This has been a tough few weeks for Barack Obama. Having seeming weathered the initial storm of the (in my opinion overblown) Wright controversy, he got himself into trouble with his “What’s the Matter With Kansas” inspired comments about rural voters. He was put off balance by guilt-by-association style questioning at the recent Democratic debate. His Pennsylvania loss, despite being widely predicted for weeks to months, bolstered Clinton support and fueled her questioning of his candidacy. The balance of press coverage has tipped in her favor. Superdelegates and donors allke are helping to keep her campaign afloat. News from his side has been almost non existent.

Despite all this, Obama is still decisively in the lead with respect to delegates and will almost certainly lock up the nomination. To do so by laying low and waiting out the clock, however, would be a big mistake. Obama needs to come back fighting. A tepid victory marked by a string of losses is not going to look good, and will not inspire Democrats to rally around their candidate.

Obama needs to start making strong stances and set out his vision for the country. He needs to increase visibility and promote his personal brand. This election is about more than winning by technically gaining a few more delegates than your opponent. He seems to finally be getting this message with increased visibility of his less serious side on the basketball court and, more importantly, with a firm split from Wright after it became clear that Wright was in not looking out for anything but his own image.

Some damage is already done and I don’t see much hope of a victory in Indiana, but there is still time to reenergize his campaign for a strong finish.

Wilting Over Waffles – New York Times: “‘The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just go. … I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Hillary R. Clinton, will you please go now! You can go on skates. You can go on skis. … You can go in an old blue shoe.

Just go, go, GO!’”

Today’s primary in Pennsylvania strikes me as rather unexciting. There are a few options:

a) A single digit win for Clinton
b) A double digit win for Clinton
c) A win of any sort for Obama.

Many are predicting outcome a, which really doesn’t change much in the election. There will be more pressure for Clinton to drop out with a small victory, but ultimately her campaign will treat this as a victory and the battle will continue on.

Outcome b will give Clinton’s campaign a boost, but still is unlikely to change the outcome of the future races and, ultimately, the nomination.

The only significant outcome would be option c, but polls are suggesting this will be highly unlikely. The only place polls completely missed the winner was in New Hampshire, but that appears to have been an outlier. Generally, Clinton has done slightly better than predicted by the polls, most likely because “undecided” voters tend to go with Clinton, probably because she is better known and thus considered “safer”.

I predict a 10-point victory for Clinton, and she may even creep into the low double-digits. We’ll see tonight.

I can’t believe I lost two hours of my life watching that debate. Nearly an hour of questions rehashing the nonsense that’s been passing for news in the election. I learned nothing about the candidates and watched both fumble around with uncomfortable questions about people not involved in this election.

The second half was a little more reasonable, though still embarrassing for ABC. Gibson was the most outrageous, sounding like a panicked stockbroker when grilling the candidates on whether they were going to raise capital gains taxes. Stephanopolous didn’t seem to have much to contribute either.

Both Obama and Clinton had a fairly rough time, with Obama facing numerous questions about various people who had some sort of association with him (some more than others) and Clinton essentially having to admit she flat out lied about what happened in Bosnia.

Clinton did seem better prepared, however. Her answers were firm and confident, while Obama was clearly shaken from the first hour.

Overall, not a productive use of the time. Maybe there’s only so much more to add if you’ve already had 20 debates. We’ve past the point of diminishing returns.

It’s not that I’m a big donut eater…I’m not. Every once in a while, however, I do enjoy a good donut (or doughnut, if you’re a fan of the less-efficient classic spelling). Perhaps it’s all in my head, but I’ve had the distinct impression that Dunkin Donuts, the standard bearer in Massachusetts, has been slipping in quality for some time. In the past, the donuts were all made in the store, and there were often at least some varieties that were fresh. No more. They are all shipped in from some factory and taste, well, disappointing.

My first stop was the local Verna’s in Cambridge, which had great reviews on many of the popular review sites like Chowhound. To my surprise, the donuts were absolutely terrible. Many of the reviews I read were from 2006, so I wonder if the company changed owners. Maybe it was just a bad day, but I’m not going back to find out.

