Golden Parachutes, Cement Boots and whats the cost for me and you? Election Cartoon of the Day.

So for a campaign bail out that is unpopular if voted for and unpopular if not voted for the Senate made the unpopular decision to pass and it is now heading to the house. Now we see Obama at least putting forth the effort and image by speaking at the Senate while where is McCain? 24hrs from NYC to D.C.? No speeches? Call off Debates to work on Bill? Well at least he voted unlike the 40 or so more missed votes he has than Obama, although to be fair most Presidential candidates miss a lot of votes. I wonder what Palin would have done if given the opportunity to vote or even speak and address senate on this issue? Golden Parachutes are handed out and whether or not popular it is the necessary evil at this point. I guess at least as Pundits put it we didn't get another Miss South Carolina speech from Palin on this issue to quickly kill McCain's credibility even further.

The US Senate has passed a reworked version of a multi-billion dollar financial package aka the Bail out Bill, designed to resuscitate the economy by a 74 to 25 votes, after adding several “sweeteners” including multiple tax breaks for businesses and greater security for bank deposits.
The new version of the bill included temporarily raising the limit on the size of bank deposit guaranteed by the government federal to $250,000 (£136,000) from $100,000 (£54,000).

A bundle of tax-breaks, for research and development and companies using alternative energy that was due to be part of different legislation was added on in an effort to win over Republicans worried that too much public money was being used.

After the collapse of six major US financial institutions and falling stock markets around the world, George W Bush was joined by both candidates to succeed him in urging the Congress and the public to accept the bill, which would use up to £380 billion in taxpayers’ money to buy bad assets on Wall Street.

Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain were both present for the vote, which was missed only by the ailing Edward Kennedy.

"I commend the Senate for tonight's strong, bipartisan vote," Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in a statement on the 74-25 vote. "This sends a positive signal that we stand ready to protect the U.S. economy by making sure that Americans have access to the credit that is needed to create jobs and keep businesses going. I urge the House to act promptly to pass this bill."

Deliberations took place behind the scenes Wednesday, as senators added breaks and sweeteners to their version of the economic rescue plan.

Ok so the Political Cartoon of the day really doesn't have much to do with the election this year a whole lot, but todays article does deal with foreign policy and this political cartoon really does deal with foreign policy. This cartoon also was just a unique find for me since it is kind of old and quite witty. You could take this political cartoon and replace the swastica with a particular garment and suddenly it would become quite relevant but we wont discuss that too much. So lets just get on to the real foreign policy relevant to the modern world instead of an old political cartoon.

The Illinois senator has over the past two days escalated a campaign to minimize Iraq in the context of the overall war on terror.

Obama on Wednesday stressed the need to secure loose nuclear material and draw down nuclear stockpiles around the world. He said if the nation devoted just one month of Iraq combat costs, estimated to be $10 billion, it could virtually wipe out the threat of weapons-grade nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists.

In what was billed as a major foreign policy address Tuesday, Obama said the Iraq war has become a distraction from fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and pledged to end the war by the summer of 2010.

Barack Obama’s continued call for a troop withdrawal timetable in Iraq has critics complaining that he’s set on that policy before even taking his highly anticipated trip to the Middle East.

“He’s going to Iraq but he’s already decided his position,” Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, a top John McCain supporter, told FOX News on Wednesday. “He’s not going to listen to (David) Petraeus. He’s not going to listen to our troops. He’s not going to listen to his own eyes with what he sees there.”

The McCain campaign seized on an editorial Wednesday in The Washington Post that criticized Obama for sticking with his 16-month troop withdrawal timeline, even after hinting that he would “refine” his policy after visiting Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timeline is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq,” the editorial said. “American commanders will probably tell Mr. Obama that from a logistical standpoint, a 16-month withdrawal timetable will be difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill. … If Mr. Obama really intends to listen to such advisers, why would he lock in his position in advance?”

McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann said on a conference call that Obama’s plan is an “ideologically driven commitment to withdrawing at any cost.”

“The American people have had enough of inflexibility on national security policy,” he said, obliquely criticizing the Bush administration.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement that Obama was also “committing to a policy” for Afghanistan before even visiting the country, and that “Barack Obama has shown he views foreign policy through a lens of ideology rather than through looking at facts.”

The Obama campaign argues that McCain is just now “waking up” to problems in Afghanistan, and claims he has no workable plan for either conflict.

Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice said on a conference call that McCain “wants to stay indefinitely at high-troop levels in Iraq, regardless of the situation, whether it’s improving or deteriorating.”

Obama released a new ad Wednesday addressing his national security platform.

“Forty years ago it was missile silos and the Cold War. Today, it’s cyber attacks, loose nukes, oil money funding terrorism,” the narrator in the ad says. “Barack Obama understands our changing world.”

As for the Washington Post editorial, she said it represented a narrow-minded approach to a broad set of national security threats.

“The Post would have you believe that we have the luxury of worrying only about one challenge and, whether it’s going well or going poorly, the answer is the same: to stay indefinitely,” she said.

“But we have a fundamental difference on the threat environment that we face globally.”

Obama and McCain: The effect of economy on Polls & Todays Political Cartoon

So what do the polls say now? A little less hacker this week and a little more poll talk, things seem to be not so up in the air anymore. I thought that today's political cartoon, though old, was quite fitting. This cartoon is just a portrayal of the polling process and what it does to the candidates. So now let the cartoon be the introduction to the following, almost, report.

With four months to go until Election Day, the outcome is set in stone, barring some sort of miracle, some experts say.

Unfortunately for John McCain's chances, the economy is very weak, and almost everything else is going against him as well, which means Barack Obama will almost certainly be elected president.

That's the view of the overwhelming majority of social scientists who make it their business to peer into the future.

With four months to go until Election Day, the outcome is set in stone, barring some sort of miracle, they say.

The poor state of the economy, the casualties in Iraq, the unpopularity of George W. Bush, the current polling, and Obama's own political skills all point to the election of the Illinois Democrat in November, according to several political scientists, historians and economists who've had a pretty good track record in predicting past elections.

According to their models, it won't be close. Most of them are projecting a 52% to 48% victory for Obama, and that's with assumptions about the economy that are very kind to McCain.

Political scientists noted long ago that presidential elections are fairly predictable because they usually turn on several big issues: How's the economy doing? Is there an unpopular war? Has one party outlived its welcome at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Is one of the candidates a once-in-a-generation leader? Has the current administration done anything outstanding, or scandalous?

Obama it is!

What actually happens during a campaign -- the ads, the debates, the whistle-stop tours, the endorsements and the innuendo - don't really change the basic landscape that will determine who's in and who's out. In most of the models, it doesn't even matter much who the candidates are, any Democrat and Republican would do as well.

Of course, all these models assume that this year's campaign will be pretty much like those in the past. A major gaffe or stumble by Obama, or superb campaign by McCain could change the dynamics. So could outside events that alter the election landscape.

There's a whole cottage industry of experts who develop statistical models based on past elections and crunch the numbers to try to predict November's vote now. Almost all of the models say Obama will win.

This election could challenge the models' accuracy, for several reasons.

It's unclear how much Obama's race will influence voters; we've never had an African-American as a major candidate before.

And, for the first time since 1952, no incumbent president or vice president is running. McCain could expose flaws in the models if he's able to distance himself from Bush enough. Most of the models assume that the voters will reward or punish the incumbent party candidate in line with how the incumbent has performed.

And What the Models Are Saying

By Lichtman's reckoning, seven of the 13 keys are leaning against McCain, and that doesn't even count on Obama being considered charismatic, or on the economy falling into a recession this year. Since polls show the vast majority of voters think the economy is in a recession, we ought to hand Obama that key as well. Perceptions matter more than the technical declaration of a recession.

Yale economist Ray Fair has been at this game a long time too. His model is based on three economic variables, and now predicts McCain will get 48% of the votes. Fair's model had done a good job through the 1988 election, but has drifted further from the actual results in recent contests. You can plug in your own assumptions about the economy and make your own predictions on Fair's website.

The granddaddy of the prediction models is American University historian Allan Lichtman's 13 keys to the White House, which include factors such as the economy, foreign policy, scandals, social unrest and even the charisma of the candidates. No one's been elected president since 1860 without holding most of the keys to victory.

Economist Douglas Hibbs expanded on Fair's idea by including a war variable, which hurts the incumbent party if there are significant casualties in an undeclared war. Hibbs' "Bread and Peace" model explains Eisenhower's victory in 1952 and Nixon's win in 1968. The unpopular war could also be a factor in 2008, but the weak economy is a much bigger reason why the Republicans are likely to get just 48% of the votes this year.

