democrat is typical. Its failure to accurately recount the history is indefensible.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From the Associated Press:

Ohio Democrats talk impeachment after AG refuses to resign

Hmm. The Dems should know that they can’t impeach anyone without Republican help.

Until that happens, Gunga Dann will soldier on:

Here’s a Dem fall campaign slogan: Give us a majority, so we can clean up our own corruption.

(PS. I know the GOP had a chance to do that in 2005, and didn’t. I’m just havin’ some fun. Columbus has been a bi-partisan FUBAR for the better part of a decade.)

“Things I‘d Like To Post About Today; But I Don’t Have Any Time ‘4‘”:

• The eeeeevil Wal-Mart, which has done more to make prescription drugs affordable than the government since it began its program in September 2006, is now doing even more — “(It) announced Monday it would expand its discounted prescription drug program to offer 90-day supplies for $10 and add several women’s medications at a discount. It also said it would lower the price of more than 1,000 over-the-counter drugs.”
• I like this term, coined in the London Daily Mail in reaction to the “environmental activisim” of jet-setting, carbon-guzzling celebs — “Hippy-crites.”
• I wonder how many soldiers are (now maybe “were”) fans of author Stephen King, or have seen one or more of his movies based on his books? Mark Levin had it right last night when he said that one of the most offensive thing about people like King (who recently said “…. the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got, the Army, Iraq ….”) is how insufferably ungrateful they are.
• I haven’t done any math on North Carolina yet, but if the African-American Democratic electorate’s proportion of the population is close to South Carolina’s, why should we impressed with a Tar Heel State win by the presidential candidate I refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) if it isn’t close to the 28-point margin he got in the Palmetto State in January? Rush is right, though; if Obama wins by even the slimmest of margins in either IN or NC, Old Media will try to play it as the Return of the Messiah.
• It’s no longer Obama the Chama. The presidential candidate I refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton) appears to have turned into Hillary the Hospitable.
• Hmmm — The Reverend Jeremiah Wright counseled a married couple in distress in the early 1980s. Then, “after Delmer and Ramah Reed were divorced, she got remarried - to Wright.”
• First domino to fall? The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, where circulation has declined 15% in the past three years, is in deep trouble (HT Hot Air)

From the Upper East Side of Manhattan (HT to an e-mail from Kevin at Pundit Review):

May 5, 2008 — An Upper East Side girl made good on her bat mitzvah promise - and, as a result, dozens of teens from less fortunate families went on a designer-clothing shopping spree at a Queens synagogue yesterday.
For her bat mitzvah last year, Ali Reisner asked friends and relatives to donate money and gently used clothing for a charity project rather than give her gifts.

She spent the past year since her May 2007 bat mitzvah collecting clothes from friends and buying JCPenney gift cards with her gift money, collecting $12,000 in goods.

Thanks to her efforts, dozens of underprivileged Jewish girls from Queens and The Bronx went to the Briarwood Jewish Center in Kew Gardens, Queens, yesterday for a free day of shopping.

“I got so much money for my bat mitzvah, and I didn’t want all of it,” said Reisner, who’ll soon turn 14. “I like shopping. All girls like shopping, so I figured the best way to help these girls out was to bring clothes and gift cards so that each girl could shop for her needs.”

Grateful girls poured in to the synagogue to get some high-fashion loot and had the chance to thank Reisner personally. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.