Pennsylvania Primary

The State

* Pennsylvania and Ohio are usually compared to one another because they are both key hellhole states.
* While the area's steel industry has struggled financially in recent years, it still wields a certain amount of influence over delegates who are suspended above vats of molten lead.
* Pennsylvania has 188 Democratic delegates up for grabs, down from 211 following a tragic mine collapse in 2005.
* Philadelphia, the state's largest city, is famous for its delicious, disgusting, delicious food.
* Pennsylvania's late-April primary has traditionally been symbolic of the goddamn primary season almost being over.

The Candidates

Hillary Clinton

* Hillary Clinton has surged ahead in the polls in Fayette County, PA, after admitting to residents that it has been her dream since she was a little girl to win more votes than her competitor in Fayette County.
* After talking with unemployed voters in Allentown, Hillary Clinton vowed to go home and listen to the Billy Joel song a lot more closely.
* Hillary Clinton solidified her lead among blue-collar workers when she defeated a steam-powered machine in a steel-drivin' contest.
* Although Clinton was recently called out for lying about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, the people of the Appalachia backwoods will likely be more than willing to provide her with this valuable experience.

Barack Obama

* Barack Obama slipped in the polls when he traveled to Harrisburg and gave his now-infamous 30-minute "What is that God-awful smell?" speech.
* Obama has spent the past two weeks paving and repairing a 20-mile stretch of I-80 so he can get to his next campaign stop.
* Polls show that Obama has done well with undecided voters in Pennsylvania, though he continues to struggle with voters who have made up their minds.
* Obama has attempted to appeal to Pennsylvania's working class by donning a specially made, all-denim, Brooks Brother's power suit.

www.theonion.com

I certainly was not a screaming proponent of the torch protests, however I do recognize the situation in Tibet. I could go through the ins and outs of my feelings on the subject, but that would be borderline pointless. This on the other hand is a great article and I think you should read it.

Watching his daughter on a homemade ladder smoothing varnish over the red-and-yellow trim of their large new log house, Norbu Choden smiled with the satisfaction that even if there was no getting the Chinese out of Tibet, he'd finally figured out how to benefit from their decades-long occupation of his homeland. "Once you understand that they’re never going to help us," he said, "you realize that you have to make your own future."

Norbu made his by transforming himself from a herdsman to a middleman. Like many of the five million Tibetans living under China's flag, he'd spent nearly all of his 48 years in eastern Tibet driving shaggy yaks through alpine meadows, eating their meat and butter, living in a tent woven from their coarse black wool, barely getting by from one brutal winter to the next. Now he leaves the hard work to others, while he buys and sells for profit.

The middleman has a long and storied history among Chinese, but his vital economic role has largely eluded the grasp of Tibetans. Before Norbu's metamorphosis, he would look on with envy as Chinese from neighboring Sichuan Province arrived each spring, buying up a wrinkled little fungus that he and other nomads had dug from the ground in their spare time. The Chinese then sold the brown Cordyceps, known as caterpillar fungus, for huge profits to traditional medicine makers.

The full article at www.nationalgeographic.com