"Support for the two major parties has solidified as the parties and their supporters have become increasingly divided along ideological lines," Abramowitz said. "Growing polarization may weaken the effects of short-term forces such as the economy and presidential approval." The approval rating of the president is one of three variables in Abramowitz's model.

Political scientist Alan Abramowitz of Emory University says his "Time for a Change" model is forecasting a Democratic landslide of about 54% to 46%. But Abramowitz doesn't think it'll be that much of a blowout because there are fewer true independents these days.

Political Cartoons for your Pleasure

Electronic Voting---How Safe are the 2008 Elections Going to Really Be?

The following article is a good example of what we face in the future of elections as we steadily move towards electronic voting during our elections. Beyond the chances of these machines being compromised by politicians and their circle of friends we also face problems regarding the software of the machines themselves. As many companies continue to insist that it would be impossible to compromise a machine during an election this article goes to show that an Obama v. McCain election could very well be compromised with the use of electronic voting. I will be the first to admit that something like the following is not the easiest of things to do and that we most likely will not face a plague of hacked voting machines but a couple machines in a couple of key counties in a couple of key states could prove to be more than enough as elections are becoming tighter and tighter races. Also I think it is a fair assumption to think that if voter fraud were to become a major problem during a presidential election that this election would be a large target. With a black presidential nominee with possibly a female vice president, if he so chooses, and a republican nominee who currently is slightly lagging in polls and has issues with the public because of his close ties to the current president, many organizations may find that their only hope of winning is to tamper with a voting machine. Now I know that voter fraud has existed for years and that to think that elections are completely and 100% free of any tampering is naive and irresponsible, but with the advent of electronic voting the tactics used become harder to trace, harder to prove, harder to fix, and easier to do. Please read the following article with a lens that will shed insight into the possibilities of our upcoming election. Then ask yourself; What can we do about this?, Is electronic voting really worth the risk of implementation?, is there a better way to improve the voting procedure?

What it Means to Be A Hacker:

My most recent confrontation with what it means to be a hacker started in March of 2006, after I went to vote for the local council of Amsterdam. At the polling station, I had to use a brand-new electronic voting machine that the city was renting from a company called Sdu. In fact, Amsterdam had contracted the entire election as a turnkey service, Sdu was even training the poll-workers. This "voting machine" was in fact a computer with a touch screen running Windows. To make maters worse: inside each computer was a GPRS wireless modem that sent the election results to Sdu, which in turn told the city. I had not been blind to the problems of electronic voting before, but now I was having my face rubbed in it, and it hurt.

Perhaps I should quickly introduce myself. My name is Rop Gonggrijp and I'm a dutch national that lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Some of you will know me as I have been mentioned in this magazine as well as been a regular guest on Off the Hook for almost as long as the show exists. I'm one of the main organizers for these Dutch hacker events. Between 1989 and 1993 I published Hack-Tic, a magazine not unlike 2600 except that it was written in Dutch. During the late Hack- Tic years I co-founded XS4ALL, which still is one of the larger ISPs in The Netherlands.

I guess I became part of the hacker community sometime during the early 1980s while playing with my fathers 300 baud acoustic modem, although arguably I was hacking before when I was soldering FM- transmitters together with a friend at age 12. But after reading Steven Levy's book 'Hackers, heroes of the computer revolution', I knew what I was and that I was to be part of a global community, even if I could only knew a few other hackers around me.

Imagine my relief when I went to Hamburg for the 1988 Chaos Communication Congress to find a few hundred other hackers. After that I was hooked, and by 1989 I was one of the organizers of the first European hacker event: the Galactic Hacker Party. Long and formative years of exploration, mayhem and mischief followed, during which, among many other things, we found and shared many new and interesting ways of making free phone calls.

And when we got our hands on the keys to the nuclear bunkers that underlied some subway stations in Amsterdam, we promptly organized tours there for all our friends and their friends. But even behind the greatest mischief was the motivation to educate, to sharpen the minds of fellow hackers and of the population at large.

XS4ALL, the Internet provider, was much more a political statement than anything else. The Internet back then would never make any money: way too difficult and freaky for the general population. I left XS4ALL in 1997 and started a computer security consultancy, and then after that a company that builds voice encrypting mobile phones, but I kept going to hacker events and co-organizing our own event every four years.

Fast forward to 2006 and the local elections. I was angry because I felt my election had been stolen: there was no way to observe a count, one just had to believe that this wireless-equipped black-box Windows machine was counting honestly. I knew a little bit too much about the risks associated with computer technology to go along with that. I wasn't the only one that was angry: my longtime friend Barry came home from that March 2006 election with the exact same story that I had come home with: trying to reason with poll-workers that clearly felt that only the medically paranoid would distrust such a wonderful shiny box. When we met later that day we vowed to not only get mad, but to do something about it.

Which wasn't going to be all that easy. By the time Amsterdam had gotten electronic voting, it was pretty late in the game: Amsterdam (pop. ~750k) was the last city in The Netherlands (pop. 16.5M) to get electronic voting. Some cities were renting the same system as Amsterdam, but the vast majority was using an older system made by a company called Nedap. While I studied the legal requirements for electronic voting, I became even more convinced that all of these 'machines' (that were all in fact computers) needed to go if we were to have transparent and verifiable elections.

The regulations treated these systems as if they were indeed mere 'machines': they worried about the amounts of humidity and vibration they could withstand and they made sure nobody would get shocked from touching one. Computer security wasn't even mentioned. But the biggest problem wasn't the lack of security, it was the lack of transparency. We got together a small group of like-minded people and started planning a campaign.

There had been previous attempts to raise the question trustworthiness in relation to voting machines, but the ministry of the interior was used to painting the opponents of electronic voting as technophobe luddites. Given that half our group consisted of hi-tech-loving hackers this was an approach that wasn't going to work this time.

During the next year and a half we managed to get the attention of the media. (((Believe it or not, this has always been a hacker specialty.)))

We claimed that the Nedap 'machines' were computers and not 'dedicated hardware' (as the manufacturer claimed) and that they could just as easily be taught to play chess or lie about election results. The person selling these computers in the Netherlands wrote wonderful long rants on his website, and in reaction to our claim he said he did not believe his 'machines' could play chess.

So we caused a true media frenzy when we got hold of a Nedap voting computer and made it play chess. (We also made it lie about election results.) There was a debate in parliament, during which the responsible minister promised to appoint two committees. That next election, an international election observation mission studied the problems with electronic voting in the country which until then had always been the example country for uncontroversial e-Voting. In their report, they advised that this type of voting computers "should be phased out" and the two committees also wrote very harsh reports about how these 'machines' came about and how they should not be used in the future.

A lot more happened: we threatened to take the government to court on several occasions, and we even won a case in which the Nedap approval was nullified. But by then the ministry had already decided to throw in the towel, retracting the legislation that allows electronic voting. The next elections in The Netherlands will be held using pencils and paper. (Which is really quite OK since over here we've only got one race per election, so counting by hand isn't all that hard.)

One of the things that struck me about this campaign is that in order to win, we've needed almost every hacker-skill imaginable. (((The converse to this interesting statement is that there isn't a single political skill which can't be hackerized.)))

Imagine all the stuff you can learn from this magazine, or from going to (or helping organize) a hacker convention. From general skills such as dealing with the media or writing press-releases to social engineering (getting hold of the system), lockpicking (showing the mechanical locks were bogus, the same 1 Euro key was used all over the country), reverse engineering (modifying their 68000 code without access to source) and system administration (website). Having published a hacker magazine and done the ISP, I was no stranger to conflict: at XS4ALL we had had serious issues with the infamous 'church' of Scientology as well as with the German government. Also the international contacts I got from growing up in the hacker community paid off: the hack was very much a Dutch-German project, and we're still working together tightly to also get rid of these same 'machines' in Germany. At certain moments I had the funny feeling that somehow this was the project that I had been in training for all these years.

So I guess what I'm saying is that if you are a hacker, if you're going to hacker conventions, if you like figuring stuff out or if you are building your own projects.... Please realize that, possibly by accident, you may also possess some truly powerful skills that can help bring about political change, and that these skills will become more and more important as technology becomes a bigger part of ever more political debates. So if you don't like the news: go out and make some of your own!

(This Article was taken from the 2600 Magazine and written by Rop Gonggrijp)

Obama Polls: Election 08 Obama v McCain

For the Political Cartoon of the Day I think it appropriate to go with the following cartoon which deals with the concept of electronic voting in the upcoming election. After today I am going to start dealing with some of the issues surrounding the election itself instead of just the candidates. I think this political cartoon shows what is at the heart of the election but by the voting population is not paid really any attention. Soon I will get back discussing the politicians and their ideals and ideas but for now I will just discuss the current issue of polls surrounding the candidates and how we are getting a little carried away and then the Electronic Voting Issues for a few Days. I will also be doing a post or two of just some funny and interesting Political Cartoons and Videos of the 2008 Elections. Today though we are just going to deal with the overwhelming number of polls and what exactly to they really mean?

