Hilary's got a solid lead in Ohio.

Texas is the toss-up state...if Obama eeks out a win there, I don't see how HRC continues. If he loses both Ohio and Texas, look for the fight to get nastier and more filled with vitriol.

I had almost forgotten what it felt like to eat lunch outside. Suddenly every task seems lighter.

Money was spent. Animals were seen. More money was spent. Pix later, I suppose.

But you see, this is exactly the point with Obama many of us were making months, if not years, ago.

Case in point. I put up a post about Hillary Clinton accepting a Fox debate over at the Huffington Post. It got 265 irate comments. I put up one about McCain breaking campaign finance law while accusing Obama of doing so, and got -- 10. (And I should say that in the grand scheme of things, Clinton accepting a Fox debate is just not that important. On the other hand, John McCain is breaking a law that calls for him to virtually shut his campaign down now and stop traveling until September, so it's hard to see how the stakes could be higher.)

I really like Hilary Clinton and she'd be a great president. But the media and a large section of the populace (influential or otherwise) simply hate her. With those high negatives, she'd always have a tough time in a general election. It's not a personal criticism of her, just an observation.

Obama, on the other hand, gets kid-glove treatment from the media and many people because they simply like him. John McCain as well.

If we're going to go toe-to-toe with someone popular, we have to bring our A game, and Obama is it. He can take the gloves off and go after McCain in a way that Clinton never can, because she'll be vilified in the press.

I mentioned this the other day to some friends, the fact that Obama's campaign is expertly designed. A couple of articles flesh things out more.

While candidates' every turn of phrase is fodder for endless analysis, their visual language, seen on endless yard signs and bumper stickers, lapel pins and mailers, and on every TV and computer screen, goes largely unexamined. Only graphic designers, lifelong students of the ubiquitous, obsessive about the nuances of typography, treat campaign iconography with the seriousness it deserves.

Paula Scher, a partner at the New York design firm Pentagram, dissected the Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards logotypes in a 2004 New York Times Op-Ed piece. In Bush-Cheney's graphic identity, with its bold, sans serif capital letters, she read "strength, integrity and steadfastness." In the Kerry-Edwards type, a thinner, fancier serif face, she intuited weakness. The "overall design is tentative," wrote Scher. "It conveys congenial subservience." (Note that Scher is no Republican; upon winning a National Design Award two years later in 2006 she refused to attend a White House awards ceremony, decrying the Bush administration's "assault on meaning.")

The brand is also discussed specifically here

I think it's just as good or better. I have sophisticated clients who pay me and other people well to try to keep them on the straight and narrow, and they have trouble getting everything set in the same typeface. And he seems to be able to do it in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Houston and San Antonio. Every time you look, all those signs are perfect. Graphic designers like me don't understand how it's happening. It's unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted.

Branding is such an important part of business that it's amazing so many companies (and even a greater number of campaigns) do such a bad job with it. For the millions campaigns spend on direct mail, designing a simple, powerful logo can accomplish so much more.

Obama gets it.

I love my roomba and can't wait to see a scooba in action, but for now, the coolest idea ever for those who hate to clean the kitchen is this guy right here

Go readybot!

Actually worth seeing.