Alabama/Mississippi Primary Night

I'm not sure why I continue to watch these stupid primary return shows, but I find myself once again watching as the results come in the ridiculously stupid way that CNN can only do.  Not only does CNN overreact to just about any small change in the counted number of votes (especially when a very small percentage of the votes have even been counted), but the excessive degree to which they have to point out that, hey, look at us at CNN!  We have exclusive results because we actually have people at the actual counting locations who can tell you the results as soon as the votes are actually counted, before any other organization can do it!  However, for reasons unknown, we are not actually going to update our totals!  So basically, unless you care enough to write down the numbers that John King keeps writing on the screen, keep track of the numbers prior to this "breaking news" reporting, and decide that it is worthwhile to make these relatively insignificant changes (because they keep doing it), this is a total waste of time.

But a new wrinkle in CNN's ridiculous coverage tonight is how they have harped on the fact that prisoners are actually helping to carry in vote returns in Birmingham, AL (I believe) as reported by Dana Bash.  Now apparently these prisoners had been sentenced to hard time for whatever reason, but the key that I took away from the first time CNN talked about this was that apparently this practice had been used before in Alabama since a prison is evidently close to this particular counting location.  Maybe CNN realizes that their coverage is terrible and that's why they keep bringing this completely irrelevant point to the attention of the audience.

You may ask then, why I am bothering to watch CNN's coverage if I think it is so awful.  Well, that would be a good question.  And a lot of this is my fault for being lazy.  My cable box stopped working a few years back with the digital transition, but I have been too lazy to get the new box installed.  This is not necessarily a bad thing as I'm sure I would have been watching a lot of useless programming over those years, but I am stuck watching CNN rather MSNBC as I would prefer.  I suppose I could watch the returns on C-SPAN, but that is being presented by Politico, and I actually believe that Politico is actually far worse than CNN.

Well, Santorum has won Alabama, maybe I'll post again after Mississippi is called, but probably not.