“It’s increasingly clear from our ‘poll of polls’ average that Sen. Obama holds a small advantage over Sen. McCain as we head into the general election,” says CNN Senior Political Researcher Alan Silverleib. “Time will tell whether Obama's lead is a temporary bounce resulting from the end of the Democratic nomination fight, or whether it is a more permanent reflection of voters’ desire for change this year.”

The latest edition of the CNN Poll of Polls is an average of four new national surveys, a Gallup poll taken from June 9-12, an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey conducted from June 6-9, a Diageo/Hotline poll taken from June 5-8, and our own CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey conducted from June 4-5. The CNN Poll of Polls does not have a sampling error. Which in my opinion is kind of hard to understand considering my stats background.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Obama holds a six point lead over his Republican counterpart McCain a new CBS News poll finds. Obama leads McCain 48 percent to 42 percent among registered voters, with 6 percent of respondents undecided.

The poll contains troubling signs for Obama as he looks to mobilize the Democratic Party behind him following his long and sometimes bitter battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, however.

So what polls are to be trusted? We know that with the White Male vote McCaine leads Obama by double digits and is also ahead of Obama in the Suburban Moms demographic while Obama leads in the Lation, Young Voters, and overall Women Demographic. All of this information leads to inconclusive evidence seemingly pointing us to the conclusion that as of yet we have not decided what we want as a country. We also know that 68% of all previous Clinton voters are saying they will vote Obama in the upcoming election while nearly 10 % are undecided and the rest say they will vote for McCain.

Twelve percent of Democrats say they will support McCain in the general election. That's higher than the 8 percent of Democrats who defected to President Bush in 2004. Nearly a quarter of Clinton supporters say they will back McCain instead of Obama in the general election.

McCain leads Obama by 8 points among registered independent voters, considered a key voting block in November. The Arizona senator leads Obama 46 percent to 38 percent, with 11 percent of respondents undecided.

And overall we know that the margin of error in a complete poll still overlaps leading to a direct tie between the two candidates in terms of the upcoming election. This year seems to show though that we are beginning to try a predict a little too much when we really don't have the information necessary to make any kind of informed decision, we still have not heard the two in a head to head debate with a widely publicized and distribution model and we still do not know at what point the two candidates are going to pick their running mates. Although many voters feel that the running mate does not bear too much weight on their decision for president I think that this year we could see a large change in that viewpoint if Obama were to pick Hillary as a running mate or McCain to pick another female as well. I also think it is quite plausible that McCain could pick somebody from the state of Alaska as his running mate for reasons of shared interest with the Bush Administration in terms of drilling, ecspecially with the rising price of gasoline in this country.

Clinton caught in Lie about Sniper in Bosnia and Political Cartoon of the Day

Todays political cartoon is a reminder of what Barack and Hillary's strategy should be in pursuing the Whitehouse. This cartoon emphasis the important aspect of the current political climate for the Democrats. Quit attacking each other and continue reminding the public of what the real problem is, not what our pastors say or who ducked out sniper fire or not. Although that is another pretty funny story in itself. Hillary is just getting old and it is affecting her memory.

Dilating on her extensive experience of foreign affairs, the New York senator told a campaign event last week that she vividly remembered how, with the Balkans still a cauldron of war, she had flown into an airfield under sniper fire. She had had to dash, head-down from the aircraft, she told the spellbound audience, to the safety of waiting cars, and the planned traditional arrival ceremony had been hastily canceled in the mêlée.

It sounded thrilling - like something out of a Tom Clancy novel. The problem was, it probably did come out of a Tom Clancy novel. It was pure fiction.

A good memory is needed once we have lied,” observed Pierre Corneille, the 17th-century French tragedian. He was right. The complexities involved in keeping an untruth plausible and consistent are so tortuous that to be really good at lying demands exceptional recall of what was said when and where.

But Corneille was writing before the age of YouTube. Nowadays, no amount of familiarity with memory's labyrinth will save you when there is downloadable disproof at the click of a mouse button. So Hillary Clinton discovered this week, when she was caught out in a prize fib about a trip she made to Bosnia when she was First Lady 12 years ago.

CBS unearthed some news video of the arrival ceremony and it was promptly disseminated on YouTube. There was Mrs Clinton, serene and smiling, strolling with her entourage from the plane, head held high, and in no evident danger from snipers, terrorists, or even the odd slightly miffed Serb. Seconds later she was being greeted in what looked very much like a traditional arrival ceremony on the tarmac where a small girl embraced her and the two chatted warmly for a while. I've been in more physical danger coming out of the car park at Heathrow.

Confronted with the incontrovertible evidence Mrs Clinton acknowledged this week that she “misspoke”. Misspeak is an Orwellian term deployed by politicians to describe what has happened when they have been caught in a barefaced lie.

The Clintons have a well-formed habit of misspeaking. Bill Clinton, of course, was always doing it. But his wife has also over the years mastered the art of misspeaking in what Mark Twain once described as an “experienced, industrious, ambitious and often quite picturesque” way.

She has misspoken on any number of occasions when the straight truth might have been very damaging: over her involvement in the various scandals of the early Clinton years. But alongside these instrumental whoppers, there have been some befuddlingly pointless little tiddlers too.

When she ran for New York senator she claimed to have been a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees even though no one could recall her ever having expressed the slightest interest in or knowledge of the baseball team.

For no obvious reason she once claimed her parents named her after Sir Edmund Hillary, even though she was born more than five years before the mountaineer's ascent of Everest, when he was known by almost no one outside New Zealand.

In fact the facility with which the Clintons misspeak is so pronounced that it is quite possible they have genuinely forgotten how to tell the plain truth. There was no real need for Mrs Clinton to make the claim about landing in sniper fire. But the compulsion to embroider, to dissemble and to dissimulate is now so entrenched in the synapses of the Clinton brain that it came to her as naturally as the truth would to a slow-witted innocent.

Someone once noted that the thing about the Clintons is that they will choose a big lie when a small lie will do, and choose a small lie when the truth will do. Most of the time they get away with it. But occasionally, an inconvenient truth, like a blue dress with DNA on it, or some forgotten news footage, shows up and damns them.

With this latest deceit stripped away, there is not much left to Mrs Clinton's disintegrating campaign for the Democratic nomination. It capped a bad week for her, a week that might have signalled the end of her hopes.

With a deft speech that was somewhat lacking in complete honesty itself, Barack Obama last week seemed to have acquitted himself quite well, for now, of the charge of being an associate of a ranting, anti-American black preacher. More important, the collapse last week of efforts to schedule a new vote in Florida and Michigan, two states whose earlier primary votes have been disqualified, was deadly to Mrs Clinton. It is now virtually impossible for her to finish ahead of Mr Obama in the delegate count when the primary season ends in early June.

That really ought to be that. After that final primary in Puerto Rico on June 1, Mr Obama will have won more states, more delegates and more popular votes than Mrs Clinton. How in those circumstances can Mrs Clinton claim a moral case for staying in the race?

Her answer is to persuade the party's super-delegates - top party leaders and elected officials who will have the casting votes - that she is more electable than Mr Obama, and that they would be doing the party a favour if they chose her over the wishes of the tens of millions of people who have voted in the primaries.

They are unlikely to be taken in. They are more likely to view it as another example of Senator Clinton's misspeaking. forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia lie sniper lie sniper lie sniper lie
The Bosnia misspeak, unnecessary as it was, revealed much, however. It helped to expose a much bigger untruth Mrs Clinton has been peddling throughout the Democratic primary campaign - that her time in the White House means she has the necessary foreign policy experience to be president. forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia lie sniper lie sniper lie sniper lie

First Ladies don't acquire real foreign policy experience. We know that Mrs Clinton did not, as she claimed, play a large role in the Northern Ireland peace process, that she was not, as she claimed, a key voice in counsels on the Balkans, and that she did not even have security clearance in the White House for the most sensitive of conversations about national security.

So the problem with the ripping yarn about the Bosnia snipers is that it offers hard evidentiary disproof of improbable claims about her role during the White House years.

forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia lie sniper lie sniper lie sniper lie political cartoon is something we need to laugh at, because a political cartoon is funny as hell. Who doesn't like a political cartoon because political cartoon s are what makes things easier for us to deal with politically. The political cartoon is also a nice reminder of current events and a political cartoon makes certain topics relavent to people who would normally not pay attention

Reverend Wright, Barack Obama, and the Political Cartoon of the Day

In Todays Political Cartoon we are touching the whole race and religion theme that is seemingly coming to face again in the political forefront. The Political Cartoon was taken from LostNation.tv. Now that we are done with the Political Cartoon we will touch on Rev. Wright and his role in the life of Barack Obama.


