There has been talk for several days about the possibility of Obama helping Clinton pay off the debt brought about by her foolish, reckless spending.  That thought doesn't sit well in much of Obamaland, especially from donors like myself.  But there is a way to do it that does not involve Obama using the money from the army of small donors contributing over the internet, while increasing his own campaign funds and bringing the part together.

Really.  Because I invested so much energy over the previous 16 years defending this guy:

This is a big deal to her. Some of you may have seen that she took a terrible beating in the press for a few days because, she was exhausted at 11 o'clock at night and she started talking about Bosnia and she missstated the cirumstances under which she landed in Bosnia. Did you all see all that?

"And, oh, they acted like she was practically Matahari, you know? Just making up all this stuff. And then the President of Bosnia said, 'Well, it was quite dangerous when she came. There were snipers in the hills around.' ...

"And she had to go up into the cockpit with our daughter, in a bullet-proof area, and all the other people had to sit on their bulletproof flack jackets because it was dangerous.

"So she immediately said, 'OK, I misremembered that, they didn't cancel the welcoming ceremony, but it was pretty dangerous.' She was there cause she cared about the troops."

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.c...

They just make shit up.

Summary: On MSNBC Live, NBC News' Andrea Mitchell falsely suggested that Sen. Barack Obama was discussing abortion when he said of his two daughters at a March 29 campaign event: "I don't want them punished with a baby." In fact, as CNN reported, Obama's comments were in response to "a question about how his administration, if he's elected, would deal with the issue of HIV and AIDS and also sexually transmitted diseases with young girls."

http://mediamatters.org/...

Obama has accepted an offer to debate on April 19th in North Carolina.  Hillary has yet to accept.  CBS is apparently itching to give Katie some more cred.

CBS News already has invited both Democratic candidates to an April 19 debate in North Carolina, though no location has been announced. Obama agreed but Clinton has not. Spokesman Howard Wolfson has said the Clinton campaign has made no decision about the CBS debate.

http://www.charlotte.com/...

That's the rap on Jeremiah Wright these days.  Blamed America for 9/11.  Said we were damned by God for our behavior.  For this, he has been declared radioactive-- so toxic that it is inadequate for a presidential candidate to merely repudiate those words.  It's too late, we are told, that candidate is already far too tainted to be commander-in-chief.

This is the standard.  Everyone should know that.  But is it really?

What about McCain?  

I've only seen the clip of the sermon from Jeremiah Wright in which he uses the phrase in the title.  I don't know the context for sure, but he does say "it's in the Bible."

Analysts have claimed he was wishing damnation on America.  I doubt that.  My guess is that he was drawing that assessment from scripture and what he has seen.

...you've gotten this far, keep going...

Looks like her bounce has left her.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are roughly tied in national Democratic preferences -- 47% for Obama vs. 45% for Clinton -- according to Gallup Poll Daily tracking conducted March 6-8.

Didn't take HRC to show just how deep her convictions are-- and how incredibly hypocritical she is.

During a series of satellite television interviews, Clinton was questioned by Dallas station KTVT about comments by Adelfa Callejo, a local activist who supports Clinton candidacy. The interviewer quoted Callejo as saying "Obama's problem is he happens to be black" and asked Clinton to respond.

"Well obviously I want all of us judged on our merits," Clinton said. "I believe strongly that the fact we have an African American and a woman running for the Democratic nomination is historical and I'm very, very proud of that."

"I want people though to look beyond, look beyond race and gender, look at our records, look at what we stand for, look at what we've done and I think that's what most voters are looking for," she said.

The interviewer asked Clinton whether she rejected or denounced Callejo's comment.

"People have every reason to express their opinions, I just don't agree with that," she said, adding "You know, this is a free country. People get to express their opinions."

.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...

Hillary mocked me the other day.  Essentially called me foolish.

"Now I can stand up here and say: Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified, the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect."

"Maybe I just lived a little long. But I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear,"

http://www.presstv.ir/...

Please follow me below...

Some strange happenings in the NYC primary vote:

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

Obama has significantly closed the gap with HRC in California:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in California shows Hillary Clinton with a very narrow three-percentage point lead over Barack Obama. The survey was conducted in the hours immediately following Florida’s Presidential Primary and before John Edwards dropped out of the race.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/...

Bill Clinton doesn't appear to think that African-American votes are that valuable-- unless a Clinton needs them.

Another reporter asked what it said about Obama that it “took two people to beat him.” Clinton again passed. “That’s’ just bait, too. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign. Senator Obama's run a good campaign here, he’s run a good campaign everywhere.”

The reference to Jackson seemed a way to downplay today's result in a state where a majority of voters are African American.

Talk about "bait."  Bill:  Obama is just like Jesse.  Don't take him seriously.

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama expanded his lead on rival Hillary Clinton to 15 points heading into South Carolina's bitterly contested presidential primary, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Saturday.

Obama, an Illinois senator, gained two points on Clinton overnight to lead 41 percent to 26 percent just hours before voting began in Saturday's primary. John Edwards was in third place after slipping two points to 19 percent.

http://www.reuters.com/...

Let's be honest and admit a few basic facts:

1. Ronald Reagan deserved credit for winning the Cold War.

2. Reagan deserves credit for his rhetoric in defense of freedom and his role in advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back.

3. The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, hastened the evil empire's undoing.

I've spent much of the last 16 years defending Bill Clinton.   I've done it over the last four plus years in the dKos community when people attacked him for not effectively pursuing a more progressive agenda.  I've also done it in countless discussions and arguments with more conservative friends and acquaintances elsewhere.  

Bill was my guy.  I loved the Big Dog, and forgave him everything.  The first Dem since FDR to be elected to two terms, he was a proud member of the DLC and triangulated the hell out of more progressive Dems, but I defended it as necessary under the circumstances.  Bill Clinton was not elected during a particularly progressive era.  The first two years of his Presidency ushered in an even less progressive era.  That is how poorly even a man of his incomparable political skill managed to sell the American people on the more progressive agenda he did, at least initially, arrive in Washington with.

I've read some some diaries that seem to border on hysteria today regarding Barack Obama's alleged loving embrace of all things Reagan.    Here's a quote that infuriated one diarist:

"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.  He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.  I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating."

I think Reagan was a lousy President.  I think his policies did great damage to this country from which we may never fully recover.  I think the reverence with which he is held in many quarters cannot be logically linked to his actual "accomplishments."  I also think that the above statement of Obama's is absolutely correct.  

Sometimes its fun to go back and look at what who said about who.  So let's have a little game-- you're on the honor system, i.e. no googling.

I like John Edwards.  May end up volunteering for him.  I'll think twice before contributing to him, though.  

John has had some questionable judgement lately.  He's building a 28,000 square foot house while decrying the fact that there are two Americas.  And he gets $400 haircuts.  

So today, we hear that he will reimburse the campaign for two $400 haircuts.  The $250 and $225 haircuts, however, are another matter.  The campaign is calling those legitimate campaign expenses because he was preparing for "media appearances."  I suppose when you run for President almost everyday is a "media appearance."  Frankly, I think it would help Edwards tremendously to walk into a barbershop in Cedar Rapids and plop down $8 for haircut and a neck shave.  If he wants extravagance, he can tip the dude a $20.  Two weeks later he can get one in Keene, New Hampshire.  Another two weeks, Elko, Nevada.