Another stop was the well-reviewed Demet’s Donuts in Medford. It wasn’t terrible. Marginally better than Dunkin’, but not really worth the extra trip.

To cast a broader net, I looked further out to East Boston and came up with the Betty Ann Food Shop. They opened early and had 4 varieties ready when I showed up: old-fashioned, jelly, lemon-filled, and sugar. The latter 3 were all essentially the same donut, a deep fried greasy blob coated with sugar granules and either filled or not, given the particular variety. The old fashioned variety were the standard cake donut, though a bit on the small side, fried a little too long and crossing a threshold of greasiness that made it tolerable when warm but progressively more unpleasant as it reached room temperature.

Just when I was about to lose hope, I discovered Donuts with a Difference in Medford, MA. These are by far the best donuts I’ve had a long time. Despite the health consequences of frequent donuting, I still find myself returning again and again. There’s plenty of variety, but you must show up in the morning because, at least on the weekends, they close fairly early. In addition, the donuts are generally not ready until about 8 AM, so don’t show up to early.

Remember when, before the New Hampshire primary, Hillary was asked, “How do you do it? How do you keep going?” CNN may have the answer…

My affection for Nature’s Path Flax Plus Granola is no secret. I regularly use my blog and Twitter account to share my enthusiasm for the product.

Recently, I’ve discovered a new twist on the usual bowl. Adding some regular Cheerios to the mix adds an additional dimension. The oat-flavored nuttiness of the Cheerios along with the tempered sweetness of the Flax Plus creates a flavor combination that tastes surprisingly like…Lucky Charms! I kid you not. I’m sure this combination much better than eating marshmallows for breakfast, of course.

Some time in college, I remember having a somewhat thoughtful conversation with a friend of mine. It was many years ago, and I don’t recall who the discussion was with, but we spent the time exploring an issue that many may wish to consider while formulating a reply to the difficult question: what type of ice cream do you want?

Given the assumption that you have already decided to eat ice cream, not particularly known for its compatibility with maintaining a slim figure, it may seem a bit frivolous to discuss the caloric differences between various flavors. Nonetheless, this was the topic of conversation on this evening during my years of higher education. In particular, the question was whether one could reduce calories by sticking to vanilla instead of the clearly tastier Oreo cookie (or analogous cookies “n” cream variety).

Try to come to your own conclusion. Got it? Okay, read on.

My friend argued that the Oreo cookie flavor would clearly be more caloric since it adds a calorie-rich cookie to the ice cream, whereas the standard fare just has the ice cream. The equation was simple. Cookie + ice cream > ice cream. Q.E.D. Not so fast, I countered. Consider that ice cream is served by the scoop. Given that the volume is likely to be constrained, the cookie would actually be displacing some of the ice cream. So the correct formula would be x = (cookie) – (volume of ice cream equivalent to volume of cookie). If the cookie is less caloric than the same volume of ice cream (which is, after all, made in part from cream), then x will be negative and thus the Oreo flavor would be a virtual diet ice cream (or Ice Cream Zero, following today’s nomenclature).

This weekend was a bit slow, so I began to ponder how to settle this once and for all: figuring out the volume of an Oreo cookie should be pretty easy, and it’s nutritional information should be available online. Once I had the volume, I could look up the equivalent stats on the ice cream and have my answer. As I considered this, I did what I do best: think of an even better strategy to find out answers to questions of dubious importance.

Recalling that Brighams was a local favorite purveyor of the sweet stuff, I went to their web site and found what I was looking for. Turns out that, 4 fluid ounces of vanilla has 190 calories, while the equivalent volume of the Oreo flavor has 200 calories. I guess I’ll have to concede this argument, but at least I can take comfort in knowing that I’ve used this blog to share an important fact with my readers.

Take heed, fatties…stick to vanilla.

Macworld | Create good queries in Spotlight: “… if your search involves multiple terms, or if you need to narrow down your results to dig up a particularly elusive file, knowing how to put together a good search query will pay off.”