With Racism playing a newly found large role in this years election we are not only seeing the Clinton campaign as the perpetrator of the racist remarks. As Hillary Clinton as had to denounce previous statements made by members in her campaign, Barack Obama has had to deal witht the words of a previous pastor of his Reverend Wright. Rev. Wright had baptized Obama and has had a solid relationship with him for years. The problems is the views of Wright on many social issues and the most recent statements regarding being black in the United states and the concept that Hillary Clinton has no idea about the racism that exudes from many in this country. Below is a video, taken from the self admitted HORRENDOUS news network Fox News, where we can see Wright's comments regarding Clinton and race.


It will be interesting to see how this will affect the current climate in the Obama campaign and to see just how Obama will react. In other news we have Obama dealing with Jewish Concerns.

Here is the Times’ front-page profile of Obama’s mother. It’s a fascinating read. “Though it is impossible to pinpoint the imprint of a parent on the life of a grown child, people who knew Ms. Soetoro well say they see her influence unmistakably in Mr. Obama.”

Obama didn't appreciate the Wayne Allard stunt that called for appropriating every Obama presidential proposal. Apparently Schumer called Allard an a**, though Allard said the amendment wasn't his idea. Obama apparently asked Allard, "You working this hard," Allard shot back: "Vote yes." Allard, by the way, didn't vote for his own amendment.

Obama continues to make efforts to allay Jewish concerns. "Barack Obama has a solid Senate record in support of Israel… Yet there is unease among some Jewish voters about the Illinois senator and Democratic presidential contender. Why? Part of it is a division between blacks and Jews that's been growing for years, a split that Obama has challenged fellow blacks to confront. Another element is the praise Obama has received from Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, whose disparaging comments about Judaism are toxic to many voters. Obama's own pastor has a history of supporting Palestinian causes."

“Finally, there are rumors and outright lies about the candidate that have gained an audience through repetition in e-mails and on Web sites. Obama is working hard to win over this vocal, powerful and reliably Democratic voting bloc. Jews have accounted for about 4 percent of Democratic primary voters so far this year, and Clinton has held a 52-46 percent edge over Obama among them, according to exit polls.”

“On the day of the Mississippi primary this week, Obama took time to call Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to express condolences over the deadly terrorist attack on a rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem. He also reaffirmed his support for Israel's right to defend itself and for its commitment to negotiations with Palestinians and underscored the need to stop Iran from supporting terrorism or getting nuclear weapons. The effort by the candidate and his advisers to calm disquiet among Jewish voters began more than a year ago."

Where do Jews go if Obama is the nominee? How big of a problem is this for him? Does it put Florida in jeopardy if enough older Jewish voters end up going for McCain?

The New York Post looks at the comments made by Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, “who stepped down from his post after 36 years, preaches a form of black liberation theology, stressing ties to Africa and ways to empower Chicago's struggling black community.”

Ferraro Says comment wasn't racist and Political Cartoon of the Day

Maybe this political cartoon is a little old but I think that this cartoon shows the inherent abrasive nature that the Clinton campaign seems to be pulling off. Yes it was Ferraro who made the comments but as of yet she has not been asked to resign. This political cartoon is just a little representative of the current demeanor that the Clinton Campaign is giving off to the public. Regarding Ferraro directly, well, just take a gander at the following:

"My comments have been taken so out of context and been spun by the Obama campaign as racist," she said on ABC's "This Morning America." "That, you know is doing precisely what they don't want done -- it's going to [divide] the Democratic Party and dividing us even more."

Geraldine Ferraro, a onetime Democratic vice presidential nominee and current Clinton fundraiser, continued to insist today that she is being unfairly criticized for comments on Barack Obama that implied the Illinois senator has done well in the presidential race because he is black.

Ferraro, the first woman to be on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate in either party, ignited a controversy when she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance that: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman [of any color] he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Ferraro, a former congresswoman from New York, said she was "hurt, absolutely hurt by how they have taken this thing and spun it to sort of imply in any way, in any way, I am a racist." But she said she was "absolutely not" sorry she had said Obama was benefiting from his status as the first African American perceived as having the chance to win the presidency.

"I was talking about historic candidacies," she said. "In 1984, if my name were Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been chosen as the vice president."

But Obama, interviewed on NBC's "Today," said Ferraro's comments are absurd on their face.

"If you were to get a handbook on what's the path to the presidency, I don't think that the handbook would start by saying, 'Be an African American named Barack Obama.' I don't think that would be generally considered an advantage, and it certainly wasn't when I was running for the United States Senate or the presidency."

Saying that he respects Ferraro as "a trailblazer," Obama accused her of participating in "the kind of slice-and-dice politics that's about race and about gender and about this and that, and that's what Americans are tired of because they recognize that when we divide ourselves in that way, we can't solve problems."

On Tuesday, Clinton distanced herself from the remarks, but said intemperate remarks are a problem on both sides. Obama expressed distaste.

In a brief Associated Press interview Tuesday while she campaigned in Harrisburg, Pa., Clinton said she did not agree with Ferraro. She added, "It's regrettable that any of our supporters -- on both sides, because we both have this experience -- say things that kind of veer off into the personal."

Obama, in an interview with the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., said, "I don't think Geraldine Ferraro's comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive. I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd. And I would expect that the same way those comments don't have a place in my campaign they shouldn't have a place in Sen. Senator Clinton's either."

But Ferraro, who ran on on Walter F. Mondale's losing ticket in 1984, dug in her heels.

"I'm sorry that people thought it was racist," Ferraro told Fox News on Tuesday. She said she was not acting as a Clinton representative, but was promoting a speech she had been paid to make, and resented the implication that she vets what she says with anyone.

"She can't rein me in," said Ferraro, referring to Clinton.

Later, in a statement that was e-mailed to reporters, Clinton's campaign manager, Maggie Williams, echoed Clinton. Her statement began with an Obama quote made in January while he was speaking to NBC's Tim Russert: "I think that, as Hillary said, our supporters, our staff, get overzealous."

"We agreed then," wrote Williams. "We agree today. Supporters from both campaigns will get overzealous."

Last week, one of Obama's unpaid foreign policy advisors, Harvard professor Samantha Power, resigned from his campaign after calling Clinton a "monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper. She apologized and blamed fatigue.

Ferraro, for her part, told Fox News that "if it makes David [Axelrod] happy, I would get off the [Clinton] finance committee."

But, she added, referring to Axelrod, "He shouldn't really antagonize people like me." If Obama is nominated, Axelrod "is going to come to me and ask me to raise money for Barack Obama, and I will do it for him, too, if he stops doing this kind of horrendous attack."

Alluding to Power in a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, said: "Ferraro should be denounced and censured by the campaign. Samantha resigned because it was not consistent with the kind of campaign we want to run. We want a candidate and president who will live by their words."

Clinton with Obama as Running Mate and Politcal Cartoon of the Day

A little Finance Humor with today's Political Cartoon as we come to the home stretch of the Clinton v. Obama Battle. Now for real news.

Campaigning in Mississippi over the weekend, the former president was quoted as saying his wife and Obama could form "an almost unstoppable force."

After winning the Democratic primaries in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island last week, Senator Clinton suggested that she and Obama might end up on the same ticket, with her at the top of it.

Hillary and Bill Clinton have been talking up the idea that Barack Obama, whom they have called too inexperienced to be president, would make a strong running mate on a ticket headed by the New York senator.

Obama won the Wyoming caucuses Saturday, and the latest polls show him leading in tomorrow's primary in Mississippi. He is ahead of Clinton in pledged delegates, but neither candidate is expected to obtain the 2,025 needed for the nomination in the remaining state contests.

As of last night, Obama had 1,578 delegates and Clinton had 1,468. Democratic leaders worry about the damage that could be done if neither Clinton nor Obama has a clear lead by the August nominating convention.

In hailing Obama as a possible vice president, the Clintons are reaching out to him and, perhaps more important, to his backers, whose support she would need to defeat John McCain in the November election.

"The Clintons are in a difficult position," said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Iowa, who has tracked the presidential race.

"If she wins the Democratic presidential nomination, she would need Obama's supporters. But she needs to be careful. If this talk of him on the ticket is seen as a cynical maneuver, it could backfire and hurt her," Goldford said.

The Clintons have charged that the charismatic senator from Illinois lacks the experience to handle an international crisis as president. But since Clinton won the Ohio and Texas primaries, she and her husband have repeatedly touted Obama as a possible running mate.

When asked about the possibility last week, Obama said he was focused on winning the nomination.

"I think it is very premature to start talking about a joint ticket," he said.

Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who has endorsed Obama, derided the Clintons' suggestion.

"The first threshold question about a vice president is, are you prepared to be president?" Kerry said yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation."

"So on the one end, they are saying he's not prepared to be president. On the other hand, they're saying maybe he ought to be vice president," Kerry said.

Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota also mocked the idea.

"It may be the first time in history that the person who is running number two would offer the person running number one the number two position," Daschle said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who has sought to rally support for Clinton in his state's April 22 primary, backed the idea of Clinton and Obama teaming up.

Pennsylvania, the biggest remaining state in the race for the nomination, should be a safe win for Clinton, but analysts say there are pockets of vulnerability for Obama to exploit - and plenty of time to do it.

"If the election were held today it would probably be Senator Clinton by 10 points, but seven weeks in this crazy race, anything can happen," said Clay Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

A win in Pennsylvania could be crucial to Clinton's hopes of gaining support from "superdelegates" - elected officials and party insiders who can vote at the convention as they choose.

Mark Nevins, communications director for Clinton's campaign in Pennsylvania, said the state was "a proving ground."

"You can't really expect to win the general election if you can't win Pennsylvania," he said.

"Pennsylvania has more Catholics, more union members, more older voters, and fewer African-Americans," said Terry Madonna, politics professor at Franklin & Marshall College. "This is pretty much a Clinton state. It's hers to lose."

The demographics are similar to those of Ohio, which Clinton won by 54 percent to 44 percent. Madonna said Clinton also can play the "hometown" card because her father was born in Scranton.

Clinton will focus on healthcare and the economy to target the large population of seniors and union members, which is higher than the national average, Nevins said.

Richards of Quinnipiac said Obama must do three things to have a chance of winning: boost turnout among black voters, which is historically low in primaries; motivate students at the state's numerous universities and colleges; and win over affluent voters in the Philadelphia suburbs where Clinton is vulnerable.

Sean Smith, a spokesman for Obama, contends that the demographics claimed as friendly by the Clinton campaign had helped Obama win Wisconsin and could do so again.

"We did extremely well in Wisconsin with the same types of voters," he said, pointing to older voters who were "absolutely open" to Obama's message of hope and change and "bringing the country together to solve our problems."

News on Obama & Clinton in Wyoming and Today's Political Cartoon

Well Todays Political Cartoon is dealing with the current market trends and the concept of our Spending habits. I mean this cartoon doesn't even touch the fact that we are going to borrow the money for our next set of tax rebates from China. Hmmmm...Does that even make sense? Well This cartoon is at least funny. Now onto the real news.

With 96 percent of the precincts reporting, Obama had 59 percent to Clinton's 40 percent.

Democrats in Wyoming get little respect. The sparsely populated red state is home to just 218,000 thousand voters, most of them Republicans, like Wyoming's own Dick Cheney.

But this year, Clinton and Obama eagerly glad-handed voters across the state because even Wyoming -- with its 12 delegates -- counts.

Barack Obama won the Democratic caucuses today in Wyoming, a state the party's presidential candidates often overlook, but that in this nail-biter of a race saw heavy campaigning by both Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The excitement about the Democratic race was evident at the Teton County Caucus, held in Jackson. Originally scheduled for the Virginian motel, the caucus had to be moved to the larger Snow King Resort to accommodate the crowds that turned out.

In previous years, no more than 200 Democrats had ever turned out in Teton County, but this year Democratic State Committee chairwoman Lesley Peterson estimated the overflow crowd at 1000 or more by early evening.

The high turnout among Wyoming Democrats is more evidence of how tight the race is between Clinton and Obama nationwide.

A Newsweek poll released Friday found the rival candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in a statistical dead heat, with 45 percent of registered Democrats and Democratic leanings favoring Obama, and 44 percent favoring Clinton.

That marks the latest pendulum swing in a race that last year saw Clinton as the all-but-inevitable Democratic candidate, to Obama's decisive lead during a sweep of February primary states. The poll was based on telephone interviews with 1,215 registered voters March 5-6.

The Newsweek poll also shows neither candidate has an edge when it comes to voters' number-one concern: The foundering economy, with 43 percent favoring Obama, 42 percent preferring Clinton.

The poll does show that seven in 10 Democrats want that dream team: Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama.

Today, former president Bill Clinton for the first time sent a clear signal that the Clinton campaign has given serious consideration to that dream ticket too, combining Obama's urban appeal and Clinton's rural appeal.

"You look at the map of Texas and the map in Ohio, and the map in Missouri," Clinton said during a campaign stop on his wife's behalf in Mississippi, "You look at most of these places -- he would win the urban areas and the upscale voters, and she wins the traditional rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was president. If you put those two things together, you'd have an almost unstoppable force."

Obama said Friday he's not interested in holding the No. 2 slot on a Democratic dream team.

"You won't see me as a vice presidential candidate," Obama said in a radio interview.

Despite talk of a dream team, the bitter tone of the campaign for the White House is likely to get worse, with Clinton on the offensive and Obama walking a fine line, talking tough while trying to remain above the mudslinging.

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King gave a taste of what could lie ahead.

In an interview with KICD radio in Spencer, Iowa, the congressman virtually called him a terrorist ally.

"If he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al Qaeda, the radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets," King said. "They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name."

If he does win the nomination, Obama will have to respond to Republicans, and to his conservative critics who pointedly refer to him using his full name, Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama looking for the Knockout Punch and Political Cartoon of the Day

On the math side, it is a certainty that Sen. Barack Obama's lead in pledged delegates, at least 151, according to the Associated Press, after 11 straight victories last month, most of them by wide margins, is so wide that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot catch up with anything less than blowout victories in the 60-40 percent range in both states.


On the eve of the Democrats' second Super Tuesday, polling is so close in both Texas and Ohio that the Clinton and Obama campaigns are preparing their own spin on what will matter when the nation wakes up Wednesday morning: Will it be math or momentum?

On the momentum side, however, if Clinton wins both states, even narrowly, she could blunt Obama's momentum and generate some of her own. Headlines will declare a Clinton victory in two giant states, lifting some of the pressure on her from party leaders to exit the race.

Obama's best chance for a knockout blow is Texas, where polls have given him a slight edge.

"Obama, to stop her, really has to win one of the two big states. Then the delegate math does take over," said Tad Devine, a top strategist for the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns.

But if Clinton wins both, she is likely to stay in the race.

"Even if the math works in Obama's favor, if he loses two big states, I don't think that's how you win the nomination," Devine said. "You don't win the nomination by losing. You have to win the nomination by winning, or at least splitting ... I think it's going to be incumbent on Obama to win one of those big states if he wants the race to end tomorrow."

Seeming to concede that Clinton could win the popular vote in both states, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the race hinges instead on "the cold hard reality of the math."

There are 370 pledged delegates, the kind chosen by voters, at stake Tuesday in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. Even if Clinton ekes out victories in all four, she cannot begin to close the delegate gap because delegates are awarded based on vote shares. A close outcome will distribute the delegates nearly evenly in each state.

"If we can come out of Tuesday night's contests with a pledged delegate lead still healthy in our favor, and we're able to maintain or even build on it, I think that's going to be a major event in the nomination fight," Plouffe said. A close Clinton victory is "simply not good enough," he said, and will require "more creative math and tortured explanations" to conceive a path to the nomination.

For the Clinton campaign, Tuesday's votes are all about momentum: ending Obama's string of huge victories, generating a long-overdue win and allowing her to fight on to the Pennsylvania primary seven weeks away, hoping that Obama implodes in the meantime.

That breather would give Clinton time to press the hard-hitting attacks that seek to generate "buyer's remorse" among Obama supporters by undermining Obama's credibility on national security, trade and his relationship with Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko, whose racketeering trial has begun.

"We expect that by Wednesday morning, the momentum of Sen. Obama will be significantly blunted and new questions will be raised about whether he is the right nominee for our party," said top Clinton strategist Mark Penn.

"If we wake up Wednesday and Sen. Clinton wins Ohio and Texas, we have a whole new ballgame here," said Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson.

Clinton has watched her double-digit leads in both states vanish over the last two weeks, but her campaign said internal polling shows votes breaking her way. She would add two more big-state victories to her ledger, along with California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Ohio is critical in general elections, narrowly swinging for President Bush 2004. A Clinton win might persuade some super delegates - the elected and party officials who make up 20 percent of the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination - to stop jumping from Clinton's ship and allow her to continue the race.

By the same token, Clinton will be out of the race if she loses both Ohio and Texas and will find it all but impossible to continue if she loses one. The candidates are likely to split the two smaller states, as Clinton is ahead in Rhode Island and Obama in Vermont.

Garry South, a veteran Democratic strategist who once worked for California Gov. Gray Davis, said he voted for Clinton and feels bad for her but that Obama's advantage even now is overwhelming.

"The fact is, Barack Obama has been winning (earlier) states, not barely, but 2 to 1, 3 to 1," said South. "If she turns around and wins a close victory in Texas and Ohio, that doesn't change the momentum of the race" or flip Clinton's delegate count, in which South said she is "getting killed" by proportional delegate allocation.

"Look, I'm a world class spinner myself," South said. "I've had to spin myself in and out of all kinds of campaign situations over my 36 years in this business, but there comes a point where you can't spin away the facts."

Even if Clinton wins Texas and Ohio, however, she faces a tough calendar strikingly similar to the one she confronted after tying Obama on Super Tuesday Feb 5.

This time the wait for another big primary is even longer: seven weeks, not four, until Pennsylvania, with its 158 delegates and blue-collar base, where Clinton holds a large but declining lead. In between is a Wyoming caucus Saturday, exactly the kind of red-state, rally-style contest where Obama has a proven advantage. A week after tomorrow comes Mississippi, whose large African American population looks to be in Obama's pocket.

Though after Tuesday, there are still 611 delegates up for grabs in the remaining contests that end in June in Puerto Rico, many Democrats are eager for the rivalry to end so they can begin focusing on likely Republican nominee John McCain. Others worry that the sharply escalating negative attacks provide fodder for Republicans, who for now can sit back and let Democrats attack each other.

Some top superdelegates have begun to call for the race to end. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Sunday that whoever is ahead in pledged delegates after Tuesday should be the nominee. Neither candidate can win the Democratic nomination on pledged delegates alone, thanks to the proportional allocation of delegates.

"Some superdelegates might see (wins by Clinton today) as persuasive enough to take the pressure off of her to drop out," said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas in Austin. "They might then say, 'Go ahead and go through Pennsylvania, we won't gang up on you and attempt to get you to quit,' as was happening over the last week."

Clinton's negative attacks, and Obama's aggressive responses, have escalated in the last few days, but experts say they do not feel they have crossed the line to be damaging to either candidate.

"These are charges that certainly would come out in a general election against either of these two candidates," South said. "And they better damn well be prepared to deal with them in the fall. One of the ways you do that is by having to fend off these kinds of charges during the primary election campaign."

John Gilliom, a political scientist at Ohio University, said the candidates are still in a healthy process of "checking for glass jaws." Voters "want to know what Sen. Obama's answers are on the various questions she's been asking," he said. "They're going to be asked in a lot tougher way later on."

If anything, they may be toughening Obama, who has enjoyed positive press coverage and comparatively little scrutiny.

What Happened to Clinton Campaign and Political Cartoon of the Day

The cartoon of the day is just a quick little photo of Hillary Clinton in a rare moment releasing some stress. Lately I have been picking on her a little bit and maybe this cartoon will be the last for a little while? I try to be fair but I have noticed the trend and will try to remedy it. Now on to the real stuff

Hillary Clinton may be one of the most disciplined figures in national politics, but she has presided over a campaign operation riven by feuding, rival fiefdoms and second-guessing of top staff members.

Those tensions partly explain why Clinton today stands where, just a few months ago, few expected she'd be: struggling to catch up to Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. If she loses either of the crucial contests Tuesday in Texas and Ohio, Clinton may face calls from senior party officials to end her campaign.

As they mapped out a campaign schedule for Bill Clinton, top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton kept his time short in South Carolina. They were probably going to lose the state, they figured, and they wanted their most powerful surrogate to move on to Georgia, Alabama and other Southern states.

But the former president shelved the plan, according to campaign aides. Day after day he stayed in South Carolina, getting into angry confrontations with the press and others. In the end, Hillary Clinton lost the Jan. 26 vote there by a 2-to-1 margin and saw her standing with African Americans nationwide become strained.

Some polls show her leading in Ohio but tied in Texas; the race in both states is considered close.

Already, some in Clinton's senior staff are pointing fingers over what went wrong, with some of the blame aimed at Clinton herself. As the race unfolded, neither Clinton nor anyone else resolved the internal power struggles that played out with destructive effect and continue to this day.

Chief strategist Mark and pollster Penn clashed with senior advisor Harold Ickes, former deputy campaign manager Mike Henry and others. Field organizers battled with Clinton's headquarters in northern Virginia. Campaign themes were rolled out and discarded, reflecting tensions among a staff bitterly divided over what Clinton's basic message should be.

The dispute over Bill Clinton's schedule shows how easily plans can unravel. Some campaign staffers didn't expect to win South Carolina overall, but "our strategy was to go after specific districts in South Carolina" to add to the delegate total while freeing Bill Clinton to spend time in other Southern states, said a Clinton campaign aide.

But Bill Clinton said " 'I need to be in South Carolina,' " the aide said. "It was a one-man mission out there."

Obama, who leads Clinton in delegates, would pose problems for any candidate. But aides to Clinton said the dysfunction within her campaign team made its task that much tougher.

Joe Trippi, a senior advisor to John Edwards' now-dropped Democratic campaign, said: "At some point the candidate has to step in and bust heads and say 'Enough!'

"If there's fighting internally, the candidate has to step up and make it clear what direction she wants to go and stop this stuff dead in its tracks. Otherwise there's going to be a struggle for power and control right until the end. It's crippling."

Last month, after a series of defeats, Hillary Clinton chose a new campaign manager, replacing Patti Solis Doyle. But she left in place many senior people, including Penn and Ickes, who have been involved in incessant turf wars.

As the campaign faces a make-or-break moment, some high-level officials are trying to play down their role in the campaign. Penn said in an e-mail over the weekend that he had "no direct authority in the campaign," describing himself as merely "an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me."

By September, Iowa staff were sending out warnings about Obama's strength. "We are being outnumbered on the ground on a daily basis by his campaign, and it is beginning to show results," said a memo to top campaign officials on Sept. 26, about three months before the state's caucuses.

One running debate within Clinton's campaign was whether her defeats -- she has lost 11 straight contests -- were due to organizational lapses or a faulty message.

Some aides say organizational problems were the most significant, as Obama outworked Clinton in many states and sent in organizers earlier.

Obama beating Hillary, McCain Leads In Texas & Cartoon of the Day

In the Political Cartoon of the day we stray a little from the current events at hand and just let the Political Cartoon Itself make up for the lack of relevancy. Nothing better than a little nude Cartoon Bush to get a little laugh out of you. Now to some relevant issues.

In Houston on Thursday, McCain said he can pull conservative voters to his side for the general election because he offers clear policy differences with Clinton and Obama.

For instance, he remarked, "we are succeeding in Iraq, something that Senator Obama and Senator Clinton won't acknowledge."

As the Arizona senator acknowledged, he is still working on winning his party's nomination and the backing of many conservatives, who disagree with his push for earned citizenship opportunities for illegal immigrants, endorsement of campaign finance reforms and other issues.

Huckabee told a Waco audience he is the only true conservative in the race, and the only major candidate of either party "without a Washington address." Though trailing McCain badly in the national convention delegate count, Huckabee said he is not about to give up.

"You can beat me but you can't make me quit," Huckabee said with a defiant smile.

Clinton had held a lead in the race that evaporated in the past several weeks.

One area where she apparently bounced back in the past month was in fundraising. Obama shocked her in January by raising $36 million to her $14 million. Clinton aides told The Associated Press on Thursday that Clinton raised $35 million in February. Obama's campaign said he had raised more than $50 million in February, but did not release the amount.

"It was incredibly gratifying to see people come forth with this vote of confidence in me," Clinton told reporters in Hanging Rock, Ohio. "Obviously this is a tremendous benefit to my campaign."

The money could give Clinton the ability to soldier on even if Texas is a setback for her in the fight for delegates to the national nominating convention.

Clinton was in Houston on Thursday night for an energy summit.

Momentum is clearly on Obama's side, though. A Texas Democratic superdelegate — state Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston — Thursday switched her support from Clinton to Obama.

Pollster John Zogby said the statistics that really show the momentum for Obama is the timing of when people made up their mind on how to vote. He said Clinton leads "substantially" among those who made up their minds more than a month ago, but Obama leads almost "two-to-one" among those who made up their minds recently.

Earlier in the day, Obama held a town hall meeting in Austin to talk about the economy, which he said is on the brink of a recession.

"This was not an inevitable part of the business cycle," Obama said. "It was a failure of leadership in Washington — a Washington where George Bush hands out billions of tax cuts to the wealthiest few for eight long years, and John McCain promises to make those same tax cuts permanent."

Obama also criticized McCain's statements about staying in Iraq for 100 years, saying that would cost trillions of dollars. Obama favors a total pullout from Iraq within a year after taking office.

McCain responded in Houston by saying his comments about Iraq have been taken out of context. He said he was talking about a military presence to guarantee stability, not an ongoing war.

"No American argues against our military presence in Korea or Japan or Germany or Kuwait or other places, or Turkey, because America is not receiving casualties," McCain said. "I think, generally speaking, we have a more secure world thanks to American presence, particularly in Asia, by the way, as we see the rising influence of China."

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama appears to be consolidating a lead over Hillary Rodham Clinton among most constituent groups in Texas except Hispanics, according to a new tracking poll.

The survey found Obama leading 48.2 percent to 41.7 percent over Clinton statewide. The poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday for the Houston Chronicle, Reuters and C-SPAN by Zogby International, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

On the Republican side, U.S. Sen. John McCain appears headed to victory in Texas over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas congressman Ron Paul of Lake Jackson. McCain led with 53.4 percent support to Huckabee's 26.8 percent and Paul's 10.7 percent in a survey that had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. McCain led among all groups, including self-identified conservatives.

The tracking poll, which will be conducted daily until next Tuesday's election, found Obama leading with both men and women. He and Clinton were essentially tied among Anglos, but he held 84.9 percent support among blacks and she had the support of 54.9 percent of the Hispanics surveyed.

That Hispanic backing helped give Clinton a lead in South Texas of 66.7 percent. She also led in West Texas, which would include heavily Hispanic El Paso.

Obama led in every other region and was supported by about 60 percent of those surveyed in Houston and Dallas — which have more nominating delegates at stake than all of the region from San Antonio to Brownsville to El Paso.

Next Tuesday's primaries in Texas and Ohio are crucial for Clinton to keep her campaign alive in the face of Obama's surge in the past three weeks. The tracking poll in Ohio showed a close race, with Clinton leading 44.1 percent to 41.5 percent over Obama. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Fact Verifications and Political Cartoon of the Day

The Political Cartoon of the day deals with not with the spin the politicians give an issue but with the spin that takes place in their heads. I think this Political Cartoon does a good job at showing us the root of much of the problem.

Thanks to past equivocations, the Democratic presidential candidates have left themselves open to the criticisms and misrepresentations they are now turning against each other as they scramble to dissociate themselves from a trade agreement they once praised — with qualifications.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are paying a price for artful dodges on trade over the years.

The root of their ambivalence is their shared belief in "free and fair trade," which, on the surface, almost anyone can subscribe to.

The problem is that "fair" trade means restrictions on "free" trade, a gloss-over that allows politicians to have it both ways when saying where they stand on NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and similar deals.

In picking apart the other's this-but-that position, they are seizing on the "this," and ignoring the "that," in the interest of winning voters in the primary next week in Ohio, where the trade deal is blamed for lost jobs.

The dustup spilled into the streets Tuesday when dozens of protesters who oppose free trade gathered outside Clinton's office in New York City. Several apparently shackled themselves to a front door of the building before police came.

THE SPIN:

Clinton on her position: NAFTA was "negotiated under President George H.W. Bush and it was passed during my husband's presidency. But I was always uncomfortable about certain aspects of it, and I have always made that clear."

Clinton mailer on Obama's position: "Ohio needs to know the truth about Obama's position on Protecting American Workers and NAFTA."

THE FACTS:

Her implication that NAFTA was simply a spillover from the first President Bush and passively made law under President Clinton ignores the fierce lobbying Bill Clinton engaged in to get the deal ratified by Congress. Hillary Clinton helped him in that effort.

President Clinton used his faith in free trade as a core issue to distinguish himself from Democratic orthodoxy and establish a "third way" between politics of the left and right.

Hillary Clinton counted NAFTA among her husband's leading accomplishments, despite her publicly expressed misgivings about parts of it.

In 1996, when the pact was three years old, she said the trade deal with Mexico and Canada was giving U.S. workers a chance to compete. "That's what a free and fair trade agreement like NAFTA is all about," she said. "I think NAFTA is proving its worth."

In a speech to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in 2002, she said this of her husband's record:

"The economic recovery plan stands first and foremost as a testament to both good ideas and political courage. National service. The Brady bill. Family leave. NAFTA. Investment in science and technology. New markets....

"All of these came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work. The results speak for themselves."

The Clinton mailer accurately quoted news stories from 2004 describing Obama's call for more NAFTA-like agreements and his belief that the deal has brought benefits to his state. But the mailer was strikingly selective, leaving out qualifications he emphasized at the time, and were closely linked in the news stories.

In one such example, he said: "The problem in a lot of our trade agreements is that the administration tends to negotiate on behalf of multinational companies instead of workers and communities."

THE SPIN:

Obama on his position: "I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have."

Obama on her position: "She was saying great things about NAFTA until she started running for president."

Obama campaign mailer in Ohio: "Hillary Clinton believed NAFTA was a 'boon' to our economy," and "Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA."

THE FACTS:

Obama has been consistently ambivalent.

In his 2004 Senate campaign, he said the U.S. should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for U.S. workers.

"We need free trade but also fair trade," he said, taking the dodge.

Obama is correct that Clinton has praised NAFTA in various ways, but he leaves out the qualifications she's expressed along the way.

And she did not say NAFTA was a "boon," as the mailer states on its ominous cover, depicting a locked factory gate. "Boon" was a newspaper's characterization of her position, which is reprinted inside the mailer.

Clinton Ahead in Critical Moments says Ohio Poll & Political Cartoon of the Day

In the Political Cartoon of the day we show the New and Modern Hillary Clinton ready for the Midwestern Struggle. Her new attire brought to you by Midwestern Cartoon Chic from an unknown designer in Ohio. Polls show that this new Clinton Model is working well in the Midwest, Voters seem to love the Political Cartoon Hillary more than Confrontational, Health Care Hillary. Super Delegate or not, she needs to pull a big win to even stand a chance at receiving the nomination.

Clinton drew the support of 47 percent of those surveyed in the new poll, Obama 39 percent. Yet there is a wild card in the results of this new survey: 9 percent of the likely Democratic voters surveyed said they intend to vote for former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who has withdrawn from the race, and 4 percent were undecided.

Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York holds an eight-percentage-point advantage over Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois among likely Democratic voters in Ohio, according to the results of a new Ohio Poll this morning which arrive as welcome news for Clinton’s hopes of regaining her footing in the contest for the party’s presidential nomination.

The spread between Clinton and Obama also stands at the edges of the poll's potential 4.3 percentage-point margin of error.

In addition, while the Ohio Poll has no benchmark by which to compare Clinton's position today with her stance in recent weeks, a new Univerfsity Poll shows Clinton has lost some of the advantage she had over Obama in Ohio just two weeks ago.

Clinton has a 51-40 percentage point advantage over Obama among Ohio Democratic voters in the Quinnipiac poll released today. This compares with her 55-34 point advantage in survey run by Quinnipiac earlier this month and reported on Feb. 14. The newest Feb. 18-23 survey of 1,853 Ohio registered voters carries a possible margin of error of 2.3 percent.

The results of these Ohio polls arrive on the eve of a televised debate between Clinton and Obama in one of the states which Clinton counts on to breathe new life into her presidential campaign. Following a string of primary and caucus victories for Obama, Clinton is counting on voters in Ohio and Texas on March 4 to reaffirm her claim as a contender for the nomination. The two face each other in debate Tuesday night.

The Ohio polls suggest that Clinton might want to play the debate presidentially -- firm, but without the appearance of worry about any threat in her highly successful rival. Obama is likely to reprise his own appearance in Texas last week, playing to the same level of confidence.

The intensity of Clinton’s campaign-trail challenges to Obama in recent days is a measure of the stakes in Ohio and Texas on March 4, with Clinton counting on victories there to regain her balance in a contest for the pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer. Obama has gained a lead in that contest.

The precariousness of the primary contest in bellwether Ohio next week is born out in today’s Ohio Poll, a product of the University of Cincinnati’s polling institute. The survey was conducted from Feb. 21 through Sunday. The possible margin of error among Democrats surveyed is 4.3 percent, and among Republicans surveyed 5.5 percent.

The Ohio debate also raises the question of which Clinton will show up:

The smiling, conciliatory Clinton who debated Obama in Texas last week in a largely civil encounter in which both refrained from bitter campaign-trail rhetoric.

Or the explosive Clinton who declared, “Shame on you, Barack Obama,’’ on the road in recent days, complaining about campaign mailings which the Obama camp has sent to voters – and the derisive Clinton who mocks the platitudes of the Obama campaign as playing to some sort of “celestial-choir’’ vision of miraculous results with empty rhetoric.

Republican Sen. John McCain holds a comfortable lead among Republican voters. The Arizona senator, on track to become his party’s presidential nominee, claimed the support of 55 percent of the likely voters in Ohio’s Republican primary next week, with former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arizona claiming 20 percent.

“A variety of issues are influencing Republican primary voter decisions about the 2008 presidential race,’’ the Ohio Poll repots, “including: the economy/jobs (30 percent, homeland security/national defense (16 percent), the war in Iraq/Iraq policy (9 percent), health care/health insurance (8 percent), abortion (7 percent) and taxes (6 percent.)’’

The economy weighs heavily on the minds of Democratic voters in Ohio, the survey shows, with 41 percent saying the economy and jobs will weigh heavily in their vote, 25 percent citing health care and insurance and 25 percent the war in Iraq.

Obama Campaign Mailers on Clinton Healthcare Position "Wrong" & Polical Cartoon of the Day

Todays Political Cartoon is regarding Obama's accusations of Hillary Clintons Position on Health Care Issues. The Cartoon is not new and neither is the claim but it has recently been brought back up to the lime light with a new mailer sent out by Barack Obama's Campaign.

Clinton's rhetorical blast, the most bellicose of her campaign, came 10 days before Ohio and Texas primaries that could doom her candidacy if she fails to stop her 11-contest losing streak.

An angry Hillary Rodham Clinton scolded Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama today for campaign mailings that she described as false and shameful attacks on her record.

The health care and NAFTA mailers were shipped to voters in Ohio "several days ago if not weeks ago," he said after holding a roundtable discussion in Columbus on health care issues. "So I'm puzzled by the sudden change in tone.

Waving two Obama mailings at a press conference, Clinton raised her voice and accused the Illinois senator of distorting her positions on health care and foreign trade.

"Enough with the speeches and the big rallies, and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove's playbook," she said, alluding to President Bush's former chief political advisor. "This is wrong, and every Democrat should be outraged."

Obama waved off the sharp criticism in a hastily arranged news conference at Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus.

"We have been subject to constant attack from the Clinton campaign, except when we were down 20 points," he said "That was true in Iowa. It was true in South Carolina. It was true in Wisconsin. And it is true now. "I think they need to take a look at what they've been doing."

One of the mailings says that Clinton's health care plan would force Americans to buy coverage even if they could not afford it.

The other says that Clinton "was not with Ohio when our jobs were on the line," describing her as a champion of the North American Free Trade Agreement approved by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Though Obama defended the two mailers that caused Clinton's vehement condemnation, he also questioned the timing of her outburst, which came at the end of a week in which she lost three more contests.

The senator from New York accused Obama of spending "millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods."

"That is not the new politics that the speeches are about," said Clinton, who has tried to define Obama as a talented speaker with a thin resume. "It is not hopeful. It is destructive, particularly for a Democrat."

Clinton made her comments to reporters on the floor of a Cincinnati community college gymnasium as a morning rally of about 1,000 supporters dispersed.

She said Obama's health care mailing echoed talking points of the health care industry and its Republican allies.

"Just because Sen. Obama chose not to present a universal health care plan does not give him the right to attack me because I did" present one, she said.

Obama's attack, she continued, would give "aid and comfort" to health care companies and the Republican Party.

"So shame on you, Barack Obama," she said. "It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That's what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio. Let's have a debate about your tactics."

Obama told reporters today that the health care mailer simply makes the same point that Clinton herself does -- that the main difference between the two candidates' health care plans is that the New York senator requires people to buy insurance, while his does not.

Clinton and Obama are scheduled to debate on Tuesday night in Cleveland.

On NAFTA, Clinton said she had criticized the pact for years and had a four-point plan to fix it. At a rally later in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton, she called on Obama to stop sending the mailings to voters.

"That is no way to run a campaign here in Ohio about the importance of the election," she told the crowd.

Clinton also released four new television ads today. One of them features her closing remarks in a Texas debate last Thursday. It shows her comments on a San Antonio hospital visit. She recalled seeing people who had lost limbs.

"You know, the hits I've taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country," she says. "And I resolved, at a very young age, that I'd been blessed, and that I was called by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted. That's what gets me up in the morning, that's what motivates me in this campaign."

Obama back on the other hand, regarding the mailers, pointed out a little misleading side note regarding Hillary's tone in the current moment. "Unless these were just brought to her attention, it makes me think that there's something tactical about her getting so exercised this morning," Obama said, calling the mailers completely accurate.

McCain Story and Cartoon of Day

Political Cartoon of the Day:
With the great belief of the current administration, that creatopm is science, this cartoon seemed appropriate. That and this "magical" Global Warming, This Cartoon is great.

The Times reported that early in McCain's first run for the White House eight years ago, one of his top advisers -- concerned about the propriety of the relationship -- intervened by privately warning Iseman to stay away from the Arizona senator. When news organizations reported that McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist's client, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

McCain this morning delivered an unequivocal denial of the charges leveled against him in the story. He flatly denied that he and Iseman had had any sort of romantic relationship, or any relationship beyond what he would normally have with someone lobbying him as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. He also said he was entirely unaware of a meeting between John Weaver, at the time a senior McCain political strategist, and Iseman at Union Station. Weaver has acknowledged that he asked Iseman at that meeting to steer clear of McCain.

McCain's account is not entirely inconsistent with what Weaver has said publicly, although it does strain credulity a bit. "I did not inform Senator McCain that I asked for a meeting with Ms. Iseman," Weaver told The Fix today. "Her comments, which had gotten back to some of us, that she had strong ties to the Commerce Committee [chairman] and his staff were wrong and harmful and I so informed her and asked her to stop with these comments and to not be involved in the campaign. Nothing more and nothing less."

So Weaver, one of McCain's closest advisers at the time, met with Iseman, but says now that he never talked to McCain about his meeting with the lobbyist, either before or after the meeting. And McCain says he had no knowledge of the meeting.

McCain was emphatic in saying he was totally in the dark about Weaver's meeting with Iseman, an essential assertion in attempting to knock down the Times story. But his unqualified denial leaves him no wiggle room if more information surfaces in the coming weeks about what McCain knew and when he first knew it.

There is much that the public doesn't know about McCain's dealings with the telecommunications lobbyist and her clients years back, including considerable potentially exculpatory information that McClain complained was ignored by the Times in its lengthy article. So, at the moment, it's tough to draw hard and fast conclusions.

But one immediate political impact of the story has been the rallying of prominent conservatives behind McCain, as detailed by Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin of the Politico. Rush Limbaugh, the talk radio show host, derided the story as "Page Six gossip" on his program today.

Ironically, Limbaugh and many other conservative talk radio hosts have attacked McCain for weeks for being an unacceptable choice to head the GOP ticket this fall. It didn't help matters that the Times editorial page endorsed McCain for the Republican nomination. One Republican observer put it this way to The Fix: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." That is, conservatives may not like or trust McCain but they like and trust the New York Times a lot less.

McCain sought to play up that line of attack during his press conference this morning. "I was not trying to dissuade [New York Times executive editor Bill Keller] from -- in any way from doing the story," he said. "I know the New York Times."

And, in a fundraising email just sent from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, the anti-Times argument is made even more explicit. "We could expect attacks were coming; as soon as John McCain appeared to be locking up the Republican nomination, the liberal establishment and their allies at the New York Times have gone on the attack," wrote Davis.

It's no secret to anyone watching this Republican race closely that McCain is still struggling to bring conservatives into the fold. Time after time he lost the conservative vote in early primary and caucus states; of the 24 states that have voted to date, McCain received the most support from self-identified conservatives in just five (Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Wisconsin).

Could this be the galvanizing force that unites this key voting bloc behind McCain?

Perhaps.

We've long believed that conservatives would eventually come home to McCain when faced with a choice between someone they largely agree with and someone they don't -- meaning either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton . While it is fashionable at the moment among conservatives to cast a vote against McCain, when November comes it is hard to see these rock-ribbed conservatives choosing a Democrat.

What this incident may do -- again assuming that nothing more damaging emerges over the coming days -- is to energize conservatives behind McCain in a way that they might not have been otherwise. Most conservatives would likely have come home to McCain in the end but there was a segment of voters who would have stayed home. They may not now -- especially if McCain and his camp can cast this controversy as an example of the liberal media trying to destroy a conservative Republican. The story has the potential in the short term to turn McCain into a conservative cause celebre.